Reservations

Dearly Beloved planned all along to take me out to eat on Valentine’s Day.  He really did.

The problem is that the man is commitment phobic about reservations.   He was sure there wouldn’t be a problem.  I was sure there would.

He must have thought better of it that afternoon because he began calling for a reservation while he was out on his walk.  It wasn’t as easy as he thought.

Eventually he e-mailed me a Valentine’s Day Menu from a new restaurant we haven’t tried. He said they had two reservations left–one at 5 PM and one at 10 PM.  Since he didn’t want to have to set the alarm clock to guarantee we’d be awake for the 10 PM one, he’d opted for the one at 5.

Before we left the house, he hastily e-mailed our three guys to share the wisdom he had gleaned from his experience:

Date: February 14, 2012 4:28:54 PM EST

Subject: Learn from the master

 

When taking the wife out for a fancy Valentine Dinner, don’t wait until the day itself to make reservations.If you do your choices are:
1. 5:00
2. After 9:00
3. 10:00

We’re leaving now.

The restaurant was wonderful– perfect, in fact–and we’ll definitely return.  We ordered from the Valentine’s Day Menu, so haven’t even tried the regular menu yet.  They have at least 15 more flavors of gelato I’d like to try.  DB had espresso, I tried the salted caramel.

We were already in bed, moaning that we’d eaten too much, by 10 PM.

My brother eats out often, since he is on the road a lot and he checks out the local restaurants in the towns he visits.  He’s pretty much of a health nut, so I’m not sure I believe some of the things he claims to have eaten.

For instance, even though he once sent a photo as proof, I’m none too sure he’s ever actually eaten a collard sandwich.   However, he is the one who hooked Dearly Beloved and me on Hatteras Clam Chowder.  I tried it after BroJoe told me he eats it “all the time.”   Even our grandsons like it.  (I don’t know if that’s how he fixes it–I found this recipe online and liked it.  I ignored the ones that called for fresh clams because I didn’t want to chop them.)

But back to Valentine’s….  Just after Valentine’s Day,  BroJoe e-mailed a photo of a menu.

I am so-o-o-o hoping that this is not the place he took his Valentine.

Time To Get Tough

With all the conversations about birth control on the news lately, please do yourself a favor and watch.  It’s men doing most of the talking and they’re coming up with cavemen proclamations like, Viagra – covered by insurance.  Birth Control – meh….

In situations like this, the question arises… What would Betty Say?  Lo and behold, the answer came in today’s e-mail:

♥y Har Har

I love coming upon hearts in nature.

(Perhaps. she wrote mushily, it’s because Dearly Beloved stole hers.♥)

Although I enjoy irises,  I’m not a fan of their cactus-like leaves after they bloom. The plants with heart-shaped leaves in our yard may have insignificant flowers, but oh, those leaves!

HEART-SHAPED LEAVES

ROCK HEARTS are treasures to find.  I have one I lugged back from Arizona, but it must be camera-shy because I couldn’t find it today.  However, my friend Dirt Woman supplied me with a photo of a rock heart she found.  It looks like chocolate, I think.  (The caladium leaf above was also one of hers.)

SAND HEART, compliments of DB.

I

In a dark corner of our back yard, I was delighted to discover this surprising heart:

MOSS HEART

Moss Hart won 1937 Pulitzer (Drama) for The Man Who Came to Dinner

OOPS!  Wrong picture.  Let me try again.

MOSS HEART:

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
Oscar Wilde

A Matter of Degrees

It’s the fourth warmest winter on record here, I heard today.  Daffodils are blooming throughout our neighborhood.  My neighbor’s large tulip magnolia is unsure what it’s supposed to do–about a third of the blossoms opened before the temperatures dipped this week.

The weather in Europe has made the news here because of the awful cold.   My British friend says they’re getting a surprising dose of winter weather in England.

Do you remember the Burns Night Supper post?   The haggis and Scotch evening traditionally held on the occasion of the Scottish poet Robert Burns’ January 25 birthday?  I had been so interested in it and asked so many questions that my friend shared some photos of the evening.

The setting in her “15th century straw house” looks just as lovely as I’d imagined.

I thought this menu was especially clever:

I’d take a Spoiler, but leave out the Scotch.  Then again, were I eating haggis, I might need the Scotch.

Since I’d also been curious as to what her guests would wear on such an occasion, she obliged by sending these photos, also.

She did say, however, that some just don’t have the figure for kilts.  I agree!

Good Vibrations

What we’ve had here is a failure to communicate.

Last week when Dearly Beloved was out somewhere, I sent him three (he says four) e-mails.  Let me point out that (a) I don’t text and (b) if I wanted to tell him something, I’d call him.  

The e-mails were something I thought he’d be interested in at some point and might not see otherwise.  I didn’t expect him to look at them right at that moment.

For reasons I don’t understand, DB drives with his iPhone in his pants pocket. He keeps it set on vibrate.  That means that whenever someone attempts to communicate with him, it emits a quick noise like someone sat on a whoopee cushion and simultaneously sets off a buzz in his britches.

I suppose that’s hard to ignore.

Soooo. . . when he returned home after my three–or four–vibrations, he said, “Don’t send me any more of those chain e-mail Forwards crap” or something to that effect.

Just for the record, that is not what I sent him.  I detest chain e-mails.  Perhaps, I suggested, he had not examined them closely before asking me not to send them.  We discussed this in some detail and that may be what prompted him to impart his wisdom to his son and sons-in-law with this e-mail:

Subject: Learn from the master

Maintain a moderate tone when telling the wife not to send you any more political links or chain emails.

 

For example don’t say “DON’T SEND ME ANY MORE OF THIS ####!!!

 

Sent from my iPhone

This morning I did not forward this delightful video to him, but after he saw me laughing, he watched it on my computer and soon his face broke into a big grin, too.  Along with 2,000,000 other people, Elder Dude found it worth watching.  So very wise of him!

“http://“>

What Say You, Punxsutawney Phil?

Our Lenten Roses have been so confused that they’ve been hanging around since Christmas.  Our Jonquils want to know if they can raise their heads.

The damnsquirrels are casting too many shadows in our yard.

Does it count that I can see my shadow?

We don’t need Phil around here.

We have Jack.

The Cat on the Mat

My friend DirtWoman sends me great photos and videos.  Besides gardening, she also  

loves cats (these two in particular) and fitness classes, so it’s no surprise that she found this delightful video.

Even a catless couch potato will enjoy this one.

You can bet it wasn’t an exercise freak who invented power steering. - Garfield