10/19 last day

 Today we went to a place to pick apples.  After almost running over an old dog who insists on sleeping in parking spaces, we shared a bag of fresh from the fryer apple fritters.  There was a red wagon parking lot so people could haul pumpkins to the register.  Even though the picked apples were the same price as the ones you pick yourself, Susan wanted to do the picking.  We walked through the orchard to the type apples she wanted.  Luckily the trees  are fairly short so no ladders were involved.  She picked the apples and I watched.

We rocked on the porch.

Stopped at Sam's Club on the way home.  They have a fabulous checkout system.. Susan scanned each item as she put it in her basket and then after scanning something at the exit line she could just walk out. I think they have a scanner that you walk under on the way out that checks you paid for everything.

Had pork roll for lunch again.

Ariel and Luck carved pumpkins that they could wear.  It was really fun to see them.

Luke hurt his back lifting pumpkins so is now in bed trying not to move.

We had salmon with acorn squash, corn on the cob, and little potatoes for dinner.  It was very tasty.

We did a FaceTime with grandson Maverick.  He is 1 1/2 and very cute.  He was roaming all over with Ford trying to keep the camera on him.

Early to bed. I leave at the crack of dawn.  If nothing exciting happens on the way home, this is it for this trip.

10/18 Yale football

 Susan’s boss wasn’t using his football tickets, so he gave them to her, including the parking pass.  Luke decided he would go too.

These were great seats on the 40 yard line.  We stayed until midway through the 3rd quarter.  Yale had just scored on a long pass and then made the 2 point conversion.  We were ahead by lots.  Stonyhill just wasn’t a good team.  I think the final score was 47-7.

Susan and Luke both had errands so I amused myself until dinner.  Luke's girlfriend Ariel went with us to Burton's grill and bar.  She had steak with green beans and French fries, Luke had steak frites and Susan and I shared a burger with fries and a side salad.  When the waiter asked if all was ok? Susan said that the burger wasn’t medium rare, so they comped us with 2 desserts, chocolate cake and key lime tart.

Watched more of Emily in Paris and to bed.

10/17 Moved on to Susan's

 Because none of us is capable of carrying a packed suitcase down stairs, I carried everything down and then put it in the suitcase.  Many, many trips.  My watch was very happy with me.  My thighs - not so much. 

When Susan arrived we had a little visit with fresh cardamom bread and Susan and Lorraine shared grandchildren photos.

In Glastonbury we stopped at T.J.'s and I managed to resist the cute canvas orange and black bags.  We had pork roll for lunch. (Another taste I look forward to.)

We went to the Apple festival.  Unfortunately it didn’t open until nighttime, so we just walked through and continued to the boathouse by the river.  A lovely day for a 2 mile walk.

Rested, since I had also climbed 6 flights of stairs! until dinner.  

We went to Max Fish and enjoyed clam chowder, mussels (me), salad with salmon (Susan)

At home we watched Emily In Paris.  In one episode I recognized the cafe they were at - it was the bad cafe across the street from my favorite on the Ile St. Louis just behind Notre Dame.

Slept like a log.

10/16 last day

We didn’t do anything, but had a busy day. A visitor 

She came with the woman who was fixing the wallpaper in the dining room.  (It was lifting a little at some seams.  So some places she glued, some she painted - a very tedious job.)  The dog sniffed us all and then found a sunny spot to nap.

After lunch 

We had another visitor.  Anne is a neighbor and friend.  She takes Bob to a book club which gives Lorraine a couple of hours by herself.  When she heard about the Jane Austen conference, she wanted to hear all about it.  She brought along a puzzle that she just finished which had all of the characters and scenes from the books.  She had seen the exhibit at the Morgan library and I filled her in with the info from the lecture.

For dinner we had spaghetti and meatballs.  They were someone’s nonno's recipe with a secret ingredient which turned out to be raisins chopped fine.

10/15 Barbara visit AND PIZZA!

