Sunday,
March 31, 2002
EASTER

Blue Pacific Margaritas -- whee!

I really should know better than to drink after I've been cleaning all day.

Well, okay, not all day -- I did get a chunk of writing done on "A Murder of Crowes," and then the Man from McKinney IM'ed me to see if I was interested in bopping out to Snuffer's (his old teen hangout over in North Dallas) for lunch. It was a beautiful day -- like I was going to turn down an excuse to get out of the house.

He wound up catching up to, then overtaking me on 75. My phone rang -- "There's a crazy lady behind me, and I can't shake her loose!" he quavered.

Silly boy. So I passed him, did a few neat weaving tricks between cars and got ahead of him until I realized that I didn't remember where we had to get off for Snuffer's. I let him get ahead of me, then, but I think I made my point about driving skills.

Snuffer's, by the way, is a fairly neat little restaurant on Lower Greenville. At first, you think it's decorated like Chili's and the other restaurants that throw tons of junk on their walls and call it "decor," until you realize that these pictures and clippings have quite literally been up there for years, and weren't bought in bulk from estate sales and flea markets by corporate interior designers. Besides, they have cheddar fries to die for.

No, I didn't have them. I was a good little girl and stuck to a chicken caesar salad with iced tea. So there.

It turned out that Steve was meeting up with his friend Charles, who'd brought one of his friends who had a wonky laptop. So the techs collaborated in a corner while I pulled out my palmtop and added 400 words to "A Murder of Crowes" (man, that thing is the best damn Christmas present I have EVER received -- thank you again, Lyndon!). After 90 minutes, the boys were still hard at work and I wanted to finish cleaning the kitchen, so I made my excuses and headed back to Plano to disimpact the countertops (you think I'm joking, but I found bill receipts from last year) and vacuum, then mop the floor. It's now a place of beauty, along with the living room. I give them both 72 hours.

After all that, Lyndon came home and announced that he was hungry. I suggested dinner and a movie -- I've never seen an Englishman move that fast. We ate at Chili's (and since I wasn't driving, I indulged in a rare Blue Pacific Margarita. Okay, I indulged in two Blue Pacific Margaritas, but they were so goooooood. And no, that's not the Blue Pacific Margarita pictured at right, but Chili's didn't have a picture so I doctored a Golden Rocks margarita from On The Border -- you gotta love Photoshop), then bopped over to the Legacy Cinema to see Ice Age.

Brief recap -- an unlikely herd of a woolly mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano), a sloth (John Leguizamo) and a sabre-toothed tiger (Dennis Leary) try to return a lost human "cub" to his tribe, despite mutual distaste and the dastardly plans of the tiger's packmates. Once again, the adults may have even more fun than the kids (a tip for Trekkies -- look for the scene with the space ship), and I had a good time trying to figure out the voice talent -- who would have guessed Goran Visnjic as Soto? I could hear the barest trace of an accent, so I was figuring Andy Garcia -- silly me (well, I was still squiffed on the margaritas, for Cthulu's sake).

And now, I am going to polish this off, upload it to my website, and stagger off to the shower. Tomorrow -- belly dancing lessons begin!