Sunday Reuniting

Our Hotel - Pass on Future Stays

It was a long day traveling yesterday. We woke up in New Hampshire looking across the river into Maine, so we ended up seeing four of the six New England States yesterday.  I was not impressed with the hotel we stayed at on Saturday night in Portsmouth, the Sheraton.  It had a fantastic location and the staff was extremely friendly but it seemed poorly designed for ease of access.  The cable TV didn’t work, the guy trying to fix it said they installed a new system that was fraught with problems, so we didn’t get to see the Olympics when we returned from the after-party following the wedding.  The clock in the room was also set for Central Standard Time instead of Eastern Standard Time (okay this was more my fault for not noticing).  My wife and I didn’t discover this until my son called to arrange our link up for brunch.  We hadn’t called him yet because we thought it was too early.   We discovered the problem and figured we only had twenty minutes to clean up, check out, and get over to the link up point. This led to frantic showers, make-up (for her), packing (for me), and check out of the hotel in order to make it to the restaurant in time for our reservations. I thought I was just having trouble sleeping but it turned out it was an hour later than we thought.  Kudos to the wife though – I’ve never (and I mean never) seen her get ready as fast as she did yesterday.  I was impressed and now that I know she’s capable of this – Nah – that would be pushing the envelope.  We did enjoy a great brunch with those two denizens of Portsmouth, our son and his Most Excellent Girlfriend.  She had made reservations for us at a restaurant called Radici’s which offered a great brunch menu.  As with most Portsmouth locales it was within easy walking distance from my son’s apartment.  We had a fantastic time catching up with both of them and I really liked the vibe at the restaurant, which was very hip but tolerated my presence anyway.  The wait staff was particularly attentive and the food was awesome.  We retired to my son’s apartment so he could open his birthday presents.  This took some negotiations because he wasn’t fully prepared to let his mother see the state of disrepair his apartment was in.  My wife promised not to judge (huge concession when it comes to cleanliness) and we accomplished the present opening without rancor as well as catching up on some of the Olympics through DVR.  Both my son and MEG looked as tired as I felt and since they had to travel to Boston last night to see Cold Play (birthday present from MEG – again Most Excellent) my wife and I got back on the road to head home.  We had to go first to Rhode Island to retrieve our retriever – Buddy.  He was a little worn out when we arrived, not that his tiredness spared me a truly enthusiastic welcome.  He was tired from patrolling my sister’s house which is located in a much busier neighborhood than his normal country living.  Buddy feels the need to announce his presence to anyone walking by a house and my sister’s house was a target rich environment.  He pretty much collapsed when we finally did reach home after a long day on the road.  I was a little envious because we had a bunch of things to accomplish around the house since we were gone all weekend.  Looking back on it – it was totally worth it, especially the Sunday brunch.  I’ve lost track of how many great weekends in a row this has been; makes it tough for subsequent weekends to live up to.

Where we Had Brunch

My Wife and M.E.G. at Radici's

My Son and I on the Other Side of Table