Barbara's Meanderings

I meant to write much earlier than this, but as usual my life kind of got in the way. We spent a very quiet Memorial Day Weekend and didn't go anywhere special.

Except even on an ordinary weekend something wonderful can happen.:)

This weekend my husband had to work for two days, so we were left alone and really it was so nice to not have to think about another person's needs. When he's home he takes up a great deal of my time. Yet if you spoke to him he would deny it. He thinks he's low maintenance, but since his heart attack he has been very high maintenance. He thinks he takes care of himself, but when he's home he's always asking me to do things for him. They range from simple things like getting out his insulin from the refrigerator or larger things like getting him his underwear or finding his lost shoe. Besides this he is constantly informing me of something he has either read, heard on the radio, or seen on TV. So I have to pay almost constant attention to him. Occasionally it will even be something to look up on the computer. So when he's away I take a deep breath and relax. I miss him, but it's good to have those moments alone to regroup.:)

So this weekend my daughters and I decided to go look for this diner we had seen advertised on a sign on Rte 84. We didn't really believe it existed, because the Eveready Diner was in Hyde Park. The sign pictured above is right before the diner showing you where it is on Rte 9. If you've ever been to Hyde Park the road there is pretty narrow and it is hard to miss this pa

rticular diner anyway.:) Back to the trip we took, we thought it might be the same diner only they were advertising the turn off for it. But being adventurous and starving we searched for the diner off the exit where they had advertised it would be. We were still skeptical, but as we were traveling back to look at the sign again we found the new diner. Imagine our excitement that they had brought our favorite diner forty-five minutes closer to us! We turned into a shopping center and there at the top of the hill was a new Eveready Diner! It looked a little different outside, but inside it was exactly the same!

Let me describe it for you. As you walk in you might think it was a diner out of the 1950's or even earlier. A huge statue of a young boy holding an enormous cup of coffee in his hand is the main attraction. Then you get the aromas of good diner food and the place was packed with people. Lucky for us we got seated right away.:) Sometimes you have to wait almost an hour at the old diner. But the service and the food is so outstanding you put up with almost anything. If you are anywhere near Brewster, NY you have to go there. They even have those old fashioned juke boxes at every table. You know the ones that you can turn on top.:) But they're filled with new songs and classics too. The best way to find out about all of the food is to go to the website link for Eveready Diner. I love it and when you visit there you will love it too. Every meal is great, but their breakfast is outstanding! Don't forget to order the sausage, because it is so incredibly good! Go with a very big appetite, because even the non-breakfast items are huge.:) Between the three of us we ordered two breakfasts and it was enough! It kept us full for over seven hours!! A few years ago this diner was on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. That's how we found it.

I am a member of a couple of blog networks. One of them is Blog Catalog and I have a lot of friends on there. A while back in March, Jose Sinclair wrote a very nice review of this blog:

He has several blogs on Blog Catalog that are very diverse and should appeal to almost everyone. You can access them all here: lawrence jose sinclair. From here you can access all of his blogs. The one I like best is the one about film, The World's Best Films.

Thank you Jose Sinclair for honoring my blog with one of your reviews. I am going to reciprocate with a review for at least one of your blogs. It's so hard to choose.:)

There are also a couple of other reviews from other people on Blog Catalog so go take a look if you are on there. Thank you to recent reviewers, Jack W and Chris for their great reviews!

One more thing before I go. I have followed these performers, The Kennedys for years. Now they are performing alone and since both of them are great musicians this is wonderful. Together they are amazing, but solo they each have something to offer that is unique and excellent. Their names are Pete and Maura Kennedy and if you ever get a chance to see them don't hesitate. Pete is an outstanding musician who can play rock, folk, blues and even classical guitar and ukelele. Maura is exciting and has a voice that adapts to all of those

I'm not sure about Thursday, but there may be an author interview here. I'll let you know tomorrow. Thank you to all my readers and my new readers and my new followers from Blog Catalog and Mexico. Ole! Hasta LaVista!

Did they get a glimpse of the soon-to-be first lady dancing on the train at her birthday party? Michelle Obama and my daughter have the same birthday. Sara celebrated by having us go to a diner that is an hour away from us. We had to travel over roads we have traveled before and see things we've seen a number of times. XM Radio kept us all sane and helped us forget our rumbling stomachs. But it was worth the trip. The diner is near Poughkeepsie and actually on the outskirts of Hyde Park almost right across from FDR's house. 

