Girls night and a fireball

This is a short story of how a seemingly innocent girls night can go terribly wrong in a matter of minutes. 

Intrigued? Good. Stick around, and you'll find out what I'm talking about. ;-) 

Friday night I had some girls over for dinner and drinks, as I mentioned previously. Ever since I gave TJ a taste of the great outdoors (via leash and collar) he sits at the back door looking pitiful when people are on the deck. 

Exhibit A:

 The girls, minus Leah, on the deck. From L-R, Molly, Sarah, and Laura. I've known Molly since middle school. She's also a bridesmaid. Sarah and Laura were college friends of Molly that I've since gotten to know, and love :)

 This girl never says no to cheese.

 And a tasty little treat I call the "French Kiss" (equal parts chardonnay and Simply Lemonade brand Raspberry Lemonade. I've never tried it with another type of lemonade and I don't care to.. the Simply Lemonade stuff is just SO GOOD.

 The girls got a sweet action shot of me prying the cork out with my teeth. Yes, that's an electric wine opener next to me on the table, and no, apparently I don't quite know how to use it.

 Lemon cream pasta with asparagus. nom nom nom. Similar recipe (with brussel sprouts) HERE.

For the asparagus, I just blanched it (boiled it for 2 minutes, shocked it with cold water), and then diced it up into 1/3's, and sauteed it in olive oil with salt, pepper, red onions, and garlic. Lil' bit-o-basil and parmesean cheese on top.

 The remainder of the evening was relatively unassuming. We sat on the deck drinking, chatting, laughing. M came home from happy hour and joined the convo. We moved things inside when the bugs got bad, and continued the drinking, chatting and laughing. 

Then it started to rain. Nothing TOO bad, but heavy rain, and a "threat" of a potentially big thunderstorm. There was some thunder and lightning but again, nothing to seek shelter over. 

M started to fall asleep sitting up, so he dragged himself upstairs around 10:45. 

It was a little after 11 when there was a flash and a crack and then black. Power was out. I think I exclaimed something along the lines of "fuckkkkkkk." I just get annoyed with power outages. You don't realize how much you rely on power until you try to do little things and realize- oh wait, that too requires electricity. I stumble into the kitchen to get the lighter and start lighting candles in the living room. We're giggling because we're buzzed and it's kind of silly at this point. Then M comes RUNNING downstairs screaming "THE NEIGHBORS' HOUSE IS ON FIRE!" We run to the backdoor, look down the alley, and all you can see is this huge, intense, orange glow. The unmistakable flickering orange glow of flames. 

For about 5 seconds it was one of those "OMG this is happening. This is real. I actually have to call 911" moments. 

So 2 of us grab our phones and call 911... it's raining hard so we still can't really see what's on fire. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we get through... the dispatcher picks up and the first thing she says is: 

"are you calling about the fire on _____ Avenue?" 

"uh, yes." 

"yep, we got it." 

click.

Sooooo we turns out the fire dept was on it! a minute later the sky goes from orange to black. Then we hear the sirens and see the lights. The truck stops at our end of the alley and for a second we're confused. It quickly becomes clear they were blocking off both ends of the alley, and then walking towards the scene. 2 firemen walk by, as all of us our standing on the deck in the rain. M, in what I didn't think was the best decision of the night, decided to put on a poncho and go walk down the alley. He ended up chatting with a fire fighter and found out what happened. Lightning struck a tree, which caused a branch to fall on the transformer in the alley, which promptly exploded into flames. Thank god it wasn't anybody's house. They cut power to the wires which killed the fire for the most part, but the fire was still smoldering/flaring up a bit.. so they stuck around to douse it. There was a live wire down in the alley though, so they taped it off for the rest of the night. We went to bed, hoping to wake up to power. Alas, no such luck. 

We hopped on the internet and learned it'd likely be out until 11 p.m. or at least that was their forecast at the time. So, we packed a bag, packed up our food that may spoil, and crashed M's mom's house. I had bought a bunch of brunch food dead set on having a lovely little Saturday morning with M.. since I had been absent studying. So I still made us breakfast, just at his mom's. :)

 Her spaceship stove. That I love.

 We lounged, I napped, and then we got ready to go to my cousin Mitch's 2nd birthday party. He loved his Elmo cake his mom made him. That's his brother Max in the green. 

M and I got into the party spirit. Actually, some little boy was running around making everybody take, and put on, a birthday hat.

 And then M was naughty and had to eat his Elmo cake in the corner.

And thus concludes girls night gone wrong, a fireball, and an Elmo birthday party. 

M and I have ZERO plans tomorrow. I'm quite looking forward to it. Actually, he looked at the weather (I call him Dave Dahl - local meteorologist- for a reason...) and it's supposed to be 78 and sunny. No more deathly hot temps! (I know people live in states where it's regularly 90+ degrees and I honestly don't know how. It's been in the 90s and humid for WEEKS/over a month here and it makes me want to die.) So, we're thinking of putzing over to Wayzata and Lake Minnetonka, where his dinner boat cruise was, for a nice little afternoon out there. 

Unrelated. Are people not supposed to post on weekends? I feel like I should be scheduling posts for weekday mornings. Is that what people do? I just draft them when I can, and then post it right away. I guess I don't care at this point what my stats are or which day the fall on. I barely look at them to begin with. I figure people will read it when they open up their google reader anywhoo. Whatevs. 

Hope everybody's having a fantastic weekend! and HAPPY WEDDING DAY to Syndal! Can't wait to see photossss!!