Brian and I went to a neighbor's house for a party evening and that was fun. Getting up early the next morning was not so fun, but we had to go to Philadelphia. Last week the babysitter asked me what time we'd be leaving on Sunday. I asked, "Leaving for where?" and she asked, "Brian is driving me to Philadelphia. Aren't you coming?" It was the first I'd heard of it. I asked him a couple days later if he knew he was driving to Philadelphia on Sunday and he answered, after a pause, "Oh, I guess that is really happening."
It really happened. She filled the car with stuff and we had an easy drive up to her daughter's new apartment. When we got all the suitcases and bags dragged up to her little room, Maureen started unpacking and it turned out we were stocking her kitchen for the fall semester. She filled every cabinet, every refrigerator shelf, and she managed to fit an astonishing volume of food in the freezer--I don't know how Hali is supposed to extract anything, but it's there. She set Brian to work insulating the windows and installing an extra lock on the door while she fixed lunch. We all drove into the city for a little sightseeing*, but the first sight we saw was a Williams-Sonoma store and we settled in for the afternoon. Think I am joking? We touched everything in the store. Maureen even went behind the demonstration counter and fiddled with the stuff back there--the helper folk were keeping an eye on her but no one called security, thank goodness. We dropped her daughter back at her place and drove home.
Yesterday was a good day to walk to work, since I didn't have to be in on time. A quiet, productive day, and then we went back to Maureen's for dinner. She must have started cooking as soon as we dropped her off the night before. It was a nice evening: with her friend Carol the socialist, Maureen the maureenist, and Brian the capitalist all talking I just had to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. With a few interruptions as Victoria insisted that we dance the fast songs.
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* Please note that we were well beyond the city limits before this happened.
