Happy Hour

I had to drive near downtown Phoenix yesterday morning to help out at my favorite local charity. I've volunteered to be their "mailer," which means I do most of the labeling, stuffing, sealing and stamping for their mailings. I love that sort of mindless work. I do some of my best thinking while my brain is loose and my hands are engaged. (I may have to embroider that on a pillow.) It's like knitting miles of stockinette stitch. You don't think, you just do.

Traffic was fairly heavy so I wasn't moving too quickly, I was looking at businesses and reading signs and I passed an interesting little bar with this sign out front ...

Happy Hour

10 am to 7 pm

Seriously? Happy hour starts at 10 o'clock in the morning? Every day of the week, too. If I'm going to drink at 10 in the morning -- do you count Kahlua in my coffee? -- then I'm going to do it in the privacy of my own home. I certainly don't need to be out in public where someone could take a picture or *gasp* a video and post it on their blog or Youtube.

I looked up the bar online (thank you, Google) and it is a gay bar. Some of my best friends and favorite relatives are gay. In fact, I've been to a gay bar and I can state with certainty that the food tastes the same and the decor is basically the same except for all the rainbows. I looked up the definition of gay and got "happily excited, merry, keenly alive, exuberant, bright, lively." And I'm starting to see a correlation here ... drinking at 10 am = merry, exuberant, lively. Anybody out there want to start their day off keenly alive and get happy with me?

And, of course, all the rules of propriety get broken on vacation. On our recent trip to New England, we had a very expensive and gay breakfast one morning in Plymouth. Here you have the breakfast of real friggin' champions ...

Line 'em up, barkeep, and keep 'em coming. And I'd like my eggs over-easy, please! This lovely breakfast -- that made my eyes water and took the edge off before it even became an edge -- was at Carmen's Cafe Nicole. I highly recommend it ...

Here's the view of the hahbah (harbor) from Cafe Nicole ...

We went on to visit the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock and I took about eleventy-million pictures ... thank God for Auto Focus on my new camera since that Bloody Mary had my eyes crossed. I'll save those photos for another day.

So back to Happy Hour. The wife of one of Hubby's friends told me once that she never ate a real meal her entire four years of college. She simply went from Happy Hour to Happy Hour and ate the cheap wings and potato skins and other bar food. I can see how that would work. I can also see how it would contribute to the Freshman 15. Yikes!

And now I had intended to get serious and talk about my favorite Happy Hour of the day, but I really can't choose just one.

I love the first hour of the morning when I'm the only one up and I brew a fresh pot of incredibly fragrant French Roast, pour myself a cup and plop down in front of the laptop to see what all of you lovelies are doing out there in blog world.

I love the hour when I prepare a nice dinner: chopping, measuring, tasting, inhaling all the goodness of my favorites, especially garlic. Have you ever seen the movie "Superstar" where Molly Shannon takes giant whiffs of her fingers (at 1:14 on the trailer)? I do that when I'm chopping garlic.

I love the hour when I can catch up on my taped Oprahs or Marthas and knit like a fiend.

I love the hour when I snuggle on the bed with Miles and Louie and a good book. Just hang out the Do Not Disturb sign. Let me apologize in advance for Miles' total lack of inhibition, but hey, when you're comfortable, you're comfortable!

I love the hour when Hubby and I have finished dinner and we take the aforementioned knuckleheads out for a refreshing walk around the neighborhood, talking about our day and looking in people's windows ... in a good way.

There are just too many Happy Hours in the day to choose the best one. =D

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