Mid-January and an MIA

Well it's the middle of January here in Providence -- and probably where you live too.

The weather has been a bit goofy here lately. We had a gorgeous Sunday, then a fast moving, very serious snowstorm blow through on Monday, hammering most of New England. Folks living just inland maybe thirty minutes’ drive from us got about a foot of snow, we got about two to three inches of heavy wet snow. You know the kind, where one pound of snow contains an additional two pounds of water. That stuff.

Anyway, Tuesday brought us another beautiful day and we've pretty much stayed that way through the week. The temperatures rose and fell like the waves of a sea in a gale storm but without the drama. (photo above: looking up Westminster street toward downtown; below: our parking lot; bet you never saw one of those before, eh?)

It's sometimes hard to believe that we have only been in this home two months. It seems like a year since we've moved to Providence. But we've been feeling that way about time and space for quite some, uh, time now. Strange.

Susie continues to settle in at Gracie's restaurant here in Providence. She is still finding her flow at the restaurant and everyone there is very supportive and keen to help her become one of the team. They had their annual Christmas dinner this past Monday at Chez Pascal's (incredible coincidence, eh?) on Hope Street on the East side. Sadly it was for staff only. But brother-in-law Carl was in the area staying with us, and so he and I had Latino food at a restaurant just two doors down from our condo. Needless to say Susie's dinner was quite a bit different from our beans, rice and fajitas. (I've included a photo of the menu from her dinner.)
Fortunately for me Susie continues to try out new recipes at home. New items like a scrumptious Pear-Grapefruit-Pistachio tart. (See the photo below.) Did I say "Grapefruit"? You bet, and it works surprisingly well with the other flavors. In fact, it was so good that she made it again.

Whether it will find it's way onto Gracie's menu remains to be seen since she has already helped to make several key changes there: the addition of a chocolate tart, a passion fruit-raspberry bouche and macaroons with the coffee.

I had my first interview for the position of web communication editor at one of the local colleges last Friday. It went very well and if nothing else I came away feeling that I've certainly learned a lot surfing the web for so many years. Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll get a callback for an onsite interview sometime in the next week or so. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime I'm working on cleaning house by selling lots of our stuff on eBay, Amazon and Craigslist. We couldn't believe how much stuff we had in storage. But thanks to the wonders of technology we can move some of our "stuff" from our space into someone else's space. Then I suppose, in a few years' time they will decide enough is enough and repeat the process all over again, moving that same stuff somewhere else. All-in-all, a strangely effective process.

And speaking of strange, it appears that my father is missing.

Now some of you know that my father passed away in 2004. What you might not have known is that he donated his body to science and science apparently cannot find him.

But more of that in my next posting.

Until then, stay warm, keep cool and as always,

Wish you were here,

Steve