On the weekend of Rhonda’s 52nd birthday, which we did indeed celebrate, here’s this week’s list of things to check out:

1. Rosé: I always associated rosé with sweet wine, which maybe it was in the bad-old days. It was, in my mind, on a par with white zinfandel. It’s very popular as a dry white, and after having it myself a number of times, I convinced Rhonda to try the rosé at Bellview after I had it at a celebration of life for a former coworker. Ever since, it’s been our favorite there, and we like to keep a couple of bottles around for jaunts to our local sushi haunt. Speaking of…
2. Ikura Sushi: Kura is a Thai and Japanese restaurant in downtown Vineland. They do a brisk takeout business, but you can almost always walk in and get a table. Which is what we do… often. Me being me, I note what I’m going to order on my phone each night, and then pull up that note so I can vary (or repeat) my order. With most things culinary, I’m adventurous and inclined to try items across the menu, but at Kura, I’m uncharacteristically consistent: gyoza, one small and simple roll, and three orders of sashimi.¹
3. BMX: I was a child of the 80s, and a big part of what boys did in the 80s involved BMX cycling. We all had a cheap dirtbike, and then increasingly expensive freestyle bikes with rotors and pegs and other affordances I wasn’t agile enough to take advantage of. But my last BMX bike was a dead simple Haro BMX race bike: no rotor, back brake only, knobbies. I just rode it and hopped curbs. It was great. Aaron has a very cool SE wheelie bike, with 24″ tires, and some time after he got it, I purchased a 29″ Haro BMX bike for Joe. He’s ridden it like twice, so I take it for a spin from time to time. In a time-honored tradition, Aaron and I rode down to the St. Padre Pio Festival at the same-named church down the street, and brought lunch back (Aaron had an eggplant parm, and Rhonda and I split a porchetta, which is a roast pork sandwich with a long hot pepper and some provolone cheese). I skipped the beer garden, and we scooped up the food and rolled back to the house in style.

¹ There is another placed where I’m boringly repetitive in my dinner order: The Knife and Fork in Atlantic City. I always–always–order the lobster Thermidor. There are a few reasons, including the fact that it’s an uncommon dish, and we don’t go there often.