 Today was very busy.  The cleaners came so Bob and I lurked in the office on the 3rd floor.  Lorraine went for a boob squeeze. Then the mow and blow guys came.  It was pretty noisy here for a while.

Lorraine, Barbara, and I worked together at the phone company from 1965 to 1968.  We vacationed together on Cape Cod with our husbands and had many good times.  Both Barbara and I moved away and hadn’t seen each other since.  She moved back about 5 months ago and showed up at Lorraine’s door.  We thought it would be fun to get together and catch up.  We both said we wouldn’t have recognized each other until we spoke and then we sounded exactly the same.

So, Lorraine invited her for lunch while I was here.  We had caprese and curried chicken salad.  For dessert Lorraine had made peanut butter cookies and also added Jaffa cakes. (Thanks, Janet, for the recommendation). After lunch we just talked and talked.  Caught up on children, grandchildren, and husbands-both past and present. 

She left midafternoon and we read and rested until dinner time.

BIG TREAT FOR ME we went out to Moden Apizza.  This not as good as Sally's but only had a 15 minute wait instead of being in a line around the block.

Bob and I shared a medium bacon with onion on one half (me) and spinach on the other half (Bob).

Lorraine had a small “muts” which is how mozzarella is pronounced here.

The drink of choice is birch beer.  I ate tooooo much.  It was delicious. We brought a lot home.

Watched the news and retired to read in bed.

10/14 errands etc.

 It finally stopped raining and all the squirrels and chipmunks came out to forage.  Today we are just doing errands and getting ready for a guest tomorrow.

Lorraine and Bob went to get him a haircut and to replenish the bourbon supply.  They came back with bourbon but no haircut.  The barber was in his shop but it was closed.  He said it was because of the holiday.  But the holiday was yesterday.  Come back tomorrow- but he is closed on Wednesday.  Oh well, he doesn’t have a solution- not his problem.

When they came back Lorraine and I went to the bank, a farm stand and Aldi's.  Janet will be happy to know that I introduced them to Jaffa cakes.

After lunch we went to COSTCO!  I was beginning to have withdrawal.  She was getting her first hearing aids.  While she was occupied, I looked for anything new and different.

Have you ever seen Goat Cubes?

Home again Lorraine made cookies and chicken salad for tomorrow and then Bob made cocktails and I put out the nibbles so we could watch the news.

Dinner was the seafood stew.

We read for a while and then everybody goes to their bed to read.  (Not for long, we were all falling asleep downstairs.)

10/13 RAIN

 I know that I have become a Californian.  It was raining when Lorraine and Bob picked me up at the train station.  When I woke up this morning and looked out the window it was still raining.  I said, “Oooooh, rain” instead of “oh, shit! It’s raining!”

So we stayed in except for a really quick trip to CVS for distilled water.  We all read all day.  It was lovely.

For cocktails Lorraine and I had Manhattans and Bob had scotch and soda.  Lorraine warned me not to order scotch because she has watered it down for Bob.  He doesn’t realize. We had very good chicken liver pâté for nibbles.

Taco salad for dinner and gelato for dessert.

Lorraine has a zoom meeting so Bob and I are in the living room.  The news is taped for after and then we will all retire to read in our rooms.

10/12 The End and New Beginning in New Haven

 The last day is a breakfast with a speaker and the introduction of the next two host cities.

John Mullins talked about Jane's use of words.  She created many new words, mostly in her letters, but here use of ordinary words to make points gave me insight into how she wrote.

Tucson, next year’s AGM, offered dancing cacti

Conference over we said our goodbyes.  Janet flew back to Cleveland and I took the train to New Haven.  Lorraine and Bob picked me up on a rainy night.  Lorraine made a fish stew which was delicious and just right for a nasty night.

We watched the recorded news (mostly there is going to be a storm) and then off to bed to read.

10/11 Ball

 We are loving the breakfast and lunch in our room.  This morning there were muffins and coffee outside of the room with the speaker.  We packed up ours to augment our lunch.

