Last Friday we enjoyed another biweekly zoom cocktail hour with our Tucson friends, Tom and Kevin. We made noises about traveling to Arizona again this January, pandemic allowing. Our other Arizona buddies, Dell and Karen have taken to sharing a daily batch of humour with us, cartoons and jokes that they cull from the internet, collect, and then send out on a daily basis. Some are groaners and some are downright hilarious, providing a welcome bit of fun into an otherwise grave time in the U.S. (yes politics!)
Saturday was quiet, some shopping and a trip to Abigail’s to water the garden. We received a phone call Saturday afternoon from, an unexpected source. Darcy’s school days best buddy Nevia Pavletic phoned us to say that she was in town and would like to come visit during the week, bringing along her husband. We set Sunday evening for a meeting time on our patio, and notified Darcy, who planned to join us. Sunday, we resumed our Eggs Benedict habit for brunch and then spent some time on our biweekly home maintenance - vacuum, dust, wash some clothing and floors, general basic maintenance. Nevia and her husband, Jose´ Garcia arrived with a bottle of wine, a game and great stories to tell.
Nevia, her parents Adrianna and Zyvko (Steve) arrived in Omaha in the early 1990’s, after a stint in Seattle. All are natives of Croatia, and Steve and Adrianna are physicians. Steve was involved in Cancer Research at the University of Nebraska Medical Center while Adrianna was busy taking her medical boards and completing a Residency requirement in order to continue practicing medicine. Nevia and Darcy met the first day in Kindergarten and remained fast friends through Nevia’s high school years.
The family moved to Bethesda Maryland after Nevia’s freshman year in high school, where her parents became researchers employed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, where they still work and live. Jose”s parents are diplomats representing Mexico, Jose’s birthplace. He grew up also in Bethesda and they have been married for over five years.The evening conversation went on to well past 11:00, covering all the changes the girls and their friends have endured, updating each other on friends, reminiscing about past exploits, and catching up on family. It was great for us to hear them chatter, get to know a little bit about Jose´, and see how Nevia has changed (she looks just the same at 33 as she did at 14.) She spent a lot of time at our house over the years and it was great to see her all grownup.
On Monday, we made our first foray to eat out of home, meeting our friends Deb and Tim Duggan at the local pub, Tracks, for cheeseburgers and fries on their open patio. Food was delicious, social distancing was adequate, and it felt good to be taking a chance, although a fairly safe one. Deb says the vodka dirty martini was the best of the pandemic, Mark’s homemade ones not withstanding.
In an attempt to deal with our surfeit of tomatoes, Deb tried a recipe of roasting the tomatoes, along with a lot of other vegetables in the order, Celery, onions, peppers, garlic, all in the roaster for about two hours. She then picked out all the tomato skins (easily) and we used the immersion blender to create a tasty sauce. We ended up with three large containers for the freezer and a large portion for our evening dinner.
Mark made his first trip back to his Master Gardener group on Wednesday, masking up and walking with them at a social distance as they toured the gardens they tend at the Josie Harper Hospice House. They toured all 14 gardens making notes of successes and failures and suggestions for next year. The day was pleasant and it felt good to be back in the swing of things.
We did have one close scare this week, Deb spent a couple of hours at a friend’s house for coffee on Monday morning. On Wednesday, word came that one of her hostess’s friends may have contracted COVID, hence a calling off of a proposed cocktail hour that evening. We consequently scheduled a third COVID testing for Thursday morning. Thankfully, on Friday morning we learned that the friend was ruled negative - a big sigh of relief for a number of older folks. We expect our test results to be available next Tuesday (Labor Day holiday intervening.) We are feeling fine and expect negative results but are trying to be smart and safe.
At the vegetable garden at Abigail’s we harvested produce from our earlier efforts. In addition to our pickings, there are five watermelons ripening on the vine and more zucchini on the way. Deb tried a new zucchini bread recipe, which turned out to be a truly moist and delicious recipe, this one straight from the Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book.
At the end of the week, we dined again on our favorite take-out, LaCasa Pizza on our patio with our friends the Needelmans. The week has flown by. The weather is surprisingly moderate, with lows in the low 60’s overnight and highs in the mid 70s in the day. There are to be a few spikes over the long weekend with temps up to 100ºF on Sunday then back to lower 50’s at night and daytime temps in the upper 70’s.
We had an enjoyable week and are looking forward to the Labor Day feast. Potato salad, baked beans, hot dogs and burgers. Not many people to enjoy it but at least a nod to the past. Stay safe, mask up and make plans to mail your ballot in early next month. Go Joe!!
