Foursquare

Foursquare is a site where you can check in with your smart phone so people know where you are.  I think its purpose is so that if you have a friend in the same place, you can find each other.  Of course, I am highly unlikely to find someone I know through Foursquare but I find I am using it more than I expected to just because it's fun to "check in" from wherever I am. So I was happy to go out to lunch this afternoon so I could chalk up another "check in" with Foursquare.   

This is the group that met a month ago at Ciocolat when our friend Grainne was here from Ireland.

The purpose of the lunch was because Grainne was here, and the group was Grainne, my Scrabble buddy Joan, Carol, a woman I have known forever and almost never see, and Mitch, our actor friend who lives in a housing complex that Carol used to manage.  We also visited with Kate, who owns Ciocolat, and whose father was in the hospital, battling cancer.  He has since died.

At the end of that lunch, we decided that we'd had such a good time we should make it a regular thing, because none of us is getting any younger and we really should take advantage of the opportunity to get together once in a while.  So today we met again, this time at Monticello restaurant, which has easy maneuverability for Joan and Mitch, both of whom use walkers.  Grainne is back in Ireland and won't be here again until next month, but Pat, Kate's Mom, came.  She is someone else who has been a friend forever.  She is now in the throes of planning the party for what would have been her husband's 80th birthday (something he requested instead of a funeral or memorial service).  I hadn't seen her since Jim died and it was good to see her again.   Mitch also decided to join us again.

Carol, Mitch and I arrived first and as we sat waiting for the others, we went through the usual "organ recital" of which body part(s) were bothering whom this week.  With all of us fading away, piece by piece, this seems to have replaced "how are the kids?" as the greeting among people of a certain age.

As Joan and Pat arrived and sat down, Mitch asked if we were going to discuss politics, because he was itching to do so.  We are all of the same mind about political issues and all terrified at the prospect of Romney defeating Obama in November. We all agreed we should be listening to more right wing media to gauge what "the other side" is thinking to be more fully informed, but none of us had the stomach for it.

Monticello was the perfect site for our lunch.  It was uncrowded enough and with the cavernous space inside, noise was not instantly absorbed, so Mitch, with his hearing difficulties, had no trouble keeping up with the conversation.  The background music was very loud, though, and we ultimately had to ask the waitress to turn it down a bit.

The goal of Monticello is to cook with seasonal produce, grown locally, so Joan was disappointed that they did not have her favorite BLT because they had no tomatoes.  Of course the restaurant is next door to the Davis Food Coop, which is noted for its fresh locally grown produce, but apparently they couldn't run next door to buy a tomato. I ordered their pulled pork sandwich and the waitress came back to tell me that they didn't have it.  I should mention we were there half an hour before the official lunch hour and, when we arrived, were the only people in the place!   I substituted an egg salad sandwich, which was OK,but for some reason they seem to have sprinkled the bread liberally with paprika and I didn't like the bitter taste.   Likewise my salad came with dressing on the side and when I poured it onto the lettuce, there was paprika which had settled to the bottom so that one lettuce leaf was like taking a spoon full of paprika...an unpleasant surprise!

But we were able to sit and chat for 2 hours, which was great.   Walt is a political junkie, following all his favorite talking heads, but he is not into political discussions so it's nice to have like-minded people who enjoy a discussion of current events.

We hope to get together again at the end of June, when Grainne is back in town, and before we leave for our European cruise.

After lunch, I drove Joan home and then went shopping at my favorite market, where I ran into...Pat, whom I had just left at Monticello minutes before.

In the afternoon, I settled in to watch the DVD of Henry V that had just arrived from Netflix.  When I tried to read the play at the book store last week, I made it 3 pages before starting to fall asleep.  I think it was 5 minutes into the movie when I began napping.  I'm thinking of buying a copy to have around for nights when I suffer from insomnia!