SHRIMP ... It's What's For Dinner!!

Happy Saturday!!  It's a breezy 63 degrees this morning, heading on up to 93 this afternoon.  Yup it's hot, but not unbearable.  Mr. Cooper, as usual, is sleeping away while I try to catch up on phone messages with blurry eyes. 

I tried to be quiet at 5 am since I had company, but that's hard to do when you have an early morning appointment at the lodge.  I like it at that time of the day ... it's dark and quiet.  It's when the ghost comes out to roam in the attic room of the lodge.  One of these days I'll look into that story.  All I know now is that the gentleman killed himself up there.  Ooohhhhh creepy .... and sad.

Meeting over and I was back home to find this.  No satellite connection it said ... due to severe weather.  Excuse me?  It's sunny and gorgeous outside with not a cloud in the sky.  What's up with this?  I don't work well when it's TOO quiet, so I frantically reset it three times before it finally came back on.  Thank goodness no phone call to India was required!!

I admit, I was remiss in the picture taking department all day long.  I took this one this morning.  Company had a haircut appointment, so I sat alone on the couch taking out I'm sure what amounted to one million stitches from the bottom of this quilt.  10-1/2 inches worth, across the entire bottom.  

I'm pretty sure it won't get re-quilted any time soon, since I'm just too tired from this week's STUFF.  How was I ever able to survive actually working every day of the week before I retired!!

In a flash, it was time to head BACK to the lodge for Friday Night Dinner.  I rarely do these, mostly because I'm too cheap.  The food is always delicious, and the company really great, so this time I invited three friends to be my guests.  

In a flash that turned into FIVE guests.  Yikes ... I wasn't exactly prepared for THAT!   Nor was I prepared to meet so many people I knew.  I'm rather shy when it comes to meeting folks.  It was so surprising for me to know so many who came to our table to say hello.  I have to say there are a lot of REALLY nice Elks in the world, and a lot of them live right here in River City.

Dinner was amazing.  This is not it.  Well sort of ... we had shrimp scampi, but ours had the shells on for more flavor.  The guy that cooks all the fish and seafood in the kitchen is a master at it.  You would never guess in a million years that he did that ... and did it so well.  I went back to the kitchen and gave him six pats on the pack.  He truly doesn't even know how good a cook he is.

I snagged the bill this time.  Here's the breakdown.  A HUGE salad bar with both regular and Caesar salad, homemade vegetable beef soup, homemade clam chowder (some of the best I've ever eaten), garlic bread, shrimp scampi, baked potato and corn, followed up with warm peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream.  All that for $25.00 each.  Not bad at all!!!

Then came the moment ... one of the unexpected guests got a ride to the lodge, but not a ride home.  You should probably think about that ahead of time.  So you know who finally had to offer the ride ... moi!  Where do you live?  Oh it's not far ... I live over by the fairgrounds.

Well after we were AT the fairgrounds, she mentioned she was going to her DAD's house.  Well that was WAY far away from the fairgrounds ... WAY FAR!!  Many minutes out of our way later, we arrived at Dad's house and dropped her off while I tried to figure out how to get back to the highway!  Maybe next time I'll be more reticent to offer.

I swear to you, today is going to be REST day!  Maybe ... okay, probably not, but at the very least I'll get in a snooze with Mr. Cooper on the couch.