Some other Sunday...

About a month ago (nearly goodbye to August already?) a friend was in town and a few of us made a little pilgrimage to Neptune Oyster in the North End. About the same time last year, on a very hot day, we'd wandered over for a birthday celebration and I am all for making this an (at the very least) annual tradition of feasting and friend-gathering.

It's a tiny & very popular spot, not great for tables of more than 4 or 6, and even if you go at odd hours (say, 3 pm, for example) there is still typically quite a wait on the weekend. But with it's food, great wine selection and white-tiled bistro decor, it's really worth it. And there are plenty of shops and scenic streets to stroll while you wait.

I always order the hot lobster roll: always delicious. If you go, taste test both and have your own debate over the merits of the hot or cold options. We ordered about a dozen oysters, bellinis all around, and settled in to our marble-topped table for a couple of hours of good laughs over good food.

Neptune Oyster
63 Salem Street
Boston, Massachusetts
617.742.3474

'As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.'

- Hemingway

Once more to the lake

Heading up to Maine this weekend for a quiet (and most likely rainy) summer get away. I'm prepared to hunker down with a good book, if that's what the weather dictates: I'm bringing an E.B. White biography that I picked up at a used bookstore in Bath last summer. White & his wife, Katherine, (and, often, one of their dachshunds, which White wrote lovingly and hilariously of) spent many years living in a farm house in Brooklin, Maine and I can't help but enjoy the idea of beginning his biography with such geographical tidiness. Looking forward to a little reading & relaxation (with my own comedic hound) up north... the way life should be.


'If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.'

- E.B. White

Love is awkward...

Have you already seen this film, Eagle vs. Shark? It's not new at all... I think that it came out in 2007... it stars Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords and was distributed by Miramax, so it got quite a bit of press for a small New Zealand film. But I still missed it the first time around (blame it on graduate school) and only just saw it recently. So sweet. And sort of painful. And human. That has to be worth a watch, right? Plus, it's got a great soundtrack with songs by the Phoenix Foundation, now a new favorite. Justice is waiting...