Saturday July 5th Sue and I held The Great 2014 4th of July Backgammon Tournament and Spicy Summer Beans and Dogs! The effects of the first hurricane of the season had been felt for the last few days with heavy, constant rain. But by Saturday, the skies had cleared, and there was a fairly strong breeze that kept the temperature down in the high 60s.

Because we had to take last night's movie DVD, Labor Day back to Red Box, we headed out around 1:00pm to first take a stroll through the gardens at Hamilton House in South Berwick, ME. While dropping the movie off, we also decided to get some things for our Dinner Party for Two on Sunday night.

I started food prep early at 3:00pm as the party was starting at 4:00pm. Not really that much to do, but wanted to be sure I wouldn't get hung up later. Sue had fixed a bean salad as well as some 'smores for desert earlier, so when I finished we were able to head out onto the deck and get in a couple of sets of backgammon before folks started showing up.

I headed back into the kitchen to cook at 5:15pm so that we could eat by 6:00pm. Everyone had all just crowded out onto the deck and were munching chips and salsa and playing backgammon. Tim had brought a bottle of Hawk Crest Cabernet, which is a part of Stags Leap Vineyards that proved to be really pleasant. We finished it by the end of the evening....

I had wanted to serve dinner by 6:00pm so that we could start the movie by 7:00pm, the 2014 Martin Scorsese directed, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jonah Hill The Wolfe of Wall Street because it's a 3 hour movie. This was the third time I'd seen it and it just flies! Great movie, though probably too raw for most folks.

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