Eating and running

We've been eating, many times fabulously, and also running the up tempo life that comes with the long days of summer.
Philadelphia: (note to self - when flying to Philadelphia from now on, fly Seattle to Newark and then tak Amtrak to Philly, save time and money) Advice from the locals and ex-locals was to try Susanna Foo's. Martha introduced me to OpenTable, a really terrific on-line reservation service that lets you make dinner arrangements all over the country from the comfort of your computer chair, and I arranged to meet Neesy for dinner there. Good time catching up on the all the kids' lives, her move to North Carolina, and all the news from the East Coast side of the family, while, in an explosion of enthusiasm for wonderful Chinese food, ordering way too much: Hot & Sour Soup, Pot stickers, Moo shu pork, and eggplant, all delicious, served by a very gracious tuxedoed young man, and accompanied by a glass of Spanish bubbly and a sauvignon blanc. What a wonderful evening, thank you Neesy!
Regrettably, the conference got in the way of getting over to Reading Terminal for Bassetts Coffee Ice cream and a Philly Cheese Steak.
Back at the ranch, salmon is still hitting all time highs (Worried about high oil prices? Something can be done about that in terms of conserving, being fuel efficient, but worried about the scarcity of fresh wild king salmon? There's real trouble, and no easy solution in sight.) but every so often we've lucked into dinner with fresh fish lately (I see this morning there is a fillet of fresh halibut in the frig, courtesy of Ren's young man who was out fishing yesterday!) including dinner with our friends Charlotte and John and their family and friends.
The Arts Council is trying to start a fund raising program called TLC: A Taste of Local Culture for visitors: Folks can sign up for a dinner in a local home and proceeds go to help us pay the utility bills at the Arts & Culture Center. We are off to a slow and somewhat wobbly start. Charlotte and family along with John and Henry had dinner with a local couple who thought dinner out sounded good, and then visitors from Vancouver BC dropped into the JACC and signed up for the next day. No hosts available, John out of town, so Ren tidied up the house, I made some potato salad, green salad, fruit salad, and cookies, laid in a variety of Ben & Jerry's, invited Art Rotch, the new artistic director for Perseverance Theatre, and the Bennetts over, and we had fresh rockfish in caper sauce. Thank goodness Mike and Diane just live up the hill, I forgot the wine in the frig at work, so Mike filled in. (There is the perennial question about why a house with a wine sales person in it never has a stash of wine in the closet.)
In the olden days, back in the late '90s, we'd leave the Fourth of July Parade and head out the road for a picnic with friends. Nowadays, the kids are grown and have their own agendas, the friends are divorced, and walking the parade route exhausts me. John grilled steaks, Uncle Thad came up, we had a quiet, early dinner, I took a bath, and went to bed. Slept pretty well, thanks.