Great Weekend!

After two days of snow, it has now melted, except the “black snow” churned up by the incredible snow moving equipment. The largest mound of that is down to about 5′ by now.

On Friday throughout the snow, we were visited by a pair of cranes, a pair of geese and a rare pair of glossy ibis, who only stayed the day before moving on. They were all in view at the same time, a real treat to see.

Saturday morning we took a drive and ended up at a small town drugstore that’s supposed to have the best burger in state! It’s the best I’ve had so far. Got myself a summer cowboy hat with beads on it, quite striking and it’ll keep me out of the sun, which is quite strong here because of lack of atmosphere at higher elevations.

En route home we stopped at an open house nearby. Sure, it would be nice to have four bedrooms, two living rooms, a wine cellar and Wolf range overlooking a reservoir and signature golf course. And prices for these “designer cabins” (their term not mine) are probably less than 1/2 of original asking prices but not for us right now.

We heard music as we returned home so took the dog on a walk and ended up sitting in a couple of Adirondack chairs outdoors listing to a couple of bands for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. Then a brand new neighbor came over for a drink and stayed for dinner in front of the fireplace.

Sunday we went into town for lunch then enjoyed a quiet afternoon reading before I made a simple supper and we sat down to watch a movie. Today the sun is out and it’ll be in the upper 60’s before it cools off again with rain on Wednesday and more snow Thursday.

At lunch we were talking about atmospheres in different locations. I wore an embellished suede jacket to breakfast at Nate & Al’s in Beverly Hills last year and got glares. Who knows what to wear in NYC these days. In cities in Italy, good leather (coat, shoes, bag) are a necessity with perhaps a Ferragamo scarf.

But out west if you want to want to go out to a middle-of-the-road restaurant (not Ruth’s Chris) you can wear a cowboy hat and boots, plaid shirt, even a bolo tie and fit right in. The realtor at the open house came out ostensibly to meet the dog, who spent the day happily riding in the back of our SUV on her orthopedic bed, but was really trying to see what kind of car we were driving so he could figure out whether we could afford the house. He couldn’t tell by what we were wearing!

Now, Robert Redford would look good in anything, but imagine him being tossed out of a restaurant for wearing his rugged and sensible clothing. The guy who is clean but is wearing the kind of clothing that could have been worn mending fences an hour ago may be a multi-millionaire (of course he’s driving a beat up old Ford pick-up, to boot).

Here one pretends to be a Democrat but couldn’t have bought that $8 million second home without being a Republican for a few decades. Everyone is eco-friendly, it’s almost a competition. I may have a 6,500 sf home but have bamboo floors…. One restaurant serves drinks with paper straws, now I wouldn’t serve a straw at all and save both the paper straw and the paper that covers the paper straw and the box that holds the paper straws, because said straws disintegrate before you can get to the bottom of a Diet Coke glass!

That’s all for now. Just wanted to say that between snows it’s getting to be a pretty fantastic Spring. Cheers, Dee