more food talk and the dog

Two co-wiorkers and i decided that this year we would not bank on the staff lunch  to provide us with the wonderful Christmas meal we feel we desrve (and by the way, the satff lunch was, despite all the fancy talk on the menu, middle rate hotel food AT BEST.) but we were unwillilng to spend a crackign great sum on the meal we wanted. Then we hit on the idea...each payday for the last few months we have each dposited $20 in a jar. We now have almost $400 for our dinner. It's tomorrow night and it's here.

Ignore the annoying Moby. This place gets raves on chow.com so I am drooling in advance!

And in other news:

I took the dog to the vet on Saturday - he has been limping and favouring his right side and it didn't get better (As a hiking dog this has happened before) so I was concerned. So was the vet, a lovley holistic vet - she spent quite a bit of time trying to get him to show his feelings about her manipulations of his legs - he's so stoic about pain. Finally she figured out where the problem was and sat back down to her laptop - tap tap tapping away and saying that she is quite concerned (oh?) and would like to do an x-ray today (gulp), it could be just a sprain but where there is so much muscle atrophy (eh?!) and so much pain whe she touched the bone she has some serious concerns that we coudl be dealing with bone cancer. Cue Peanut bursting in to tears. Ever so helpful, sitting in the vet's office, clutching a box of tissue and sobbing as she tries to tell me it may be something else but what with his age etc, we really need that x-ray. Sob sob snuffle "go on, I'm listening" raggedy intake, quieter sobbing.

So she gos to finish with another patient and I go to the truck to get Roland, who, upon seeing my face believes that the dog has expired right there. He comes in and does a bang-up BF job, sitting with Rudy while I sob, lifting him on the x-ray table while I empty my schnoz into another tissue, helping them lay a distressed doggie down on the x-ray table while I hiccup and wheeze from the doorway, and then sitting with Rudy during the the x-rays (behind the vet's shield momentarily of course) and holding his head to keep him calm while I am banished to the doorway, still riding little waves of calm-sniffle-snifle-sob-calm. Thenthe short wait while they check the x-rays during hich Ibegin crying more as I am so sure of the dire outcome. THen the news that his bones are clear and he must have simply done some smashing damage to his muscles/ligaments etdc and they will give us some presecription anti-inflammatories for 3 weeks then come back for some massage and accupuncture and you know maybe next time we won't discuss the worst case scenario until we are sure? OK?

 Sniffle, yes. Good idea.