Since Thursday

Get ready for my longest post ever, with the usual typo's, bad grammar, mis-spelling and stream of conscience writing.

I think I'll start with a little bit about dinner at Osteria.

The restaurant is super friendly and the people working are super efficient, to the point of very nearly rushing us. Nearly but not quite. The wine list is fantastic with lots offered by the glass. It's a casual looking place.

The food - What's great is you just couldn't make this at home. The Pizzas are justifiably remarked on by everyone who eats there. I guess it's something about the oven which is at 700 degrees F.

What we ate -
We started with a spring onion flan with morels and a chervil tarragon salad. very springtime flavors, fresh contrasted with the earthy morels. Then our pizza, we opted for the fava bean mozzarella, walnut which continue our spring theme and in no way was as boring as my description may sound.
dinner was rabbit for me, skate for Francis and Carol(his Mom) had a crespelle with asparagus and truffles. all of the dishes were OMG good, I especially loved the crespelle, the noodle was perfect and the filling yum, Not saying I didn't love the Rabbit , too. I didn't taste the skate since it was scarfed down in a second so I'm assuming it was good. as a side we had the fried artichokes, we debated ordering more of them but as artichokes do they were killing the wine. which by the way was a full bodied dry red from Puglia. We just got a relative cheapie because we anticipated the artichoke effect.

then dessert A rhubarb bavarian, a polenta budino, and a semolina cake with strawberries. I loved the budino a soft polenta pudding with vanilla and chocolate hazelnut. all desserts were great. If you go( I'm already talking about going back) I'd concentrate on the pizzas, pasta and desserts.

The next day.
We cleaned and cleaned and shopped for food. Lunch at Honey's Sit N Eat where we had our favorite waitperson Angel (this is notable because we ran into her later at the B-52s show).
We got Carol to the Hotel by 4:30 so she could get ready for the rehearsal dinner, and we ran home to nap and then get dressed for The Show.

We get to the venue, pick up our tickets and passes at the will call and go in. Sounds simple right? It worked out but I was slightly nervous because I was sneaking Kate's birthday present in, and it was a garden gnome on a stake, definitely could have been a weapon. Lucky for me the security was straight straight straight, so the idea of a thorough frisk of an aging queen didn't appeal to them so the gnome in my back pocket trick worked.

They played all of the favorite oldies and integrated the Funplex tunes. I thought most people were there for the Older Bs. Keith had tons of energy and played all night., Kate was high energy and moving shaking and singing her voice was great (contrary to today's review in the Philly paper), Cindy was a little less forceful and Fred talked/sang dancing all night. The crowd was a little older, the after party was sedate and we were home by 1 pm.

That was a good thing since we had all of Fran's family coming for Brunch at 10 am the next morning...

The brunch was a blur, prepared food, gave tours of the house, gave tours of the neighborhood, hugged, kissed, drank coffee. Everyone left we cleaned up took a "disco" nap and got our selves to the wedding just on time.

The wedding, was fun and dancing and drinking and eating and drinking and more dancing and drinking, and we got home late again with a new pet ( beta fish that was a table centerpiece) and Jonathan and Lori tried again to give us one of their dogs. (Jon's a vet and Lori's a vet tech so they have lots of animals in their lives). We resisted(well Fran resisted).If I stop to think about it If you weren't family at the wedding you were a friend and involved with animals in some way.

Next morning we were back at the Hotel for family breakfast at 9am. I was not the only one there with a hangover. Lots of family stuff both Jon's and Lori's and by about 11 everyone was on their way home. Jon and Lori tried to give us the dog, again.

We just quietly laid around the house for the rest of the day appreciating the Sunday NY Times.

The end.
did anyone make it this far? there's more... but that will have to be later.