A Good Week

For once, everything proceeded smoothly in all our repairs at Connie's house this week.  Today we finished the last bit of framing for the sunscreened lattice we rebuilt for the atrium and the patio cover and as our final lunch out Connie took us to Le Crepe Michel in Old Town Albuquerque.  Because like the folks that stand at intersections with cardboard signs, Denny and I work for food.  We each had something different and tasted each other's meals which were excellent.  Connie's choice was salad and French onion soup (I recommend the soup), Denny had the crepe au porc dijon and I had the crepe a la volaille and then for dessert we shared a serving of crepe David.  I have to say that Albuquerque is definitely a great place to be a gourmand.  Or as my friend Vicki calls me, a food snob.  Heh.

After lunch we meandered the streets of Old Town, hitting the shops with art work and jewelry.  We perused paintings, sculpture made from pressed paper, statues of St. Francis carved from heavy tree branches (I wanted one badly)  exquisite glass wall platters that gleamed with the colors of the desert (I think Connie is going back for one next week).  Denny bought me a lovely pair of earrings that will forever remind me of the southwest and Connie has a lovely ring of multi-colored segments of spiny oyster separated with a delicate band of pave set diamonds on hold.  At that particular store the salesman tried really hard to sell me a beautiful ring of diamonds, hand carved garnet and opals, but our ship has yet to come in so I had to pass on that.  But Old Town is definitely a place to spend a day just browsing the beautiful handcrafted items and being entertained by Native American singers/dancers/pan pipe players and maybe even a wedding ceremony at the gazebo in the center of town.

This week Denny and I also made some new friends.  As a blogger, I make comments on other's people's blogs and Linda here in NM responded to one of my comments mentioning that she lives in Albuquerque, so we got in touch by e-mail and made plans to meet.  Of course, we met at yet another of Albuquerque's nice places to meet and chat; the Flying Star Cafe (which by the way has fabulous bread pudding!)  Linda and her husband Joe turned out to be the kind of folks that you feel you've known forever and we just talked and talked and talked.  Naturally, Denny and I spent some time extolling the virtues in fulltime RVing when the two of them expressed an interest but the conversation jumped here and there and before you know it 2 hours had passed.  One of the things I appreciated about Linda is her interest in the word vert game; word vert is that verification word that you have to type in the box before your comment will be posted on some people's blogs.  The game is to use the word vert word in a sentence.  Some of them easily translate into something recognizable, but some are a stretch so you have to hope the person whose blog  you are commenting on has a good imagination or pronounces the word the way you're thinking.  I guess you have to be there, as they say.  Anyway, Linda plays word vert so she has a twisted mind too. (Linda, if you read this I hope you understand what I mean by that!)

Tomorrow Connie will finally come by OUR place to see the new trailer, visit with Patches and be fed by us.  We have a bottle of champagne to quaff to celebrate new homes, finished projects and family.  And Monday it will be time to move on to newer if not greener pastures.  The RV Vagabonds are feeling a bit of hitch itch and even Patches has gotten bored with the scenery so it's time to head out.  We'll turn Black Beauty's nose to the north for most of the summer, where almost all of the places we'll be stopping will be new to us.  Right now that sounds real good to me.  It's time.