Thursday, June 25, 2009

Day 5

Well, the weather finally got to me. I’d thought about going to Indian Beach this morning and walking from there to town, but when I woke up to the grey skies and possible rain I lost my motivation. It ended up being a nice slow morning. I had leftover fruit salad for breakfast. I think this may be the best fruit salad I’ve ever made, even without the watermelon. I read a goopy book about an orphan who takes a cruise and ends up with a male roommate, and they fall in love. I enjoyed it very much. Everybody else read or watched TV or surfed the internet. At lunchtime the clouds were still quite thick, so our plan of going to Warren House was scrapped again. Instead, we went back to Bill’s, which is Dave’s favorite lunch place. We had a very nice lunch there, including a moment when the waiter glanced at Dave’s glass and said, “dangerously low beer there.” No wonder Dave likes it so much at Bill’s.

After lunch we went to El Mundo for me to exchange Tim’s fabulous eggplant-purple T-shirt for a less good looking tan one which he said he would be willing to wear. I thought the exchange process would take forever when they told me they had a new computer system and would have to go get somebody who knew how to run it, but when the somebody came she took the tags off the new shirt, handed it to me and said, “You can go. We’ll figure this out.” Yay! I was able to join Dave and the boys at Osborn’s, where three out of four people had ice cream. No, actually, it was Dave who demonstrated self-control.

After that we went to Gepetto’s toy store to get a hoppy ball for Tim. We almost got him a pink one but the saleslady noticed we had the pink one and double checked. You know if a purple shirt wouldn’t work, a pink hoppy ball would be right out. Our next stop was Ye Olde Driftwood Inn, to check it out as a possible place for dinner tonight. It has been here forever, mostly unchanged except they put a deck out front a year or two ago, but we have never been there. We thought maybe we would try it out tonight, but one look at the menu – completely uninspired meat and potatoes (Dave called it The Mo’s of Steakhouses) – and one sniff of the deep-frying oil laden atmosphere was all it took to change our minds. So we are going to take a chance on JPs again tonight. Stay tuned.

Finally we headed down to the bookstore to meet up with Josh and Tim. Josh found a book about shipwrecks during World War II, or something like that, and Dave found a book about Oregon wineries. I like the bookstore very much. They also had a very cool magnifying glass sort of thingy, which the boys had trouble sharing. It was very cool, but not $26 worth of cool, so we left it there. On the way to the car we stopped at the Mariner market for more sissy firestarters. Dave has almost made having fires completely painless, except for the part where he has to poke at it and rearrange it at intervals, which he says he is ready to hand over to someone else but which I think he wouldn’t like to give up.

We got home and Tim inflated and tried out his hoppy ball. It is a heavy duty ball with a handle, about 18” tall, that you sit on and bounce around. It is way too small for Tim, but lots of fun anyway. Eventually we hope to take it down to the beach and all try it out. And even though it was still cold and cloudy, Dave was determined to have his nap on the deck, so he bundled up in a sweatshirt and went out to read his wine book on the deck. Once again he was thwarted, however – it started to rain not long after he went out. So he came in and we both had naps.

One thing that is interesting today is how dirty the ocean looks. Of course it looks all gray because of the clouds,but it also has lots of brown foam on it. We don’t know what causes it, although the surf does seem rather higher than usual so maybe that is what does it? It makes the ocean look polluted.

While we were at the toy store I also picked up Pocket Farkle, a dice game similar to but mostly unlike Yahtzee. It’s 6 dice in a film canister and is very portable. After Dave and I woke up from our naps and I finished my daily game of Sudoku, Tim and I played it without keeping score to get a feel for it. Turns out we should have kept score because it might be the only time we’d ever have a chance to win, but more about that later.

