You know what really sucks? (where by “sucks” I mean “was actually pretty killer, just not optimally so”) That would be when you sit down to a tasty dinner of ravioli with sun-dried tomato pesto, the leftover tomato-and-bread salad (panzanella, which word I love but always forget and have to google), and a Spanish rose wine and then realize you could have heated up some garlic bread.
Oh, well, I should be eating less carbs anyway, right?
(One thing about the Netherlands: you can really rely on bread here – it’s always good, even if it’s just from the work cafeteria or the freezer aisle. We get frozen garlic bread in the supermarket and it’s good stuff – maybe not quite up to fresh-made but far better than the greasy versions you sometimes get in US supermarkets.)
Another odd thing about this meal: this wine is about the only one I can remember that’s actually better on its own after dinner than it was with food. Usually that’s the other way around. Too much acid, I suspect, what with all those tomatoes and a bit of balsamic vinegar on the salad.
The weather has turned blissfully cool. I didn’t bike in today because I didn’t know when the thunderstorms would hit, but tomorrow I will. I am being brave and biking on a day when I will also row, but I think it will not be a tiring row. I am doing some karmic payback, or rather pay-forward; last week I met a guy at work’s unofficial American dinner (RIbs Night, though I don’t do ribs). He’s here for the summer for training and this week his wife, a novice rower, is visiting. So I’ll take her out in a double on the canal as a bit of a thank-you to the kind people who gave me and Ted the opportunity to row on the Schuylkill River last summer and on Dexter Lake last month. This should be interesting because not only is she a novice but she’s a sweep rower, but we’ll take a stable boat, and I’m pretty confident in my ability to coach and manage. Worse comes to worst, there’s always the option of only rowing one at a time, with me setting the boat. But I’m sure we’ll both be able to row at least some of the time. From what her husband says, she doesn’t sound big enough to overpower me, which will help. (Keewee, your case was completely different – you might not have been a sculler but you were already a good rower the first time we took a boat out. I wasn’t worried in the least.)