Bloodhound in the Background

Once again we hosted MLK weekend Beachy Poker, with Kathryn, Salli, Jess & Tom as our gaming guests. From Friday evening, when Tom & Pep arrived to play some Rummy-O, eat dinner and drowse a bit over The Gates, until noon on Monday, when we at last let Salli and Kathryn up from the Mahjongg table, the fun was nonstop. Great food, great games, and great pix--almost all you see here from that weekend were taken by Tom, who has The Gift. In the background, the bloodhound renting Nancy & Sadie's place brayed.

learning the evil Spite & Malice

Tuesday was another Red Letter Day, during which we stayed home from morning bingo to watch the Innauguration live (a Tivoed version just didn't seem as if it would cut it). We loved it all, even the prayers! And while we were watching, Jo's Money, that mythic gift from the beyond, arrived! A little inheritance from S's Aunt Jo, which has been in the offing for nearly two years, and which has been spent six ways to Sunday long since, the cash was good for one more present to ourselves (about which more in a sec). Then we went to bingo, and both of us won a couple of little pots. And THEN we had supper at Fat Clemenza's Italian Ristorante, a definite do again! E's eggplant parmesan was delicious, and S's pasta marinara with sweet sausage put her slurp into overdrive. Then we came home and watched the balls, mainly the Hometown Inaugural Ball, dazzled, swept up. Can we credit Barack Obama for our beautiful day? Yes we can!




Coming down off Tuesday, Wednesday's Tai Chi class was absolutely brutal. On Thursday afternoon, Squeak took one look at the gear slung over our shoulders, and led the way to the beach, trotting down the smooth concrete border of the pavement (The Kitty Sidewalk) to the dune crossover and onto the sand.



Friday, S had a little medical procedure and both S & E met their new GP for the first time. Saturday concluded our week of Spite & Malice, the wonderful card game that Kathryn used to play with her mother and taught lucky us. Let the record show that E beat the crap out of S decisively. And just as we were finishing up, our thank-you-aunt-Jo present arrived, a Wii! When we tire of the Australian Open this coming week, we can play tennis ourselves in the living room!

Glen & Jo, thrifty and childless, thanks a mill!

Motivated!

But perhaps not sufficiently organized: where are those missing pieces?

Progress Report

Food Glorious Food

Our first holiday season as full-time beach bums began with a visit from Von, who rented a condo just up the road. We hung out on her balcony overlooking the Gulf on Christmas Eve while a fire alarm at the condo complex across the parking lot whooped it up. When we'd had enough of that, we tried a new resto, Bombay Masala in Fort Walton Beach. Yummy! A definite Do Again. Not every dish equalled the very best Indian food we've ever had, but there were some lovely flavors and a nice atmosphere. Christmas Day Von came to us for more plebeian fare, ham and yams and curried apples, and, ahem, a glass or two of gin. Sort of remarkable any food got to the table at all . . .

A crew of serious cooks appeared on our doorstep for New Year's. Sure, we did more than just hover over the stove and eat and drink and wash dishes for 10 days, but it's fair to say that a big chunk of every day was devoted to that evening's supper. There was beef stew, scampi, shepherd's pie, pork & pepper goulash, elaborate German dumplings, roasted chestnut soup, Deramus sausages, lasagna, and Moroccan chicken. Not to mention homemade ice-cream, homemade sorbet, homemade cookies. And when we weren't cooking ourselves, some of us attended a class on cooking!

Every angler needs a zinger

It wasn't for lack of trying that we didn't eat fish every day

Scampi--inspired by Ina that morning

It takes a village . . .

Bruno rocks!

Coulis R Us

Tough nuts!

Where did all the cookies GO?

Who's zoomin' who?

Just 30 more passes thru the machine and we can eat!

Hydration is key . . .

Chocolate pasta is not such a hot idea

Supper after everybody left . . .

Splendid weather was on tap during the entire visit, great for beach walks, running, fishing, and hanging around inside with the windows open. We played poker, read books (Frankie was 350 pages into Dombey & Son when we dropped her & Martin off at the airport for their return to London), watched Utah *cream* Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, and viewed a couple of Chris Rock specials, in one of which he was so young and tense that it was painful in a new way to watch him perform. E worked doggedly on the tricky jigsaw puzzle that F&M gave her for Christmas, S&E took Frankie to Bingo in FWB and dropped Martin off at the Okaloosa Island Fishing Pier where he was schooled on the ins & outs of catching the lively bonito, and several groups made runs to the outlet mall at various times with varying degrees of success.

Now we're on entertaining hiatus until Saturday, when some folks are planning to spend the long MLK weekend here playing poker and mahjongg. Yesterday we revved up the GPS system S got E for Christmas and followed it to the site where we hoped to find our very first geocache (tho our hopes were muted, for nobody has seen this particular cache since September of 2007). On the way to Eastern Lake, we finally stopped at FlipFlops and tried their burgers. Which were just fine, very meaty, but not only were the buns not toasted, they weren't even room temperature! We too were cold, standing around in the mist on the Eastern Lake overlook, no cache to be found. We did learn that coastal dune lakes like this one are rare worldwide, and in the US they only occur on the Gulf, so all was not lost.



Today S pitched in on the jigsaw puzzle: we're going to need that table next weekend for jongg!

HELP!!!!

Happy New Year!

Hope all y'all are kicking off your 2009 with all optimism and good cheer. Here's what we're up to:

And what you can't see is Sandy's oven fire. But the braised pork goulash will be worth it.

