Japanese dinner out...

With all the food that we have in this house, including leftover Thai food, cooked salmon, cooked quiche, all the stuff we bought at the Nutcracker Market and the Whole Foods Market.... we went out for dinner tonight to a Japanese restaurant.

C's mom called last night to ask us if we wanted to try the new Japanese restaurant that opened up a few months ago. Not only do they have table service, but they also have the hot hibachi-grills to cook on. C was at our house this afternoon (I picked her up from school), so when her mom got home from work and my husband came home from his meetings, off we all went.

Delicious dinner.... and we got to taste a lot of different things.... salmon, chicken, shrimp, and beef (just one tiny bite of that for me).... plus the soup, salad, rice, vegetables.... everything was excellent. The chef was very good, tossing things in the air, including a thick onion ring which came down against the blade of his knife and fell into slices as it hit the grill. Nice restaurant, great food, excellent service.... we all said we'd go back happily.

This afternoon, C decorated the silver aluminum tree for me.... I had it all set up on the table when she got here after school, so she got to do the fun part. She had a ball, and the tree looks beautiful. It was cute to watch her... she was smiling and humming as she put on the ornaments. While she did the tree, I took out still more holiday decorations for the dining room and living room, and put some things aside to take to the lake.

While all of that was going on, Mickey Kitty caught a lizard out on the screen-porch, which he brought into the house for all to see. Wonderful. He let the lizard out of his mouth and it promptly ran underneath the piano. Well, no way am I going to move the piano just to get a lizard. We just waited for the lizard to come out, which he eventually did. Trouble was, as soon as the lizard poked his little green head out, Mickey swatted him with his paw and he went back under the piano.

We put Mickey and all the cats out on the screen-porch and shut the door so the lizard could come out in peace and my husband could catch him. Thankfully, my husband was still home, but needed to get ready to get to a meeting at his office. That was an adventure in itself. The lizard decided to crawl up the wall, rather than taking a chance on the floor. So there was the lizard, all the way up on the wall near the ceiling, above all my pretty cameo pictures hanging over the piano.

My husband got him off of the wall with a broom.... the lizard landed upside-down on the carpet and quickly flipped himself over and tried to run back under the piano. My husband used his hand to keep the lizard from going back there again, so the lizard changed his path and ran into the dining room. And there was my husband, on hands and knees, chasing the lizard around the dining room table, trying to capture him in a Tupperware bowl as C is screaming and I'm laughing.

After about three tries, my husband got the lizard underneath the plastic bowl, got a lid on it, and brought the lizard out into the backyard as he's doing his best Steve Irwin imitation: "Crikey, she's a beaut!" The lizard is now free out in the yard, and my husband has dark red rug-burns on his knees. Two minutes after releasing the lizard, my husband had to rush to dress for the office and get to his meeting. He sat through the meeting with burning knees.

I know I've said this before--- just who was it that said that people who have cats have lower blood pressure?