Weekend in Scarsdale, NY

"Live so that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip." ~Will Rogers

September 9-10: Woke up early and began to rearrange the beer I've collected in my trailer. One bottle of everything is heading to Oregon so I can share it with my husband. The rest I repack into mixed 6-packs that I will distribute as I continue on my journey. Hopefully every brewer that I visit will find something special that they can't get locally in their gift 6-pack from me.

Ellen made a lovely Sunday morning breakfast of scrambled eggs, turkey bacon, and a very nice cinnamon coffee cake. Then it was time for Valerie to dress up in a fancy black party dress and head off to another local Bar-Mitzva party. I guess boys can invite girls to their Bar Mitzvas. The theme of this party was rock and roll. While she was gone I taught her twin Brian several games from my bin including Cathedral, Quoridor and Loot. That was fitting because yesterday when he was off partying at a Bar-Mitzva I taught the same games to Valerie.

Then I spent a few hours going through a stack of old photos with my Aunt Pat (photo above). She's my father's eldest sibling and is still pretty feisty at 88. As we went through the photos, I wrote on the back of each photo who was in the photo, and where and what year the photo was taken.

We called my Pop when we were finished to see if we were supposed to send the photos back to him or if Aunt Pat was supposed to keep them. He said we weren't done with our homework: we had to put all the photos (about 40 of them) into chronological order and slide them into a little photo book. We did, and now Aunt Pat has a small picture book of her life story to show to any and all visitors.

Then it was time for the weekly Sunday dinner at Ellen's mother's house. I got there a bit late because Michael's brother, Peter and his wife Denise showed up at the last minute after being away for the weekend. We literally had 30 minutes to visit. Peter asked me a few questions about my trip and I pretty much spoke at top speed for most of the 30 minutes. I hadn't seen Peter and Denise since 1996, so it was nice to visit, even if briefly.
Ellen's mother is a charming woman with a charming house. Ellen's brother "Uncle Bill" joined us for turkey, mushroom pasta, veggies and salad. Photo above, L to R: Michael, Bill, Ellen, Valerie and Brian.

Photo below, L to R around the table: Ellen, Valerie, Brian, Mother, Teri and Michael.

Back home and time for bed. School for the kids tomorrow. I planned to get up at 7:15 am and get ready for the next leg of my trip.