We have arrived!

Here we are! It’s odd to come out in the middle of the week, but last year we decided that weekends aren’t our favorite times to be here. So this morning I went to work and taught in the health center and balance 3, then stopped at Grand Central for lunch. Where I called in an order for my favorite sandwich, the green goat, and they said OK, but when I got there even though I got a perfect parking space right out front and they called my name right when I walked in, and I was thinking it was the best day ever, it turned out they were calling my name because they had stopped serving the green goat the day before and I had to choose something else. They gave me a free loaf of bread and a shortbread cookie, so I forgave them.

I’d done most of my packing on Tuesday (after doing all the laundry from OSP on Sunday and Monday) so I finished up and we got the cars loaded. We’ll have 5 of us here, so we brought Otto, the Navigator, instead of Dave’s car. I had a short nap and we headed out – me in my car listening to Murray Perahia playing “Songs Without Words” and Sam (the niece formerly known as Sami) and Dave in his car.

We’d been planning to try Harding’s Trading Company for dinner – it opened two years ago and we’ve not been there. Faithful readers might recall that they DON’T take reservations and they DON’T answer the phone during dinner service and they DON’T seat groups larger than 6, and now it turns out they DON’T exist anymore, so we went to Pelican instead, where I had a hibiscus lager and the most delicious walnut tacos I’ve ever had. Actually, I’ve never had walnut tacos before. These had sautéed walnuts and corn with quinoa and a jicama slaw and a delicious tangy sauce. Completely memorable and excellent.

Before that, however, I got to the house and was about to turn into the main driveway when the car right in front of me turned in, and then started to do the thing where you back halfway out and then go down our side driveway, which was really weird. It turned out to be the owner, Gordon Church, who was fixing the screen door. Which he did from the time we got here – 4:15 – until almost 8:00, including several trips to the hardware store, where he was coming back from when we arrived. It doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the quality of his repairs to the bouncy bridge on the path down to the beach.

We took a short trip down to the beach where we discovered that the water is very cold and the sand is very high, with a very steep slope down to the water. Josh and Jen arrived while we were down on the beach and we took a nice sunset selfie. What’s particularly strange is that there are no changes to report – everything looks pretty much like it did when we left. It’s good to be back.