It being early in the year, this meant it was time for the annual Girls' Time Out with my female in-laws. The emails started flying early last week, choosing dates and making plans, and the date was finally set for today.

I'm not sure how long my female in-laws have been doing this, but they've involved me since I became a part of the family, and it's been a lot of fun. I drove down to Campbell to meet at his parents' house, where I got to interact with the very excited puppy. He keeps growing – every time we see him he's stretched out, either taller or longer than the last time. They've been working with him on some simple commands, but the excitement of someone new in the house always seems to be a little too overwhelming and there is often much leaping and licking involved in meeting him. At one point, I'd gotten up to do something, and when I sat back down the puppy shot across the room, completely airborne, launching for my face. I was licked in the eye by an extremely exuberant wiggly thing before I could calm him down and remember that I'm supposed to say 'Off' and not 'Down' (I am sure I do not help matters any by continually confusing the command words!). Here's where I am so very glad I've been doing the allergy shots. Six months ago I would have likely gone red and itchy at this sort of contact. Today I just burst out laughing and wiped the puppy spit off my face and told him he was a very good puppy.

Our first stop was Lisa's Tea Treasures, which has been the traditional gathering place for our Girls' Time Out for the past three years now. We met two other women there – coworkers of my mother-in-law – so it was a nice sized group sitting around the table. It is always a little surprising just how full you can get on a plate of tiny, bite-sized tidbits of food – tea sandwiches, mini tarts, tiny little croissants, scones with Devonshire cream, ginger cookies with lemon curd. By the time they brought out the dessert I could barely finish even half, although since it was a slice of incredibly rich and dense chocolate cake it felt almost criminal to leave so much of it behind.

Next up, a chick flick. We'd all heard great things about Sideways, so we all piled into cars and headed off to the theaters. I wasn't sure what to expect about the movie at all, but I ended up loving it. It really is a chick flick, in its own way, even though the two main characters are men. It's at times funny enough to have us laughing out loud, and at other times poignant and sad.

I think if I hadn't had to leave there might have been another hour or two after the movie of lingering and chatting and possibly more eating. But it was getting late and I had a two-hour drive still ahead of me. So we all headed back to Richard's parents' place, and we hugged our goodbyes, and I got back into my car and hit the freeway and the cruise control button, and somehow made it back home before midnight.

I was still pretty wide awake even though it was getting late, so just out of curiosity (because they told me the article might run this weekend) I went to the website of the Fairfield Daily Republic, and hey, what do you know. The article was posted. My 15 seconds of fame has come.