Spectacular Leave from Customary Habits

A Friday Evening and a Saturday and Sunday for the books. This weekend represented for me everything that a summer weekend should be.

Friday Night I arrived at Oak Grove at met up with Kate. On a kind of whim I suggested taking the short drive to Wakefield and driving around their town center. We proceeded to do this and ate at a lovely little Italian restaurant "Dettorre's Italian Deli and Bella Cucina", which was a little off the beaten path. After we ate at this amazing ice cream and candy parlor right on Main St. called "Cravings etc." which was very cool. You should have SEEN the chocolate covered waffle cones!! AMAZING.

Saturday we headed to Hampton Beach and had a very beautiful day permeated with an Ocean breeze and the delectable smells of fried foods, pizza, and cotton candy. We had dinner at a Bar and grill place called Dylan's. They had an expansive menu. The prices were a little inflated due to location, but the servings matched what you paid. We sat on the upper deck over looking Ocean drive and the beach. It was beautiful out with a nice breeze. We both got individual pizzas, which in actuality turned out to be 14 inch pizzas or so. It was a end of our Hampton experience, one of leisure in the sun whether it be walking lying on the beach & people watching, or taking a quick albeit refreshing dip in the frigid Atlantic. We came back to Brookline, and walked to Herrel's on Commonwealth Ave for.... drum roll, yes an ice cream! Herrel's lived up to my expectations. It was one of the ice cream standards in Greater Boston that neither Kate or I have had the luxury of experiencing. On Commonwealth Ave we saw a huge rat in front of some brownstones. A lady walking by had a poodle and I think the rat may have been bigger. It is perhaps my first "up close" wild rat sighting ever, and I found it to be quite cool.

Sunday there was not a cloud to be seen in the sky. Kate and I were on a mission. We headed out to find a little swimming hole out in Newton called Crystal Lake. It was very picturesque, a very American little pond to cool off in which was a stark juxtaposition in its location which had no intention of being middle class. Surrounded by beautiful Victorians with stone walls and the occasional picked fence, it is a locale perhaps trapped in a time past. It weren't for the Mercedes and BMWs, I may have thought I was in Pleasantville. We found Beacon St. and walked back towards Brookline in the extraordinary summer weather. In Brighton we sat for an hour or so on a park bench by the reservoir. It was beautifully picturesque, and we are lucky to have such places in our urban world. There were many geese playing about on the water, not to mention the occasional duck and swan. The swans are so beautiful and graceful when they eat, however we did see one that managed to get some pond weeds wrapped around its neck. The ducks are funny, I like how they shake their little bills when they eat and drink. I think the geese just like to poop a lot, because it is everywhere, although I do find geese amusing as well. They were just upstaged by the swans and ducks on this particular occasion.

Tonight I enjoyed watching the Constant Gardener. It was a riveting suspense film about government and corporate corruption involving a pharmaceutical company and trials of TB drug in Africa. Rachel Weisz plays woman of powerful spirit, who drives half of the movie, and Ralph Fienes her husband, a British diplomat who is a little in the dark about her passionate quest to thwart the plans of the corrupt pharma company. Rachel Weisz showed her acting prowess, which I have not seen in former ventures of hers.

So About Israel and Hezbollah... awful isn't it?
Here is a timeline from CNN which I fine forms a bit more of the back story. It is interesting that the current tactics are being used, because if history repeats... especially with these folks, violence begets more violence.

Timeline: Decades of conflict in Lebanon, Israel