Owlet of Bliss

I'm remarkably tired tonight, in spite of getting a big six hours of sleep last night, for which I'm profoundly grateful. I might have slept later, but our next door neighbor is having his roof replaced, so the day started off at 7 am with a bang--the kind of bang produced by someone throwing a sheet of plywood into a dumpster from a great height. Dragonfly came over for a much-belated chat, meditation, and lunch. We went to a place that used to be a much-loved breakfast diner place, went through a Mexican iteration, and is now a drinks and diner kind of thing. The food is excellent. I had eggs over easy with hashbrowns and blueberry pancakes, and brought most of the pancakes home for later. Dragonfly wanted to check them out because they also do catering, and she is planning a birthday party for her next door neighbor, who is about to be 90!!

Our Dante book club was happening, and I had volunteered to make salad. I made a variant on what they call a Riviera salad, with lots of fresh leafy greens mingled with sliced strawberries, blueberries, and toasted pecans. I left off the goat cheese because our host was serving lasagna, so there was plenty of cheese in the offing already. I made my own dressing, with maple syrup, balsamic vinaigrette, dijon mustard, salt and pepper, and oil. Our host exclaimed over the salad and said it was a work of art and he didn't want to mess it up by serving it. So I was pleased. Hmm--I just googled "Riviera salad" and found a lot of different versions, most of which are wildly different from what I thought it was. Oh well. Some of them sound delicious--I'll have to try those too. We had a lively discussion and ALMOST finished off Purgatory. Those darn masques at the end tripped us up. But we decided to call it good and move on to Paradise for next time.

I was thinking I'd just flop tomorrow and take it easy, but now we have an opportunity to see Bird Baby and her family, so I think we'll have to have brunch before flopping. . . .