it rained today

The rain was supposed to start by around 9:00 last night, but I don't think it hit us until after midnight.  And hit us it did!  We have a rain gauge on the roof, and when last I checked (and before our connectivity in the neighbourhood was lost), it was suggesting that we'd had 2.4 inches.  That's a heavy soak!  Official readings for DTLA showed about 1.24 inches, a lot less, but still more than double what we would normally get in October.  Wow!

Oh please oh please oh please let this be a very wet and cold fall and winter! 

another quick check-in

So, Marie is back home, the weekend is more than half over, and I am feeling lazy as all get-out today.  I will blog about our time with Marie, I surely will, but right now I just want to sip my decaf and listen to some music and take it easy.  I was in the kitchen a whole bunch yesterday, and I am not a young man anymore.

So, in case anyone is upset about this blogging situation, well, you can deal with these two, and good luck to you!😉

quickly, then…

… we are down in Disneyland, and I shall post more when we get home!  A fun time, for sure.  And I have proof!

cassis or not cassis, that is the question

The answer, alas, is no, not.

Marie arrived on Monday evening, and she brought something with her: a bottle of fruit wine, clearly blackcurrant flavoured, that she had salvaged from our work on moving Mum out of her condo and into care in 2018. 

Take a closer look at that bottle:  2004.  This, friends, is not a grape wine chockful of tannins that will let it age.  No, it is not.

Conrad and I visited Elephant Island with Mum and Roy and Greer way back in 2005 when we did some wine tasting in the Okanagan as birthday treat for me.  Mum was partial to sweeter wines, and she - good Brit that she was - loved blackcurrant.  And so she must have bought it and held it.  I don't know why she didn't open it a long time ago, and now that she's been gone 6 years, we'll never find out.

Monday night, then, between dinner and dessert, I opened it.  I poured us three small servings, noting the tar-like colour.  It did not smell bad, to be honest, but oh, I had my doubts.  I brought the servings and bottle out for all of us, and we toasted Mum.  And then sipped.  And looked at each other.  And, yeah.  Not good.  It honestly reminded me of pomegranate molasses.  Nicely fragrant, more tart on the tongue than you would think.

We put the "cassis" (for, really, it was not cassis we might think of it, and yes I can be a horrible snob at these things sometimes) aside.  If we had had it in, oh, 2005 or not much longer after that, it would have been a lovely after dinner drink.  I remember liking much of what Elephant Island produced, after all.  But no, away it went, and I pulled out a Big Head icewine from our visit there two years ago. 

It had held up well and went nicely with the apple cider doughnuts and salted maple ice cream.  We toasted Mum again, and enjoyed our wine together.

first weekend in October

The weekend started with rain.  It's so odd - that's twice now in the space of a week or so where we had measurable rain but I had no inkling of its potential.  I even went out for a walk on Friday morning, not a long one, and thought how very nice the overcast morning was for a walk, but I assumed it would all lift and dissipate as the marine layer so often does.  But no.  I was doing work at the dining table as I often do, and Van texted us to comment that it was raining his way.  I looked up, and lo!  Rain. 

Not buckets, but clearly rain.  And not for too long.  It let up, and by afternoon, there was some sun coming through.

It wasn't our usual weekend.  Neither of us was in the mood to head to Maestro on Friday night.  Not a reflection on Maestro - we love the place and were delighted to see the photos on Instagram from the owners of the two of them in Mexico at the wedding of one of them.  It was an odd week for me of working two nights late, and I feel like I've dined out a lot lately.  I just wanted to stay in.  Conrad felt the same way, so I poured us a couple of cocktails and set to work on making us a simple dinner of pasta (including - yes, sorry - jarred sauce) and salad.  We opened a decent Italian red,

watched some Great British Bake Off, and that was the evening we needed and had.

Saturday morning was a little more usual, though.  A short walk for me before Conrad was up and at 'em, then another walk of comparable distance with him.  That brought us to Amara for breakfast, a very light one for me - only an empanada. 

But I did have my decaf latte,

and I did have Conrad's fine company!

That got us partway through the morning.  By the time I was home from a haircut

and groceries, it was closing in on noon.  The afternoon mostly passed with us doing housework - my sister will be with us through much of this week, and we needed to have the place tidy for her - and then we got ourselves all pretty for a dinner out.

I think I've posted things with Heath and Nicole in the past.  Heath is, sort of, Van's nephew.  That's a stretch, but it's the easiest way to describe things.  Anyway, Heath's birthday was last Friday, and so we all met up in Santa Monica on Saturday for dinner together. 

Van and I had wanted to get Conrad to The Georgian Room after our nice dinner there last fall, and it felt like a special place to take the young couple.  It's a handsome setting, though they discourage photos inside (Conrad snuck a few when a dessert with candle came out for Heath).  Even the outside is handsome,

tucked around the side of a hotel right on the city's oceanfront boulevard. 

We had a good meal, most of us enjoying steaks, some cocktails and wine as well.  It was really enjoyable, celebrating with them.

Sunday morning I was up before the others, walking around in South Pasadena, having a casual time of it, taking a photo or two. 

Eventually Conrad and I got going a bit, heading for some groceries (with Olive tagging along!),

then coming back to make a light brunch for the three of us - avocado toast with poached egg. 

