I am a happy mendel.

Tomorrow’s my birthday, but Candice moved it to tonight. :-)
She bought me a bottle of Masi Amarone Costasera 1999, which is a
fantastic, complex wine that drives home the fact that I cannot describe
wine in text at all. Suffice to say that this is a very good wine that
I have wanted to try for quite some time and I was not disappointed.

I also got a pentapus!

Understand first that Candice has a lot of stuffed animals,
and while I don’t have a lot of stuffed animals myself I wholeheartedly
approve of the cause. During a conversation about said animals, I noted
that I wanted an octopus or squid, and that it is very hard to find
stuffed octopi and squi.

So Candice
tried to find me a stuffed octopus, but had no luck. She did
however find a beanie baby starfish named “Wish”. The interesting
thing about Wish is that he does not look like a starfish at first;
he looks like an octopus until you count his legs, of which there
are five. You can see Wish to the left there, and you must agree
that he looks awfully cephalopodean.

So I decided that he was indeed a cephalopod, but one with a
birth defect — a pentapus! And, of course, that he is named “Wish”
not because he is a starfish but because he wishes he had his remaining
three legs so he could be like all the other octopodes.

I also got an extremely nummy dinner of cheese-stuffed jumbo shell
pasta and bruschetta, and we are about to go down to the Oh So Good
dessert cafe for cake and coffee. I am a very happy mendel.

Have I mentioned how crazy I am about Candice?