My Last Working Monday of 2007

It is officially my last "work" Monday of 2007. That alone is keeping me smiling. Although the mere prospect of spending the day at work is competing hard to ensure a bad mood.

The weekend was good, surprisingly restful, which I think is just what Varen & I needed before we both jet off to alternate destinations for 2 weeks :( It's starting to sink in ...

Friday night Varen's whole family came round to see his new place (his Mom had never seen it before at all) and then we all headed out to dinner at Adega in Greenside (we were supposed to go to CTFM in Cresta, but they were having some noise a carol service and the place was chaos.

We were amazed at our luck, just showing up off the street at Adega and there was a 9 seater table just waiting there for us :) The food was pretty decent and the portions are huge. It generally wouldn't be my choice of restaurant except when they're having their kilo-of-prawns special :)

On Saturday Varen & I slept in (it's been a while since we've managed to do that on a weekend) and decided to head off to the Irene Country Market to try and get some Christmas shopping done. Unfortunately it was very drizzly and started raining good and proper by the time we left. But I did taste a vetkoek for the first time in my life. Well, I've had mini sweet donut type ones ... or at least that's what we were told they were called. But after tasting Varen's savoury one, they are not the same at all. It wasn't too bad, but I'm not sure I'll be ordering a whole one for myself anytime soon! And then I had a delish banana spring roll and we shared some Pumpkin fritters. Yum :)

Then we headed home for a bit of a relax before going to The Goof Troop's Christmas party. Varen & I were a little unsure about going having not seen any of them for quite some time, but we ended up having a blast :) It was great fun with many shooters, cocktails and hubbly bubbly for all. Varen in particular got "a bit under the weather" and I had to drive us both home ... luckily I'd seen this coming and had stopped drinking well before.

This is the first time I've ever seen Varen really hammered and it was quite different to what I was used to with Bean. Varen still loves me when he's been drinking and he isn't just trying and impress the boys, he's not arrogant at all (although he may believe he can still keep the next drink down, he doesn't get silly and didn't argue once about me driving us home).

The next morning we got a very late start (someone was particularly hung over) and ended up lunching in Cresta at Piatto. Initially I'd wanted to try the Talking Eatalian, but it seems to have closed. Piatto was a fabulous choice and after seeing their menu and the number of things I'm keen to try, we'll have to go back another time. I was craving my favourite pasta so stuck to the Pumpkin Panzerotti and Varen had chicken breasts coated in parmesan cheese, stuffed with parma ham, mozzarella cheese served in a pool of napoli sauce - it was really good :) We also tried some potent Jalepeno Poppers to start, which was maybe not hte best idea on Varen's hung-over stomach ... but he survived.

Then he headed off to his folks place while I finished up my Christmas shopping. Decided to skip the house hunt this weekend in order to try maintain a fairly upbeat mood for the remainder of 2007.

Christmas Shopping List:
Mom - bought a fabulous item that the Peeb is going halvies on
Dad - done and dusted
The Peeb - bought last week :) And I'm thrilled with it ... Mom should be collecting it today, hopefully :)
Varen - Got plans to track down something specific while I'm in Cape Town ... I only hope I'll be able to get it back to Jhb.

All in all, a really good weekend. There was plenty of reading and series-watching involved in there too :)