Gin and juice???

No fool, it's Gin and tonic, with a dash of lime juice of course, or just a lime tossed in there. Either one works. This is what I was drinking last night, late into the night. Somehow post dinner I was able to throw down 4 of thse tasty little gems. Sapphire blue gin, little tonic, squeeze some lime in there, or actually in this case, just the juice. Damn that's some good stuff. When did I turn into a Rat Packer though? That's what I'm really wondering over here.


Last evening started with a dinner in the SO's friend Jen's honor. It was her Birthday, or well, today is her birthday, so we got dinner last night for that little celebration. So Happy Birthday Jen! It's today. You know, to be honest, not really sure how old she is. I'm guessing 29ish? This is just basing this on how old the SO is. I assume that they are the same age, but I don't know, I could just be really really wrong. Anyway, I digress. Dinner started the evening, at a casual 8:30PM at this restaurant in Durham. I think the name was/is Saluda maybe? I can't remember actually. Well, whatever the place was, it was good dining. It took a little long for dinner to get over and done with, but it was worth it, the stuff this hippy is cooking up over there is delicious. Think Mario Batalli, except just a touch smaller. It did make me wonder who was doing the cooking though, as the head chef seemed to be walking around, working the restaurant a lot more than he was throwing food around in the back. So don't know who was doing the cooking for the most part, but whoever it was, it was damn good. I had this roasted tomato stuffed with risotto and some other things, some spices, and served with some fried okra, on some kind of cucumber sauce. Hot and cold mixed together well in this little infusion. Good stuff. I also had some fried risotto balls that they threw out there for an appetizer, and damn weren't those good as well. Deep fried, risotto, tomatoes, mozarella in there, all fried up. Good indeed. Reminded me of fried food night at Johnny and Maureen's house last week. Maureen whipped up something similar to it, and actually, her's might have been just a touch better. But then again, I'm probably biased because I know her, and not the hippy who was cooking last night. I was sort of surprised at the lack of people eating there though last night. It's a nice place, and reasonable in price. I think the location though, it's not so good. I'd go back for sure. We did have the curse of having a waitress who was there in her first night, which can sometimes be good and bad, but it appears that she didn't have too much experience waiting tables, so I'm more than willing to cut her some slack. Can't get stuff right like that the very first time. I'm certain that my friend Dahron could have taught her a thing or 2 about waiting tables, and flare of course. If you don't know what flare is, watch Office Space, you'll see what I'm talking about over here.

After eating, it was back to the old SO's basement apartment for drinks, a lot of which I seemed to have had, and desserts. The SO got some mini pastries from somewhere, and damn those things were good as well. Good for coming from Costco I would say. We had liquor galore. We had a lot more liquor than we really needed, but hey, that stuff doesn't go bad, so it can be used again, and consumed and can be used to get one another drunk again at a later time of course. Being people of "good taste" that we are (I write this as I sit here in a "Shocker" t-shirt) we had to get the expensive stuff to drink. Bottles of wine, good booze, it was a free for all. We only had a few folks come by post eating and such, and hence, the leftover stuff that we now have to deal with, and drink. I'm thinking another party sometime should be in order to get rid of the rest of the stuff that we have. There was also some good key lime pie. Mixing that with some gin and tonic was surprisingly not that bad. Kind of like when Paris Hilton guess starred on Saturday Night Live, she was surprisingly not that bad either, well, then again, I was kind of drunk that evening as well when she was on, so I am no person to make judgements on such things. I'd have to watch it again to make sure, but I think that watching it again might make the old brain fry, so I'll resist that certain temptation.

Then getting to sleep last night was tough as well. We had a black dog stored away in the back room in her hive/cage, but hearing us talking in bed, she of course woke up, and started whining to get outta the cage. Because if there is one thing that the black plague, otherwise known as The Bea loves is to be around people. If she hears people, she wants to be around people, and when she's in the hive, unable to get out, there is a lot of whining and crying to get out. This will stop eventually, but sometimes it takes an hour or so. This evening, it took an hour or so. And since her pattern of behavior is that she gets out of the cage in the morning, and goes outside for a pee and or some relief, she was up and ready to roll at 5 in the morning. Going to sleep at 2 or so in the morning, and then being awoken by a whining dog at 5, not the ideal situation. Oh well. We let her out of the cage, and she predictably jumped into bed with us, and then started crawling around. Which wasn't too bad as long as she stayed at the bottom of the bed, but of course, this only happened occassionally. I was driven out of bed around 8 in the morning, rolled back home, pulled the shades in the room, laid back down, and am now only getting back out of bed for the afternoon (it's like 1:50PM as I write this sentence). Another Saturday wasted. I needed the sleep, work week was tough, hard, and long.

Hopefully, I can get some more rest this evening, ride tomorrow, and get back on the old exercise train to fitness again. I need to. It's an imperative for me now.