Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

I went up to Hitchin tonight to see my old friend Karen. By "old friend", I mean we've known each other since we were 8 :) We are hopelessly bad at keeping in touch, for all that she lives 15 minutes away from me, but she's married with 2 kids and runs her own business so she's kinda occupied :D

Anyway, she sent me a birthday card with an added note saying "Text me! Let's meet up and go for pizza!" so I did and we arranged to meet tonight. We went to Strada's, an Italian restaurant train (our usual haunt is Pizza Express but they were all booked up). Very, very good food there, I shall frequent them again. I had a Speck pizza, thin crispy base, with Speck ham, rocket, mozzarella and gorgonzola cheese. I was worried about the gorgonzola, which I adore on pizza but is very easy to overdo. But this was spot on, complementing the other flavours without overpowering the whole thing. Dee-licious. And I had a pear sorbet to finish, which was sweet, light and refreshing. Karen had Rigatoni Sciiliana (roasted aubergines, courgettes and peppers in a garlic, basil & tomato sauce finished with ricotta). Her dessert was a chocolate dessert of great evil - a case of chocolate (shaped like a trough) filled with an insanely dense and rich mousse topped with strawberry slices. She finished it all but admitted she didn't want to see chocolate again for about a week :)
We finished off with coffee and tea before waddling back to her house.

Before, during and after the meal there was much happy yakking as we caught up on life, the universe and everything. I didn't leave until nearly midnight :) A very good evening indeed and I really must try and make sure it happens more often than every two years or so :P

I am in possession of my five days leave :) We tried a small experiment. FogHorn approved the holiday request, even though it said I didn't have enough hours....and it went through and DIDN'T deduct another five days off my tally. Huzzah! Also bizarre because to our knowledge, it's not done the "take hours off before approval" thing before but now that we know, 's all good :)

I had a lovely evening yesterday, I went over to my old school buddy Karen's for dinner. It's been a couple of years since I've seen the kids - they're a smidge bigger than they were :P To my horror, Karen calmly mentioned that Oliver was 10 years old now. Gnnng. That's 10 years that's gone by waaaay too fast.

Anyway, I was fed yummy food (deelicious cottage pie, yummy apple & blackcurrent crumble) and there was much, much yakking and catching up. Was a lot of fun. Next time, I'll have to lure Karen down to WGC and unleash my limited cooking repertoire on her :D The poor girl.

Work is...meh. So dullsville. But I'm not being pestered or overworked (yet) so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

And now there will be tea. And then food. Hurrah!