making the best of it

yesterday was the end to a long, terrible week. there were a lot of things that really just bummed me out about last week, so instead of talking about it, i'll just talk about the lovely dinner andrew and i had last night at the george. we thought friends might want to come join us, but everyone had their own plans, so it turned into a private date-night with just the two of us, the candle-lit ambience beside a HUGE window, looking out on raleigh's downtown area, and over 2 hours of food, wine, and conversation -- just what the doctor ordered after a hard week. i tried to take pictures of the table and window, but they came out really dark... not surprising.

as an appetizer, we had spinach gouda dip accompanied by a glass of chenin blanc for me and duck rabbit milk stout for andrew. then came andrew's glass of shiraz, and caprese salads for each of us, all of that was great. andrew talked the whole night about his agility test, and now i really want to know if i would be able to do all that stuff. sounds like a fun (and difficult) challenge, especially for someone like me who has no desire to actually be a firefighter.

after salads, we ordered the tuna sashimi that came with very strange foamy stuff on top which the waitress called "lime infused" something-or-other and some dryish balls of rice with too much pepper to be asian. along with that were two glasses of pinot noir for me. two glasses because i sent the first one back because it smelled like dog poop (and i would know) and tasted even worse. andrew and i think the bottle was bad. that was followed by the other pinot noir, which didn't have a great aroma or flavor. that was sad. out of those two glasses, i probably had about 1/4th of the glass total. round two - yucky.

but that didn't stop us from round three - dessert. i wanted to order the poached pears we were all so intrigued by the last time we went, but they were no longer on the menu. they had been replaced by "milk and cookies" which was supposed to be an almond cookie confection with some kind of white chocolate liqueur. andrew and i decided to try the just plain cookies part and a chocolate concoction and split them both. that didn't happen though, because they were all out of cookies. so we just split the chocolate mousse thing, which was excellent. i got another glass of chenin blanc to go with it since my attempt at red wine there had been so unfortunate.

we sat together a little longer, chatting and enjoying the evening, before leaving to perhaps meet up with megan and her friends for a little first friday action. however, by now it was past 9, and most of the art galleries were closing down. megan didn't really know the plans for her group, so we just headed home and called it a night.

plans for the rest of the weekend include (for me anyway): working out, making a stop by the triangle rock club open house, meeting up with the carrie's birthday party crew, church tomorrow (either at vintage21 or the river with melissa), more grading for school, and perhaps some sunday evening event with jackie (though i know no details as of yet). feel free to join up for any or all of this weekend's planned events. hopefully this week will go more smoothly for me. at least it's the last week before our two-week track out. thank you, Lord.