Last night we went to dinner with Amanda and her hubby Jim, who is recently back from Iraq, and Amanda's parents. We'd met at a hotel close to our house, then caravaned to the Plaza, found parking, walked to the Cheesecake Factory in the snow to find the wait would be upwards of 2 hours, stood around wondering if any other place would be faster, then trudged back to the cars to make our way back down south to Ted's Montana Grill. Finally found ourselves around a table and happily dug into our food. Jim seems to be doing well...better than I'd expected, based on Amanda's warnings that he probably wouldn't be the same Jim that left us last year. Amanda on the other hand, seems really stressed and on edge, partly due to Jim's return home and partly due to the presence of her parents, both of whom make her nuts. I, however, found myself delighted to hang out with her mom, I suspect because my own mom is gone and Amanda's mom seems just about at the same level of batty as my mom was, heh. Her mom followed me into the bathroom at Ted's, and as I waited for her to finish so she could follow me back, I heard her exclaim that she got her underwear caught in her zipper, hee! She chuckled about that in that un-self-conscious way that older folks have, and all I could do was grin. Too cute. Amanda's dad has a running joke that has all sorts of people convinced that he used to play for the Chicago Bears. I've GOT to find my old Super Bowl Shuffle LP to bring to dinner tomorrow night to have him sign. ;) It was a fun night.

This morning, we awoke early in order to get Cecile to the Goodyear place. Poor little green car looked so pitiful sitting in their snowy lot. I asked Chris to drive us there this morning as we'd gotten a couple inches of snow last night and Cecile's tires are almost bald. We had a few moments of slippery-ness, but made it there safely in the end. I'll be glad to get her back tonight, and see how nicely she handles the road in her new "shoes", heh.

I'm way sleepy today, but feeling fine otherwise. Due to a complete disregard for the diet over the holidays, I'm up about 7 pounds (aaack), so am trying to be good today to see if at least some of that is water-weight. It's not looking good, but a girl can hope. :p

I was thinking about my LJ account, and what I wanted to do with it, and while I know I'm going to keep it in order to keep up with the goings-on of friends, I think my posts will go here instead of there. I've not gotten many comments (if any) on my last few LJ posts, and I feel the need to kind of censor myself over there anyhow, so I may as well just post here without carrying around the wonder of "did anyone read it?" Here, I know only one person who might read it, at least right now, and I don't expect a comment on every little thing here, so I feel like I can write for ME instead of writing for others again.

Last bit of news...Sasha nipped at Connor last night over a candy wrapper. *sigh* She only scratched him, so no first aid was needed, but that's not the point. Chris talked to a friend of his who lives north of St Joseph and asked if he'd consider keeping the dog for a few years. He said he'd think on it. Brenna heard the conversation and started crying...she doesn't want to get rid of the dog. I don't so much either, except I won't stand for a dog who thinks it's okay to bite anyone, especially kids. If the kids would remember to put her collar on her every time they take her out of her crate, and would be consistent in using the collar on her, and would remember not to take food from the kitchen (not even a stick of gum, srsly), we might be able to make this work. But they're inconsistent with her, and she's quickly "learning" that she's actually the one in charge. Gah. It's a tough call...we hate to get rid of her, but also hate the worry of what she might do when neither Chris nor I am around. *sad* Hopefully we'll be able to train her to remember she's at the bottom of the pack and not in the middle where she thinks she is. She's almost 2 years old now, and I think that means she's hit the rebellious teenage years (equivalent), so maybe this is a phase she'll pass through once we get a handle on who is really in charge. My fingers are crossed.

Okay, better go. I tend to get chatty when I carry on like this. :p Have a good weekend!