First, my Mom sent this amazing California wildflowers graphic to me at work today. I’ve put the original large file up on a separate webpage for you, in case you’d like to download it yourself. There’s three different file formats—JPG, BMP, and PNG. If you plan to save the photo for your Windows Desktop, you need the BMP version. But it’s huge, so it loads more slowly. If you just want to look at the larger picture, click on the one for the JPG version. It loads quickly and you can enjoy the original photo. It’s quite impressive, as you can see from this small thumbnail:

Click on the thumbnail to go see the larger links.

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Last night I got to see some old friends from my last job, sorta. You see, the last month or so before I left, there was a huge push to fix some problems on the contract. We started involving some other people across the country on phone conferences, and I made friends with a gal named Courtney. She and I hit it off well on the phone, and she was really bummed when I left the contract. She has family in Southern CA and she wished she could have met me someday when she was out visiting. Then LuAnn was hired after I left, and she and I have also hit it off really well since she came on the project. I’d met her in person one other time, over dinner and drinks on a Friday night, and we’d done some serious training over the phone and email to get her up to speed.

Well, Courtney was out in CA for both work and family-related things, and whined to LuAnn that she wished she could have met me after all. LuAnn rang me up, we all made dinner plans, and I went down to Benihana’s for dinner and drinks after work last night. Now, since I had a good 90 minute drive home, obviously I wasn’t drinking alcohol over dinner. But the restaurant was a block from Courtney’s hotel, so let’s say she had maybe a few more glasses of wine than typical for a work night.

Gee, I haven’t been around drunk people in a long while!

We had a great meal, and earlier the Happy Hour specials while we were waiting were great too—Wednesday Happy Hour sushi deal was three handrolls for only $5, so we had a Philadelphia roll, a Benihana special (crab, avocado, and veggies), and a Shrimp roll. Our chef was fun, although maybe not quite as flashy as some, and made the fried rice into a heart shape (for the Anniversary couple at the table) and then into Mickey Mouse (for the tourist Japanese folks at the table, and the Disneyland Anniversary this week). I had some very yummy chicken and shrimp, although next time I may get the scallops because they looked amazing.

Courtney’s husband hates mushrooms, so she kept saying she felt like she was cheating on him by eating mushrooms.

We finally had to convince her to let us drive her the block home to her hotel, but she relented after a little peer pressure. What is it about alcohol that makes people think they’re fine to drive? *she rolls her eyes*

So then I got home without incident, and I have some fun photos to send to both gals in memory of our spiffy dinner.

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Recently Listened to: Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)