Tuesday night at Maestro/Wednesday morning at Amara

Friends, I have finished packing.  I am all set for tomorrow.  It's the last day of September.  One last blog entry for the month.  Short and sweet folks, short and sweet.

Because of travel and Conrad's case of Covid, we've missed a lot of time at Maestro and Amara lately.  And we have missed them, truly.  Since we can't go in this weekend or any other Friday/Saturday until near the end of October, we took care of this before we leave.  So, it was a Tuesday night at Maestro, sitting outside, enjoying the warm weather, chatting with Sergio, Paul, Rigo, and Nestor when they came by the table.  Guacamole to start,

cochinita pibil as a shared main. 

I had their drink special, a mezcal and ginger cocktail that was nice and light. 

We enjoyed our meal, said our goodnights and told them we'd see them in three weeks, and brought home a piece of their tres leches carrot cake for us to enjoy when we were tired of doing travel prep for the evening.

This morning:  a very short walk and on to Amara for right after they opened.  The usual for each of us, the arepa for me and a breakfast croissant for Conrad. 

Oh yes, the decaf latte as well. 

We had a nice little chat with Amara, and then home in time to begin getting all the things done today that we needed to do.

Van will come over for dinner with Olive, and then he'll take us to the airport in the morning.  Gosh, 18 hours until we are in the air! 

third weekend in July

Hey, it's the weekend update!  Lucky y'all, right?  Here we go!

Friday started out with me doing a mighty mighty long morning walk:  just shy of ten miles.  I was understandably a little worn out the rest of the day, but I rallied for dinner at Maestro.  No Van this time - he was a little under the weather - but we did have a nice time with Stephen. 

Ah, Stephen, someone we didn't see often enough despite him living just over in Glendale.  And now he is all packed up and moving to Texas.  This week.  We wish him well there, what with the new job and being much closer to his daughters and grandson.

Anyway, it was a nice evening outside. 

I stuck with the Maestro margarita, a hibiscus-flavoured drink, and we shared some good food:  guacamole with plantain chips, oysters, the roasted beet salad, and the cochinita pibil.  

I really love that last dish.  Yum!

Conrad and I came home from dinner, poured a little wine, watched some television.  An easy Friday done.

Saturday started out with less walking than the day before.  And, of course, we ended up at Amara.  Rather than having my usual arepa, I split a breakfast burrito

with Conrad. 

Have no fear:  there was a decaf latte for me.

Saturday then unspooled through a day of groceries, some laundry, and tackling some of the accumulation in the one storage room.  That felt good to get done.  Eventually I took up residence in my kitchen where I cobbled up from dim memory a lentil and bacon tart

to serve at room temperature for dinner and served that along with a salad platter (no lettuce - we are being wary of that like many other people) of burrata with crispy prosciutto, tomatoes, nectarines, basil, and mint. 

We had barely finished when Erik from next door showed up at the door to say hello.  That turned into a longer evening with him and his friend, Barry, joining us.  And then, because the dishwasher is on the fritz, I was up until after 11 washing and drying all the dishes by hand.  A lot of time on my feet despite a shorter walk that day, and man oh man, was I exhausted by the time I went to bed.

I let myself stay in bed longer yesterday, and our morning walk was meager.  It was nice to get a morning with some oatmeal and decaf and writing a few notecards to friends.  I made some dinner for Conrad to reheat tonight while I'm at Van's, then set to work on the happy hour cocktails.  That was fun.  Van stuck around for sushi after drinks, and then he headed home while Conrad and I finished up with some travel planning we'd been doing earlier in the day.  To bed after that.

Just a rather ordinary, easy weekend for us.  Nice to have! 

second weekend in July

The weekend that was, and really, it was a good weekend.  It's Sunday night now as I start this, I've had some decent, moderately-priced wine.  We've watched a little of Cougar Town, an older television show we're now getting into.  I have a ticket purchased for tennis in the desert this fall.  Why not start the weekend check-in?

And let's extend the weekend back to last Thursday.  A cheat, but Fridays during the summer are WFH, and although that's not a day off (there's always something or things to deal with), it is a little easier for not having the drive.  Anyway, Thursday evening was nice for having had friends invite us over. 

That's a rare thing.  People get intimidated or weird about cooking for me, and I swear, I SWEAR

EVEN. IF. YOU. MAKE. ME. A. BOX. OF. KD. I. WILL. BE. GRATEFUL. THAT. YOU. COOKED. FOR. ME.

I mean it.

Jennifer and Sanders, however, provided us with a dinner beyond Kraft Dinner, with halibut cooked on the grill

and some very juicy and sweet corn on the cob.  Lovely!  We sat outside and had a great chat, the five of us.  Very good food!

Friday came, and it was off to Maestro that evening.  Sooooo long since last we were there.  They had closed for some renovations, and before they reopened I was off to the Midwest, so it had been weeks.  Too long.  So it was so very good to be back.  YAY!  We sat outside, the three of us, and shared gaucamole, a roasted beet salad, the tetela, calamari, and the bone marrow esquites. 

