funny man's performance follows state street stroll

monday, april 16th

the evening jon planned revolved around an event i had brought to his attention weeks ago. one of our favorite authors and npr guests, david sedaris, was in town and reading at the orpheum. besides the fact that sedaris is one of the greatest storytellers i've ever heard, he's got this voice that serves as the icing on the cake. weeks prior to the show, we visited the orpheum (tickets are always cheaper at the box office than online), jon purchased our $30+ tickets which assigned us a seat in the front row of the balcony. we were pretty jazzed.

when the 16th finally rolled around, we took a walk up past the orpheum and landed at myles teddywedger's cornish pasty (that's a mouthful). i'd never had a pasty and never really intended on it (i'd also never said the name right, so maybe that was the turnoff in and of itself), but jon insisted it was time i break into this little world, and i'm glad i did.

it's one of the cheapest meals downtown - and meal, yes, is the correct word to use. we split a ground beef pasty with vegetables and i couldn't even dare to finish my portion of it. although lacking any particular smack of spice, it was salted enough to leave a taste lingering, but it gave off a vibe that this little meal could actually be healthy (i actually have no concept of the nutrional value in one of these little pasties, so don't trust me). but to split a pasty, some sodas, and a bench up at the capitol on a gorgeous night? unbeatable.

after dinner, we were craving something sweet and the night's perfect spring temps called for the first outdoor icecream of the season. and where else could we stop but the chocolate shoppe? (well, okay, there are plenty of places to stop, but the line at ben & jerry's was ridiculously long, and i think cold stone creamery is ridiculously overpriced) i ordered the espresso fudge & jon got something (c'mon, it's been two weeks! how am i supposed to remember?). delicious. we devoured them happily and arrived at the orphem with 10 minutes to spare.

and how was sedaris? hilarious. i don't know if i can do a write-up justice so long after the actual event, but i encourage you to pick up "me talk pretty one day" or any one of his other books. or just tune in to this american life - he's more or less a regular.

new and old

One of the hard things about trying to enjoy all that Madison has to offer is deciding if you want to try something new or stick with what works. This past Monday we went with both and.

We headed over toward the Willy street neighborhood where we dream of owning a home if only it were closer to work and we could actually afford that area. It is amazing the cost of homes in an area with such a hippie feel ... ah, to be a rich hippie. So instead of lusting over what we can not have, we headed over to Monty’s Blue Plate to get some food we could have.

Neither of us had been there since our college days but we both arrived with fond memories and high expectations. Monty’s seems perfect as a neighborhood or high school date hangout. The décor and sounds of a busy diner give off a comfortable, come as you are feel. So far so good.

We quickly ordered our food; Mary got the chicken in a pie and I asked for the salmon cakes. The service was friendly although the server seemed a bit stretched by the number of tables he had to cover. When the food arrived, our "A" experience dropped a couple of letter grades. The food was luke-warm and tasted as though it had been sitting under a heating lamp for far too long. It was a race to get it down before it became too cold. The gravy over the chicken in a pie overwhelmed the dish and the rice with the salmon cakes was crunchy, from either sitting out too long or being undercooked.

We were especially bummed by the less than stellar food since our memories recalled something much better. Besides, word of mouth about this place has always been good. Still, despite the disappointing meal, we decided to have dessert there since we couldn’t think of anything else close by and pie is hard to pass up. We ordered a slice of the pecan pie and a cup of coffee - both of both were better than dinner.

We then headed over to The Weary Traveler which has become one of our favorite places. Upon entering we were reminded why we love this place: good beer selection, great lighting and good service. For the remainder of the night we worked our way through a pitcher of Bell’s Oberon and played Rummikub. (For $100 dollars please leave a comment on how to correctly pronounce this game.)

bbq & bball

i think when you've committed yourself to writing up your date nights on a public blog, you have the potential of overwhelming yourself with a need to do something uber-creative for the sake of your audience (be it all 3 or 30 of you who read this). thankfully, we love each other more than we love you (though we think you're all very lovely people), so we are learning to choose dates that are right for us.

and that's just what we did last monday.

as usual, we wiped ourselves out last weekend, visiting family in eau claire, traveling up to the twin cities for a good friend's wedding, and driving back in time for work early sunday morning. so by monday, we were ready to take it easy.

date night started with a walk out to the washington hotel coffee room located on lakeside right off lake monona. we had intended to just grab coffee at cargo coffee since it's so close to my house, but for god-only-knows-why, cargo closes at a ridiculously early hour so we extended our walk for a few blocks.

neither of us is washington hotel coffee room's biggest fan. for a few reasons: 1) it's eerily quiet making conversation frowned upon, 2) we're not knitters, so we just really don't belong, and 3) if you're gonna order a sandwich, subway's really got better bang for the buck. but if you're a lakeside fibers junkie, this is the place for you. but as i said, not being knitters, we knew better than to overstay our welcome (feeling awkward anyway just daring to converse with each other in this sanctuary of silence), so we took our coffees and enjoyed the short walk back to my house.

ah yes, date night at my house. and it was excellent.

jon is the king of the BBQ, so he entertained me with a full meal including his signature fall-off-the-bone ribs. YUM. i am a very lucky woman, and will be a very lucky wife :)

the meal was an appetizer to the night's main event (though i really believe the main event proved itself to be quite unsatisfying in comparison): the ncaa men's basketball championship, florida vs. ohio state.

honestly, with wisconsin out, a girl's gotta cheer for the remaining big ten team, and oden had been growing me. and tell me who in good conscience can route for florida? really.

but we all know how the game turned out. and we all saw noah make a fool of himself on national tv. and we all wondered if florida is really concerned with turning out articulate, thoughtful, intelligent adults or if we ought to encourage high schools to scrap scholastics and focus all their energies on training a handful of potential athletes to compete for scholarships to schools who will fail to prepare their students for careers actually beneficial to the real world. okay, maybe i just wondered that.

i digress. i love college basketball. and i love ribs. and i love coffee. so here's to jon: well done, babe. good date night.

old enough?

Let me begin this week’s post with some humble advice. For those of you out there engaged or about to be engaged or for that matter ever plan on getting engaged allow me to highly recommend a short engagement. There are a number of reasons for this but as it relates to this blog I recommend this course of action because planning a wedding will HIGHLY affect your day off.

After a tiring morning and afternoon of looking at potential reception sites it was time to turn the corner and have fun. We headed over to Greenbush Bar on Regent St. We had just been there a few days ago with other members of my family only to find out that since they are a bar everyone in the party needs to either be your child, spouse or over 21. The annoying thing that night was that they first seated us and then a few minutes later asked to see our ids so we had to leave and ended up heading to Nam’s down the street for a great meal.

On Monday night we sat down without a problem next to a family with little kids and a young college couple and ordered a couple of beers. We tried to drown out all wedding conversation with a plate of garlic cheese bread that was good and would have been amazing if the marinara sauce would have not been cold and then came our garlic, pepperoni and green pepper pizza. Overall all the food and drinks were good but the service was lacking and the prior experience left me with a B- impression of Greenbush BAR.

(wrong barriques)
After dinner we headed over to Barriques on Monroe St. for a couple of loaded drinks and the chance to just sit back read, write and talk. The place was busy compared to many of our Monday night experiences and for good reason. It is a great place to get a drink with friends whether your prefer tea, coffee, beer or wine. Or you can plug into an ipod and read. Mary and I stayed there till close and thus ended another night of exploring a couple Madison’s many options.