Clever Sex

Lester suggests where we should go for our Thursday night outing. He gets to choose - its only fair since he was let go yesterday :(

He picks Dragonfly, a cool restaurant and lounge with a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere, and quite tasty food. We did Rack 'n' Roll last time, and all agree that we need a change from foosball.

The whole crowd is there, Albert, Leo, Nabil, Sruthi, Lester of course, Alok (he actually came this time!), Tawanda (Alok's new colleague), Manju, Bright, and his carpool buddy Sam.

The place is amazing, plush furnishings, gothic motifs, detailed stonework and carved woodwork. The ornate dragonflies hanging from the rich burgundy velvet drapes add a nice touch.

Nabil is into red wine, Sruthi is drinking some sort of plum martini, I'm having a mojito, everyone is consuming a variety of different cocktails and liquors - most of us have seconds and get very happy. The conversation flows freely, but you wouldn't want to take some of it out of context, or it might sound very suspicious. So here goes:

"Nabil is the best blower in CDR."

"I'm having problems with a vibrator - how do I get it working properly?", asks Lester inncocently. "Let's ask the expert, Sruthi!", everyone says in unison.

Nabil stands up and makes yet another announcement: "Leo shares his towel..." (don't even want to think about that one)

"You want it right now?!" demands Bright (whatever could he be talking about?)

"Banging goes with any alcohol!"

Bright gives us his words of wisdom about how gender and intelligence mix:
A smart man plus a smart woman is a great life;
a smart man and a dumb woman is pregnancy;
a dumb man and a smart woman is an affair;
a dumb man and a dumb woman is a marriage.

We all agreed whole-heartedly :)

Half way through, a live light jazz band starts playing swinging music, adding a lot to the atmosphere. A fantastic night out, we all enjoy ourselves immensely.

"Blow out those candles Nabil!" But he surpises us by extinguishing them with one swift wave of his hand.

Sounds

I wish you could hear these sounds. So many, and so varied.

I'm sitting outside in the front yard, just finished spraying some roundup to kill the weeds on the driveway. The sounds of modern day life are not very far away, even here where we are supposed to sort of be in the "country". Cars drive by on the road up front. A plane flies over. I even crane my head up to see a helicopter go directly above our house, flying low.

But then there are the other sounds. The waterfall provides that constant calming white-noise background. The wind blows softly through the trees. The leaves rustle in the undergrowth, probably a squirrel or something rummaging for food. And most obvious of all are the birds. Not one species, but dozens, each with their own unique sound, some short and to the point, others loud, complex, and ostentatious. One sounds like an owl, somber and low, maybe a great horned. Some chirping, others warbling, yet others twittering, from all directions, a cacophony of noise, grating and mellifluous all jumbled up together.

Its very peaceful out here, the sun will be setting soon, that magical time of day just before dusk. I just wish all the cars were gone, or replaced with quiet electric ones perhaps. Nearly time to go back inside to the even noisier family.

Justifications

I have a confession to make. I am a bad father. Every Saturday Charlotte has a soccer game, usually at 10am nearby, but today it's at 8:30 and is a few miles away. Charlotte was in pain last night, and I had to give her ibuprofen, as she been to the doctor that afternoon, and had shots in her arm including a tetanus shot. And she also recently had a fight with some poison ivy, and I put cream on a dozen spots on her arms and legs. So she is not exactly in a good shape atm.

Maybe we'll just her her sleep in today, and pretend our alarm didn't work properly.

So the question is, are we being nice to her, or just selfish, so we can sleep in ourselves in a nice warm bed?

...

Heavy breathing at our bedroom door. After a couple of minutes I wake up, and see Charlotte standing there. She of course had an alarm clock under her pillow, and I had "forgotten" to turn it off the night before. It's Sigrid's birthday, so we let her sleep, and creep downstairs to get ready.

So here we are, huddled and freezing on this miserable day, not enough rain to actually close the fields, sitting in our fold-out chairs, trying to wrap not-big-enough blankets around us, cheering on our "Pirates", who are running for the ball, or standing shivering in defence. What fun.

We just scored a goal. Yay!



Final score: Pirates 4, the other team 3. But its just a game, nobody cares about the scores. Ok, maybe just a little bit. :)