Such a nice evening there.  We came back to the condo to have some little pastries from Bu Pastry Bar. 

A nice way to finish the evening as we watched some Stanley Tucci in Italy.

Saturday!  Saturday I was up early, but I lingered as I heard Conrad stirring upstairs.  We eventually went out on our walk, a nice casual one.  And then it was Amara.  So, yes, a proper and regular weekend for us.  Our usual breakfast after all this time,

and a second round of lattes to boot!

 

Then there was the SG Lewis concert, a good walk this morning, a great and bountiful breakfast at Van's, a new pair of shoes for walking, dinner with some television.  Nothing especially photo-worthy, or moments where taking photos wasn't at front of mind.

All in all, a good mix of busy and not busy this past weekend. We're almost halfway through the month, which doesn't feel real, to be honest.  Fall semester will be upon us in no time at all! 

ah... the best laid plans

It's the weekend that was post, but with a bit of  difference.  You see, I sit here at Van's place not having done much of anything since late yesterday morning.  Why, you ask?

That's why.  There are two steps down from Van's home's entrance to the living room.  And when I took that second step yesterday, I rolled my left ankle hard.  Cursing, crying, icing.  I've run the gamut.  And now I'll baby it for the week ahead so that it's (I hope!) at least a little ok by the time we head to Nashville on Friday.

Sigh.

What's frustrating is that I'd been ramping up the morning walks, going harder and faster and longer.  7+ miles on Friday morning,

with Conrad joining me about four miles in,

9 miles on Saturday

with Olive and Conrad joining me for the last 3/4 mile. 

Good step counts through the week.  Feeling good about it.  And now this.

Alright, enough moaning and gurning on about such things.  Let it heal, Peter, and tell your gentle readers how the rest of the weekend was.

There was that good walk on Friday morning.  Conrad and I eventually made our way to Amara Cafe for a little breakfast

before I had to get home for an online meeting (that, it turned out, I didn't need to attend, and so I didn't).  I worked from home the rest of the day while Conrad spent the day with Olive, then he and I met up back at the condo to head for a light, quick dinner at Maestro.

I love when Rigo and Marco try out new cocktails.  It's always fun to see what they've come up with.  We only had one cocktail each at the bar there, but it was a terrific new one, a clarified pineapple daiquiri with a whipped matcha topping. 

Sweet, not too sweet, a little fresh.  I could have had more easily. 

Instead, we kept ourselves to the one round along with some guacamole

and plantain chips as well as the grilled octopus with fideo and nopales. 

Then it was back to Van's to rescue Olive

and feed her.  We had an easy time of it the rest of the evening.

Conrad has been taking care of me since Saturday morning, and thank goodness.  His cooking is rudimentary at best, but it's care, and I appreciate it a lot.  It's mid-afternoon on Sunday as I write this, and I think I may soon go back to sitting on the bed with my ankle propped up.  I'll avoid going in to work the next couple of days so as not to have to aggravate things.  Van comes home tomorrow, and the three of us have some travel ahead.

Onward with Sunday! 

first full weekend in March

It was a nice weekend, this past one.  Yep, simple as that.  End of blog entry.

No, sorry, just kidding.  It was a nice weekend, but I'll certainly blog at greater length than that!  And share photos.

That said, it wasn't an especially interesting weekend.  That is, we didn't do a lot out of the ordinary.  Still, the ordinary is rather enjoyable.  So it was that we were back at Maestro on Friday night.  A light meal, though - we weren't especially hungry.  Just guacamole

and then enmoladas to share. 

I am trying to do a mostly dry month, so I had a mocktail

made with non-alcoholic tequila. 

Nice little drink!  On the way home, we saw that the little cheesecake pop up

had a sign out, so we bought a few pieces for eating tonight when Van and Olive come over.  We otherwise got home from dinner early and enjoyed an evening of music and reading before bed.

Saturday morning was a good little walk for us on a sunny

but windy day.  We ended up at Amara, of course, and had breakfast. 

And then it was home to... nothing, really.  It was truly a day off, and I did very little.  We had plans for later, and until then, I was utterly, happily lazy.

Saturday night was supposed to be dinner downtown for Mitch's 65th birthday, but that got postponed, alas.  So, the three of us

pivoted and ended up going to see Hamnet (good film, Buckley was outstanding in it) and then on to dinner at Smitty's where, shockingly, I did NOT have the liver special.  A lobster roll for me instead. 

We all shared a salad and a dessert,

and because I had intended to raise a glass to Mitch, I let myself have a drink at dinner, a Toronto. 

A slow sipper through the meal.  Nice evening!

I took no photos yesterday, sorry.  But I did get some things done:  groceries bright and early, baked two banana bread loaves and two batches of scones, got some laundry through the machines.  Not a bad day.  Conrad and I finished it off sitting outside with a grazing board for dinner, watching some television on the iPad together.  I ended the day with the last of season 4 of Bridgerton, and that, friends, was the first full weekend in March.