She should know, and dog vomit

I'm in New Jersey this weekend.

Suzanne is delighted by the first part of her birthday gift: I got her a 30-gig iPod and the stuff necessary to connect it to her car stereo. Hers is in white, so we don't get confused as to which one is whose. My 60 is black... I hate getting the case dirty, but since it's going to happen anyway, might as well not be able to see it. Anyway, she was delighted, and we stuffed it with about a hundred tracks she had on CDs I'd burned for her over the last few weeks, as well as the entire contents of her Ken Burns: Jazz companion disc set.

Should be good, and should save me a lot of time making CDs for her every time I see her. That frees up time to do... other things.

The drive up was remarkably problem-free considering it's Fourth of July Weekend (though the 4th is Tuesday). I had pre-ordered the iPod and stuff from the (tax-free) Circuit City up in Christiana, Delaware. I got there, though, and none of it had been picked out of inventory, so I got to stand around while they did that. Nicely, though, they now have a promise: if your online isn't ready for pickup 24 minutes from when they send the email confirming it's ready, you get a $24 gift card.

I'd ordered at 6:01, they sent the email at 6:03, and here it was, eight o'clock and they were running all over the place like they'd never gotten the word. I got the card.

Friday night we had a somewhat disappointing dinner at a place over in Cranbury. If Ponderosa could get $27 for an overdone grainy steak like that, I'd buy stock in the company. Somehow this place managed to figure it out. The leftovers are in the refrigerator right now, just in case I want beef jerky late at night.

Saturday was improbably hot. We waited until late in the day to go out riding. There was a ride talked about in one of those biking guides to New Jersey, showing a path in and around the Monmouth battlefield park and the local orchards. Halfway through part of the ride (it was too hot to do all 28 miles) I turned around and yelled at Suzanne, "I am going to write to whoever laid this route out and tell them they're insane."

Most of the roads were heavily traveled and had nearly no shoulders. Lots of bumps, lots of views of shitty subdivisions under construction. Oh, and a few orchards. We got back to the state park and went around to the visitors' center (closed thanks to a New Jersey state budget impasse) and that almost made up for the rest of the ride. The view out over the Revolutionary battle lines was spectacular and pastoral. Off to one side, there was a huge maple tree which was apparently split into three pieces and destroyed during the rainstorms last week (the same ones that did a bunch of flooding in Maryland and Pennsylvania). It must have been eighty feet tall.

After riding, we came home, took a shower, and went to Princeton for dinner. After wandering around a little, we decided to have dinner at Lahiere's, which has been around for over eighty years and is quite impressive, though a touch expensive. The waiter we had seemed to know Suzanne from graduate school or something, but she couldn't remember who he was and was a little puzzled. There was a piano player doing jazz most of the evening and he was remarkably good.

Dinner was also remarkably good: Suzanne rambled on for about half an hour about how good her scallops were, though some of the rambling might have been the result of two martinis.

After dinner, we wandered around Palmer Square and had a little ice cream -- very unusual ice cream -- at a place called The Bent Spoon. Interesting, but I'd have appreciated a lot more real ice cream on the list and a lot fewer sorbets. The flavors were interesting, though... coriander, sour cream, kiwi/lime and plum, among other things. Still, I find sorbets unsatisfying, so I got a mix of the vanilla and the blueberry.

Today, I'm sitting waiting for her to get back from church. We were supposed to go to brunch with a friend of hers, an event about which I've been a little wary, but she just called and said her friend called and said that the dog she's dogsitting is yacking all over the place and she feels like she has to stay and keep an eye on it. My view is, the dog is gonna puke whether you're there or not, so might as well go do what you were going to do. No such way. So, Suzanne and I will be wandering around Princeton and probably going to brunch at that place at the Nassau Inn. We'll see. It's already hot as hell out there, but it could be worse: at my house, it's already over 90.

The comfort I feel here is amazing. I know that 80% of it is directly tied to being with her... I think we're likely to carry that anywhere we go... and we're trying to figure out when might be the time for her to move back to Maryland and bring that comfort with her.

Soon.

I hope.

Tomorrow morning I'm driving down to work (I don't have the day off) and Monday night I'm coming back up here for Suzanne's birthday on Tuesday. Then, she gets the other part of her birthday gift.

She says I spoil her.