Sunday, September 9, 2012.
Fall Pile. Late Marriage Movie.
Breakfast at Mattina Bella. If Mary Ann felt we didn't order enough at Bosco's last night, why no remorse about our splitting the combo breakfast of two eggs, bacon, and pancakes for seven dollars? We did hesitate a moment before sending the pancakes back. Mattina Bella makes the best pancakes in the area, but for some reason today's stack was undercooked. Owner Vincent Riccobono came out in the mellowest of moods to check on this. "They're a little light," he said. No big apology, no disagreement, no ego. He just went back there, made another batch right away (below), and brought them out. Here is a restaurateur who knows what it's all about.
I spent most of the morning clipping more tree limbs. The water oak in back of the house contributed tremendously to a growing pile of prunings. Dragging it all out to the burn pile in the meadow about a block away gave me all the exercise I needed today. My biceps are already sore from all the sawing yesterday. This project will have benefits I wasn't figuring on.
Mary Ann wanted to watch the Saints game at The Chimes. Forget about that: the place was filled, with a waiting list of fourteen parties inside and thirteen outside. Back home we went. We never would eat a second meal this day, which is just as well.
I moved the reservation for our cruise dinner in Quebec City from Le Café Du Monde to Aux Anciens Canadiens. A few people who read me in Quebec (and one who listens to the radio show online; I'm astonished any of these people exist) led me to believe that the coffeehouse namesake may be more touristy than I want. I liked Aux Anciens Canadiens three years ago, and I hit it off with the guy I talked with there. He worked up a tasting menu for us that looks great.
To the movies, to see "Hope Springs," a semi-comedy about an aging couple the wife (Meryl Streep) in which is dissatisfied with the love level in the marriage. Her husband (Tommy Lee Jones) is a cartoon of the utterly uninterested, work-obsessed man. She buys a book that purports to correct the problems, and is impressed enough by it to sign the two of them up for a week-long workshop in Maine with the book's author--Steve Carell, the fist signal that we should not take this thing seriously. The movie was pretty funny, but I imagine only to long-married people who are in their fifties and beyond. (Indeed, when the lights came up, we saw that everyone in the theater was in that age group.) I liked it okay, but it would have been more believable if the story were set in 1950 instead of the present.
We staved off hunger with a medium bag of popcorn. It was not as salty as usual, for which I was thankful. No headache came of eating it, and when I got home a check of my blood pressure registered normal. I the third daily pill must be the charm.
