Three Things I Like

1) The neighbors cat. I still don't know its name, but we are quite good friends. The kitty is often lying on the sidewalk in front of its owner's house, and whenever I walk past the area, I always look for it. As the cat is so calm and amenable to petting, I gather it's not young. We've had a bit of sun recently, I've found it dozing in a patch of light quite frequently. Sometimes I let the kitty sleep, and other times I can't resist scratching behind the ears, on the neck and under the chin. Since it will roll on its back and give me its belly, I think the cat likes me. Such activities help temporarily assuage the longing for our cats.

2) Sancerre Rosé 2006 Les Baronnes, Henri Bourgeois. "This refreshing, very fruity rosé will seduce you with its bouquet of ripe red fruits. It's easy to drink, fresh and particularly well-balanced in structure and aromas."

I'm so happy that a trip to Provence last summer brought on a rosé epiphany—these lovely, tasty wines are perfect for summer and bare no resemblance to U.S., boxed wines of the 1980s.





3) Rome—HBO/BBC
Thanks to a friend, we were able to watch the complete first and second (also the final) season of Rome, a joint HBO and BBC production. Having not had a television since last August, we couldn't stop ourselves from plowing through the 22 episodes in two weeks. Season one just blew us away, and we were a bit disappointed to find season two put less emphasis on historical and political issues and more on soap opera style intrigue. Still, the entire series is captivating viewing. It also came in handy to temporarily distract us from the facts that we now have less than a month in Cambridge and we still don't know our future plans. After back-to-back episode viewing, M* and I would withdraw to our laptops and Google characters, battles and trivia that had just been presented to learn what was fact, fiction or a blend of the two. It's nice that we can geek-out together over such things.