Well, it couldn’t be any more beautiful. Hard to believe we’re about to have two days of pouring rain. I guess this can be a gratitude post! I’m grateful to have a nice lake and walking trail at my office. Nothing wrong with some fresh air and a little more walking every day!
Busy weekend…. Dinner with Chet and Patty at Bolsa Friday night. It’s Complicated and lunch with the Ya Ya Movie Club on Saturday morning: Lisa, her mom and sister and Alanna. Dinner with Stephanie and Geoff Saturday night at Ocean Prime. And Hard Rock Cafe tonight for Chick Singers Night. Our friend Amy is performing.
Last night’s dinner at Ocean Prime was really great. Thanks P for encouraging us to go for it. 
But one funny thing did happen. Geoff always picks great bottles of wine, so we had him select. The regular wine list was on the table, as well as the “fine” wine list. So Geoff picks and it is a delicious wine from Napa called Plumbjack. Then we decide to have another bottle and Geoff says, well, let’s get the same wine… it was the cheapest on the list. And we all happily agree because it was great and we like to be a little frugal too. Turns out the cheapest bottle was $140!!!! Geoff didn’t realize he was looking at the “fine” wine list and was flabbergasted that they were so expensive, but didn’t want to put a damper on the evening. So we all laughed and laughed, and then cried a little as we paid the bill.
Another word about Ocean Prime… we had the Colossal Shrimp and the Tuna Tartare, both excellent, as well as excellent steaks, potatoes, mushrooms, and onion straws and a baked alaska to finish off. Everything superb. Oh yeah, and a really great wine! It was really dark, so I used flash to take some food pics, and they are pretty ugly. But if you want to see them, they are here.
We went to Dish last night with Howard and Lisa to (finally) celebrate the holidays and also to celebrate the start of Howard’s new business. H&L are great friends, we loved the restaurant, and the food was delicious!
We started with a mushroom flatbread and the crab dip, both delicious. Lisa and I loved our entrees: the roast chicken for me and the filet special for her. Howard and Les weren’t really thrilled with their food. Les thought his flank steak was dull and Howard thought his salmon was under cooked. But we finished on a high note! The Lemon Icebox Pie and the Apple Cobbler were out of this world. We also had a great seat… a raised banquet with a view of the kitchen and the whole restaurant. Not sure it would have been as much fun if we had been at a regular table on the floor. Super evening though.
Today Les and I have to go photograph sections of Fort Worth Avenue for a historical project. And it’s 17 degrees outside! I’m going to try to be grateful for the cold though… it will be 100 soon enough.
I don’t know if you can see them there, with their little butts in the air, but I love the ducks that visit every day. My office has a wall-sized window onto a lake and I can see the herons, ducks, birds and bunnies that live around here. Yesterday, there was a lone duck honking away, and I got worried that he had been left behind by his flock. Then I started worrying that he was going to freeze to death. I have a bad habit of anthropomorphizing animals. But just a few minutes later he was surround by all his lady friends. I was very relieved. Have a nice day duckies.
I have no artistic ability at all. But thanks to the joys of digital cameras and a little education from my talented photographer hubby, I at last have a hobby! I have a lot of fun documenting my life on Flickr and this blog. And it’s a nice thing for Les and I to have in common.
Okay, so I already missed a day in the month of gratitude. I guess I’m grateful that I can cut myself a little slack once in a while. But today, I am grateful for fabulous technology. Just think about all the marvelous things that are possible now! For example… This morning, I got up and put on my Nike+ bracelet before I walked. It measured my rate, distance and calories, and I downloaded them onto my computer. While I was walking, I listened to my iPhone, but also streamed music from XM Radio and Pandora when I got bored with my own music. After I got to work, I updated the Lose It app on my iPhone with the calories I had from breakfast and the exercise calories I had burned according to Nike+. And of course, I snapped the above picture of my iPhone and Nike+ wristband with my digital camera and then popped the card right into my computer to download it. It’s just amazing! And imagine what other new things will come along in the next ten years? My dad is 85 and still fascinated with technology. He loves using his computer and digital camera and every other piece of technology that becomes popular. I can tell I’m going to be just like him….
We got our Christmas presents this year using a lifetime’s worth of credit card points that we’d never touched. And since we’re debt-free and won’t be accruing any more points, we decided to cash them out in a blaze of glory. A espresso machine for me, and a camera for Mr. Hall.
We are embarking in 2010 on The Prosperity Program…. Eating healthy at home, exercising, spending time and money on experiences rather than things, and doing some service work. All the things that will make us healthy, wealthy and wise, as my father would say. I think it’s going to be a good year! And in that spirit, I am going to have another “month of gratitude”. I’m going to try to post one thing I am grateful for every day. Or close to it. Today, I’m grateful for my husband’s partnership in achieving our goals: financial, health, and all the rest.
No Pursuit, she didn’t kill me. But I am about half dead. We flew into San Diego Monday afternoon and had dinner with the first group of managers. Then every morning we both got up at 4 a.m. to check voice-mail and email. We’d start at the store at 6:30 a.m., and leave around 4 p.m. We’d drive to the next city and have dinner with the next group of managers. Then we’d stay up until about 10 or 11 p.m. catching up on work. We did stay at some lovely hotels, including the Westin Pasadena, which was fabulous. Our best meal was at Cafe Santorini in Old Town Pasadena. We sat outside in a courtyard drinking Duckhorn Sauvignon Blanc. I had the Pasta Di Casa and almost climbed into the bowl to lick it clean. We landed back in Dallas at 8:30 pm on Friday. I never left the house this weekend, except for dinner with Ken and Graham at Eno’s Saturday night. I took naps both days. Back to work tomorrow!
The photo above is from the courtyard in Old Town Pasadena. But it’s from another trip. There was no time for photography on this trip!
Tags: work, southern california, travel, “a month of gratitude
About to embark on a weeklong trip with my boss, I really enjoyed this weekend. Friday night, it was Chan Thai and Battlestar Galactica via Netflix. Saturday, after a day of errands, we dressed up and went to Zen Sushi, followed by The Spiderwick Chronicles. This morning, we met Howard and Lisa at the new Cafe Brazil. Love their green walls. Plus lots of Tour de France and playing with Miss Izzy. Anyway, it was a fun and relaxing weekend, like our weekends always are. Which is great, because my boss is a dynamo who needs neither food nor sleep. So I’ll return late Friday night an exhausted and famished shadow of my usual self.
Tags: bishoparts, oak cliff, restaurants, friends, zen sushi, bolsa, cafe brazil, weekends, a month of gratitude
We had booked a lovely apartment in Recoleta for our Buenos Aires vacation, but we got a note yesterday saying that they had to cancel our reservation due to maintenance issues. No problem, as they refunded our deposit, plus a bonus of two nights rent. So we went back on-line and found this luscious apartment with private deck including jacuzzi and firepit, plus fabulous modern furnishings, king bed, jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom, blah, blah, blah for a price that’s a fraction of what we spent at the Inn of the Anasazi at Christmas. Plus, Argentina is the one place on earth that the dollar is actually in good shape relative to the local currency. I guess we’ll be having lots of steak dinners, bottles of Malbec and shopping for leather goods.
Yeehaw!
Tags: amonth of gratitude, travel, vacation, buenos aires,
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