april 23rd late installment

so monday, april 23rd was scheduled to be an uber-relaxing, take your time waking up, totally chill out kind of day. but when i got a call from jon early in the morning that my brother-in-law had left a voicemail on his phone, sharing that he was at the hospital with my sister, the day took a turn for what any thinking person would consider "crazy."

so my sister was okay, just a bad stomach virus that made her feel something akin to contractions. but while we were visiting her at st.mary's, i got a call from our realtor who informed us that the offer we'd put in for a house had been joined by two other offers ... so to her office we'd have to go to counter our own offer.

the whole day was go-go-go, so by the time we hit late afternoon, i was desperate to get my life in order, and jon was desperate for a run. and by the time he got back to my house, it was nearly 8 pm, and neither of us were ready for an official date night (read: what's nearby?).

thank god famous dave's is so close to my house. bbq it was. we love bbq, and you can't go wrong with the baked beans or the firecracker green beans or the hot applesauce or the cornbread on the side. i was particularly pleased with my beer, berghoff's hefe-weizen blend (i think ... jon's not around right now to tell me i'm wrong, but it was light and citrusy, so i'm going to say it was a hefe regardless of being right or wrong). i never drink berghoff, but the waiter was so enthused, i couldn't pass it up. turns out he was rightly enthused. it was so fresh, so crisp, so citrusy, i'd take it over a blue moon any day. check it out when you hit up famous dave's next.

we spent the good part of the evening there, talking through our day, discussing the possibility of losing this house we'd been so excited about, and just enjoying comfort food on a day that necessitated it. we left full and happy. thanks, famous dave's.

and that was it for date night. we might have considered a movie ... if we hadn't received a call at 10:30 pm from our realtor, congratulating us on becoming homeowners.

turns out the day ended even crazier than it began :)

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.