Matt and Patricia go to Ariel & Ben's Wedding. Part I

The summer of weddings continues with Ariel & Ben's wedding. I work with Ariel and was very excited to attend this wedding.

At first, Matt and I were in the shade. "Thank goodness we are in the shade." I thought, feeling smug, because the people to our right were in the sun. My smugness was short-lived, because the sun does move and soon enough we were the people to our right in the sun. Happily, the sun moved even more and we were back in the shade when the ceremony started.

Building the chuppah.

Ariel's mother died from cancer a few years ago, and has been missed by all who knew her. The spirit of her mother was invoked when the ceremony began and friends of her mother put the tallit on the poles.

After that, important friends of the couple were invited to decorate the chuppah

Which was lovely.

While the decoration and chuppah adjustment was going on, Matt and I had time for a picture.

Ben and Ariel wait for the chuppah to be ready.

During the ceremony, people were invited up to give blessings or good wishes to the couple. Allegra, another of my coworkers, read a Jewish blessing.

This was a very sweet portion of the ceremony, which I took no more pictures of. The couple was married to great cheer.

Bridge Pedal

Rarely in our relationship does Matt get up before I do. I'm the morning person, he's the night person. Today was one of those rare days. He was up at 5:00 so he could be at the starting line of the Bridge Pedal on time. I stumbled out of bed early enough to take his picture and see him off. He did the 10-Bridge ride and had a great time.

Kelly's Birthday Pizza Party

Kelly--that's her on the right--had another birthday (they come around so regularly) and Heidi and Kevin hosted a make your own grill pizza party. That pizza was goo-ood.

Heidi made three batches of dough. She thanked her Kitchen Aid for doing all the kneading, but I thanked her for making three batches of pizza dough, among other things.

We had the traditional carrot cake and it was deemed good.
Happy Birthday Kelly!

Meat cookin'

It is nearly time for the next order of meat to be delivered and we still have a lot from last year. Matt and I are doing a massive cook off to finish off our stash.

This is called Fiesta Beef Kasha and tastes better than it looks or sounds. You get some hearty protein, good old kasha and vegetables all in one serving.

We marinated a bunch of round steak, broiled it and sliced it thinly.

Sliced and ready to go in the freezer.

Matt browned a bunch of hamburger and rolled beef and cheese burritos.

The always delicious campfire casserole.

We also made African Peanut Skillet. There were so many different kinds of food, we ran out of normal storage containers and had to use canning jars.

This ought to hold us for awhile.

Antares. A good kitty.

It's just been the past few weeks that Antares has decided with some certainty that I am not going to hack him to bits the first chance I get. I was never going to do that, of course, but I'm pretty sure that thought has been lurking in his mind from day one. Lately, he is behaving much more like a house cat and much less like a feral cat. He will probably always be skittish and very slow to warm up to people, but he has been very sweet of late, even doing "the roll."
"The roll," as cat lovers know, is when a cat entices you to pet him by rolling his head on the ground and exposing his belly. Antares hasn't yet fully committed to "the roll"; he's feeling more comfortable with a half roll at this point. Still, this is progress. He's seen Sentinel do it, and he knows he should do it too.
Alas, we are going away for a week soon, and I will have to put him in the cat carrier to take to my Aunt Carol's house. He is not going to be pleased and we shall see how much it sets him back. In the meantime, I'm enjoying him greatly.

Curses, carroted again!

Three years of gardening has taught me a deep appreciation of the humble carrot. I can't get a good one to grow. this one looked promising when it was in the ground. It had great leaves and what looked like a fat carrot growing. But I pulled it and was dismayed to find this specimen.

Now that's a radish

I planted another round of radish a few weeks back and they have grown. These ones have not been eaten by the ants and were very good. One good point of gardening: if you only like something so-so and plant a lot of it, and not much else grows, you learn to like what was once so-so. It has been a very good year for radish. And for me liking radish.