New Year’s Eve….AGAIN!!

Okay, here’s the plan for this evening. As long as the place is open, we will be dining at a Chinese restaurant, and partaking in a huge volcano drink thingy (or 7). Then we will be retiring to my house or Perfectly’s Dad’s house for games and merriment. Unless after we eat and drink, we poop out.

Okay, so you may be asking yourselves “what does she mean if the place is open….Chinese places NEVER CLOSE!!”. Well, that’s what you think. I live in small city Missouri, where there are no really GOOD Chinese places. And the couple of places that are okay have really weird hours. Remember my FAVORITE Mexican place? El Jimidor? The one with $1.50 margaritas on Monday and Thursday nights? You know the one I talk about ALL THE TIME? Well, they are the busiest place in town. AND there are 3 locations in our 38,000 population city. THREE LOCATIONS!! That should show you how popular this place is. It’s cheap, it’s decent food, and CHEAP MARGARITAS!! Well, THEY are closing at 7pm tonight. WTF?? You’d think on New Year’s eve they’d sell TONS of FULL PRICE Margaritas…..and food…….and BEER!!! (Beer is the drink of choice for the ‘boys’ in this town). So, since the Chinese place we want to go to is 3 doors down from the Mexican place in the same strip mall, I’m thinking we may be SOL. I don’t really have a plan ‘B’, so I guess I’d better get onto the internet and find out how to make those volcano drinks, because we may be lighting them at HOME.

I had a very pleasant surprise this morning. SOMEONE BROUGHT ME A PRESENT!!! This never happens. See, it all started on the 19th. We had our work gift exchange and snack day. Our section is pretty small, therefore we include the “IT” (information technology, for those of you not hip with the lingo) section in this small celebration as well. They are a small group too, and we are the only two sections of our whole department that work on this floor, so we sort of hang out together a lot. As far as section hanging out goes, that is.

ANYWAY…….one of the ladies that works in our IT section used to work for my husband. I drew her name as the person to buy a gift for. We have a $15 limit. I try to use my money, savvy and coupons wisely to purchase something really nice for the person I buy for. She indicated on her ‘wish list’ that she wanted earrings and candles. I went to JC Penney---found a boxed set of supposedly real gemstone earrings set in silver and plated in gold---normally $50 (ahem…right), on sale for $17.99. I had a $10 coupon for any purchase at JC Penney, so I used that, then bought her a Vanilla Honey candle as well.

That day she brought some sort of cream cheese dip for her contribution to snack day. It was a sweet, slightly spicy concoction with crackers! It was cream cheese and some sort of mix in. We all LOVED it! She told us it was HER VERSION of some high dollar jam from Harry and David. She picked up a similar product—a sweet/spicy onion and pepper jam at the grocery store (instead of $15 or so at Harry and David) and used it as her mix in with cream cheese. IT WAS SOO GOOD! I looked at the same grocery store and couldn’t find the stuff…….so I emailed her earlier this week asking where she found it at the grocery and she told me. I was so excited to make it myself! And today, people, she brought me in a jar of the jam AND a block of cream cheese! How sweet was THAT?? Someone thought of me!! And, she wouldn’t let me give her any money to re-pay her!! So, now I can impress everyone with MY dip tonight. Except Mr. Perfectly who hates cream cheese or anything with cream cheese in it. Which eliminates like HALF of the really good crap in the world. He also doesn’t like Marscapone cheese…….he’s such a party pooper.

So, internet, do any of YOU know how to make those firey volcano drinks? If so, send on the recipes….because we may be eating La Choy tonight if there isn’t any place open.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, Everyone!!!!