Bridgey Speaks

The other day our office had a holiday lunch at a lovely place in the Strip District downtown. We were doing a white elephant gift exchange at this party, and we were all to bring $10 fun/funny presents.

I left early with a co-worker to take all the presents to the restaurant and set things up. There were at least a dozen gifts, but between the two of us, we figured out a good scheme for getting them to the car in one trip. We loaded the presents in her trunk, and we were off.

Once we parked the car, we went to the trunk to gather all the presents to take inside. We again arranged things in our arms just so. As she closed the trunk, my coworker said, “That was easy.” As I nodded in agreement, one of the presents repeated her: “That was easy.”

We stopped cold and stared at each other. “Um.” And we burst out laughing.

As we were walking from the car to the restaurant, she said she had seen these toy parrots at Cracker Barrel that would repeat what you said to them. We decided to test the theory. She held up the bag we suspected, and I loudly said, “Hello!?” at it. Nothing. We figured maybe it was too loud out on the street.

So while we were waiting for our table, we started talking to all of the presents, when the wait staff wasn’t looking, of course. “Hello,” I said to the snowman-wrapped box. “Hello,” she said to the bag with the frog on it (creative wrapping is also encouraged). Nothing.

We were totally stumped and figured we would just know and share a look when the secret was revealed. Either that, or we decided it was just a bridge troll.

Not quite half way through the gift exchange, someone chose the bag with the frog on it. She pulled out a book and a mouse pad. Then she pulled out an Easy Button and pushed it: “That was easy.”

Our eyes got huge and we started cracking up! What are the chances of that exact timing — that we would bump the button and make it talk right after those words were spoken?

As a bonus, I was relieved that no bridge trolls were following us.

Last night I decided to make a new recipe for “simple risotto.” It was simple, in fact, with very simple ingredients, directions, etc. I melted the butter and added the onions. I added the rice and the wine. I was then to add 4 cups of chicken broth to the rice, a half a cup at a time, letting the rice absorb the liquid before adding more broth. The instructions said this would take a half an hour. After half an hour, I still had about 2 cups of broth left and was starting to get really hungry!

I finally decided to ignore the “medium-low heat” directive and bumped it up to a healthy medium. Success! The risotto was actually quite good. We had seconds. I will make it again, with the annotation to the recipe to kick up the heat a little.

I mention this because I am trying out new recipes and working on beefing up my repertoire. (See what I did there?) If you have any easy, yummy gems to contribute, please do. I’ll send along the edited risotto recipe.

P.S. I spelled repertoire correctly on the first try. That is my moment of brillance for the day. Enjoy it.

Leela graduated from Kinder Puppy class this Saturday. She’s a great student, but she needs more practice before she’ll win the spelling bee. She’ll be starting Companion Dog Manners–Puppy class in January. Maybe then she’ll learn not to talk back so much.

Anyway, she clearly loves Animal Friends, the local no-kill shelter where we take the classes. When we pull into a parking space, she seems to instantly recognize the place where she gets to play with her friends and eat lots of treats. And everyone there loves her too, especially the woman at the info desk, who recognizes her and knows her name.

Leela continues to be a very sweet, smart puppy who loves to play as well as snuggle. Mojo continues to hate her.