EuroLife: Day 115

This, by way of reminder, is our table. It is our kitchen table, our computer table, and--now--our poker table. It is not the biggest table we've ever had, but it is slowly becoming the best candidate for "all-purpose table" that I know of.

Michael and I had 3 friends over for dinner and poker last night. I made our new favorite soup and Michael made a salad and picked up some wonderful bread from a local Italian bakery. (German bread is nice, but sometimes I need something with a little more olive oil and a little less, well, density.) The soup is a carrot, sweet potato and ginger concoction that comes out of a cookbook that Moira gave me entitled "Eating for Pregnancy." (The recipe actually calls for butternut squash, but it's out of season here and unavailable so I use sweet potatoes.) After dinner, we told our guests--Tim, Timo and Laura--where I got the recipe. Then Michael implied that, having eaten the soup, they could all expect pregnancy to follow. (Timo wanted to know if this particular soup resulted in a boy, or a girl.)

Despite our table limitations, and our lack of poker chips, it was great to be playing again. Four of us played, and Laura watched to learn the game. Tim and Timo brought a variety of beer and actually brought some alcohol-free beer for me which, here in Germany, is really not bad. There was a great deal of discussion as to which beer was the lucky one. For a long time, Timo was convinced that Michael had chosen the lucky beer. Then the first round of beers ran out, and decisions had to be made. Once again, Timo chose an unlucky beer and things went poorly for him. We heard him on this phone with his girlfriend explain in a very matter of fact tone: "No, I'm out...Yeah, I chose the wrong beer." It may have been funnier in German, or in the context of the evening, but while Timo went on chatting the rest of us could not stop laughing for a while.

In the end, it was a great night. We hope it will be the first of many poker nights! And, as it turns out, I had the luckiest beer of all. Whether or not this has anything to do with the fact that my beer was nonalcoholic, I leave it to you to judge.