We headed home after that, getting more cleaning done, then I hopped online for a happy hour with friends.  Conrad and I ended the day with a simple dinner of things set out on a board for grazing.  Some television, a short walk, then to bed early!

All in all, it felt like a simple, basic weekend.  Certainly, I don't have as many photos, and I'm not being all that descriptive.  Still, it was a good weekend, getting some things done, having some social time.  I'm happy with how it all went! 

Hawaii, day seven

You will be not be surprised, I am sure, to find that day seven of the Hawaii trip started in much the same fashion as day six.  That is to say, a walk.  And a longer one than the day before - we weren't due to meet in the lobby until a half hour later than the previous day.  The morning walk included part of the park but part of Waikiki first. 

And yes, a few photos from the stroll. 

A good start to the morning!

Oh, and I wore a new shirt with a cool manta ray pattern on it.  Love it! 

The work at the college went easily that day.  The morning was busy, but by shortly after lunch, we had finished what we needed to do and were waiting for the mid-afternoon report-out.  That event happened quickly, and before too long, we had made our return to Honolulu.

I've done five of these teams now, and this one was the one that went the smoothest and easiest and quickest.  But that also made it the one where the team members bonded the least.  We had dinner together the night before, and we had two breakfasts and two lunches at the college, but as soon as we got back to the hotel on that last day in Hawaii, the team chair was out the door of the van, thanking us each sincerely, and then heading off to his room, not to be seen again.  The assistant chair (or whatever the title may have been) beat a similar path but lingering several minutes longer.  That left the four of us to head to Pint and Jigger for drinks.

I like that bar.  I don't like the sports bar aspect to it, but I like the bar.  Good drinks!  I asked for one called Mr. Fancy Pants,

and the server was very careful to make sure that I might like it.  Like, super cautious.  And I get it.  Cynar is weird, not everyone likes mezcal.  But it was, in essence, a mezcal negroni, and I do like those, and so I liked my cocktail. 

As we went for round two, one of my colleagues decided she liked it as well.  I'm sure the bar was a little gratified that we all did!

Drinks done, we went our separate ways.  I could have invited one of them to dinner with me, but no, I decided to have a last evening to myself.  I hemmed and hawed (I get weirdly anti-social in situations like this and sometimes would prefer to have delivery food or something and just watch television I've seen before) and eventually got myself over to the Halekulani for a light bite at House Without a Key.  And it was nice.  It rained lightly on us.  My cocktail - a mai tai

- was good but not as good as what I'd had three nights earlier at Orchids.  The food was fine - some loaded fries and a mildly bland tuna tataki.  I enjoyed the singing and hula - the current Miss Hawaii was the dancer (but she sang a bit as well). 

It was all very pleasant.  But I felt guilty that I was there without Conrad and Van.  Oh, we would have loved being there together.  Sigh.

I spent the rest of my evening packing.  I was at the airport

early the next day, which meant time in the United Club there,

one of the nicer ones in my experience.  And, lo!  The one seat available for upgrade on my flight was assigned to me.  1A for the ride home to California. 

Good work done, good time spent, good food and wine enjoyed - I'd call the trip a success.

I can't wait to go back to Hawaii....

Hawaii, day six

Day six was where work got done.

Yes, despite all of my postings about fun and relaxation and good dining and hanging out with my sister, the trip to Honolulu came about because of a work trip.  You may recall (or not) posts from 2023 wherein I visited the College of Micronesia. An excellent trip, that one.  Well, this trip was for a similar purpose:  participating in a peer review team at Windward Community College.

I started the day off by myself, though.  The team was due to meet in the lobby at 7:15 before the drive over to the college (and if you've never been to Honolulu, let me tell you that there is some awful traffic there).  That meant a nice but not too-long walk,

once again over in the nearby Ala Moana Park, once again capturing a few photos of the brightening morning

before returning to the hotel

to get ready.

Six of us crammed into a small van and headed over the pass to the wetter side of the island, arriving at the college well in time.  It's a handsome campus, the old site of the state mental hospital, if I remember correctly.  That means that most of the buildings have heritage designation as do the grounds, which is great for preserving the look and feel of the place but not easy for the facilities maintenance.  Still, it was a fine setting at the foot of a mountain, lush a green all around.

We waited in the parking lot a short while until the staff liaison to the team let us know that all was ready. Every Monday, members of the college community gather in "the quad" to come together, sing, and start the week.  The song they shared was in honour of the mountain, and it served as a welcome to us.  There were introductions all around, and we were presented with leis that they had made themselves. 

That was an especial delight.  I love the tradition of leis, and I wore mine all day while there. 

The scent from them hit me every now and then, a sweet fragrance that was so very welcome.  A tiny distraction from the work, but not a bad one by any means.

The college housed our team in the library, a new building rather than a re-purposed old one.  I was a little envious to see its pristine, modern interior,

and its one wall of windows gave onto a great view of campus and on down to the ocean. 

The college has integrated a Hawaiian perspective into so much of its work, and this was reflected in many places, such as in the naming of buildings. 

That was also evident in the artwork on display in places. 

All in all, it was an honour to be there and to do the work with the team.

As the afternoon drew closer to an end, we collected and headed to the van. 

Once back at the hotel, we had time enough to refresh ourselves.  Night fell over the city,

and we headed to the restaurant at the top of the hotel to have dinner together, bond a little further, and end the day successfully.