The Cramer Lemon: The Baby Swiss Walk, Roulette, and Qanina!

The last week was pretty jam-packed. I'll start with the walk we took last week when Rob opted to take the day off from his internship at the zoo (such a treat since he and I so rarely have a coinciding day off). The weather was sunny so a walk was in order. Since time was a factor (I had to be at the Khoreys' later), we went only to the unofficial dog park near the end of our street rather than our usual walk to the main park. En route we found a 3 lb wheel of baby Swiss cheese, all wrapped up with a bow and everything. What a score! We scooped it up and kept going. There's an opening to the woods at the base of the hill and we proceeded to try out the trail which wound around the back of the King Estate, the $2,100,000 8-bedroom manor that's been on the market - and wallpapered in Bradbury & Bradbury, the company my great friend Bruce established years ago! I think we'll buy it when my olive oil ship comes in. The trail was wonderful - hilly, mysterious, and hardly a building in sight. A creepy-looking trestle bridge, which I loved, loomed off to the side. It's a really magical place. This is one of the hundreds of things I love about where we live. Of all the cities I've called home, Pittsburgh is filled with the most wonderfully wooded areas; the marriage of the forests and urban setting suits our family quite well, I think. This is definitely a place where we'll return often now that we know it's there.

Thursday night was the holiday party at the National Aviary. Nina kept Olive for us since drinking and gambling were going to be involved - no place for a babe. Rob and I were really just going for the food which was rumored to be quite good. We have no interest in alcohol and really none in gambling, but since door prizes, which included four Kindles that struck Rob's fancy, were to be awarded at the end of the event, we decided to sit in on some Roulette to earn chips to be traded for raffle tickets. Five minutes in I was itching to go back to our table and stuff my face with more of that incredible sweet potato-sage-and-walnut salad, but decided to buck up and be a sport for Rob's sake; my sweet had it bad for those Kindles. And wouldn't you know it? I hit some sort of stride and started cleaning up. Bigtime case of beginner's luck (but isn't Roulette about just that?). I won nearly every time, my red plastic cup nearly overflowing with chips (Rob ran out, but we more than broke even between the two of us). Unfortunately we did not go home with any of the Kindles but I won a sketchbook and a really rad box of Pittsburgh trivia cards and Rob got two tickets to a tour of one of the local furnaces (and an Orange Crush t-shirt that he'll give to Zoe. I almost was into it for the R.E.M. reference, but then thought better of it. Plus, she's really into men's t-shirts that are many sizes too large for her. I am not). Luckily we both are really into learning more about the history of where we live so we still came out on top...aside from my newfound gambling problem.

On Friday we were delighted to have our dear friend Katrina in for a visit. She's been in Boston since August, in her first semester of grad school at Tufts. How we've missed her. She joined us for quiche (made with broccoli, shiitakes, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and - what else? - the baby Swiss), butternut squash and pear soup, and several rounds of Bananagrams. Olive Christened her "Kanina", the spelling of which we changed to "Qanina" during the game while discussing q-without-u words. It's so nice to have old friends back, even for a short while. It felt like she'd never left. So all in all a pretty grand week!