Not on a work night

Last night I got together with an old friend for our dinner that was canceled last week. Knowing it was a work night we decided we weren't going to be drinking, just talking and eating. The original plan was for me to cook but -- c'mon now, me cook? I wasn't even in the mood to let Whole Foods do the cooking for me, I wanted to get out of the house.

I used to work with Yvonne before our company became Great Place to Work, LLC. When the company moved to New York and just a couple of people were hired to continue with the boss locally, she had to go on to other opportunities. We've become much better friends since then and try to get together every couple of months. Of course, that turns out to be about once or twice a year. So we have lot of catching up to do.

We met at my house and I started us out with a cocktail, a pometini. It was made with the Pearl Pomegranate vodka, Grand Marnier and Roses Lime juice. Yummy big time. Also, all booze. After we drank that I decided we'd better eat before having another drink because otherwise we'd fall on our faces. We decided to just go up to the corner and went to Applebee's. I wasn't going to have another drink but then Yvonne ordered a Cosmo and I just had to join her. No, I certainly couldn't be as rude as to make her drink alone! We split a salad and I had a surprisingly good piece of tilapia as my main course. Off their Weight Watchers menu since I had apparently decided to drink all my points instead of eating them.

After dinner we returned to my house since our conversation hadn't slowed down and we still had months of catching up to do. Yvonne convinced me we should have one more itty bitty pometini. Oh yeah, twisted my arm soooo bad. So we had one more, talked and talked and realized it was getting pretty late, so we said g'night and promised to do it again (with less booze) real soon.

Ow my head. And I'm supposed to run tonight??

At the rate I've been going lately I'm thinking of changing my feature to the Gratuitous Bear of the Week. But not yet, so here's a GBOTD. She's another marathon bear and had to wait a year after I got her to get a medal. I had planned to run the Honolulu Marathon in 2001 but my tibial stress fracture ruled that out. I had paid for the trip to Hono the day before I got the diagnosis so I ended up going with the team to cheer and watch (and feel ohsovery sorry for myself that I couldn't run boo hoo). I indulged in some major retail therapy while I was there and this perfect Hawaiian teddy was one of my purchases. In 2002 I returned to Hono and was able to run the race, despite a case of stomach flu or food poisoning. Not my most pleasant race (and by the way, running a half marathon totally hung over was very good training for running a race with the flu!) (don't tell my coaches I said that). This pretty bear has a long vowelish Hawaiian name that translates as Little Star.