Pig Roast Weekend!

I had a lovely long weekend with family.  Part One involved a museum visit:

Don't get your hopes up; the sign on the door says "NO VACANCY."
(On the other hand, fear not; the seagull perched overhead is a mere toy.)

We also watched an episode of "I, CLAVDIVS," which I'd heard of before (my dad commented on Livia as the "power behind the throne") but purchased and watched only recently, after a colleague who is close to my age raved about the program.  Apparently, she pops this in to watch when she is sick and needs to be distracted and awake, without undue strain on her mental faculties.

In any event, it proved sufficiently entertaining for post-dinner amusement, and my parents enjoyed seeing it again after many years.

For Part Two, after some delicious waffles, we headed west for my first-ever pig roast.  In an inadvertently Seussian manner,† folks in NYC had asked me whether the pig would be roasted in a covered pit rather than in the open air on a spit.  Given the location of the event, I thought it unlikely that anyone would dig a pit for the occasion.  But given that all the New Yorkers assured me that the pit option produced a far tastier result, I thought it equally unlikely that anyone would go for the spit option.  So I didn't know what to expect.  

If truth be told (as they* say), the pig roasting was done in a manner that combined the best of all worlds - the delicious cookery of a covered pit, combined with the ease and convenience of a spit.  Yes, apparently there is a third way: the smoke box.

This was a community event, complete with a live concert (featuring a local musician and his merry band who played both Latin beats and cool jazz), a home-made dance floor (featuring hot-spot locations marked with instructions such as "spin around" or "dance with a partner" or "have fun"), home-made salsas with home-grown vegetables (including a beet salsa and a cucumber salsa, among others), and even a photographer from a local newspaper who photographed folks leaping about happily on the dance floor.

I don't think the reporter managed to capture a picture of this activity, however, in which children explored certain alternative, environmentally-friendly forms of transportation: 

I think someone earned extra dessert here.  

All in all, a delightful evening which brought the whole community together.  The feeling was really that of a 4th of July picnic, but with more temperate weather and no fireworks display. 

More waffles (hooray!) kicked off Part Three, when we went blueberry-picking.  It turns out that there are some important differences between picking wild blueberries (as I've done before) and farm blueberries (as we did today) -- besides price, and the convenience of picking blueberries from high bushes rather than low scrubs.  I am thinking, in particular, of the blueberry baskets provided for our use.  These were white plastic, lined with white plastic bags, to be belted on to our waists.  It was certainly convenient, but hardly the attire favored by the fashion-forward.  And no, there is no photographic evidence of our visit and thus no proof that I or others in the group actually donned this infernal get-up.

We adjourned to a local pub:

Good heavens, what is that mysterious clear liquid?
Could it be ... dihydrogen monoxide?  Served to an underage patron?!  

At the pub, I enjoyed appreciated this lovely mural:

An homage to Magritte's "La trahison des images" and possibly "Golconda" etc.

Close-up: "Ceci n'est pas une fenêtre" (which of course it isn't)

Part Four included another episode of I, Claudius, another delicious home-cooked dinner, and a walk in the soft twilight:

A coastal scene

Local flora

All in all, a lovely weekend filled with laughter and good company.

---
Notes
FN†: "Will they cook it /On a spit? /Will they cook it /In a pit?" cf. Green Eggs and Ham.
FN*: In this case, "they" means a precocious 8-year-old who has not only picked up this expression from parts unknown, but also used it to break the news to her parents that she "[was]n't missing [them] as much as [she] thought [she] would" when she spent a few days visiting other relatives.