Practice: I Took a Short Vacation from Practicing to Engage in Long Conversations with an Old Friend

None of the people in this photo are my friend or me. 

I ate two days in a row in the same restaurant in western MA down the street from Smith College. See how nice the server above looks? You can order one buckwheat ginger pancake on the side (with your real maple syrup)--if you want sweet with your savory, that is.

You can walk right in that restaurant and help yourself to coffee and locally sourced milk and cream while waiting to be seated.  Then you can come back and get more coffee. And more.

I took a bus back through some of the formerly grand cities in New England, like Hartford, CT, which was once one of the riches cities in the US and is now one of the poorest.  (The Mark Twain house and Harriet Beecher Stowe house is there--all according to Wikipedia on my phone.)