Are You Ready?

Like most of the rest of you, we've spent the last little while prepping for the holidays. In the Adventures in Cooking department, we practiced making our own lasagne noodles and the resulting lasagne was both beautiful and delicious--hope the holiday company likes pasta! Our biggest Adventure was our first trip out of town, leaving Squeak in the capable hands of Karen and Phil next door while we drove across the low country on the way to the casinos in Biloxi.

A favorite part of that drive is the stately Pascagoula River, which is ecologically significant as the only virtually "unaffected," that is un-dammed, river emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. Could that be why it is so breath-taking?

The Beau Rivage, our home base in Biloxi, was ridiculously decorated, as these photos demonstrate. (What you can't see is the incessant xmas music, which fortunately did not extend to the casino floor.) On the advice of Susan and Charlie (serious gamblers), we visited a different casino, the Imperial Palace, which lacked the glitz of the Beau, but made up for it in the looseness of its slot machines and its down-hominess. And the food was certainly no worse. Asked by another patron at a blackjack table, one of the dealers opined that the clientele on Christmas Day fell into two camps: early in the day the casinos are populated with folks who have no family; late in the day, crowds of people who are sick of their families appear.







Most of our time away, this part of the coast was completely socked-in with dense fog, and there had recently been snow in New Orleans. This last phenomenon was explained by our bell-hop as a consequence of the first Vietnamese congressional representative having been elected in the state of Louisiana.

Where the carts go at night.

Squeak appeared none the worse for wear when we returned home (to the beach for the first time!), but we did learn from Karen that the one time she tried to pet our dear kitten, she hissed.

Traveling Mums

Most of what happened this week happened in the immediate neighborhood. Two pots of yellow mums, which Marina displayed on her steps for the month of October, until she returned to Switzerland, and which then moved to Daryn & John's house for the month of November, have, now that D&J are back in Tennessee, moved to Karen & Phil's, next door. We've not seen the flik about the traveling pants, so luckily we have this.

Finally. FINALLY our new door was delivered. Naturally, because measurements were only taken 37 times, it was too small by several inches. Nothing that Ronald & Leidy couldn't handle, but worthy of a half-hour of crepe-hanging on their part nonetheless. E very much hopes that this is the END of remodeling for a while, and S agrees that it's great to have it done for the holiday guests. This door is swanky, closes with authority, is designed to survive the battering it will inevitably take from the extreme conditions on the third floor. And best of all, there's absolutely NO WAY anybody can lock themselves out. In fact, figuring out how to lock it from the inside proved quite a challenge for S. For the first time, Squeaky got to see what was on the other side, and shouldered her way through the pickets in the railing to take a good look.

Because we were invited to Billye's for dinner (we thought) Thursday evening, and charged with bringing rolls, S spent a couple of days practicing to make some from scratch. E was a valiant crash-test dummy, for S is way out of practice in the dough department, and her good luck with pizza dough of late hasn't transferred to the more delicate sorts. The remains ultimately became a very tasty banana-rum-raisin bread pudding. S is at a crossroads, wondering if she's got the heart to teach herself how to make bread once again: the aroma is so amazing, it might just be worth it. Stay tuned.

Billye's dinner party turned out to be a mob scene, not the intimate little affair we thought we were in for. We met her three cats: Josh, Jake and Toby, whose Christmas stockings were already hung, in anticipation of KittySanta. The house is themed Sailboat. Turns out it's not Billye's taste at all, but a gesture toward the summer rental biz, and was all designed and executed by B's sister-in-law. Holiday decorations were abundant and lovely--and belonged to Susan (excluding the cats' stockings), who set them all up and planned to come back the next day and take them home again. B's actual personal taste is allegedly Asian/Modern/Minimalist. Twelve or so couples each brought a dish to accompany Billye's brisket and salad: the food put us in mind of our bunco party days. E was in a conversation about botox and we might be one step closer to getting together a local poker game--so a good night when all's said and done.

We spent part of a very blustery (and cold!) afternoon on the beach and our faithful Squeaky now ventures even further out onto the sand. Brave brave girl. S slayed the second of the giant squash and made a curry that received mixed reviews. We reorganized a closet and a set of dressers while watching the SEC championship game. Alas, our Tide was defeated, despite how loudly we yelled Stop Him, Stop Him, STOP HIM! One evening, while listening to TV in the office, waiting for Letterman to start, we caught the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, and heard music that we loved, by The Ting Tings. Alas, the group's own vivid video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UX0p7uAW2s) can't be embedded, but you can look at the cute PINK short shorts on the runway and hear the song below:

Out in the larger world, we tested another quick lunch option, at PJ's Coffee, where we got most unremarkable muffaletta/panini sandwiches. If you ask S, there ought to be a ban on the use of ciabatta anywhere but Italy for at least a year. On the tasty dough front, we made an excursion to Panama City on a day when the Bagel Maker was open, and voila! yes! they DO make good bagels, including salt bagels (S's fave), one of which E & S ate sitting on tall stools in the store before they went off to play romp'em-stomp'em bingo at Bingo Paradise.

Two things about which we marvel: 1) there seems to be a rupture in the time/space continuum here at B-A-R. When E comes to bed upstairs and turns on the TV, programming runs a half hour behind the TV in the office she's just left downstairs. So she hears Dave interview the same guests, crack the same jokes, etc. 2) when we wake up every morning, we're happy.