Snapshots from a Week-end

I had a great week-end--let me count the ways:

--On Friday, we ate a real meal, of salmon, with side dishes of steamed carrots and cous cous.  I also made a great sauce:  1/2 c. sugar, melted in a large sauce pan, then 2 C. wine added (Mark Bittman's recipe called for pinot noir, but I had cabernet), then the whole thing is boiled down to 1/2 c. of syrup, add a T. of balsamic vinegar and a T. of butter.  Yum.

Why does it feel so significant, a meal with side dishes?  After all, we've been eating--but usually it's been cheese later at night or a salad or just a burger from the grill--all satisfying and nourishing to certain extents, but not a meal, the way I've been trained to think of a meal.  And we ate it at the table, with music on the stereo, not in front of the TV or gulped on the go.

--After our meal, we sat on the porch, enjoying wine and watching darkness settle over the neighborhood.  We spent every evening this week-end on the front porch.

--On Saturday, I had a really vigorous, really wonderful spin class ride.

--We got a lot of chores done, like grocery shopping, laundry, mowing the bit of grass we have.  We have been neglecting some of these chores for weeks, as we have had house guests and I have been off on travels.

--I had time to do creative work.  On Saturday, I sketched several different times.  Here's my favorite, with a quote that comes from a PBS show I was watching on the creation of the sculpture on Mt. Rushmore:

On Saturday morning, I figured out how to weave together 3 chunks of a short story that I hadn't been able to figure out.  Here's the second paragraph:

I typed an e-mail, an e-mail on the company computer, which I knew might be monitored, but I didn’t care. I wrote to my oldest friend whom I had known since our college days: “I am watching old Prince videos while ignoring my self-imposed deadline on spreadsheet submission. The door to my office is wide open, and the volume is up. This may be the most subversive thing I have done in a decade.”

The way I envision the story right now:  most of it will deal with a pivotal summer in the narrator's past, the summer that "When Doves Cry" dominated the airwaves.

--On Sunday, we went on a motorcycle ride to help raise money for a police benevolence fund.  It was mostly flawless.  It seems like a long time since we've had a ride that perfect.  The weather couldn't have been much better, and it was great to ride through the Keys, a place of so much beauty.  Our ride took most of the day, but it what a wonderful Sunday.