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| Yummmm... all ready to go to Michelle's! |
We were actually a bit late getting to dinner because my laptop is ancient and slow. I tried to transfer the housewarming invitation that Wes and I have been working on to the tablet so that we could take it along and show it to Michelle. This ended up being a half hour project in and of itself and we didn't get underway until long after we had planned to leave.
On the way down to Wollongong, we saw quite a bit of traffic. I also saw a number of coal trucks (which I had somehow missed on previous trips down).
We arrived at Michelle's house as she was finishing up dinner and there were hugs all around. We mostly just chatted about little things at first, but as Michelle finished up dinner and we joined her at the table, we got around to discussing more personal topics like work and goals and eventually the housewarming, too. I won't go into too much detail on such things, since they're personal conversations, but I will say that the most reassuring thing that she said all night is that I fit.
I've been a bit self-conscious and worried that I might disrupt the circle of friends as they presently exist, but she told me that no such thing was occurring, which is a huge relief. No one wants to be the clingy new girlfriend, after all. Especially not when coming from an ocean away.
In short, dinner was awesome.
Michelle used to be, in her own words, a hardcore vegetarian; now she eats fish once a fortnight, chicken once a month and red meat only once a year (twice, depending on elections, I believe she said). This is definitely reflected in what she cooked for dinner, though hardly in a negative manner. She made some of the tastiest gnocchi I've had, entirely from scratch. They were very tender and very tasty, in a really lovely basil and tomato sauce.
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| Cleaning up a bit before dessert. |
I also got to have my first taste of agrum mineral water. I've had blood orange mixed in with other juices before, but never by itself. It's really quite good, though it wasn't exactly what I had expected.
Toward the end of the night, we got into the gooey butter cake (and Michelle was so sweet that she stuck a candle in it as a belated birthday celebration). She and Wes decided that the gooey buttercake is sort of like bread pudding and that it would probably taste really nice with a bit of ice cream, so I think we'll have to test that out.
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| Gooey butter birthday cake! |
After we finished our desserts and ten o'clock tolled, Wes and I said our good-byes to Michelle and headed home to get some rest before our big day at Toranga Zoo!
