So when last we left Duncan, he was ranting in a curmudgeon-like fashion about how he dislikes birthdays…

takaza, that sneaky bastard, had ideas, you see. After ascertaining that I had no plans for the evening, he started asking around at work to determine nice romantic places to take someone for dinner. Right after he got home, he hustled me into the car and surprised me with a lovely romantic dinner at The Melting Pot. It was just wonderful, a leisurely meal, just the two of us, and I had a great time. The food was tasty, too 🙂

Tuesday night I was feeling kind of tired so Takaza took the initiative and cooked up a yummy dinner of linguine with tomato sauce and Italian sausage. I felt bad because I was pretty much a complete lump and just sat on the sofa while he cooked and cleaned up but he swore it was OK.

Last night I had a bit more motivation, so I set some pork chops in to brine when I got home and started a loaf of bread in the bread machine. Saute up the pork chops in olive oil with a little Penzeys Old World Seasoning, add some steamed corn and we’re good to go. After dinner we watched Swimming to Cambodia, one of my all-time favorite movies. Spalding Gray is an amazing monologuist and I always find his movies riveting. I’d seen this one before but it had been a while and I wanted to see if Dan would like it too. Well, it wasn’t particularly to his taste, but hey, I suppose we can’t have matching tastes in everything. I still have Taboo (Gohatto) sitting on the TiVo to watch, but I suspect Dan won’t be much interested in that one so I’ll probably watch it by myself this weekend.

Then we have today – Valentine’s Day. Dan surprised me with a card and a box of chocolates left for me to find after he’d left for work. Then, right before lunch, I got a cryptic voice mail message from him asking if I’d changed CD’s on the way into work. I checked the center console in my car and there was another card from him, as well as a little gift box of Tic-Tacs (which I love, but they’re addictive!). Silly woof. I have a very small something for him when he gets home – I honestly hadn’t intended to celebrate the day much, but I’ll see what we can do tonight 🙂 I wanna snuggle me some wolf!

I’m feeling restless lately. It’s only been a month since we were up in Chicago, and the next scheduled bit of traveling we have is Technicon in March, a month away. I’m kicking around the idea of an inexpensive weekend trip sometime in the next few weeks – maybe the Outer Banks, maybe the mountains. I’ll need to think about it more.