Thursday

All right.  Who stole my week?  How did it get to be Thursday already?

We had a busy weekend, it is true.

We went to see Stella and Tony on Saturday, taking with us a proper shepherds' pie (the apostrophe is in the right place - this would have done several shepherds ). I made it in a very traditional way, with lamb mince, a proper mirepoix (finely diced onion, carrot and celery, gently sautéed) with stock and Worcestershire sauce plus, of course, buttery mash on top.  It was very much the way my grandparents would have made it, and Jim says it tasted exactly like the ones his mother used to make.  A win for me, then :-D

It was quite exciting trying to get to Mount Martha. Multiple people tried to kill us.  The one that would have been the most likely to succeed was the one who pulled straight out in front of us from the emergency stopping lane with no notice, no warning, no indication, while I was doing 110 km on the freeway.  I am happy to tell you that the car brakes work and I can still do an effective emergency stop.  Fortunately, this was also true of the car and driver behind me!  No one else came even close to success but I did have to concentrate quite hard to avoid mad drivers.

We had a good visit. We enjoyed the shepherds' pie for lunch. There was a good bit left to I packaged that up and put it in their freezer for other occasions. We had a good natter.  Everyone seemed fairly cheerful and in not too bad health. We didn't stay too long because I really wanted to get back before it went properly dark.  So, we had 2.5 hours driving there, 2.5 hours there and 2.5 hours driving back.  The weather pretty much held so that helped with the driving.

We had considered the possibility of going to the Talbot Market on the Sunday. But it's a large market and we would want to buy things.  Sadly I had taken the "Market Budget" out to play in Costco the previous weekend. There didn't seem to be much point in driving all the way to Talbot if there wasn't the budget to buy things.  So we had lunch with Lindsey instead, and then went to the vegetable farm gate shop and then to the Elaine farm gate shop.  It was a very pleasant way of spending a Sunday.

So a busy weekend.

And then I had a busy week.

I went with Lindsey to Reservoir very early on Monday morning, leaving Jim all tucked up in bed. I don't usually work on Mondays but a couple of the receptionists are away and I am helping to fill in for the next few weeks.  I had three rostered reception shifts this week, plus there is all the usual stuff to do as well. I'll go back down tomorrow with Lindsey. Then she heads off on holiday for three weeks.  Alas, I do not.  But I've got out of the habit of working four days a week. I feel as though it should be the weekend already.

It was Simon's birthday on Monday so Lindsey and I joined him for dinner.  Lindsey made spectacular roast potatoes to go with our steak, salad and veggies.

We came back to Mount Helen yesterday evening.  I think Jim was quite pleased to see us.  He had been on his own since 06:45 on Monday morning when I had left him snuggled up in bed.  He had moved up to Hill House after he got up and had been here with no company but the dogs ever since.  I had thought that he and I would go down to Tani no uchi for the night but Lindsey and I didn't get back until 8:30 and the stew I had prepared for dinner was here, so here we stayed.  And here we will stay until Lindsey and Ian get back in mid-June.  Fortunately our place is only a few minutes away so we can drop down and keep an eye on it.  In fact, I will probably go down later this morning.  I don't seem to have any clothes up here :-D

Ian is playing in Baltimore this week. He will meet Lindsey in, I think, Chicago on Sunday..