Life Snippets #23

I really look forward to these posts.  They probably bore you to heck, but I like them.  Ha!

These are mostly January happenings, but I'm gonna throw in a few photos from December, that never made it into another post.

This happens daily now.

The Cat has finally changed lounging places.

He was on the arm of the couch for SO long.

But once the Christmas tree went away, he claimed the chair.

It's a good bird and squirrel watchin' position.

Because I had a big surprise party for my birthday early in December (post to come one of these days), my "real" birthday on the 23rd was spent at home.

My parents and sister's fam came over for dinner and then a girlfriend popped by for some wine.

Not a bad way to ring in your 40's.

My parents took the kids to a play earlier that day as one of their Christmas gifts and got a cute picture of them with my mom.

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I worked at a pharmacy.

This is waaay before marriage and kids.

Every Friday night, a group of us would go get a beer and snacks after we closed the place up.

So many memories.

Everyone eventually went their own separate ways, but I've stayed in touch with a few of them.

Janet, who was a pharmacy tech at the time, started dating her now husband, Rob, when we worked there.

I remember when he started coming to our Friday night gatherings.  

And actually, one of my first dates (maybe our second?) with The Dad was their wedding.

It was quite a trek to the location, so a lot of the wedding party and guests rented cabins or camped.

The Dad and I slept in the back of his Ford Explorer.  

Hahahahahaha.

Clearly, I'm a cheap date.

Anyway, one of the pharmacists, Darrell, moved out of state fifteen years ago to open his own naturopathic practice.

He emailed me awhile back to say he'd be coming to town to do some lectures and wanted to know if we'd like to get together.

So dinner at our house was on the calendar.

At the last minute, literally while I was making the salad, I called Janet (see above) up to see if she could make it and surprise him.

Luckily she was available, so she hauled her family from the next state over and while she was here, ended up calling another one of the pharmacists, John, and he drove an hour to come hang.

It was spontaneity at its finest.

So fun, you guys, to have four of the old gang in the same room together.

We had plenty of food to go around and the wine and beer was flowin'.

A really great night with old friends.

Alas, not a single one of my photos turned out.

So, so disappointing.

But I'm gonna go ahead and throw them into this post anyway, because the memories are priceless.

This won't mean anything to you, but Rob is on the left, Darrell at the window end.

Janet and one of her kiddos.

They have two boys.

Bummer about the food pics, too.

I made baked ravioli with fresh tomatoes and a pesto cream sauce.

Then forgot to put the fresh basil on when it came to the table.

Doh.

The Dad grilled up some marinated flank steaks, and we had salad, bread, marinated mushrooms, baked brie with fig jam......and brownies with raspberry sauce for dessert.

Crappy photos aside, it really was a fun night.

And since I rambled way more than I normally do in a Life Snippets post, I'll quietly leave you with some Baby, (prior to fixing her DIY haircut), who is now officially four.

What?!

Till next time.....