Another One of Those Typical Days

Dear Readers,

A recent fun Sunday consisted of a series of pleasurable activities.  We, the residents of the Oakland Morehouse, often use having out-of-town guests as an excuse to throw a Sunday brunch.  On this particular day, a lovely woman named April was the reason to party.  Sierra did most of the cooking, along with her friend Ramadin (whose sister is the aforementioned April), and the rest of us helped by setting the table, putting out the platters of food, etc.  After many pancakes, waffles, eggs and potatoes were consumed, we were still gathered around the table, as the conversation had clearly been the most satisfying aspect of the meal, and no one wanted it to end.

Lynne and I finally tore ourselves away, however, as we had plans.  We walked down to the lake, then through the park to the Lake Merritt Boating Center, and rented ourselves a rowboat.  It was a beautiful day, perfect for being on the water.  Lynne, who had spent every summer of her childhood on the family lake, is an accomplished rower.  The best that can be said about my skills is that I can row.  So Lynne got us out to the middle of the lake, and then we traded turns twice more before returning the boat an hour later.  It was glorious.  Once we were away from the dock, we entered an altered reality.  No longer were we bound to an urban landscape that was the backdrop to our everyday lives (as fun as those lives are), but were instead vacationing in the middle of a lakeside resort.  We floated past pelicans and kayakers, and breathed in the slightly salty air.  True, it was only an hour, but it was surprisingly restorative.

Then, back home for a groovy.  Chris had been hell-bent to organize the laundry room/paint room/tool room.  He and David were already hard at it when I got there, taking years of useful and not-so-useful items off the shelves and dividing them into piles of where they would go next.  When it was done, all the paint was on one set of shelves, all the tools on another, and everything else was outta there!  It was so gratifying to unsnarl this mess and restore order and beauty to such an important room.

The plan for the evening was an 8pm screening of O Brother Where Art Thou at Cinema Shawn in the living room.  But before that was Taco Night.  The indomitable Chris likes to set up do-it-yourself tacos for the whole family.  He puts out individual platters of chopped onions, tomatoes, lettuce, shredded cheese, sour cream, chopped beef, diced chicken and fish, and beans, and we do our best to stuff all the ingredients in toasted taco shells.  Neatness doesn’t count.  This was a lovely precursor to the movie, which many of us who’d seen it before said we liked much better this time around.  Maybe it was the after-dinner haze.

Anyway, it was just one of those Sunday’s where the day was scheduled with serially fun activities, and I wanted to share it with all of you.

Thanks for reading.

Best,

Gerry

Perfection includes the potential for change.

-- Vic Baranco