Maryland

After Carnivale, carnivalone was not enough for me. I needed a longer break from the stresses of having nothing important to do here in Sicily. What better than to take a trip to see friends in the states. I flew from Palermo to Paris, stayed two night is Paris, and then a flight from Paris to Amsterdam, a change of planes, and when I woke up I was in California, and my body was complaining that I had somehow reset the clock by eight hours (not the nine I had expected, as it was already daylight savings time in the states, but not in Europe.) To keep my body from getting used to Pacific Coast time, my friend from high school days, Carl Buchin, and I flew out two days later to visit the third of our unholy trio, Eric Chandler in Maryland.

We spent a lot of good times catching up with each other, and Eric's wife Carol keep up with us and our obscure references as best she could, as she also turned out gourmet meals for us, fed us wonderfully, along with making the best eggplant parmesan that can possibly be made outside of Italy. Neigh, indeed the best Italian meal made outside of Italy, at least the best I have tried so far.

When we were not gorging ourselves, or listening to Carl play his saxophone, or talking about children, us as children, step children, and politics, we went for drives around Cheney land (Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld are two of Eric's distant neighbors. Eric lives in a much more habitable area that is a mix of summer folks and old time Maryland watermen who make their living from crabbing and fishing). There was even an odd old lighthouse for us to visit.

This was the first time that the three of us had gotten together for over 45 years. It was amazing, as the intervening years did not close out our friendship, and we had a wonderful time keeping up.

In some sort of way, and in keeping with pictures that we had taken when Carl and I were together (and Eric was not around), ar that we had taken when Eric and I were together and Carl was not around, we finally got a picture of the three of us, greeting ourselves, I suppose, in the manner to which we have become accustomed.