Our speaker this morning was Dr. Juliette Wells, from Goucher College.  She talked about an alumnus who had a very extensive collection of Jane's works.  First editions, translations, etc.  Pretty much anything she could get her hands on that was worth while.  She donated it all to the Morgan Library and Goucher.  Dr. Wells recently co-curated a JA exhibit at the Morgan and her talk was about all of these things.

The fearless leader of the Southern California chapter in one of her many dresses and the hat she wore to celebrate Jane's 250th.

A young woman wore an homage to Edgar Allen Poe. (From Baltimore)

Banquet was ordinary.  Janet had chicken and I had salmon.  Mine was better but not great.  The birthday cupcakes were pretty good.

We took our pictures in front of Chawton House and went to the ball.

We managed to dance the 1st and 3rd with a rest between.  These dances went on for a long time.  We were only doing short versions of them.

Off to bed.

10/10. Lectures all day

 Woke up to the good news that Trump didn’t get the Peace Prize.  Breakfast in our room again.

Our first speaker mostly writes biographies, but has recently written a novel about Jane at the sea.

I thought this was a priceless moment - the woman in regency dress working on her lap top.

The second speaker was drawn to Austen when as a black girl she recognized herself in Miss Lamb.  Now she has written almost 30 books with historical black women as the heroines.  

Both of these women gave excellent talks and I will try their books.

Our regular lunch in the room.

2 more talks - 1 bad and one about what articles of clothing are called that was interesting.

Changed out of my blue regency dress to go back to MO’s seafood for dinner.  This time we were more savvy with our order.  It still was an enormous crab cake but doable. I also took a picture of 2 of the lumps of crab.  The menu says JUMBO LUMP CRAB and they aren’t kidding.

Back to the room and now to bed.

Me in my blue dress at the Denver conference.

10/9 Jane Austen begins

 I slept the sleep of the dead after yesterday.  We had a leisurely morning with coffee, small cinnamon buns (brought from Cleveland) and trail mix.

Our first activity was the Country Dance lesson.  We took this last year also to prepare us for the ball.  This year was a review and also worked off a few calories from last night’s dinner.

The dances are done in a line which divides into groups of 4 and then after each set of steps you move up towards the top of the line.  We had the same instructor as last year.

We bought hard boiled eggs to supplement our crackers and cheese for lunch in our room.  We both think that this is the best way.  It gives us a little quiet downtime and we don’t eat as much.  (It’s also cheaper.)

Our afternoon class was the Georgian Portrait Bracelet workshop.  This was not very successful.  I don’t think the teacher had ever tried to teach it before.  She can make one in 1/2 hour, but in 1 1/2 hours no one even came close to finishing. She asked how she could make the next class better - so I told her, with the people around me saying “YES, that would have been better.  This is one the teacher made:

We went back to the room to rest and decide tonight’s restaurant.  Phillips is well known and was a close walk.  We started with cocktails.  I had a blueberry pomegranate margarita and Janet had a strawberry colada.  Then we both had the fried trio - crab cake, haddock and shrimp with fries and coleslaw.

I think huge portions are a Baltimore thing.  I don’t know how many potatoes gave up their lives for the mountain on my plate, but I had enough leftover to feed a family of five.

We waddled back because we were signed up for the first breakout session: Head to Toe.  The first speaker talked about what headdresses Miss Lamb in Sanditon would have worn.  She showed many paintings of women of color of different classes and how they styled turbans, tignons and hats. Jane Austen Footware in Fact and Fiction was the second topic.  This speaker specifically talked about boots.  Emma breaks a lace so they will have to stop at Mr. Elton's to fix it.  It was interesting to see what that kind of boot and lace would have looked like. Very different than I had pictured them.

Then we went to a session on the smells of the time.  Since London had 1 million people and no sewers, thousands of horses and other animals roaming the streets, it was pungent to say the least.  Slaughterhouses and tanneries, and markets without refrigeration, and wood or coal burning added to the stench.  It was fun and informative.

Bedtime.