How I spent a hot muggy summer day & some fun 'vintage' photos

This (above) is how we spent the glorious day yesterday. (That's not me in the photos but it is my family.)

This (below) is how I expected to spend today.

That's the magnificent Saratoga Racetrack, in my hometown just 20 minutes away. I'm not a gambler, but once a summer I meet up here with an old union leadership friend. Our friendship began when we met in 1995 at a statewide training conference for new local teacher union presidents, and has continued ever since. But with expected severe thunderstorms (that never happened here) and hot humid muggy weather, we've postponed until later in the week.

I also expected to be surprising my childhood BFF (who lives in England but comes home to see family) with a visit for dinner, also in Saratoga, at the invitation of her kid sister.

In the photo above, that's Annie on the left and me on the right at maybe 5 & 6 years old (she's younger), and on the left below at maybe 17 and 16 (this time I'm the angry one on the left) and finally at 36 and 35 (I'm convex - 7 months pregnant with dyed hair; she's concave and beautiful).

And here's the kid sister at approximately age 10 when Annie and I were 19 & 20.
But sadly, kid sister is having serious back trouble and the visit is temporarily called off tonight. But Annie will be in the states for a bit and we'll catch up, just not by surprise.

And here's what I did today instead: (sorry for sideways photos)

I cleaned and froze blueberries that I picked a few days ago. Then I went out back to my hubby's wonderful garden and picked chives and basil. I chopped and froze chives, and I made the basil into pesto and froze it in these rectangular ice cube trays. Now I can have fresh herbs in the winter, and fresh berries too! After chopping and chopping and processing etc, my house smells like heaven - the aroma of basil/chives/garlic all together. Of course I saved some of the fresh pesto for dinner tonight! YUM.

And in between all the slicing and dicing and washing and processing, I took turns at my latest obsessions on my iPad:

If you like to play too, let me know! I'm seriously hooked on both. I'm also playing Scramble with Friends (kind of like Boggle) but so far only with my son and he's seriously KILLING me and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.