Friday, August 27, 2010

Bonjour, Ciao

Tonight we had a reunion of the group that went to France and Italy. Well, not exactly a reunion of the whole group, but Char and her daughters, Jeri and myself, and Sheri, who is the mother of Ashley (who brought "Bongo," the stuffed monkey on the trip), all got together. (Pat was supposed to come too, but things got too complicated and she was unable to join us.) The occasion was that Jeri was in town and what better way to celebrate?

The day started with my taking Polly to the vet to see about starting her on Prozac, which she probably will do next week, in the hope of mellowing her out to allow her to actually make friends with a potential forever family. After hearing her story, the vet looked at me for a long time and said "YOU can't adopt her, huh?" A logical question, since she's lived here 9 months already. Jeri is convinced we should adopt her. I'm not convinced and I know Walt really isn't convinced.

Polly shook like a leaf all the way to the doctor, and fell asleep in my lap on the ride home. I'm hoping Prozac will help that a bit.

Anyway, I then got in the car and took off for the Bay Area. Jeri was at my mother's and I was meeting them for lunch. Except that I got stopped on the highway for a good 30 minutes due to an accident somewhere up ahead. I was an hour later than I wanted to be when I arrived, but we had a nice lunch, a nice visit, and then took pictures before we left.

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Then Jeri and I took a leisurely drive over to Charlotte's house, which included meandering through the UC Berkeley campus and reminiscing about my memories of being there in the 60s. We avoided the always horrible back-up line of traffic going through the Caldecott tunnel by going over the mountain, which was also fun.

We got to Char's not horrendously early and sat around chatting until the others arrived. We had wine and clam dip and other hors d'oeuvres and it was just really nice seeing everybody again.

There were few of us so that we could all fit in one car.

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We went to an Italian restaurant, Incontro, which had been reviewed by Check Please, Bay Area, and which lived up to the praise it received on that television show. The wait staff in particular was very friendly and one cheery waiter took a group photo for us.

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The food was good (my gnocci with truffle oil was fabulous, if not exactly photogenic), we laughed a lot, shared memories and updates on current events. Just a wonderful, relaxing evening with good friends, after which Jeri and I drove back here to Davis.

All in all a very good day.

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