For the win(times two!)

Had a pretty good day yesterday. 

From a culinary standpoint, I had a 'Great Successes!'  To give all credit where it properly belongs, the recipe came from a very reliable source, Brigid, over at Home on the Range(I know...like I need to link to her...I doubt anyone is visiting my blog that hasn't visited hers already).  Much like my other favorite recipe source, Alton Brown, Brigid's recipes are sometimes a little involved, but I have never had one let me down. 

We had been invited to my bosses house for dinner, and I volunteered to make the desert.  This gave me an excuse to try a recipe from her site I have been wanting to try for a long time: Guinness Brownies. 

There are really no words to describe these brownies, so I will steal from one of my favorite authors, Alistair MacLean, who once described a stormy night as being 'Dark as the Earl of Hells Waist-coat'.  Yeah...that'll do.  Very dark, very dense, and very rich, but not the least but dry.  We discovered they go equally well with milk, or Mocha Death Stout from Iron Horse Brewery(picked up a growler full Thursday($6!), or with the Lot #1 Red Blend from Terra Blanca Winery.  Fascinating...all you really need to know is these brownies only half 3/4's of a cup of flour in them..everything else is flavor.

So...my 2nd success was entirely personal, and romantic in nature. 

I'm not a jewlery/accessory guy.  No necklaces, and I can only occasionaly tolerate a watch.  Pretty early on in my marriage, I used the reasoning(not an excuse, because it was the truth) that all the work on submarines, climbing up and down metal ladders was causing my wedding ring to become a major annoyance AND safety hazard.  My wife was fine with this, and so I would usually take it off while I was at work, and then put it back on....sometime.  This sometime became a smaller and smaller percentage of the time, until about 7 years ago, when my wedding ring became a permenant attachment of my key chain.

Hey...at least I didn't lose it.

Let's flash forward now.  I know longer have the submarine excuse, and as a manager, I don't do much work with rotating equipment.  My wife has pointed this out like once or twice...not badgering, but more of a 'wow...that's an expensive key chain' kind of way.  There is a problem though...the colder weather on this side of the mountains has caused my ring to shrink(there are other theories, about the size of my finger changing, but this isn't Coast-to-Coast AM...look other places for those crazy ideas). 

I brought my ring into a local jewlers last week, and had it resized.  I thought about putting it on the tree, but yesterday was a pretty special day too...it was 11 years ago yesterday that my wife and I got engaged, so rather than wait, I walked in the door with it on, and told her what I had done.

There may have been slight moisture in her eyes...but I think it was the good kind.