Rambling Round-up and Painful Embarrassment

 A family of albino squirrels live on the grounds of one of our local hospitals.  

Maybe they escaped from one of the research labs.

 At 30,000 feet, I left the spring-line of Massachusetts 

and passed through the snow-line to the northwest.

 A couple more days back in San Francisco, where a friend took me to the very top of the bridge tower.  A slow freight elevator no bigger than a phone booth carried us up.  I am prohibited from posting photos of the structure at the top, but there are a few available from others online if one were to search.  It was breath-taking and literally spine-tingling at 750 feet.  Keep in mind that the road and sidewalk is only 250 feet above the water.

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A flight to Charleston, SC where a friend (and professional sailor) and I bonded over seafood.  He was coaching the Boston University sailing team on their winter practice, but he strangely doesn't care much for oysters.  Fine... more for me.

In Savannah, GA the air was warm with nectar-hungry bumblebees and the tables were full of French food.  Mother and Father buzzed into town and turned out in their evening wear to take me out for a lengthy dinner.  My shame was thick later that night when I was effortlessly outlasted by my parents, who sat in the lush hotel courtyard with Scotch and my father's cigars.  There I was, their mid-thirties aged son calling it quits a full two hours before them.  I thanked them and headed off to my hotel room, and though Mother hugged me and said "Goodnight. I love you" she was likely bristling at my lack of endurance for such important matters.  The next morning, I dragged myself up to prepare for the day, and in the pleasant hotel sitting area my father was already present, fresh and miraculously rested, sipping coffee in his bow tie and blazer while my corpse staggered up to the coffee counter.  Father took one look at me and gave the tiniest shake of his head: "amateur", he was likely thinking.

Georgia antiques. 

Back home in familiar territory, a lone daffodil welcomed us to a party at the MFA.  After the party, I got a chance to visit some Saxon porcelain from the Meissen plant.

If you ever want to read a true tale of murder, espionage, Saxon intrigue, and shamelessly insatiable social climbing, the discovery of European porcelain is told in a surprisingly thrilling book by Janet Gleeson:

I think that I convinced porcelain enthusiast Reggie Darling to take up this book a few months ago. 

Lost mittens from the winter that barely was.  

Clueless Brahmin

An older widow neighbor of mine had me fix her screen door recently which was creaking loudly.  

I gave it a spray of WD-40 and it was fine.  I hadn't even noticed that I had forgotten the oil spray at her house.  Three days later, she spotted me from her balcony during a sunny Boston day, 

and called over to me in her operatic patois: 

"Thank you for your help the other day, but you left your can of lubricant here."  

Naturally, every neighbor on the block also heard, 

and my wife bursting into laughter didn't help my case.

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I added the "$20" because that is what I actually paid for it at the outlet in Charleston, SC. Readers of this blog likely already know that there is no chance in hell that I would have paid $115 for a piece of silk.

A ladybug and peapod tie by that great French silk-maker... a gift from Mrs. 

80 degrees Fahrenheit in Boston today on March 21.  The windows are open to the harbor's breeze and the cloudless blue sky, and a friend just arrived with a bottle Vintage Bourbon.