hey jud

The impetus was to attend a wedding, but the result was the first, very special gathering of our whole family at the new house.

Now that Miss Silvia's gone to VT for the upcoming ski season, I'm back to my regular morning latte stop at Starbuck's. It's nice to be recognized again, and sometimes even have my usual (tall, non-fat) ready and waiting for me.

With the beginning of school this past week, another set of regulars reappeared - the blonde Mom and her elementary school-age twin boys in Red Sox jackets. Now that the boys are older, last year's friendly morning breakfast together, has been replaced with a new routine. Each is seated at their own table, Mom with coffee and the newspaper, boys separately with hot chocolate, pencils and whatever homework assignment has been left undone. These kids might be the youngest ever student regulars, developing that crucial coffeehouse ability to focus regardless of surroundings. But that's the paradox. Where families and coffeehouses used to be about people getting together, here it's turned into the opposite.

It was a work weekend for us in Vermont, painting the first two bright-colored walls, putting up house numbers and starting to clean up the slate in preparation for sealing it. The refrigerator repairman came to try and fix the popping noise (it literally sounded like a popcorn popper, not a fridge) but with no luck. Keeping it rolled slightly out of position seems to stop it, but it would be nice to have it pushed in flush like it's supposed to be. We also had the water tested and it is indeed hard (correction level > 3.0, ours is 15), so we'll be getting a Kinetico non-electric filtering system. The only bad thing about the weekend was that the Miss Silvia Rancilio wouldn't pump the water through to make espresso. After conferring with Jay, I think it was a combination of a bent tube and not priming the machine after draining out the water while we were away. It's primed now but too late to make a latte tonight; my fingers are crossed for a good brew tomorrow.

Sunday night we drove over to Charlotte, to Marcia and Jay's for dinner. As always, the food was great, and the barn and views photogenic.