Friday night I felt like celebrating. I swear that day the stars were right. Not only did our announcement go off with a bang, but I had three manuscripts (two terribly late) drop into my inbox as well, and I had a very interesting phone conversation with a noted author that may lead to yet more goodness. That night we headed out to dinner with Bruce and Tim. We went to a place up the U-District called Rio, which is a Brazilian rodizio. I was first turned on to this style of cuisine in Vegas, at a place called Samba in the Mirage. It basically works like this. You get a bunch of excellent side dishes that vary from restaurant to restaurant (Rio serves yuka root in herbed butter, potato salad, feijoada, rice and several salads). They then start coming by the table with giant skewers of various meats and some seafood. They slice off portions right onto your plate. The best is that they will continue doing this until you tell them to stop. Rio has a rotation of about ten dishes, which included sausage, glazed chick wings, turkey wrapped in bacon, peppered steak, and the king of the menu, tri tip rubbed with a special salt imported from Brazil. Top that off with some caipirinhas and you’ve got a fitting celebration. The food at Rio is excellent, and it’s a cool family-run joint. Totally my kind of place.

After dinner, some of the group got ice scream down the block and then we went back to our place. Bruce had brought his own cigar and I lit up my Fuente Fuente Opus X Perfection X. We sat out on the porch in the cool night air, smoking and drinking. A little later Ray showed up with a bottle of wine. When we had taken our last puffs, we moved inside for more wino. Bruce and Tim headed home, and then Ray and I talked about games and comics until 4 am.

Eleven hours later, Ray was back by the house. He and Christine were hosting a BBQ at their place and he had kindly offered to give us a lift (our car still being out of commission). Nik stayed home for a few hours until her headache went away, then she joined us as well. It was a beautiful day, so we spent most of it in the yard. Christine made some terrific guacamole, which tided us over until evening time. Then Ray lit up the big grill and did some great steaks with a tasty sauce made of bleu cheese, cream, onions, and a smoky salsa. Christine had prepared some butter with infused chiles and we had that on roasted corn and it was out of this world. More libations followed, so ultimately we decided to crash there so we didn’t get home until this morning.

I’ve been catching up a bit on my e-mail today (I was swamped Friday). I had also very deliberately not kept up with the bullshit brewing on the various GAMA mailing lists and some message boards I occasion. I refused to waste my time even thinking about that nonsense Friday and Saturday. Not that that made the fucktards go away (if only) but dammit, I deserved a little celebratin’. And as you can no doubt tell, we had a good ole time.

Tomorrow, it’s back to work. I’ve got a lot of writing to do over the next few months and with our new developers on board, I should finally have some time to get back to design. I am totally looking forward to it.