Tough Day, Great Night

Work in the field was tough yesterday. I got quite a workout. It was cold, but not raining or snowing. Can't complain though, all it did was made me tired, and that's not too bad.

When I got back to the office I checked my work email here and Steph had sent me an email ending with "Well hope you make it back in time to go to dinner." which confused me. Did we make dinner plans that I totally forgot about? Unlikely. Was she just really looking forward to having dinner with me but had to go somewhere before too long? Maybe. The answer came when I checked my personal email and my friend Emily had invited us over for dinner. Ah hah!

So I hurried up and got out of work and went straight over to Emily and Ricarda's house to see what was happening. When I got to the house there were 4 ladies talking around the counter in the kitchen. Emily and Ricarda were working on getting things ready and Stephanie and January (yes, that's her real name) were sitting at the counter.

I hadn't seen Em and Ricarda in a while, a fact which they mentioned, so it was a happy reunion. Ricarda had made a pot roast with some beef from her family's ranch in Oregon. She wasn't too confident of the outcome of her dish, but none of the rest of us were worried. She had also made cornbread from scratch, a dish of potatoes, carrots, and onions, and Emily made a salad. Just before we started eating, Jesse showed up with his dog Dante. Dante is about the happiest dog I've ever met. He has very expressive eyes and his tail is going nearly every second he's doing anything with anyone. There was a stuffed duck and beaver in the living room and Dante just wanted to play fetch with them all night.

We all finally sat down to eat and everyone enjoyed the food immensely. Oh, I forgot, there was gravy as well, that complimented the meat and potatoes excellently.

Steph had to leave not long after dinner because she has so much school work to do. After that our evening activity involved looking for a needle in a haystack, almost literally. In the school newspaper there is a contest going on right now where an image of a needle is hidden in an advertisement somewhere in each week's edition. If you find the needle and spend $5 at the store whose advertisement it was in you can get entered in a drawing for a $200 gift certificate for the school bookstore. Ricarda had a few weeks worth of papers in which she couldn't find the needle, and none of the rest of us could either. Let me tell you, it was about as much fun as it sounds.

After that I headed for home and headed for bed not long after I got there. I read a little into the night and that was my day.