Friday

No rain fell on Latimers today but the grass continued to grow - it was almost as though it had spent the entire day concentrating on coaxing every millimetre of length it could to replace what I'd ROM'd yesterday. It did well.
I don't know why (possibly because I'd spent what seemed to be all night dreaming) but when the alarm went off this morning, I was so tired I actually considered giving Emma and Beazley their insulin shots, and then crawling back into bed. Work could wait until Monday. But, not to be, and I'm glad because it was a good day. I spent some time with one of our young engineers, putting together the Minutes of a meeting we had both attended a fortnight ago; we'd both taken some scratchings during it and Nathan put his hand up to do the minutes based on his - and I offered to help. It was good fun - collaborative work for a change - and there's usually little opportunity for that. Although, come to think of it, it may have been because it was "writing" rather than "numbers".
One of the other engineers had also brought in his new eBay purchase - a nerf rocket launcher - remote controlled and, with an action similar to a tank turret, very aimable and is great fun (until someone loses an eye I can hear safety people say)!
The ptolemy effect was alive and well this evening - with the moon hanging huge and glowing bright and yellow in the eastern sky. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to see it rising out of the sea. As M said as we watched it as we drove in to Mouse's for Family N Friends dinner, you could understand why the ancients did (regard it with such awe and/or fear).
It was our first dinner at Mouse's for a while and Mi had requested borscht and vereniki - because you cannot have one without the other. Amazingly, there was no sign or word from The Great K - usually he knows when one of his favourite dishes is on - seeming to pick the aroma out of the ether.
The invitations to Trivia for my birthday were finally sent out this afternoon and at dinner we did some practice - using questions from the last two weeks - and everyone seemed to at least have a go. F said he was good at Geography and he certainly had little trouble identifying the four countries that border South Africa to the north. That was the homework question for this week, and S and I know we only named them all because we had looked it up on the interweb (the homework questions are "sure points" and, surprisingly, are usually work out to be almost the number of points you're handicapped for a previous week's win).
It was a great night - and F's favourite dessert appeared - except with a twist - rather than being the usual rhubarb crumble, this time it was sans crumble - and while I don't eat it, the others approached it with some gusto. Yum ... but Family N Friends dinners always are ... great food and great company!