I had dinner last night with friends at O/8 in Bellevue. Yum! I do recommend. Our cute waiter, the wonderfully strong Makers Mark & Amaretto Manhattan, the perfectly cooked scallops, and the delicious desserts made the whole experience thoroughly enjoyable. It's definitely worth a trip to the eastside.

Today I saw Then She Found Me with Em at the Seven Gables. It was directed by and starred Helen Hunt, along with Bette Midler, Mathew Broderick, and Colin Firth (Rarr!). I may have mentioned this before, but I've been wanting to see this movie ever since I saw the preview a few weeks ago because of a line of Matthew Broderick's. He plays Helen Hunt's confused, man-child husband/ex, and at one point she asks him what he wants. Perfect in his delivery, he responds with, "I want to try to be with you!...I guess." Words to melt a girl's heart for sure. And, yes, unfortunately sometimes we end up hearing things along those lines. Yay. That's what I liked so much about the whole film, though. The dialogue and situations of the characters felt very real, and often they captured the hilarity, ridiculousness, and imperfections of being a regular human in complex relationships. The movie also acknowledges and depicts how a barrage of loss and hurt can temporarily crush us, rattling our faith. This can be faith in ourselves, faith in the meaning and purpose of life, or faith in whatever higher power we choose to believe. Yet, we go on. And, hopefully, we find our way back to faith again. The reviews I read beforehand were lukewarm, so I wasn't expecting much, but I ended up liking it so much that headed off to Half Price Books after to buy a copy of the book.

I've been craving books lately. In addition to The Lemon Tree, I wanted to find fun reading for my mini-vacay this week. I haven't shopped for books in a while, and I forget how much I love it. I can wander around in the store forever, totally absorbed in my own little world, as I browse through shelf after shelf in different sections. I'm both totally overwhelmed by all the books that exist that I will never know about and excited at the possibility of what I may find. It's so great! I had a lovely afternoon.

Oh, it looks like I'm going to have the Hoopty for another couple of weeks. My car is nowhere near being done, sadly, and even though I called up Enterprise and offered to trade it in for the Kia, they worked out a "deal" for me to keep the Hoopty. The Universe has destined us to be together for something like five weeks! Sigh. Em sent me a link to Sir Mix-A-Lot's video "My Hooptie." So now I run around saying lines like, "Keep laughin' at the car and you might get clipped" or "He at a quarter pounder; threw the pickles on my rug!" My hoopty! There are some smooth dance moves in that video. I'm going to incorporate them in to my already established repertoire.

Invited friend Jen via text to join me and friends for breakfast tomorrow. She wrote back saying sounds fun but she'd let me know for sure in the morning. I said, perfect, I'm thinking mimosas. She responded, "Hell yeah! Now I'm setting my alarm. :-)"

Love that girl!

- Meganar

P.S. Please sign the petition that's part of the We Campaign to save the polar bears. I don't know if you've seen the footage on TV, but I can't take the thought of them floating around on little ice cubes in the Arctic and eventually drowning. It's too terrible.