TREVOR MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE RABIES...

But we'll get to that in a minute. First up, Friday night was a lovely cap to a busy week. Trevor met the Sturdy Voogds out for a drink and I got frustrated trying to track down his Valentine's Day present. The silly employees at Borders (it's okay, he already knows it's a book of some kind...) seem to have liked the product I put on hold Wednesday night SO much that they replaced it with a decidedly sub-par book on the hold shelf, perhaps hoping I was a blind, nerve ending-less child, and wouldn't notice the difference in size, texture, and quality. But alas! I am NOT such a child, and noticed the difference right away! (well, as soon as I paid for the phony book and walked away from the register. But I did NOT exit the store! Ah-hA Borders!) But to my chagrin, and to some lucky employee's, well, luck, the one copy the store still had in their computer couldn't be located by the lovely girl helping me out (it had probably been stuck in the paperback romance section under some Nora Roberts new releases by the same sneaky employee that now has it on his shelf). So, Saturday afternoon, I located the book at yet another Borders (one that didn't screw me over) and picked it up after work.

But before that, at work, I had a library appointment with a woman named Kate, who came in with her husband from Albany, New York: he had to attend a lawyerly conference all weekend, so she took advantage of our theater and watched both shows (Much Ado on Thursday night, and Macbeth on Saturday morning). She teaches 11th and 12th grade Brit. Lit., so visited our library to get some good class activities to take back with her. And thinking about her now, I wonder if she and her husband made it back to NY all right; Trevor's friend Daniel in Brooklyn told us they've got about 2 feet of snow out there! Lucky East coast. All we've got is cold.

While I was at work Saturday, Trevor and Henry went out to the dog park, got dirty (well, Henry did), and picked up a Valentine's Day gift for me. All I want is candy in a heart-shaped box; anything else is just gravy. And hopefully, it's chocolatey gravy!

We had the Sturdy Voogds over for dinner last night, and it was a successful second dinner with friends. We pulled out the table leaves, Jessica got to see our "new" furniture (last time she was here, we'd just moved in, so neither the couch nor my rocker were here yet), and we ate some pretty tasty pasta shells, which I stuffed myself (with riccotta, basil, onions, and love). After dinner, we went out to Pressure, a billiard cafe in Roger's Park, to see the S.V.'s friend Mike do stand-up comedy. And he was damn funny! His bit involved tigers at a Vegas magic show, so how could it NOT be funny? Although we can't say the same thing for the guy following Mike (the "headliner"), who stunk like a fish decomposing in a field in August. Pee-eww. But Mike made us laugh for twenty minutes, so it was worth it. And we walked past an "Authorized Lego Dealer" (no joke) on the way back to the car, had a beer at the Ten Cat, then went home to bed (well, Trevor fell asleep and I stayed up eating Ritz cracker sandwiches and watching A Fish Called Wanda.).

Today was a relaxed, food-focused day. We went to breakfast at a place called Jane's. It looked like the North Shore burped up a restaurant in Bucktown: the food was great, but we were certainly out of place among all of the rich-looking, thirty-somethings and their impeccably dressed toddlers. It was a terrific space, though, with lofted ceilings and exposed rafters, like an old barn. Even the ladies' room was decorated with Laura Ashley-like floral wallpaper and white painted paneling. Someone should have been churning butter in the kitchen. But the stereo system was playing some sort of new age techno that didn't fit at all. Just like us! But, I ate apricot apple pancakes, Trevor ate banana bread French toast, and we agreed that both meals were delicious. We'll never go back, but the eats were great.

Now, on to RABIES!

After breakfast, we stopped by the house to get Henry, then meandered up to Wiggly Field, our favorite dog park. We'd been there for about half-an-hour, had met some nice people with some swell dogs, and Henry was having a blast: chasing, being chased, tumbling around. It was great. Until a woman showed up with her undercover hell-hound. The dog was quite fine for the first ten or fifteen minutes he was there. He was a muppet-looking terrier of some sort, and he was getting on well with all of the other guys in the park. Until a sweet, chubby Weimaraner apparently looked at the terrier sideways and caught the brunt of his temper. And of course, our good natured Henry popped in the fray to see what all the fuss was about, and that was when the terrier went Cujo. Seriously. Henry yelped horribly as he ran backwards from the terrier, and the dog wasn't letting up. Trevor tried to grab our guy out of the way, but of course Henry was excited and struggling, and before he got Henry off the ground, Trevor was bit by the terrier. The woman finally got a hold of her Cujo and removed him from the park. Apparently the dog had also ripped through the jacket of the Weimaraner's owner, in addition to poor Trevor's hand. A helpful Huskie owner got a bottle of water for Trevor to wash out his wounds, and a pen and paper for me to write down the terrier woman's information. Trevor's hand is sore, but his cuts stopped bleeding, and we think he's okay. But we'll give him some homemade rabies shots anyway. Just kidding. When we got home, he took a much deserved nap with Henry and Martin, I baked some shortbread cookies and did some laundry, and all was right with our world again.

And that's all of our exciting news. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! And wish me luck that Trevor likes his Valentine (it's the two year anniversary of our first romantic contact, Trevor's "anonymous boy" Valentine stuck between my two volumes of Sherlock Holmes' mysteries! Well, first romantic contact if you're not counting a conversation about the Thai vampire movie Aswang as romantic. And I guess I'm not.)