Thursday, February 27, 2020

Three Beautiful Things 02/26/20: Crab Stock, Organizing Papers, Two Week Trivia Win Streak

1. My three crock pots of crab stock bubbled away for about two days and this morning I shoveled out all the shells and vegetables, strained the stock, and put eleven quarts of stock in the freezer. I have one more bag of shells and, if I have enough containers on hand, today I'll put those shells, along with onion, celery, and seasonings into a slow cooker or two and make more stock.

2. Today was a good day to get some papers organized. Once I receive the last of our tax information, I want to be ready to jump right on the task of getting our returns filed. Completely separate from taxes, I have some filing to do now that I have gone through the papers I had piled chaotically on the card table I have up in the Vizio room. I plan to get the filing done right away.

3. Linda L. has been through -- and in her recovery, is going through -- a serious medical episode, but she's on the healing side of it now. I was really happy to see her with her son's mother-in-law at the Crab Feed Saturday night. On Tuesday, Linda messaged me that she wanted to go to Spokane with me and join Kathy, Mary, and our other team members to play trivia.  This was great news.  Linda felt up to spending another evening out.

I met Linda at the Rose Lake Junction Conoco station and we soared in the Sube to Spokane and on up to Airway Heights and the Northern Quest Casino's Riverbank Taphouse.

We have kind of accidentally assembled a very good team just by figuring the more the merrier. Dan lives in the same apartment complex as Kathy; Chris is Mary's sister-in-law; Joan and Mary know each other as fellow novelists; Linda and I came over from Kellogg and Canyon to join our fellow KHS alums and longtime friends, Mary and Kathy.

And, tonight, for the second week in a row, we were the night's winning team! We were like the Oregon Ducks women's basketball team: no one of us knew everything, but what some didn't know, others did. We picked each other up. We worked together smoothly.

The group of young men (who had a woman at their table tonight) whom we have finished as runner up to several times in the past were on hand tonight.

We defeated them!

I lost track of what all we won by finishing first in two or three rounds and winning the night, but I know I came home with a handsome beer glass and an empty growler from Spokane's terrific brewery, Iron Goat. I also know that much of our collective bill for tonight's food and drinks was covered by last week's and this week's winnings.

Linda and I had a safe and enjoyable drive back to Rose Lake and I returned home and fixed myself a couple chilled dirty martinis (up), relaxing and basking in the thrill of team Random McNally's victory. 

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