Entirely too much fun for a Monday

I spent most of yesterday shirking work and being social (shhhh, don’t tell my boss).

I started off meeting a long-time online friend for lunch – we’ve only met in person once before, when she stayed at my house to take the bar exam – and yet online, we’ve known each other so long and been so open with each other that seeing her in person seemed completely natural. Like something we do all the time. Mary is a lot of fun and she does really good work (family law). She travels a bit, up to Gainesville and Jacksonville, but is based in the Volusia County area. We’ve tried to get together a couple of other times when she comes up this way but it’s always pretty last-minute for both of us so mostly we just wave at each other as she drives by. It was good to see her in person and take her to one of my favorite places.

Then for dinner we went to Denise and Tarrant’s house. Long-time readers know how Denise found me (my blog) and how she made Tarrant come to our Sunday Stitch & Bitch (waaaaaaaay back when it was at Books Inc., before they kicked us out) (er, politely asked us to buy more or leave). And how we became good friends, and they’d hang out at the yarn store with all their kids (whom I adore) and how sad we all were when they moved to Chicago for a few years (to be near the kids, which we all totally understood, and they’d post things every day like how long the line was at Starbucks, things they’d talk about in person, and it made us all feel like we weren’t that far apart) and then how they moved back and bought a house out here in Keystone across town from us and now we meet once a week at the local coffee shop and go gank their electricity and internet every time our power goes out. Huh. I just feel like I did a “previously on” recap, haha.

ANYWAY.

We went to their house for dinner, and there was an amazing brand new kitchen with all kinds of bits and bobs and dishwashers and gadgets and glass doorknobs made by my talented brother-in-law and also – get this – MEATLOAF THAT I ATE AND ENJOYED. Y’all. You don’t even know. I have a strong, strong dislike for meatloaf. Mostly I am off the hook for it, though, because meatloaf is made with eggs so I can plead out with my allergy.

But Tarrant made an egg-free meatloaf she makes for her kids sometimes, and all she said was that the secret ingredient was Cheese Nips, and y’all, it was all I could do not to eat all that was on my plate and go back for seconds. But there was also home-made Dole Whip (D&T are also our Disney buddies, so anything Disney we can make at home?!) and I’m very, very sorry Aloha Isle but Tarrant’s Dole Whip is a lot better than yours. And I’m not just saying that because we put rum in ours.

After dinner we played a little pinball. I wasn’t sure if That Poor Man was going to like pinball or not… I love it, but for some reason we’ve never really talked about it….? But the minute that he figured out there was a strategy, especially with the Elvis game which offers a lot of extra things if you do certain things, he was ALL OVER IT. What a good time!

I highly recommend having a lot of fun on a Monday. You might feel like you haven’t gotten a lot of work done, but your heart sure is happy.