Love my sunflowers!

Friday evening, rather, late afternoon, Nancy W. came by to pick me up to help celebrate our friend, Bill's, birthday. His wife, Nancy M., not to be confused with the other Nancy, asked me to pick between two different venues for Bill's birthday celebration, and I chose La Nopalera. The other choice was Whitey's and while neither of these two places are easy to find parking on a given Friday night, Whitey's would be the worst! 

AND, she allowed me to set the time to meet at 5:30 pm, rather than later, due again to the difficult parking situation there. (Justin chuckles how I am the social director of this group!) I only have to get towed off once to learn my lesson about parking at La Nop!! 

Nancy called there to make a reservation for the 7 of us (Justin couldn't go because he was still working), and was told that they don't accept reservations. Coming at 5:30, though, should be no problem. Well, that didn't seem to be the case!

We found parking with all of us arriving about the same time. Phyl, Cynthia, Bob, Bill, Nancy, Nancy, and I went into the restaurant and expected to be seated. There were lots of tables available for our number, but it seemed that, yes, they were reserved!!!  This brought to mind a "Seinfeld" episode regarding making/keeping reservations, of course. Nancy told the 'hostess' that she had called Monday and was told no reservations were accepted but the hostess said, "Well, I didn't talk to you..." What difference does that make? 

With some cajoling and our perseverance, we were eventually seated at a table which had been saved for a party at 6:30. Now, if we were served and out of there in less than an hour, well, that's on them. We were squatters! Bob would like to have gone somewhere else but I don't know where we could have gone at this point and just sat down, unless we went to Manny's Italian, next door. Or Pasta Market, but this was Bill's preference so we stuck it out. 

I didn't care as much about the food as I did about having their yummy strawberry margaritas.  I did have my shredded beef quesidilla for dinner. It was so nice to be together, catching up on each other's news, a great meal and laughs besides. I had not seen Phyl and Cindy since before Christmas and we are all excited for the next pool season soon to begin so we can all be together again!

On the ride home again, Nancy asked if I minded stopping at her dad's house so she could pick up something. She ran in and came out in a minute carrying this lovely cobalt blue vase. She made it a gift to me. I guess when Nancy M. said "No Gifts" for Bill's birthday, it didn't mean I couldn't get one! 

I had told Nancy a week or so ago the story of Justin coming in one night to my room, carrying his laptop. He wanted to show me a scene from "Last Man Standing" where in the background was a blue vase with sunflowers in it. He knows I like both! So that's why she gave me this vase, and wished that she had some flowers to put in it. I assured her I had some, and as soon as I got upstairs, I stuck the sunflowers in the vase, snapped the picture, which was texted to her before she got in her driveway!