Berry exciting

Strawberry season is finally here. And this year more than most, I'm taking advantage of it. The fabulous soft serve place near our house makes strawberry ice cream using berries they pick themselves from a farm a mile or two away. The soft serve is very good, but my favorite is the strawberry milkshake, which includes chunks of fresh strawberry that clog up your straw.

What makes this all so great is that it's so fleeting: Strawberry ice cream lasted six days last year. With the rainy, cold spring, it's likely to be even shorter this year. So on Tuesday, when I noticed strawberry listed on the flavors as I drove home from work, I put out a call to several friends. Tuesday night, I had a strawberry shake. Wednesday night, I had a strawberry nor'easter with oreos (it's like a blizzard or flurry). And then last night, at a group dinner out to celebrate some work stuff, Darren and I split a luscious piece of strawberry pie. Yum.

Tonight, however, we are heading down to NJ to visit my folks for a few days. Traffic is supposed to be horrific, so I've researched all the dog-friendly hotels along I-84 in Connecticut... we'd like to drive all the way to my parents' tonight, but in case it gets lousy we can bail out. I figure we'll leave here around 5 or so... there's been no packing done, although we did do the laundry. I'm starting to make some piles of things I don't want to forget, and Darren took Rocky with him to work this morning so he can drop her off at his parents' (she's easily overwhelmed by the chaos at my parents', so she gets to be pampered by D's folks). Jelly will make the trip with us, as none of the Jersey family has met her yet, and being mostly deaf and blind means that the chaos will roll right off her.

Not sure if I'll be posting from NJ or not... if the weather's as good as they're predicting, I may spend the entire time on the beach, which is just fine with me.