Day #71 – A Day with Carolyn & Nina

Pittsburgh, PA

Kelly gave me such a wonderful gift today.  She took the truck to the dealer for inspection, thus giving me several hours to visit with Carolyn and Nina. 

Carolyn and I have been friends since the late 1970s.  We met when I was working at a vocational rehabilitation center and she was a masters-level student intern.  We became good, close friends.  I switched careers, returning to school to pursue an MBA, but she took the rehab field by storm.  Our lives had taken us in different directions for a number of years, but several years ago, she talked me into joining the board of directors of Sharp Visions (http://www.sharpvisions.org ).  Now retired, she knits, reads, cooks (and a whole lot more!) and laughs when I go tilting at various windmills.  Even with our common community work, we seemed to never be able to find extended time to just be together.  When I retired, I asked her to teach me how to knit chemo caps so I’d have a connection my Pittsburgh knitter friends, plus a compact hobby for the road.  This brought us closer together, too.  Having a whole morning and afternoon to just hang out was such a gift.

Nina and I decided that dinner would take place at a new restaurant I’d read about, the Legume Bistro (http://legumebistro.com).  Kelly surprised me by ordering, and eating, a whole fish!  Generally, she goes for various forms of cow.  Sometimes she gets adventurous and orders seafood.  But, I’ve never seen her order fish with bones and skin.  She did insist that the chef remove the head – didn’t want to make eye contact with her dinner.

After dinner, we drove to a local theater to watch a live performance of Prairie Home Companion (http://prairiehome.publicradio.org) that was being streamed to movie theaters across the country.  Nina is a big fan of the show and was excited at the prospect of seeing it.  She and Carolyn had gone to opera events that had been streamed from the Met, so she was more familiar with the process than we were.  We had a great time!  The cameras did not show as much of the technical geekie parts of the show as I would have liked, but it was great fun watching the sound effect guys doing their thing.  In the right context, squishing Styrofoam plates can sound like just about anything else you might want.  They also used their voices a lot to make the various effects.  At times, during a skit, the sound effect guys would clearly ad lib a sound and wait for the actors to catch up.  At the end of the show, Garrison Keillor ad lib’ed a story and tried to make them screw up.  Despite their best efforts, everybody kept up with everybody else.