Leaving for Paris

It's a very nice Saturday morning here in Providence, no rain or snow predicted and with partly cloudy skies an ideal day for flying.

We've had a good week here -- Susan has been winding down at Gracie's, and letting the staff take over more of the hands-on dessert work. She's prepped a lot of recipes for Danielle, Mike and Maurizio (the JWU coop student) and they are as ready as they'll ever be to step into those very big, batter-splattered shoes.

As for my work, I'm prepping for my own trip to Paris in three weeks. I hope to have all of the university images on an external hard drive, which I will then start tagging and cataloging while I'm in Paris, for two or three hours every morning anyway. Still, I'm pretty excited about this project -- something I did with my own images (nearly 37,000 of them) last year -- of course we're looking at probably more than 50,000 images but hey! who's counting!

So we ended another good week and last evening kicked off Susie's trip with (another) delicious meal at New Rivers. Bruce is the consummate host, a truly gentle soul, and Beau Vestal in the kitchen is another one of Providence's culinary treasures -- he belongs to that same group of young, dynamic chefs like Matt Gennuso of Chez Pascal, Matt Jennings of La Laiterie, and Joe Hafner of Gracie's, to name just three, who continue to put Providence and the Ocean State on the East Coast food map.

Anyway, Dick and Dorothy joined us for dinner and three of us had the New Rivers burger: a half pound of delicious, locally raised (Aquidneck I believe) ground beef on a Portuguese sweet roll (very nice and different) with a small salad and a side of potatoes "du jour," in this case perfectly roasted potato slices; all with a side of homemade Aioli; Susie had an incredibly scrumptious piece of trout -- another winner. All accompanied by a St. Joseph from the Southern Rhone.

We had to skip dessert -- the food was simply too filling -- and soon found ourselves standing on the sidewalk in the bracing clear night air. We said goodnight to Dick and Dorothy and headed back home.

So, this morning Susie is getting herself packed up, and our house ready for me for the next three weeks (or thereabouts). Of course we have also been trading tips: she explains to me how the quilt fits on the bed and the proper method of cleaning the toilet while I show her how to plug the iPod into the computer to charge it and such sundry things. She's off shortly to Gracie's one more time; I'm off to the store and gas the car.

The plan for this evening is we'll try to find a place to eat on the way to the airport -- possibly Legal Sea Foods just outside of Logan. After a bite to eat we'll get her checked in about 7pm and once she's through security I'm off for home.

Alone.

Not relishing this believe me but hey! I'm an adult. Sort of.

Take care and we'll talk soon.