Happy Earth Day!

Ah...and what a wonderful day it was! Let me start by saying that tomorrow is Jeff's birthday and I took him out to dinner last night. We got dressed up and ate at Ruth's Chris. We'd been before, so I knew it'd be expensive...but it's always oooohhhhh so worth it! I paid more for that one meal that we pay for a week of groceries. Insane..yes, I may very well be...but we enjoyed it. At dinner, we also discussed our Sunday plans and tried to avoid discussing what had happened earlier in the day.

Jack, my black lab/border collie mix, ran off for about 30 minutes. When he came back, he smelled HORRID. He'd found a carcass somewhere...I'm assuming deer....and rolled in it. Lovely. After 2 baths, he still smelled, but not as bad. I would have given him a 3rd bath, but I ran out of time and the water was frigid. There was no way I was going to bath him in the house, so I used the hose. The smell was enough to make me gag and open every window in the house. So...what do you normally get when you go to a steak house? Steak. What's a steak? A piece of cooked animal carcass. The first bite I took tasted an awful lot like Jack smelled when he came home. I really didn't think I'd be able to finish it, but since it cost me $36 for an 8 oz. steak, I was determined to eat it. I pushed past it and then enjoyed my sweet potato and then my Caramelized Banana Cream Pie. Oh, and the Mango Strawberry Mojito...was to DIE for!! Just enough Rum to make me happy...which it should since I paid $9 for it. Then, it was back home where I fell into a food coma until this morning.

Today, we went on a picnic up at the Jordan Lake Dam. BLT's, chocolate covered strawberries and tea...you can't go wrong. The lake has been really high due to all the rain, so they were draining it. It was quite an amazing site to see that much water come spewing out of the dam. Probably about 400,000 gallons a minute...maybe more. It was churning and foaming and splashing everywhere. It sounded like being at the beach. We got tons of pictures and watched people try to fish in the raging water. They weren't too bright I guess. Any creature that got sucked through the dam..was destroyed by the mere pressure and force of the water.

One thing I noticed that irritated me was that no one apparently knows how to use a trashcan. There was trash on the ground not 5 ft. from a trashcan..?? I don't get it. There was trash all over the riverbank, all around the picnic tables, floating in the water...and I even watched a girl throw down her drink bottle b/c she didn't want to carry it the 20 ft. to the trashcan. How freakin' lazy has our society become?!?! Within 30 ft. diameter of me...there were 3 trashcans. Within 50 ft., there were about 6. I picked up what I could get to and the rest, well, I didn't want to die in my effort, so I left it. I did what I could and that'll have to be enough. It still made me angry though. Littering on Earth Day is kinda like...cursing in church on Sunday..you know? Wow..when did I become such a hippie?!? Anyway..

After our picnic, we walked up to the visitor's center and hung out on the overlook deck and watched the boats. It made me really wish ours was fixed so we could be out there with them. We took more pictures and then walked along a trail to go around to the other side. It was quite secluded and serene. There was also no trash on that side. As we were leaving, I got some great pictures of the sunset which I'll have to post later. It was an incredibly beautiful day though. Warm, breezy and not a cloud in the sky.

Then we left and did a mundane, necessary errand and went to the grocery store..where we did indeed spend less than we did on dinner at Ruth's Chris. For those of you who are curious about how much dinner cost...I'll just tell you. After about an 18% tip..it was...a lot...lol. I know, 18% sounds random, but it made it an even number. Originally, I was going to take him to Maggiano's, but I knew he really wanted Ruth's Chris' and I want him to have what he wants...so..I took him even though he protested about it being too expensive.

It's been a great weekend and I've had a lot of laughs..mostly b/c Jeff is completely goofy and never fails to make me happy. Today is also my mother-in-laws birthday..so in the off chance she should ever read this...Happy Birthday, Jane! Well..I'm off to bed to ponder how I can afford gas until my next payday and to cuddle up next to Jeff for the next few hours. I hope everyone else enjoyed their Earth Day and felt the urge to help out in some small way. I leave you with one of my favorite sayings: "Keep the Earth clean. It's not Uranus." =)