Chowdah Begone!

Last week in this space, I reported that I had actually gained 3lbs, which I am fully attributing to all the New England Clam Chowder I consumed over Memorial Day weekend while we were up at the Cape.

I am happy to report that this week I am down 3.8lbs, which is my "chowder weight" plus a little extra.

I can't find anything Scrabble-related that weighs 3.8 lbs, so I'm going to cheat a little this week and use something from the "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought..." feature on Amazon, namely:


All hail the cult! (And clam chowder. Believe me, it was worth the temporary setback.When my cult leader asked me what I did differently this week to rack up such a big loss, I simply replied, "I didn't eat clam chowder." )

It's the Little Things

Back at work after a GREAT weekend.

What made it great, you ask?

Well, part of it, believe it or not, was the fact that I had time on Saturday morning to actually RUN ERRANDS. I got to go to the post office, the shoemaker, AND the dry cleaners. While I was doing that, our lovely cleaning service was cleaning our apartment and so, after errands, I had enough time to get my eyebrows waxed and get a pedicure. Considering that I haven't had time to do ANY of these things in the past several months, getting them all done in one morning left me positively euphoric.

And that was just one small piece of the weekend.

Friday I spent the afternoon with a dear friend getting caught up and acting like "ladies who lunch."

Friday evening the hubby and I saw Bill Maher at NJPAC. Hilarious and on-point. (My favorite line: "Let's see, we've had War--Iraq, Flood--Katrina, Famine--the current food crisis...all we need is Locusts and Bush is officially the Anti-Christ.")

Saturday afternoon, we saw "Thurgood" with Lawrence Fishburne, which was EXCELLENT. Made me proud and ashamed to be an American in the same moment. Powerful stuff.

Also Saturday afternoon, we had a late lunch/early dinner at Becco, one of my favorite restaurants. (Yes, all you cult fans out there, bonus points were used.)

Saturday evening, I saw the Neo-Futurists, which was definitely experience. One that I might try again sometime.

Sunday, we bought flowers for the terrace planters (finally!) which I planted and then sat down to enjoy. It was the first day I've had time to sit on our terrace this year.

Sunday evening, I had my writers' group and then went to see my friend do Leonard Cohen covers at the Slaughtered Lamb.

All in all, a fun-filled (and yet very relaxing) weekend. Yay!

A Moment of Silence

In recent years, the hubby and I and my mom and her husband have gone up to Ptown almost every year and usually off-season. We love the quiet, the beauty, and the feeling of having the town to ourselves.

Because it's the off-season, most of the restaurants in town are closed, particularly the breakfast places, and so that's how we discovered the Post Office Cafe (which my husband swears makes the world's best pancakes) and its spirited manager Dixie. During a typical weeklong stay, we eat at the Post Office five of the seven days. Exchanging banter with Dixie has become one of the highlights of our trips and one of the things we looked forward to each year.

And so, we were very saddened this weekend to learn that Dixie tragically died from a fall a couple of weeks ago.

If you Google "Dixie" and "Provincetown," you'll get a sense of how well-known and loved he was. And there are certainly many others who knew him better and longer than we did. But I couldn't let the death of the only person who ever called me "bitch" and got away with it go unremarked.

Dixie, we'll miss you. P-town is a little bit emptier.

Time to Get Back on the Wagon

As I feared, all that New England Clam Chowder and my other culinary indulgences this weekend caught up with me. I gained 3lbs, or one of these:



Hopefully, a week of strict point-counting will put me back on track. Stay tuned...

Wow.

"Pixie dust" may help re-grow vet's finger

Weirdness!

There are lots of stories and highlights from the weekend ("meat sweats" comes to mind as an example), but the element most sticking out in my head at the moment is the cult coffee shop we went to in Hyannis.

Some quick context-setting: this trip was my brother's first time to the Cape since high school and so part of the weekend was spent re-visiting all the old haunts and doing the whole "memory lane" thing. One of his fondest memories was getting rollwiches from the Box Lunch. Since we didn't make it there on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, we decided to make a small detour on the way off the Cape in Hyannis. Which we did. But, perplexingly, the Box Lunch in Hyannis was closed for Memorial Day (we expected a sandwich place in a tourist town to be open for the launch of the tourist season, but alas). So, before we got back in the car for the long trip home, I decided to grab an iced coffee and innocently walked into Common Grounds.

There was definitely a weird vibe in the place, but things didn't actually click for me until I went to use the restroom and noticed the wallpaper. You know that wallpaper they have that looks like old newspaper articles? Well, this was that kind of wallpaper, but instead of showing advertisements for the health tonics and men's shoes, it was articles about "Yahshua" the son of God.

The weird-weird part about all this is that my husband's uncle actually belonged to one of these cults about 20 years ago and worked in a coffee shop like this one, which he was telling us all about when he came to visit last week. (Oh Anonymous Commenter, is this actually the same cult?)

Disclaimer: In all fairness, the Twelve Tribes of Israel doesn't think they are a cult.

Quick Update Before I Blow Town...

First of all, my mom had a follow-up procedure yesterday that seems (fingers crossed) to have made a huge, positive difference in her pain level.

Second, I stage-managed my first show! And actually got paid!

So, now that my mom is hopefully on the mend and I my weekends and evenings have freed up a bit, by rights I should be blogging regularly again, but first I'm headin' out of town to one of my favorite places in the world: the Cape.

See ya next week!