Reading · Friday Happy Hours

Friday happy hour at #Vanaprastha. Jumbo shrimp with cocktail sauce, stuffed mini bell peppers and celery with cheeses and Tuscan bread, garden cucumber and Prince Michel Viognier. Inside tonight due to heat and Canadian forest fire haze. Both wine and food life stories, tomorrow on my Substack.

Jumping right in with the wine story. Last month, after my annual mammogram, I received a letter from the radiologist who found an asymmetry and recommended further imaging, which took place just before the 4^th of July. More views then a sonogram, and yup, there was the spot deep in my right breast. Too err on the side of caution, let’s do a needle biopsy, he said, to which Keith and I replied, okay, let’s see how this plays out. Although my mother’s sister and one of my father’s both had breast cancer later in life, my chances are between 5-6%, and needle biopsies only average about 20-30% malignancy. Pretty good odds.

Due to the shortage of needles for the specific equipment at the facility in Charlottesville, I was scheduled at their imaging center in Culpeper, a two-hour drive away off 29, just north of Prince Michel Winery. I spent Sunday afternoon and Monday morning working ahead, especially on things that would require me to lift more than 5 pounds in the week or two recovery period.

But recovery never happened. The Culpeper radiologist asked for one more image to compare with past images taken since 2013, my first mammogram after we moved here permanently. Yup, there was that same spot, same location, same size. No growth. Benign. Keith and I celebrated at Prince Michel and brought home a couple of bottles of Viognier, one of their higher-end wines not available at Virginia’s local ABC stores.

Now the food story. Wednesday evening was Serenity at Trinity, a hymn-sing at our church’s historical site in Crimora. Historical, including no air conditioning. The choir sang, I played duets with our violin-cellist Elizabeth, and we all sweated.

Air-conditioning is a blessing, for sure. But sometime Thursday afternoon, our unit stopped maintaining the thermostat’s 75-degree setting. Keith cleared the clogged drain line, the usual culprit; that didn’t solve the problem. The temperature climbed to 79 degrees that night, 81 on Friday morning. We’ve had power outages recently, so Keith decided to reset the system, which return the house to 75-degrees then kept running. I called our repair folks, and Clayton checked everything out. Compressor and Freon are fine, he said, except one of the geothermal pumps is dry. Clayton talked to his boss, who’d installed the system. Preliminary guess: our geothermal wells are only 200-feet deep, and with the drought, one of the two wells might have gone dry. To which Keith and I replied, okay, let’s see how this plays out. Clayton and maybe his boss will be back early next week with a geothermal diagnostic kit.

In the meantime, Keith and I are trying not to tax the system. Thus, a non-cook happy hour. Frozen jumbo cooked shrimp kept on hand, ready to thaw and serve with cocktail sauce, fresh-cut veggies with herbed cheeses and artisanal bread. And the Viognier. Cool blessings.