Prelude To A Martini

You know the old expression, "When the cat's away, the mice will play". Well, in this case, "When the boys are away, the girls will play" ;-)
I got up bright and early this morning, showered, got dressed ate leftover pizza (the best!) and started painting. Beverly came down about 10:00 after she had been to exercise class and had walked goodness knows how far, and we decided to have an early lunch today. I had gotten to a stopping point in my work, so we went downtown to a cozy little spot and had a delicious Southwest Chicken Panini. The lady that runs it said to her, "I see you're driving the Batmobile today". We got tickled because that's Larry's car and he would die to think that someone had called it that. It's THE sports car that Cadillac makes and it's a fast little thing. It sits so low to the ground that you'd think that your bottom was going to drag the pavement any minute. Our friend Ray in Crested Butte has one as well. Check it out, It's something else. A guy (or girl for that matter) could pick up a really cute date with one of these if you were the right age! http://www.cadillac.com/cadillacjsp/model/gallery.jsp?model=xlr (Do you think we're later age crazy?)

After lunch Bev came in and watched me paint for a while and then she went back up to her house to check her Email and feed the dog. His name is Rio and he's an Australian Red Healer. He only has 3 legs, so I told her that she should either call him Trio or Tripod but she won't do it. He's the neatest dog and so smart. Last year, however, he went after a bear that came into the yard and by God's grace he survived. That was a scary thing. The bears around here are very bold and come down at night to raid the garbage bins. You can't even put Hummingbird feeders out since they attract them. If you remember, I photographed a couple of them several years ago that would come down in broad daylight into their yard and swim and get water from their pool. That's scary! Frank was furious with me because he said that the bear could out run me any day and I was getting pretty close. I thought I'd just run into the garage if he started my way and close the door and Frank said it that were the case, I would probably close the bear in with me because they're so fast. I won't do THAT again!

I've tried to get Bev to paint with me instead of just watching, but so far she's resisting. However, I haven't given up just yet. I've finished the painting as you can see and I'm going to put my paints up for a while and then will start dinner for the two of us. She has a meeting at 7:00 tonight, so I said that I would cook and we would eat early. It's a lot easier than going out. I'm going to make what my kids always called "Salazar Slop". It was a favorite of theirs for year ... still is for that matter. It's macaroni and cheese with sauteed onions and ground beef. We'll have biscuits, a Mandarin orange salad and a bottle of white wine with it and I have a surprise for dessert! A BIG peanut patty. This is a real "when you were young and broke meal" and it will be great. We were all young and broke together 49 years ago so it will be another trip down memory lane.

We'll be having dinner tomorrow evening with 3 of my old friends from here that I used to run around with. I'm really looking forward to the reunion. I'll report more later.

I want to thank you for traveling with us. Hope it's been a smooth ride for you so far. It's been a luxury ride for us and I'm loving every minute of it.

Pcasso