The Snails and Near Death and Hogwarts

I promised a very exciting post about the weekend that was now several weekends ago. And now it's almost the next, next weekend which will be VERY exciting as it contains a special someone's birthday. I'm kind of over the other weekend, exciting as it was. And there was a whole nuther exciting weekend in there that I'm not even going to try for. But that one weekend, I promised. So here is a recap.
I did eat snails. (I can't quite bring myself to call them escargot right now because I'm listening to Bob Dylan and I think he would make fun of me if I called them escargot). I have eaten snails before but these were broiled in mushroom caps then drizzled with a garlic cream sauce. Oh, my goodness. I think that in heaven they will only serve snails broiled in mushroom caps with cream sauce, nothing else. Also from now on at my house I will be serving snails, nothing else. It was part of a fancy dinner at a fancy restaurant celebrating no special occasion except that this wonderful restaurant was closing the next day and we're not ones to let a nice restaurant go untested. It was our last chance. Here is a picture of me from right before that dinner, trying to look sophisticated like I belong in a place that serves escargot.

Saturday we spent in Philadelphia. In case I haven't made it clear, we are moving to Philadelphia in April. We spent the day scouring some realtor's definition of 'up and coming neighborhoods' which equals affordable which equals the ghetto. We hope we're still young enough to have that inner-city rough around the edges experience. As long as we do regular maintenance on the huge steel bars that we'll put on all the doors and windows we think we'll be fine.

Or we'll go live in the suburbs. We're leaning toward the suburbs. We might be that old already.The suburbs are very nice and they look like this...

Believe it or not this lovely little cottage costs much less than that block of concrete above. Because it's in the suburbs. Ahhh, suburbs.
The suburbs are also where Rosemont College a.k.a. Hogwarts rests on gently rolling lawns...

Harry Potter wasn't really filmed there but I think it should have been. It's castle-y and dreamy like that. The real reason I'm going to school here is to indulge my inner witch, I mean princess. In case I haven't made it clear, I'll be attending Rosemont College to become a Master in English and Publishing. It's a unique degree, one of very few in the country. It's half Liberal Artsy stuff like reading and writing (English) and half kinda technical website design, layout, editing, marketing (Publishing) classes. It perfectly satisfies my obsession with reading, and my obsession with needing some marketable skills in case Zeb dies. Even if he doesn't die, having skills are (is? where's my editor?) nice.

Enough about that weekend that was so two weekends ago. This weekend we will be cramming in all of Zeb's favorite things in the world into 3.5 days. The party begins Friday night and ends Monday night and will include many many burritos, martinis that are mostly olive brine, and probably SAW 14. I'm so excited. The things we do for love.