Friday. What a busy week it has been. I was up late reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the girls last night, so only got maybe five hours of sleep. I had to be up after seven because we had an eight o’clock train to catch from Trinity Mills to get downtown for an early morning meeting.
Paul and I rushed out the door at twelve minutes to eight and made it just in time to get across the tracks and buy our tickets to get downtown as our Green Line DART train pulled up Perfect timing, not a moment wasted.
As always, an easy ride down. We got off at St. Paul station and walked in the windy cold to Pacific to look for Stupid Good Coffee where we are having our meeting this morning as the person that we are meeting was coming from the Sheraton Hotel just across the block.
We ended up arriving half an hour early, so had plenty of time to get coffees and hang out. Ended up hanging out with some guys who were talking about art and travel for about half an hour. The coffee was really excellent. I had two cups of cappuccino. Been a while since I’ve had really excellent espresso in the US, even thought we regularly hang out with a barista.
Our meeting started at nine thirty and probably ran for an hour. It seemed to go really well. Hopefully some work will come of it. It sounded like it probably would.
A chilly walk back to our train and found that we had fourteen minutes to wait before the Green Line would pick us up. We ran into Original Italian Pizzeria while we waited and Paul got a slice of pepperoni and I got a slice of stuffed veggie pizza. We ate there, it was quite good. And filling. One slice was enough for me.
Got the train back to Trinity Mills. It was roughly noon when we got back. A busy and productive morning.
Thankfully today was pretty slow in the office. Everyone was doing fine when I got home and I didn’t have to do very much catch up from having been out for half of the day. All went very smoothly.
We did some afternoon reading of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Luciana asked more about where slavery happened because we are at the part where we have to explain why Ol’ Jim had run away and she wanted to know if only Missouri and done things like that and I had to explain that no, lots of states had allowed slaves. And then she sheepishly asked if Texas had been one of them and got very upset and was crying and said that she didn’t want to be from Texas anymore, because the rest of her family were from New York. It was very sad for her.
This evening, we had dinner with the Collaos. They came out our way and we met up at Nico’s Cocina which is right around the corner from the house, on the corner of Josey and Frankford. We have been seeing this place for a long time, it is not new, and is ridiculously close to the house. We almost never go to that plaza, though, and it is in a location that we rarely think about and being in the corner of the plaza we always thought that it was just a tiny little place. In reality it is really big and even has a banquet center and a playground out back! The plaza that it is in is mostly serving the local Mexican community with a local taco place, meat market, bakery, and so forth.
Dinner was great. Dominica was able to get a spinach and mushroom quesadilla that did not make her sick, as nearly everything does. And I got an all bean chimchanga which was excellent. Luciana loved her cheese quesadilla. And Liesl really enjoyed and enormous bowl of seafood soup and bread. A major success and a great find, such a nice restaurant just around the corner. It is unfortunate that we had not made it hear earlier.
The girls were so happy to be hanging out with their friends. It has been a couple of months since they had a chance to spend time together. The four of them were having so much fun hanging out together at dinner, and then went outside to play in the playground for a while even though it was so cold. They were the only ones out there, obviously. Way too cold for normal kids. But our kids are hardy New Yorkers and think nothing of the cold, even without wearing jackets. And Bolivia is quite cold as well. None of the kids noticed the cold at all.
It took a lot to pry the kids apart and get back home. So handy going home when we are within an easy walk! I have walked to this restaurant, without going in, many times and the girls often walk up to it or past it on our Poke-walks. It sits right on the Greenway. I am sure that we will be going back there.
The kids are going to try to get together at one house or the other this week. They need some time to just hang out together.
I really need to push us to spend more time “eating on our block.” There are at least three taco places within walking distance that we have not tried and I recently discovered a pupusa place and a great looking sub chain nearby on Trinity Mills. And there is a good looking Thai place on our block, too. And two Vietnamese places! So much that we never explore. I feel pretty silly not having been to all of them.
This evening Liesl and Luciana and I watched a little of Full House on Hulu. But then Garrett got online and wanted to video game with Luciana. Liesl and I then switched to Family Matters and watched that together for a few hours until it was time for bed. Dominica watched with us a bit, but went to bed at least an hour before we did.
Finally managed to get the kids off to bed at half past midnight.