"Discover the Norah Jones of Rieslings"

What does this mean??? That it's really young and old people LOVE it?

My Girls.

Annette and Loreto and I all went to grade school together. Old friends are special. All those years of walking to school together, pooling our change for a bag of chips on the way home. Joy riding in the elevator of Loreto's building. Sitting on my balcony, drinking iced tea. Letting Annette do our make up in her basement and then taking glamour shots of ourselves. Old friends are in a unique position to know exactly how geeky you REALLY are. Old friends are the ones you can let it all hang out with.

I'm so lucky that I get to talk to Annette pretty much everyday, at least via email. I was her Maid of Honour a few years ago, and now, here she is, big shot in the bid-ness world, about to become a Mom. We haven't seen Loreto in almost three years, since she went of to the Lower East Side of Manhattan to teach. She's "To Sir With Love"! Scratch that, she's Michelle Pfeiffer from that movie with the Coolio song. She's fierce. She's gorgeous and tiny and I bet every bad ass in her class was terrified of her.

We're glad to have her back, that's for sure! We spent a couple of hours together today, the three of us, eating brunch, getting Starbucks and strolling around swanky Yorkville.

The best thing about old friends is that no matter how long it's been since you've seen eachother, you can always just ease right into the way things used be. See?

Maybe that's why we always wear our hats.

This week began with the Robeau and I attending our first ever Passover Seder at our wonderful friend Elaine's house. We were both raised Catholic and I am now what can only be described as aggressively secular, so something that steeped in tradition and spiritual was a change of pace for both of us. It was fascinating to be a part of someone else's traditions, to meet her great family and enjoy all that incredible food and drink. What I liked the most about the whole thing was the discussion had around the table about the disenfranchised and the suffering. While they were celebrating their people's freedom from slavery they considered the plight of the homeless and of the people in Darfur. It was inspiring. Like anything to do with organized religion though, I am still left thinking, "nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there".

The week ended yesterday when I hooked up with Book Vixen to enjoy a belated b-day breakfast (happy b-day BookVixen!) and to take in the "Jesus Parade" in Little Italy. Every year the Passion is marched out along College Street, complete with marching bands, ancient women saying the rosary and a different young guy from the community playing Jesus for every station of the cross. What was the most entertaining was the fact that the best Jesuses (Jesi?) got saved for the more showy parts (whipping, cross-bearing) and the really weak Jesi were cast early on, in the less exciting part of the story, riding a donkey and wearing a bad wig. I imagine there is a great deal of back talk and jealousy involved in the casting of the big man every year...just like any other form of theatre. It was a very cool spectacle and really fun afternoon (you can check out all the pictures over at my Flickr account).




Today we enjoyed what has become my favourite new Easter weekend tradition, a visit from Momster, Robby Disco and the adorable Mr. Liam and Miss Norah. This year we gathered at Sam's house. He was a very amiable host...


It was great to meet Norah, the first girl of the bunch. She's quiet and sweet and I get the feeling that she is just sort of tolerating all of us and our stupidity. She may only be three months old, but at one point, I'm pretty sure I saw her roll her eyes at me. I'm OK with that, I probably deserved it.


Liam is more fun than I can tell you - he had a field day with our camera, taking well over 100 photos (some of the best ones are up at Flickr too). What was really cool was that he made us all feel like we get to hang out with him every weekend and not just once or twice a year.


But that's how it is with old friends, right?

Happy Easter everyone, however you choose to celebrate it.