I was late getting to Irvine so I skipped visiting my cousins’ house and just met up w/them at Ruth’s Chris. I had an amazing wine. By appearance it was a white, almost looks chardonnay, but is made of 4 types of grapes. It was light like white zinfandel, but the flavor has much more depth and color. The nose was an explosion of grape bouquet. I wish I could remember what it was called, but I had some alcohol so foreign memory retention wasn’t at its peak. We started with an oysters rockefeller appetizer. All 3 of us had the petite filet mignon (melts in your mouth), and we shared sauteed mushrooms and a warm chocolate ganache cake a la mode. It was great catching up with my cousins over dinner, and to have frank, non-judgmental conversation about the raunchiest of subjects. We were an episode out of Sex and the City. With better food.

After dinner we walked to the Edwards Theatre and watched “Must Love Dogs” w/2 of their chick friends. This is the first time I can say I agreed with the movie critics. The reviews are lukewarm, but never was there a doubt in my head that I would enjoy this movie, this was right up my alley, it was quirky and sweet and it starred Diane Lane! While I was taking off my face earlier, I thought of all the comments I could blog about this movie, and I settled on these two: 1.) Of the parts of the movie that I did see, the best was when a large fluffy black dog named Mother Theresa climbed into John Cusack’s character’s boat from the water, because of how small the dog looked with his fur wet. 2.) The reason I say “of the parts of the movie that I did see,” is because for the first 1/3 of the movie, I dozed off at least half a dozen times. My cousin Diana was on my left, and I felt horrible because here they were, taking me to a movie with their friends, and I was falling asleep. I was afraid to turn and look at her, but I hoped she didn’t notice that I was dozing off. I did note that she was awfully still, tho. It wasn’t until after the movie when we talked about it, that I realized all 3 of us slept on and off thru the first 1/3 of the movie. We were all hoping no one else noticed. Of course none of us did, because we were asleep.