What a lovely night we had last night! After hanging out as long as we could huddling round the fire with our dwindling supply of logs, we headed out for dinner. We decided on Tex-Mex and went to the Austin Grill. They do pretty darn good margaritas, so we decided to have a drink at the bar before we had dinner. What a palaver! Not to mention humiliation!! I am 5 foot nothing, the bar stools must have been about 3 foot 6!! There was no way I could even get a corner of my butt onto the stool (and I had a couple of good goes!). I piled my coat, scarf, bag etc onto Stephen and tried again. Nope. Still no joy. Even standing on the footrest I was still a couple of inches short of making it on. By this stage I'm telling Stephen quite pointedly that I'm NOT trying again! I was laughing and humiliated in equal measure! Then the guy next to us at the bar got involved, and pointed out that there was a supplementary launching platform running along the bottom of the bar. I was kinda concerned that the guy was going to get underneath and shove me on, so I made a concerted effort! After standing on the ledge and hurling myself upwards I finally made it onto the stool! (I'm now contemplating a career in High Jump!). Thankfully the margarita was worth the effort. They do a really good swirly lime and strawberry frozen one which was pretty darn tasty! Dinner was really good, if a little overwhelming...I ordered chicken fajitas, thinking this was going to be a lighter choice (I was obviously thinking in UK portions!)...4 dishes appeared in front of me!! A sizzling platter with the chicken, onions etc, the tortillas, a plate of sour cream, guacamole, cheese, salsa, and finally a plate of rice and beans. I did my best, but I was barely making a dent in it! Stephen managed to polish off his steak, which was a much more reasonably size.
We were just stuffing our faces when Morag phoned to say they were on King St and did we fancy meeting up for a drink. Turns out that they were in a restaurant only a block away, so we hooked up for drinks. It has been ages since we saw them both, and it was strange as I had actually said to Stephen in the afternoon that I was feeling guilty as it had been so long. We had a drink in the tapas bar, then wandered down to the jazz bar (aka the QQ weekend office - Paul was in there, so there was a high QQ count last night!). The band were really good. Obviously old hands judging by the wrinkles! And there was some serious hair action going on! The guitarist had a quiff and Roy Orbison glasses, the bass player had a pretty unconvincing toupee...and the drummer looked as if he was out on parole from the big house for the night!!! It was about 12:30 when we all left and found Morag and Simon a taxi. Their babysitter is going to be going "Oh, no! They must have been out with that Scottish couple again!"
We spent some time this morning looking out our holiday clothes. We booked a long weekend in the Bahamas a couple of days ago, and we head off on Thursday which is Thanksgiving. It was a bit of a bargain, as it halved in price if we travelled on Thursday - Monday as opposed to Wednesday - Sunday. We're not worried about celebrating Thanksgiving, and we have enough holidays not to worry about taking an extra day so it worked out great!
We made a trip to Home Depot to get more logs. We bought about 5 bundles, which we figure will get us through a couple of days. It was a bit milder today, so we didn't have to light the fire until about 4pm when it suddenly got dark and cold. We're in our warmest woolly poollies, and I've got throws for snuggling under on the sofas so it's actually quite cozy. And the good news is that it only took a few minutes to get the fire going using a fire starter and logs. Cleaning it out wasn't even so bad....once I had got Stephen to move the enormous spider that was hanging out on the screen going "hey Kerry, hurry up and get this lit, my feet are getting cold".
There was an awesome display of Christmas decorations in Home Depot. For $150 you can have a giant inflatable Santa riding a train with 2 carriages - with animated elves and revolving Christmas tree. And there was a gizmo which would synchronize your Christmas lights to Christmas music. There is also no need to ever wrap your Christmas tree in lights. All the trees here are pre-lit with lights attached (not fibre optic, just lit with bulbs). There is absolutely no arguing over who has to untangle the lights, and tears of frustration when you put them up and discover they are not working...they are so cheap you just throw them out and buy new ones!
I have my decorations planned! I have bought masses of lights, garlands, wreathes and bows....and last night I went on-line and found the most fabulous things! I was looking for glass droplets for the tree and found a website that sold crystal droplets for chandeliers. It said they were good for tree decorations too, so I placed an order. They were only 33 cents each!! So (assuming that they are delivered and I don't lose patience with putting the hanging hooks on 100 of them!) my tree will be a-glisten with sparkle this year.
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