Now that's a Fun Weekend

Friday night my cousins came over.  The two of them stayed over the night, but we started with dinner out.  We went to Mulan, which is a Tawainese restaurant that I've had food from at work (free lunch Thursdays!) but had never eaten at this location.  I definitely will be back.  

Sky on left; Pam on right

We ordered way too much food, but trust me - it didn't stop us from eating heartily.

I share the spotlight with no-one!

I look like I am in pain in the above picture.  Not my best look.  But at least I took out my camera at dinner!  Go me!

Shredded Beef with Mixed Vegetables;
Beef with Leek Wrapped in Pancakes

Salted Crispy Chicken
(I think this was my favorite)

Of course I loved the fried food - what did you expect?

We really have to teach Pam to use utensils.
But the Kung Pao Chicken was worth diving head first into.

Not pictured - Eggplant with Basil.  Way too much food - but that was okay, leftovers rock!

After dinner we came back to my place to relax, play games, and of course - eat more.

Cherry pull-and-peel licorice

I have to admit - I have a weakness for sweets. I have self control in how much I eat (luckily), but tend to overbuy.  Let's just say that I spent $20 on half-price post-Halloween candy.  Anyway, I brought out my two(!) plastic shoppin bags of candy and we went to town.

After dessert we played games.  We started with Imaginiff which is a game where you pick a set of people that you all know and answer questions about them based on a question with a limited set of answers.  For example, one of them had to do with "Imaginiff Mike (my brother) was a hat - what kind of hat would he be?". Luckily we all agreed he would be a baseball cap, so we got to move forward.  But if no one matches anyone else (which happened frequently), no one moves.  We didn't want to get stuck playing that game forever, so we modified slightly and moved forward two spaces instead of one.  One thing to note - Pam is a noted cheater.  We always have to keep an eye on her.  She won this game...and we THINK she didn't cheat.  This time.

Next we played Bananagrams, which is pretty much individual scrabble without the board.  I love this game but very rarely win.  It's not a game where you keep score; you just win one round at a time.  For us a lot of the joy is when you manage to put an awesome word down, like you manage to use a Q or J (strangely hard letter to use) in a longer word.  Prior games have also involved our made up variation where you have to have at least one swear word, but this time we stuck with the basics.

After Bananagrams we played Hand and Foot.   Hand and Foot is a game in four rounds, and each round can get very long, so we rarely finish a full game.  This time we actually were playing a continuation of a game we started in 2010!  We played the game (rules are a little too complicated to fit here, will explain in a later blog post), and of course since it had been two hours since we stuffed ourselves silly, we had to break out the chips and dip.   We have a term for when we are together - Constant Eating Mode.  If it's there, you must eat it.

During all of the above we were laughing hysterically, teasing each other, and basically having a great time.  Once hand and foot was done it was late enough that we went to sleep.  Sky took my futon; she always likes having her own space when she sleeps over (she's the only one of us that is married and actually has a sweet little one year old baby!).  Pam and I shared my bed, which confused my cats to no end. 

I'll close this post here, because although there was a lot more that happened the next day (Saturday), my poor fingers are getting tired.

Today I am thankful for - the love that expresses itself through teasing.  It sounds strange but sometimes you just have to laugh at yourself.  I told my cousins about my freakout over my contact lens fiasco earlier this week, so they've created a term for it.  "Pulling a Susie" is when you overreact to events.  For example, my dad called Sky a couple times a few weeks ago.  He wanted to talk to her husband about buying a new car.  He didn't leave a message the first couple times he called (and I think he called fairly rapidly in succession), and when he did leave a message he didn't say the buying part - he just said he wanted to talk to Eric about his car.  Sky flipped out, thinking my dad was trapped at the side of the road.  When Eric came home she made him call my dad immediately.  That?  That's Pulling a Susie.  I do it often.  And I have to laugh because really - it's truly ridiculous.