Virtual Coffee {26}

Hello dear friends, and welcome to coffee. I can’t believe it’s been three weeks since our last virtual coffee together! (I’m refraining from segueing with “where has the time flown” as we’re not quite eighty yet…) Let’s get our favorite topic, the weather, out of the way first, shall we? Our crazy climatic conditions continue (oh, how I love alliterations!), you may remember we had a pretty cool and dreary summer, an inexplicably hot September and about 5 minutes of autumn. Today it has started snowing. Yes, snowing.

Of course it’s not snow snow yet it’s still that gross, slushy, wet thing that looks like snow coming down, splatters on your windshield but then turns to water as soon as it hits the ground. Up where the husband works (which is also where I go and pretend to work a couple days a week), it’s actually snowing, real snow. Which is fantastic because since the leaves haven’t finished falling off the trees yet the tree branches get really heavy with snow and break off. This is so great on so many levels! Let’s see, well first you have to watch where you park because those lovely falling branches tend to land on parked cars, and there’s no point trying to park away from the trees as we work on a mountain covered in pine and chestnut trees. Also, the branches like to fall on telephone lines, which is so exciting cause then we get to work with no phones for months and months because we live in a beautiful albeit completely inefficient country (see how I switched those around?) where it takes the phone company three months to come repair our phone lines. (Three months is not an estimate or an ironic exaggeration of reality, it actually happened just like this two years ago when it also started snowing way ahead of time). Unfortunately, I won’t be able to go visit this winter wonderland we call our workplace because I haven’t finished fishing out all our winter stuff from storage, and the husband can’t seriously expect me to go work and risk catching a cold cause am inappropriately dressed now can he!

Setting sarcasm aside, the past few weeks have been both crappy and great, since I’ve posted on the crappy enough this week let’s talk about the great. The husband and I went off on a wonderful weekend getaway to Milan two weekends ago. A weekend in a nice hotel was my birthday present, and since we had a really good friend’s fortieth birthday to celebrate we decided to treat ourselves to some child-free time. It was wonderful, and very, very strange. We simply aren’t used to being without two very short, needy, hilarious and cuddly people all the time, so we kept looking around for them all weekend. It was fun spending time alone in a city we loved and lived in for many years. It brought us back to the early years of our marriage and to another life of dinners in nice restaurants, aperitifs in chic bars, of buzzing in and out of beautiful shops with nary a care in the world. It was also nice being pampered in a lovely hotel, of course we had forgotten how snooty people in the service industry were in Milan, but all in all we had a great time. Oh, and did I mention I did some shopping? Ahem, let’s leave it at that.

I’m still waiting on my other birthday present, which was supposed to be a KitchenAid all-purpose mixer/blender thingy, but isn’t cause I already have one (that’s another, less design-y brand) that works fine and has all the attachment pieces already, and so was swapped with a Le Creuset pot. I’ve been coveting one of these for years, and am very excited to try all the wonderful roasts and stews in it. If only my husband would get his act together  and take me to buy it (hint, hint, wink, cough).

Ok, my coffee’s gotten cold and all the dreary wet snow outside is making me sleepy so I’m done rambling on today. How’s about you? What have you been up to? Do you own a le creuset or a kitchen aid, would you recommend them to your friends?

Now go visit our hostess Amy!