The Night of Many Surprises

I have two friends from my old days when I worked across campus. We were all working under the same regime and we were all miserable beyond words. Well, we have all since moved on to greener pastures but still hang out and have lunch together 3-4 times a week. There's actually alot more of us but only 3 of us eat lunch together. Andrea (Andrea Unplugged)and Taylor are my lunch bunch. They have been dating for 4 and a half years. Well, Taylor set up an elaborate night for Andrea and a few of her friends. There was a fancy dinner and wine tasting at the top of the library here on campus and all of the walls are windows look out onto the city from the top floor. It's really beautiful up there. But at the end of the night, they raffle off bottles of wine. The contest was "a little" rigged for one of the bottles. They bought a special bottle of sparkling wine for Taylor and tied Andrea's engagement ring to the bow on the bottle. So when he won, he untied the bow and announced to the whole room how much he loved her and then asked her to marry him. It was so great! She didn't have a clue. We had all been planning this for weeks. Here are al few pics from the other night:

This is Andrea and Taylor.

Me and Andrea realized that we have been good friends for over a year and have no pictures to prove it...until now!

Cherrye from My Bella Vita was in town from Italy for a visit by chance when the whole thing went down. She actually won one of the raffle prizes.

Here is Taylor popping the big question.

Since I am not drinking these days, I didn't want to be rude, so I let them fill may glasses with all the different wines they were trying. At the end of the night I couldn't move because I had 10 full glasses of wine in front of me. They came around with 2 extra glasses after this picture was taken. But the ice water was good, as was the dark chocolate on the table and the spinach dip at the food bar.

And Then There Was One

Just a small side note that you may find interesting, this is what my carpet looks like on a regular basis. Honestly, I got tired of vacuuming up all of the mulch, bones, sticks and paper scraps that Maggie makes out of the stuff she brings in from the backyard everyday. So it just stays there until the weekend. She has actually found a few more sticks and brought them in since this picture was taken. I have just given up!

When Mom was here last week, every time we turned around Maggie would take off with our chalk, or scissors, or pin cushion, or fabric, she wanted so desperately to chew on something that was not an approved toy! We were constantly fighting to regain possession of our materials. Thinking I was a genius for coming up with a solution, I tied her up in the front yard and left the front door open. Well, then she dug up my flowers we had just planted in the flower beds. ARG! There are no good answers.

When we started putting the cushions back together when we noticed the pin cushion was missing for the 5th time...MAGGIE!!!! She was sitting secluded on the other side of the room. Using her front teeth, she pulled each individual pin out of the cushion and set them aside in a small pile. Then she proceeded to chew on the cushion like a new ball, which is probably all she thought it was in the first place.

Well, Easter was getting close, so I went ahead and planned out my menu for Easter lunch. I made a list and went to the store. Saturday night, I went ahead and made the dessert and started trimming and marinading the 3 pork tenderloins. I had my recipe on the kitchen counter for the marinade. I turned my head and when I looked back my recipe was GONE! I looked everywhere for it and felt super crazy for losing it!!

So I ran into the office for less than 2 minutes to print another recipe off of the internet. I came back into the kitchen and Maggie was standing over one of the pork loins she had pulled into the floor. I just looked at her, completely stunned. She just looked at me, completely stunned that I wasn't yelling and screaming at her. I had no words ... until I noticed that only one pork loin was left on the counter. In the 2 minutes that I was gone, she had already eaten one of the pork loins and had pulled the second one into the floor to start working on it. She ate a 1 pound pork loin in less than 2 minutes!!!! I...WAS...FURIOUS!!!!! The only thing I could think to say was" E, this is bad...this is very bad."
















Well, Easter lunch turned out ok. Even without the planned number of pork loins, we still had leftovers. Here is Mags about 30 minutes after eating the pork....with a stomach ache...she goes to her Daddy for consolement!

Maggie and the Mole

Once upon a time, a little girl got a puppy. That puppy grew so big. She started getting very smart. So smart that she could hear and smell anything and everything. She chased squirrels and birds all day long. Then one day, while visiting her Nanny’s house, the puppy spotted a pile of dirt. She liked dirt piles. They were good for digging. But this particular dirt pile was in the middle of the grass. She was curious when she found another pile not far from the first. And then another and then another.

**Maggie mole hunting

All of the sudden, she smelled a mole. She had never seen a mole and was very excited to meet her first mole. She howled into the night air asking Mr. Mole to come out and meet her. He didn’t answer. So she howled again asking him to come out and play. No answer again. This made the puppy sad. So she decided she would go find Mr. Mole herself. She immediately began digging into the dirt piles to try to find Mr. Mole. He continued to hide from the puppy.

The little girl looked at her watch and saw that it was bedtime for the puppy. She called for her to get ready for bed. The puppy came inside and sat in her lap, sad, because Mr. Mole would not come out and play. And they all “lived” happily ever after.