Today is Erica’s birthday. For those of you who don’t know her, she and I roomed together freshman and junior years at Conn College and I credit her with shortening the mouthful of a nickname my best friends gave me to “soe.” Plus, she always makes it look so lovely with her calligraphic handwriting.

I thought it cool when I found out I was going to have a roommate from Japan. I was thinking she’d actually be Japanese, but really she was an upstate New Yorker who’d just lived in Japan for a few years.

When I reminisce fondly about my alma mater, Eri one of the main reasons why. The owner of a glowing Julia Roberts smile, Eri is permanently associated with Milano cookies, my passing economics (twice) and a Bronte class, Depeche Mode, textbook sharing (a real challenge on nights papers were due!), tromps through the arbo, a stuffed aardvark (more scientific types might actually deem it an armadillo), playing Rummy, the loan of a phone line when mine had been shut off, sipping cocoa under quilts, flowery poetry, and L.M. Montgomery stories (she actually loves a whole variety of books, but the Anne books may have been what cemented our friendship).

In the decade since college ended, Eri and I have had fewer and fewer chances to see one another, and that is sad. But I hope we’ll be able to catch up (at least briefly) when Rudi and I head to the Big Apple next week. In the meantime, Eri, have a terrific birthday!

I’m disappointed to learn that the Pepe’s has decided to go the way of the chain restaurant — the family has hired a consultant to open a restaurant in Fairfield in November and with plans to open another in Stamford if the Fairfield one is successful. “We’re hoping it turns into something big,” says Frank Pepe’s grandson and co-owner, Gary Bimonte, in the New Haven Register article.

I have no doubt that the restaurant will be a success, at least in the beginning. People line up for hours to get the chance to eat in the New Haven restaurant. Who would blame Fairfield residents if they were curious about the experience?

While I can understand the family’s concern that the next generation is uninterested in managing the business, it does seem as if someone could be found who would manage just the New Haven location without bastardizing the concept. If, indeed, a Pepe’s chain were to take off, would we be assured that its essence would remain intact? Or would it instead be lowered to a generic style, instead, without adherence to the ingredient quality we’ve come to expect with a trip to Wooster Street.

Certainly anyone who has ever eaten at the restaurant chain Wooster Street Pizza and then at an actual Wooster Street eatery would agree there is little similarity between the two.

As someone who lives in a pizza vacuum, I would hate to see Pepe’s lose its identity to the sort of pizza that most people find acceptable. And I have my doubts that franchising the “expertise, recipes and family name” of Pepe’s would recreate the authentic New Haven experience. After all, if you dig a really deep hole and let people wander down on burros, you wouldn’t expect it to emulate the glory of the Grand Canyon. Why should we expect that to be true in this case, either?

I understand the Yankee part and the Dixie part (“Y’all” and “blessed” seem to have crept into my vocabulary since moving to D.C.), but where in the world did the Upper Midwestern part come from?

Sunday dawned bright and clear (and a little bit later than Sunday mornings usually do around here). The trip to the farmer’s market did not bring a cornucopia to our table. Halfway through their hours, flowers were pretty much gone. This wasn’t surprising; it was Mother’s Day after all. What was surprising was that the food had gone quickly, too. They were even out of milk!

We did manage to nab the last basket of morels from Sunnyside, where the farmer threw in our potatoes for free. And we bought a bag of baby lettuce from Heinz, whose strawberries were long gone. Two bunches of asparagus and a dozen eggs rounded out the produce.

Blueberry scones had sold out, as had sticky buns. We contemplated pie, but our options were apple or apple rhubarb and that just didn’t say beautiful spring day to us. So we settled on the goat cheese tart to complement the loaf of maple oatmeal bread I made on Friday night.

Yum! I wouldn’t want to give up blueberry scones on a regular basis, but it’s good to remind myself how nice the combination of sweet and savory can be as a breakfast meal.

Usually when I post something that registers as being written during “the wee hours,” my blog is lying. It seems to believe that midnight constitutes a wee hour, which, clearly, it does not, as 12 is large. But tonight it is 2:21 as I sit here and I do not want to go to bed.

It’s been a long day. Rudi and I got up early (for a Saturday), threw on our grubbies and headed over to a D.C. high school for a marathon painting session. Yes, the main second floor corridor door’s did look nicer by the time we finished. But it was discouraging that we got as little done as we did.

This afternoon, after a Paradise ice cream cone (raspberry ice cream with a chocolate fudge swirl), I came home and dozed off. It’s Jeremiah’s fault. He hopped up on my lap and went to sleep. It’s just very hard to stay awake with a sleeping cat on you.

Rudi woke me up for the Kentucky Derby (a surprisingly exciting 2 minutes of my day) and the end of the Nats game (a nice come-from-behind victory in the 9th) before he made us a lovely dinner of a ramp (a wild leek found in West Virginia that has a foraging period of about three weeks)-morel mushroom-chicken stirfry followed by asparagus and hollandaise (left over from the sauce I made earlier in the week).

Then we headed off to friends’ Siete de Mayo party. I enjoyed some of the conversations and seeing some friends I hadn’t seen in a while, but it was definitely the sort of party where it helped if you were drinking. I wasn’t, so I failed to find the enjoyment in the piñata being set on fire in the neighbor’s yard or the beer bottle-M90 explosion. I mean, come on. How much alcohol must you have consumed when you’re amazed the M90 shattered the bottle?

Since arriving home a little more than an hour ago, I’ve just been sitting here, surfing the web. I sort of feel like the day passed me by without a whole lot getting accomplished. Clearly this isn’t true; I did quite a bit. It just wasn’t a satisfying sort of day and some part of me feels like I ought to stay up until it becomes satisfying. The sane part of me realizes that’s just likely to make me grumpy tomorrow, though, so I think I should head to bed. There’s a farm market in the morning and the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival and a potential bike ride in that area in the afternoon. I wouldn’t want to miss out on those because I stayed up in pursuit of an elusory ending to today.

My back did something yesterday morning. I don’t know exactly what. It wasn’t like I was asking it to do anything out-of-the-ordinary. In fact, I think it was bending down to find shoes.

But apparently it didn’t care for that, because either a muscle pulled or a nerve tweaked because boy does my back hurt!

I have hopes that the popping and cracking that are going on today mean things are loosening up and that my back will be feeling much better tomorrow for our volunteer clean-up day at Spingarn High School in Northeast.