Had the best, BEST time yesterday. J., J., J., J., and T. picked me up, as arranged, about noon and we took off for Atlantic City. The boys loved the aquarium, little T. running (he hardly ever walks) from one tank to the other, pointing excitedly and yelling "Wow!" or "Ga!" at every one. His favorite, though, was the "touch a stingray" part. (The stingers are removed from the creatures.) He wasn't so much interested in touching, as splashing in the water. He got pretty wet, but had a great time. After, at my suggestion, we drove down to Margate to see Lucy, the elephant. It was closed for the winter, but we saw the outside and I promised to take young J. back in the summer. He was also impressed by the casinos we drove past--I hadn't realized he hadn't been there before. We then checked out Longport, which often has pretty spectacular waves breaking on the rocks, but yesterday was calm.
By 4:30 or so we were all hungry. Big J. remembered passing a Japanese restaurant in Absecon and suggested we stop there. We did, and what a great choice. We ate hibachi style, marveling at all the flaring flames, knife-throwing, and fancy moves of the chef, operating right in front of us. When he squirted something from a squeeze bottle right into big J.'s mouth, I thought it was water, but he did the same with me, and I discovered it was saki! The food itself was just scrumptious. I had salmon and shared off with J. and J. some shrimp and chicken. The other J. had steak and that looked wonderful, too. The rice and vegetables were great, too. I ate every crumb, myself. (The chef, little squirt, kept calling me, "Grandma," but I'll assume that's a common term of respect for him.)
Because we had eaten early, we were home before 7:00, which was perfectly fine with me. I found ice cream in the freezer, had a bowl with butterscotch topping, and followed that with a few other goodies. I know I'll be back on the straight and narrow today, so am not worried about my pigging out. After watching some wonderfully stupid television, I went to bed and slept like a log. My respite weekend has been wonderful so far, rain or not, and I have another full day to enjoy. That old song keeps running through my head: "Lucky, lucky, lucky me...!"