Autumnal Equinox

After the medics, a couple of days of pure fun. No more dentists, no more doctors, at least for the time being. Then the following dialogue:

Liesel: My tooth just fell out.
Mick: Oh no, not again.
Liesel: Out of my purse.

Yes, Liesel was hoping the tooth fairy would visit her purse and leave a bright shiny sixpence for the piece of tooth that fell out of her actual mouth a week ago.

Liesel got up first, as usual, and I stayed in bed with Cerys. Her music show on BBC 6 Music is probably my favourite and I’ve been missing it for a few months.

Later, Liesel and I were meeting up with Amrit for lunch. We arranged to meet at Pad Thai, which was closed last time due to refurbishment. And, guess what? It was temporarily closed today as well, due to a gas leak. We’ll have one more attempt before accepting that the cosmic forces just don’t want the three of us to eat at Pad Thai.

Instead, we went for an Indian buffet and that was very enjoyable.

We walked to the Performing Arts Center to buy tickets for an Anchorage Symphony concert in a couple of weeks time.

When we were in Italy two years with Jyoti, Suvan and Gita, we visited a lot of museums and galleries, the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, Uffizi, all the usual visitor attractions. We greatly admired the artwork of course but at the risk of being struck by a thunderbolt, we did get a bit fed up with all the Madonna and Child paintings. The Pokémon GO of the time.

So imagine our surprise when we visited Kaladi Brothers Coffee Downtown branch

to be greeted by a Madonna and Child. A Leonardo original. Well, maybe not.

Liesel: We’re going to join Monica for a stake-out.
Mick: Oh, whereabouts?
Liesel: Sullivan’s.

So, yes, Sullivan’s Steakhouse was where we met Monica for a lovely glass of Glenlivet, so smooth on the tongue. And another reminder that we need our hearing tested!

We’d offered to take Asa out for a meal, but it was quite hard tracking him down.

By mistake, we went into an ice hockey venue, which was pretty cold, surprisingly. But even more surprising was the size of the pucks they were playing with: almost as big as car tyres.

And as a mathematician, I was intrigued by the local addresses being shown in binary notation:

Eventually, we found Asa in a different sports centre.

La Cabana was where we ended up after two first choice restaurants had long waits, over half an hour. We had a good time and lots of good food. Too much food, really, for this English person with an English-sized stomach.

car alarm (noun) (1) Device installed in a vehicle designed to wake up everyone in the neighbourhood, in the middle of the night, apart from the owner of the vehicle. (2) Arguably the worst invention ever.

This is how the day began for us. The sound even drowned out the torrential rain that had tried to keep us awake all night.

We walked around to Jyoti’s house for breakfast where I again managed to eat too much.

We both remarked on how lovely the Autumn season is on this equinoctial weekend. It was a little bit cooler today and the headwind was a bit annoying. But the trees are very pretty.

But Winter draws on too. The first snow has fallen on top of the mountains way over there in the distance. As time goes on, the snow will appear lower and lower down the mountains until it threatens to leave Anchorage knee-deep in snow and ice. One weather app briefly forecast snow for Monday but thankfully, that’s changed, and the person responsible has been severely punished.

We walked home again and a couple of cars pulled up beside us. We were warned that there was a bull moose close to the path, just round the corner. Well, again, I was torn between wanting to see the moose and wanting to stay safe. We crossed the road, but we never did see the bull: it had probably just crossed the road and gone straight into the woods.

We drove to see Amy and her family for a chat and to taste test Kathy’s peach cobbler. I had to have two slices just to make sure it was OK. It was delicious! I’d met Kathy and Wayne, Amy’s parents, just once, probably over ten years ago. Amy’s sister Kara came by too.

Wayne and Kathy gave us lots of useful tips for our trip to Japan, and we talked about our overall travel plans.