nice day!

Yesterday was wonderful.

It was Friday, my usual day off. And usually, I'm so foggy and fried by the time Friday rolls around that it takes me hours to clear my head and get out the door. For some reason, perhaps because I'm calmly within reach of my first big deadline at work, I woke up early and got out the house fairly quickly for a swim. I don't think my swim was any faster than usual, but I felt like I had a little breakthrough with my kick. There were a few moments there where I felt like I was moving through the water efficiently, rocking back and forth, moving with some measure of grace.

I came home, made some coffee, had a snack, and then briefly caught up with the gentleman who has been doing some small jobs on the house. Yesterday, he was finishing up a tile backsplash over one of the showers, where splashed water was beginning to eat its way into the wall. I had an idea for another project and he was very encouraging and reassuring. So we'll see about proceeding with that. (The backsplash came out beautifully, by the way; Robert and I are both very pleased with it.)

Then I dashed off to meet a friend for lunch. This particular friend and I met 25 years ago at work and I probably last saw her 15 years ago. A few weeks ago, she contacted me through LinkedIn. I'd been thinking about her but had completely lost touch. What a fun lunch -- lots of good catching up, lots of funny little connections we didn't know we had, lots of good belly laughs. We'll see each other again next week with our partners. From all I've heard and know, the partners will like each other a lot.

And on to pick up a framing job I'd ordered a week earlier. When we were in Greece last fall, we stopped at a charming island, Hydra, on which the cars are limited to about three tiny sanitation trucks. The harbor is flat, but the rest of the island rises up, probably volcanically. The footpaths that run parallel to the harbor are terraced and flat, but the connecting spokes are built as staircases. The main form of transportation, other than foot, is by donkey, and yes, they climb the stairs.

The day we were there, we wandered around, had lunch, wandered around some more, and then, after climbing one of the staircases, stumbled into an artist's studio. We bought four tiny watercolors, perhaps just a couple of inches across. I finally had them framed and am absolutely thrilled with the results.

Oh, and did I mention that yesterday was stunningly beautiful? The sky was blue blue blue and it went up to 80 degrees inland. I came home and turned off the heat and opened all the windows, making me and the kitties very happy.

As I was researching options for getting into the Fenway Park area while a baseball game was going on, Robert called to say he was leaving work early. So I hopped in the car and met him. From there, we went to one of our favorite restaurants, where a former manager was such a frequent customer and took me often enough that now I'm warmly greeted when I go there. Both our waitress and the restaurant manager spent time talking to us and they comped our appetizers. And yes, we had an incredibly good meal and left a huge tip.

Then on to Boston. We took public transportation which worked mostly, save a small miscalculation on my part. But we made it to our event on time and what an event it was. We attended the performance of the Black Grace dance company -- a small taste that hardly does it justice is here (sorry, the embedding machine didn't work and after several attempts I gave up) -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU8bVqaC6eU.

The company is from New Zealand and combines modern dance with traditional Samoan dance. Imagine total eye candy (yummmm!), fabulous music, and explosions of movement. There was poignancy and a lot of humor, just great. The last piece used music by JS Bach, with visual accompaniments that made the Bach more rocking than I've ever heard it before.

We caught the tram to our car just before the ball game ended; fans were getting a head-start out of the stadium, but the wall'o'drunken fans hadn't hit the station yet. I even got to sit down for most of the ride home.

Then home, more admiration of the shower-stall back-splash, some warm fuzzy cat snuggling, and to bed.