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Friday: I was trying to fix poor Vickie C’s computer all day and all night. There is a lesson in my attempted fixing. She has a 333Mhz, 64meg RAM laptop. This computer should NOT have XP on it.

Her computer has been dying unexpectedly. I tried a bunch of things to fix it to no avail so I reinstalled the BIOS and did a fresh install of XP in the hopes that would do it. Well, it did but nothing ran right under XP. After hours of “push the button, wait 20 minutes. Push the other button, wait…” I dumped XP and reinstalled Win98. I was up til 4 pushing the button.

Saturday: I brought Vickie’s computer to her. It works. :-) I tutored her on all sorts of fun computer things and then rushed back home to drive my mom to the airport. We left at 2. That leaves me with the house all to myself. Woo hoo, let’s par-tay! I got back and started making an apple pie for PPG. I was a bit nervous because I had tried making one several years ago with Julie and the crust was a total disaster. Julie and I had fun playing with the dough but… total disaster. :-)

I followed the directions in Cook’s Illustrated’s The Best Recipe to the letter. (PPG gave me a copy as a present!!) And you know what? It came out great. I’m very happy. Just as it was finishing, PPG called from her wedding in Long Valley. Oh did she get lost! She must think that I live on the moon! Her cell phone service kept bopping out every 5 minutes, she almost hit a deer while trying to read a map on the dark road… She got lost several distinct times… oh poor PPG! The worst for me was when she was about 4 miles away: just as I was going to tell her when to make her last important turn, her phone went out AGAIN. I envisioned her driving right past the road while cursing at her phone and wondering where the hell she was! Her service returned as she got to rt. 80 and I had her write down directions to my place. But she got lost AGAIN just a mile from the house! AHH! I drove out and got her, brought her home and gave her a big warm hug & kiss!

I was thinking we’d go out to Jenny Jump Observatory to see the lunar eclipse with all the other star-nerds. And then go to The Lodge at Mountain Lake. But we decided to stay home and pop outside a few times to look at it. Brrrrr, it was cold out! We watched Spenser Tunick’s show on HBO, Naked States. But we only got half way through the 1:20 presentation. It’s a really good, pretty intense program. We’ll finish it sometime. (image from Sky & Telescope Magazine)

We ate, we talked, we nuzzled. It was good!

Sunday: We took a fabulously long time getting up, had Apple pie and other things for breakfast and then went off to the city. When she was at that Spenser Tunick event on Oct 27th, an artist had asked her to pose. So we were off to Brooklyn for the session. I think the artist’s name is Jessica. She’s doing this photo with lots of people sitting on this super long (digitally created) couch. It was a fine shoot. After, we went into Manhattan to get glitter. The lady at the counter was a characteristically uncaring New Yorker. PPG asked for glitter and the lady pointed and said, “Here, this is all we have.” We didn’t like any of the glitter in the rack and were sad. But then while we were browsing, we found what could only be described as the glitter department. They had hundreds of kinds of glitter in the glitter department, and even more in a few other spots in the store. We played with the glitter and she picked out the exact color she wanted. It was good. We went shopping for a vase-thing in Crate and Barrel. We didn’t find what she was looking for, but just as well because when she got home she decided that it would be better to unpack all her stuff and make an evaluation before buying more stuff. A quick stop in Pottery Barn discovered the world’s most expensive firewood kindling. $20 for the cutest little bundle of “scented winter twigs”. We started back after that. See the Holland Tunnel mention above.

We went looking for Luigi’s restaurant in Dover. They said they were moving from Ledgewood to Dover in September… But we couldn’t find their phone number via 411. So we went to Dover in search of the restaurant. But by the time we got there, we were both so grumpy-hungry that we stopped at the very first restaurant we found, Giovanni’s in Dover. You can’t miss it… get off Rt 80 toward Dover. At rt 46, look left and there’s the sign. The place really didn’t look open but we were so hungry. Even as we got to the inner door, I tried the door thinking that it would be locked. Low and behold, it opened! There were only 5 folks at the bar and 2 people dining in a place that could fit 150… and here it was Sunday at 7pm… We sat down anyway.

Wow. Everything was perfect. I had Strachatelli (spelling?) it’s a fresh spinach and egg soup… well, this was “perfect”. Really. I didn’t try PPG’s soup but she said it was good. Dinner was linguini marinara. I was expecting “pasta”. But what I got was magic. I honestly believe that the chef crushed the tomatoes for my sauce just for my dish. And PPG’s eggplant rollatini….. let me say again, “perfect”. Now, I will say that they kept the temperature in the restaurant a bit chilly, which wasn’t very inviting. But hey, the place was literally empty. I’m going back. You should too. I’ll still go back to Luigi’s if I can find the place. Luigi’s food is also fantastic; they take the standard dishes and give them a little face-lift. Both of these restaurants, one strictly classic and one with a slight flair for new-school, both of these restaurants have a place in my heart.