"I didn't realize this was a sad occasion." *

* If you don't know the significance of this phrase, that's okay, just read on, and then go read the entire collected works of Mr. Lemony Snicket.  And if you know the proper response, feel free to leave it in the comments, or send it to me via crow or telegram or coded couplet.

Recently The Wife and I finally were able to re-read Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events in its entirety together.  It took a little longer than we expected (those last few books take a while to plow through), but it was great fun!  And a Vigorously Fulfilling Duty.  I have read them many times, but never all the way through, I don't think, and it was great to both be reading them at the same time so we could have Very Fun Dialogue about them together throughout.  I left lengthy reviews of all of them that can be found on my Goodreads page, so I won't go into that here.  (I also did a drawing that has some Visually Fun Details, which can be found here, with a fair few more on the way.)  But, in celebration of (finally) finishing them, as we sometimes like to do, we decided to have a Baudelaire-themed Very Fancy Dinner, which took place last night.  Some people might wonder what this could possibly include, but there are a lot of Veritable and Fancy and Delicious foods described in the books, which I will now illustrate with photographic evidence providing Veraciously Factual Documentation.

Pasta Puttanesca, Chilled Cucumber Soup, and of course aqueous martinis.

You can tell it's a Very Fancy Dinner because 1) we're eating it at the dining table, and 2) we're using champagne glasses and 3) my pinky is up.

The chef!  (Though I helped peel and grate the cucumbers.)  She's so cute.

 It was so nice and fresh and tasty!  The soup was creamy and cool (though it did require use of the blender--Aunt Josephine must have found a way around using this electrical device), and the pasta sauce was savory and a little spicy and pretty strong.  The "aqueous martinis" tasted just as you might expect they would ("Violet took a sip of her aqueous martini. She was not surprised to find that it tasted like plain water, with a slight hint of olive." -- The Ersatz Elevator), and one glass was just enough, no matter how in they are.  We opted out of trying to find or make parsley sodas.  Afer it all we even had some makeshift peppermints for dessert, though we didn't experience any allergic side-effects.  It was a Victorious Family Denouement to our reading journey.

And this is my best Lemony Snicket impression.

I think Julie's is even better.

Beware of realtors.  Memento Mori.  He who hesitates is lost.  (Or she.)  Have a heart-shaped balloon.