Late dinner tonight

Got home late tonight -- very late -- because I had to make up emergency business cards for a charity event I'm catering this weekend. It's a fundraiser for our synagogue; a couple bid on my offer of a homemade meal featuring recipes from my cookbook. So I'm preparing them smoked brisket and a bunch of side dishes. Drew suggested I get business cards made up just in case someone loves the meal so much that they want to hire me for a real gig.

Anyway, I got home to find that Rachel had made a cute necklace at preschool, featuring an acorn with a smiley face on it and fuzzy orange hair. It was adorable!

At dinner I was expressing my fury over the scandal at Penn State (assistant football coach raped young boys over a 15-year period; head coach, athletic director and president responded completely ineptly. As of this writing, the legendary head coach Joe Paterno is OUT, as is the university president and others directly involved in keeping quiet. This is especially interesting to me now because I work for a university) and Drew was talking...and then Rachel said sternly, "Less talking, more eating!" We laughed, stopped talking, and finished eating.

Then Rachel wanted me to read to her. She has a new trick at night: She begs and pleads and teases, "ONE more book. No. ONE more book. ONE more book!" So, of course, I always give in, even when she started the conversation saying, "I wanna read TEN books!" We worked our way down to two, and I let her get away with a third, albeit short, book.