David Bowie, Mini Golf, and Hot Hot Fishermen

Sunday was a busy, productive, and fun day! Ruth and Ben went to church this morning, while I slept in (don't tell!), drank coffee, practiced, and finished a book. After a lunch of bagels and plums Ruth and I got to work rehearsing. We invited acclaimed composer Benjamin J Mansavage Klein to listen in on our practice session of the piece we commissioned from him, "Drop a Stitch". He was quite pleased with how it was going until he told me that I could really just "get down" in a forte section of the piece. I took him seriously and rocked out on it but apparently I was a little over-zealous because Ben's comment afterword was that I needed to "get down in a more David Bowie manner instead of Axl Rose"...whatever that means. I got a thumbs up the second go around though so I guess I channeled my inner David Bowie. Ruth and I got some good work done as can be seen by the state of the room we've been practicing in with music strewn all over the place.

We decided to reward all of our hard work with an outing of mini golf and dinner with Ruth and Ben's friend, Murray. The three of them are hard core mini golfer's and have played 50% of the courses in the state of Connecticut. I, on the other hand, do not consider myself to be an accomplished mini golfer, but am happy to tag along and have a good time. We started out by cooling off with some ice cream pre-game. Here are Ruth and Ben with their peanut butter dipped and Reese's Pieces covered cones:

Delicious on another hot day! It turns out that it WAS a hot day on the green for Ruth Bergman. After a near meltdown on the 7th hole when she accidentally hit Murray's ball into the hole, granting him a hole-in-one, she managed to pick herself back up to win the game! She also won a free game by hitting her ball into the bullseye on the bonus hole! I guess I'll try the peanut butter dipped cone the next time, since I ended up in 5th place out of 4.

(She's very excited and proud of her day in the sun!)

For dinner we ended up at East-West Grille, a Lao Thai restaurant. We tried to go to The Fernwood, a restaurant that Ruth and Ben have been trying to take me to for 3 years, but something always seems to go wrong. This time, instead of a blizzard deterring us, it was closed for no reason. I was quite sad, but East-West Grille was delicious and well worth going through the disappointment of The Fernwood being closed. Ruth and I decided to share some Hot Hot Fishermen, which was as good, if not better, as advertised.

Tons of seafood and veggies in a spicy chili sauce!

We've concluded our busy day with a little more practice, some crushed ginger ice cream, and some quality sister time. I'm so happy that I get to have this time to hang out with Ruth and Ben before we're off on our crazy adventure!

More tomorrow!

-Leah