We’d decided to give JPs another try for dinner. JPs used to be in midtown, and was one of the first grownup restaurants we ever went to in Cannon Beach – first without the boys, then with them. JPs used to be known for simple food perfectly prepared. Since then it has vacillated between simple food perfectly prepared and boring food not done quite right. Also they have marionberry lemonade, which used to be a dark, rich drink, not too sweet, without the bitterness you sometimes get in lemonade. Tonight it was mostly successful. Not to take too much away from Dave’s food and wine blog, but here it is: Josh and Dave had the special, a flatiron steak au poivre, I had my perennial favorite, the lamb & chicken black forest salad, and Tim had a NY strip with a green peppercorn sauce. Everybody but Tim was very pleased with what came, and Tim was pleased when Dave generously gave him a large chunk of his. Everyone but Josh had dessert, and they were quite good. So JPs gets good marks, although honestly I’m not sure if it’s any better than Wayfarer – the expectations were just much lower going in. JPs sides – the rice and veggies – I find particularly uninspired, so it’s hard for them to get top marks.

On the other hand, we love Chef Bill and his wife Diane, who came over and gave the boys advice about marrying well. Two of their sons have married and moved away, but their daughter is still working in the restaurant (the Pappas nose is unmistakable) and their youngest son just turned 16. It turned out to have been a nice choice for dinner. During dinner we also talked about what makes a perfect vacation, and for Josh it is unlimited internet, good food, and a game in the evening. You might think from this that when we got home he would have been up for some farkle, but it was the unlimited internet that got him. We have two computers – mine in the front room and Dave’s in the TV room, so when we got home Tim got on Dave’s, Josh got on mine, Dave read a book, and I practiced farkling.

After a while I was able to convince Tim and Dave to join me in a game of farkle. Josh has taken an unreasoning dislike to the game, but the three of us enjoyed it very much. It is a little like the game Press Your Luck from TV, in that you can keep rolling as long as you want, but if you don’t roll something that scores, you lose all your points (but only from that turn, unlike the TV show). But you do find yourself saying “big numbers, big numbers” a lot. It was sort of a pretty close game except that Dave was definitively out in front most of the time, and eventually won. Later on, he and I played a game just the two of us, which he also won. This made him say, “I sparkle at farkle”, from which Josh is still trying to recover.

Between the farkles we played what may have been the longest ever game of trouble. Dave got all his pieces out while the rest of us were either still all at home base or had 1 piece out, but then somehow in one round of playing three of his pieces got sent back home, and since one had already been sent home (been honked, we say), he was suddenly back to the beginning. Meanwhile I eventually got all of my pieces to around to win the game, though not without many setbacks, and at the time that I won all of Tim’s pieces were in his home base. He was a very good sport about the part where for most of the game all he got to do was push the pop-o-matic and watch the rest of us move around the board.

These days we don’t usually eat dinner until 7, and get home around 9, so it gets late very quickly. The evenings have been very peaceful, though, and even though we don’t get to bed until midnight or so we’re doing better at sleeping in, so everyone is feeling pretty well rested. And the weather is supposed to be better tomorrow, so maybe Indian Beach and Warren House will be able to happen. Low tide isn’t until after 10, and it is still a very low tide (-1.1 or -1.5, depending on where you look), so we have some good walks planned.

We also have two extra places reserved at the Bistro Friday night at 6:30 – if you want to come out, let me know!

1 comment:

  1. ooh, I'd love to! I have been to Wellfleet where I had TWO guac hots (one each day) and a long talk with Owen. The Box Lunch is now 33 years old, which means you were 15 or so when you went there the first time. I won't say how old I was! I was going to have a lobster roll at PJ's but they were 24.95!

    I coudn't get to the ocean because it is already sticker time, so I wen to Spectacle and swam first across and the all around the pond. It took me abut an hour. It was pretty cold, but there was no one else there and it was just beautiful. The Little Beach is all overgrown, but the 'other' spectacle lens, that you didn't used to be able to see, is now a little exposed and with aqua (the bottom looks squishy)shoes would be a nice alternative when #1 gets crowded, ie.e.summer aftenroons. By making several calls, I located Governor Sanford, i.e. Ben, who is neither on the Applalchian trail nor writing a book - he's in Seattle. He has not made any plans for coming East on the 10th, but you know he will. Plese tell Tim to bring a small packable game when he comes, and that I wish he would answer my email.

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