A little vodka, a little Gin…

So, Mate and I went out on Friday night– casino style.

*snicker* yeah- that sounds all badass and hot, I knowsit, but Mate’s job had a soiree– I love the way his job does the soiree thing. It’s all free (including desserts that I would kill you for, BEFORE I died in heaven while eating them) and the employees ask for tickets–in this case, Mate got two. One for Mate, one for his largish, socially inept +1. Who had a grande sized time, btw.

The thing is, Mate’s friends are so ubercool, so fun, so nice, so excited about their jobs (even though they don’t admit it) they are uberawesome people to hang with. (I’m sure they don’t have the same thing to say about me, but, well, I only get to hang with them twice a year, so they’re nice to me anyway.)

Anyway, they had a casino thing– the employees got tickets to trade in for chips–neither of us did the gambling thing, but it was sort of cool– turned out we knew one of the pit bosses, he helps run the company and our kids have been in gymnastics together for years! (Okay, this was probably only really exciting to me. It was like, “I KNOW PEOPLE IRL– SERIOUSLY! SEE– IS PROOF!”) But then, maybe the whole thing was just given a nice rosy glow by the copious amounts of Ketel 1 Mate kept bringing for me. It was HWEAWAWESOME.

Now, you all know from past blogs that usually, I don’t like to drink too much–for one thing, I’ve got a habit of running into embarrassing people from my past. But this time, not a hide-nor-hair of anyone who might not want to see me shit-faced, and my husband, who was taking great satisfaction from being one of the elite few who did. *bright smile* And after a nice nap and some Advil yesterday morning, I wasn’t even that hungover.

It was fun– talked to real people, just… I don’t know. Re-the-hell-laxed. Some of you all know this was a long time coming–since early October, actually, and I enjoyed myself immensely. Don’t want to do it a lot, but enjoyed it while I was there.

Anyway– that was Friday, and the last couple days have been… well… I got a lot of writing done.

I’ve said it before– the bad thing about writing is that it all happens in your head. You can jump up and down and sing, “I wrote 8K in two days!” and that’s all well and good, but aside from the smashing feeling of accomplishment you get (and, well, yes I do!) there’s not much else to show for it. I can tell you that Alpha is really exciting to work on, that I’m going to edit “I Love You Asshole!” tomorrow (love that title!) and that Waiting will be out on April 9th… and the Locker Room on April 22nd. And that I sat on the couch and knit some, and that was satisfying too.

Oh yeah– and I made bread. Again. And the kids cleaned the kitchen to do it. Can we say, “Magic?” Oh–and one more thing. Shortly after making the bread, the following conversation occurred:

Me: “I, uhm, turned on the auto-clean function on the oven while you were gone.”

Mate: “Did you at least scrape out the gunk first?”

Me: “Uhm, no?”

Mate: “Is there some reason you’re not letting me in the house?”

Me: “Uhm, no?”

Mate: “Is there some reason all the windows and the sliding glass door are open?”

Me: “Uhm, not anymore?”

Mate: “How bad WAS the smoke.”

Me: “Not so bad once we all sat outside for about half-an-hour.”

Mate: “I’ll clean the oven before you use it again, how’s that.”

Me: “That would probably be best.”

Oh yeah– and one more thing I’ve been doing: Reading the Gin Blanco Spider books by Jennifer Estep– I’m enjoying the hell out of them. Anyone who likes UCF–go ahead and read them. Lots of gritty fun!