Bought the permanent LJ account...

So I went ahead and bought the permanent LJ account. Thanks for everyone's input on that!

I've got about a month's worth of paid extra userpics left over, that I can gift to someone else. Anyone want 'em? First one to claim it gets it.

Update: Claimed, by bear_left

Sweet Friday evening

Last night riley37 joined patgreene, echidnaboy, pokedavid and me for dinner and gaming.

The kids were great about pitching in to get ready for riley37's arrival... pokedavid diligently scrubbed the floor, and echidnaboy helped with food prep and other tidying. This freed me up to do lots of cooking, which I've been wanting to do with a passion lately. I made a hearty country soup, some quiche-like spinach parmesan cakes with a tomato-yogurt-balsamic sauce, and a creamy tangy raspberry fool served over peach sorbet, mangoes, and pirouette cookies for dessert.

(Psst, brian1789, we've saved you some of the raspberry fool and peach sorbet :-)

patgreene and riley37 told lots of good jokes over dinner, and the kids had to nudge us to stop chatting away and begin the gaming already. First riley37 taught the kids a variant of Robo-Rally that he'd developed, which they enjoyed learning the strategy of. Later, when patgreene returned from picking James up from the airport, she joined us in a couple of rounds of Set. Some pics:







( One more, plus recipes... )