B E B E R E

Pablo's sister Anna-Maria's been in the Boston area since last September. Unfortunately, due to the weather, the stress of overwork, and the need to adapt to an often rather hostile personal climate (I've been living here 1/2 my life, now, and I've still not gotten used to it), we've not seen nearly as much of each other as I'd like. The past several months - since January, to be exact, have been particularly brutal. This weekend, we finally got together for a bit of outdoor activity, as both the weather and our physical selves seemed to be holding up.

We took a strenuous walk through another part of the Lynn Woods Reservation - was fun to be in the company of some fun avocational geologists and naturalists. Pablo (whose relationship to Anna-Maria is a typical older brother/younger sister one) even came up with a new 'rhyme' to help her out with the native flora:

"Leaves of three: tasty snack!"

Hal, who rarely laughs when Pablo is around, broke up over that one. Anna, after she (like I) got over this verse not rhyming, had some cutting remark to her brother. I chuckled throughout our outing at Pablo's little improvisation.

Afterwards, we had a little dinner at the Salem Beer Works, which I'm sad to say, has decided to "foofify" their menu. Having acquired a new chef (who apparently thinks he has so prove himself or something), they have gone bistro. I wish I could say we were impressed. Actually, we were all kind of underwhelmed. The beer was still very, very good, however.