As a writer, nothing beats having devoted readers. Some great fans of this blog have traveled across the Pacific Ocean to visit us before we move on to Hobart. They have brought us gifts of Bubba aprons and Bubba house plaques and patiently stood in line to see the One-Side-Soft-Toast (tm) toaster. They were disappointed - but not surprised - to have missed Streak, and they laughed politely whenever Linda made fun of me.
OK, so it's not some mad fans of the blog but our friends Jaki and Robert who are visiting and I love their gifts. When I look at the wooden plaque for our house, I can even picture Robert as a 9-year-old, patiently learning the craft with his woodburning set.
They have arrived just in time to watch us deal with our final days in the Greenwich home. There is less than a week before the movers start filling cartons with our stuff.
When we picked up Jaki and Robert at the airport yesterday morning, we still had a fair amount of stuff to do in preparation for the move. So we were faced with a classic Don &Linda decision - On the one hand, you've got dozens of little things to tick off your list before the imminent move. But on the other hand, you are seeing good friends from overseas for the first time since last July. What do you do?
The answer, of course, was perfectly simple. We went out to lunch at noon washed down with a couple of beers, then came home and voted to move Cocktail Hour ahead by two hours. I urged everyone to be careful not to stumble over the piles of things left lying arond the house - officially known now as postponed projects.
As darkness settled and we sat around the table on the deck, I brought out some nice old Aussie reds, starting with my absolute favorite - Seppelt's Dorrien Cabernet from 1998. We then compared that to a 96 Penfolds 409 and finished off the taste test with some WA shiraz from the wonderfully named Mongrel Creek. It all went perfectly well with the steak, baked potato and Caesar salad LK dished out.
LK and I are not the hardiest travellers any more. It's rare for us to be able to make it through the day after we fly in from the US without a late morning nap and even then we struggle to stay awake until the sun sets. Jaki and Robert are made of sterner stuff.
We sounded taps at 11, and these folks who had left their California home more than 24 hours earlier finally got to crawl into bed. LK and I did the same.
She and I have actually attacked a few of the projects today. Obviously aware that Linda was busy with her projects, Jaki decided to help her out and took on the role of nagging me. It's the main reason this post is getting done.
I don't really mind the nagging so much. However, I do have few issues to straighten out with her. You see Jaki single-handedly nixed the idea of starting Cocktail Hour early again today, and I want to ensure it's strictly a one-off thing.
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