|
|
|
kids beneath our pizza
Monday, August 16 2010
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York
I mostly needed the day to unwind, to remind myself what it's like to use a computer with four large screens instead of just one tiny one. I went through the chaos of the various file systems I'd used on and off the road, trying to impose some organization and make it so others who use this stuff would stop yelling at me (via email).
Originally Gretchen had wanted to go out for Indian food the night I'd returned, but I'd been too weary after a 7.5 hour drive. And by today we were in the mood for something other than curry. So we decided to go out for pizza in Woodstock instead. Catskill Mountain Pizza is one of the few pizza shops where one can order a pie having soy cheese (but, since their cheese contains casein, it wouldn't please a vegan purist). First, though, we took our dogs for a walk in the forested Comeau Property (where authorities have recently been cracking down on offleash dogs like ours).
There were some good microbrews in the Catskill Mountain Pizza refreshment fridge. I sampled two different IPAs during the course of our meal. Our pizza was simple one, with just mushrooms and onions in addition to the soy cheese, sauce, crust, and what not. For some reason Catskill Mountain Pizza cubes the soy cheese instead of grating it, so it usually doesn't melt completely in the oven. We were in the outside patio area and a couple little kids came up to us during our meal and expressed great interest in our dogs, though they didn't seem to understand why anyone would get a dog at a shelter. This provided, shall we say, something of an educational opportunity. Gretchen didn't go into the finer points of hybrid vigor, though she did address the problem of perfectly good dogs languishing in shelters while breeders insist on bringing more dogs into the world for too many people too particular to consider adopting a mutt. A downside of having little kids crawling around beneath your dinner is that inevitably they will collide with and contaminate it. Neither Gretchen nor I have much patience for the cooties of small children, but in this case I was willing to eat the slice whose crust had momentarily connected with the top of a seven year old white girl's head.
Meanwhile a table nearby became occupied with a large group of very blond people speaking a foreign language. Initially I assumed they were Swedish, but then Gretchen noticed that they were all speaking French. So then our working theory became that perhaps they were Haitian. "Profiter de vos vacances," Gretchen said as we were leaving. She loves using the languages of others, though perhaps she was being a bit presumptuous. They might well have been long-time Woodstockians who had decided that Monday nights were French nights, and on such nights they would all go out to Catskill Mountain Pizza for a couple of pies, a few bottles of wine, and only speak to one another in French.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?100816 feedback
previous | next |