Yesterday Sara and my other daughter put the Wii together, although it was mostly Sara and she spent hours playing on it. She wanted the Wii Fit and we also got the Sports Bundle in case we wanted to play other games. So she played and since we only had one remote I couldn't do anything but watch. Watching someone play a virtual game has to be one of the most boring things to do. Second only to watching water to see if it will boil or waiting for the timer to go off. And then my other daughter, Rachel, decided we needed Dance, Dance, Revolution. So today after we had stuffed ourselves with one of the best breakfasts I have ever had we went shopping. I had The Eveready Breakfast: 2 eggs or in my case egg whites in an omelette; 3 huge pancakes covered in powdered sugar; 2 slices of bacon; 2 links of sausage which I seriously wanted to marry they were so good. This was accompanied by both strawberry whipped butter and regular whipped butter and for a little extra, real maple syrup in its own jar. 

After I finished this breakfast, adding 2 cups of coffee, black I had so much energy I wanted to go skiing or at least sliding down a snow-covered hill. But instead, we had to go shopping for guess what? More Wii accessories. We needed another 2 remotes and of course the Dance, Dance Revolution, and an HD cable to attach everything, plus a charger so everything will be ready for our virtual experience. I can't wait to use the Dance, Dance Revolution. I love to dance and this should be fun. I hope. But the best thing about this shopping experience was that with all of the people out of work, as we are, and the whole economic picture of stores laying off people and going out of business, Best Buy was jumping with customers and they had boxes of Guitar Hero's in the aisles. People were crowding around the Wii games and lining up at registers. There is a Wii craze and our family is finally in it!  One boy eyed our Dance, Dance Revolution II and said, "I didn't know they made a Dance, Dance Revolution II." The look of reverence in his eyes was amazing.

So now that so many of us are out of work we can still get our virtual exercise.:) Plus the Wii has so many other features like World News and Weather. It also has some TV channels and Internet hook up so you can see websites if you want to. You can also hook up your computer and see your desktop on Wii. Except for the balance board, which needs to be treated gently, everything is small and the Wii itself is as thin as a DVD case. But even though Best Buy was jumping and the shopping center was filled for Target and a few other stores I knew that there was a Circuit City there too. Circuit City, if anyone doesn't know by now is going out of business and has to liquidate all of its stores. This would have been the place to try to find the Wii accessories. We might have saved money. But the depression of going into a store that is going out of business is severe. We stopped into a Circuit City before Christmas and it was not a fun experience. I can't imagine what they look like now. We went into CompUSA a few days before it closed and the atmosphere is almost funereal. People scrambled to find bargains and shelves began to be disheveled as bargain hunters grabbed what they could and left the shelves in a mess.

What I did to keep from being bored was look around at the scenery on the way home. Up there the Hudson River is frozen in most spots. I have never seen such cold weather for so long up here. Usually we have a thaw and then it freezes. Then it snows a little and melts and it starts all over again. Not this year. We've had snow on the ground since New Year's. Anyway, I wasn't bored as I imagined a Currier and Ives scene in case the Hudson froze around New York City. It used to be frozen on the river there all the time and people skated there. If you've seen the Currier and Ives scenes you have seen that one with the children and women in victorian costume skating on the frozen river. We have come a long way from that time. People go shopping now on cold winter afternoons instead of playing in the snow. Kids get excited over virtual games instead of playing winter games themselves. Anyway, just my thoughts and I'd take that trip again up to Hyde Park for breakfast, lunch or dinner. If you are near any of the places I mentioned, I live in North White Plains, NY, but anyone who knows the Taconic Pkwy and Rte 9 can get there. Just get off at Fishkill and follow Rte 9 through Hyde Park and you'll see the Eveready Diner on the right! Go here for more info: 

With about an hour to go we turned to the one channel on XM that will help on a trip: The E Street Station which plays all Bruce Springsteen all the time, 24 hours a day. Today Darren Aronofsky, the director of the movie "The Wrestler" was on for an hour, since Bruce Springsteen wrote "The Wrestler" for his movie. Mr. Aronofsky is not the person you would think about to host a show of Springsteen greats. But he had on his friend who is a long time fan and between the two of them they played about 7 songs, playing "The Wrestler" twice. I didn't mind, because the one thing you want on a trip is Bruce Springsteen music. Listening to this show I didn't notice the time and as we pulled into the driveway with the show still on I was reluctant to leave the car. Of course, temps in the teens and snow covering ice might have something to do with it. 

I thought I'd stay home in the warm house, but that was not to be for me. I realized we didn't have a birthday cake, so I had to go to the grocery store to get one and of course, I didn't like the one with Happy Birthday written on it already. So I decided to write it on myself. I had gotten a cake covered in chocolate pieces so it was difficult. I managed to get Happy written and Birthday, but that left practically no room for Sara. I realize I really, really suck at writing on cakes.:) We can't all be perfect. She didn't care and Carvel cake is always good. But I couldn't believe I had to go out in that frigid cold. Seriously, I must love that girl!!