A Lovely Gift

Yesterday one of my dear friends invited me to join her for a wine tasting and dinner. Tracey and her guy Joe are a part of a group that do these tastings every third Monday. Joe was scheduled to be out of town, so Tracey asked if I would be her "date."

What a great night! The restaurant that hosts them is one of the finer restaurants in town. It is an Italian restaurant and during these wine tastings they had been going through the 20 regions of Italy, eating dishes and drinking wine from each area. Last night was Piedmont.

I won't go into the fantastic food (risotto, salmon, duck...) or the amazing wines I got to try, but the best part about it was just kicking back and enjoying the evening in the company of one of my closest friends. Tracey and I were seated at a table with two other lovely and fun ladies and a rep from the wine distributor. Everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun.

It was so wonderful for Tracey to invite me on a number of levels. For one thing, this is the kind of thing I absolutely love to do - but simply can't afford right now. I am lover of great food and have always been fascinated by wine, but eating out at certain places just isn't in the budget. While I have several favorite wines in the under $12 category, right now it is something I tend to save for a special occasion. So this was an opportunity to enjoy a fantastic evening out - and all it cost me was $3.00 for parking. (Hilarity insured when I realized I only had a $20 for the parking lot attendant machine - and it shot out all my change in the new gold dollars. I couldn't get all 17 rapidly dropping coins in my hands and had to pull my car forward past the gate, then get out and go back to pick up the ones I dropped. The good thing is I am less likely to spend gold dollars - the bad thing is they are heavy!)

Another wonderful thing was that I got to spend time with Tracey. Life has been so busy she and I haven't seen each other much since the garage sale I had in July. Unfortunately we didn't get quite as much time to chat as I would have liked - we were surrounded by people and there was a speaker throughout most of the dinner, but still, we managed to catch up!

The other great part about the evening was that the dinner was in the same room as where my wedding reception was held. I know that doesn't sound like it would be great since I am recently divorced, but actually it was. It gave me a chance to be in that space while doing something fun and sort of reinvent my memories of that area. Had I just walked in there on my own, it might have been really hard. But as it was, surrounded by laughing people, great food, good wine and conversation - it totally changed the dynamic. For that I am really grateful.

Thanks Tracey!!


Photo by: katiew