Fancy Weekend

So I went to visit Chris this weekend and had a grand time for the following reasons...

Firstly, Friday for dinner we had fish and chips from a bag. Complemented by beer. I love fish and chips.

Saturday morning Chris made me scrambled eggs and toast and then we bundled up and went outside to build a snowman. :) That's my kind of whimsy. By the end of the weekend, no one had knocked down our snow friend or given him inappropriate body parts, so that was a win as well.

Saturday during the day we were just bums and watched cooking shows on TV, and Chris read smart articles, and we talked a lot about food. I got some time in to read more of The Fifth Head of Cerberus too.

Saturday  night we went out for uber fancy dinner at The Grey Plume. It's actually a pretty comfortable environment for a restaurant with such high end food, but I wear jeans every day and wanted to wear the awesome yellow heels I just got, so we classed it up. Most importantly, I got to check off one of my life food goals--I ate rabbit.

To make sense of our meal, the Grey Plume does two smaller portioned plates for the meals, so rabbit was my first plate. They prepared it three different ways. The leg was my favorite.  It had a hint of lemon zest and they do pureed things with it so you can dip your main item in different purees to get a variety of flavors out of one dish. They served the rabbit with black walnut, strawberry preserves, and parsnip. Oh, and part of the dish was the kidneys. I am proud for having eaten the obvious little rabbit kidneys, which actually tasted good, but which were disconcerting to eat anyway.

Chris's first plate was a butternut squash soup. The Grey Plume puts purees and other food objects in a bowl and then they pour the soup over it so that you again get a sort of food diversity from one bowl of soup. It's kind of like a treasure hunt. The things in his soup included a rubarb puree (which was my favorite complementary flavor), blood oranges, a truffle marshmallow, and a spinach puree.

My second dish was brilliant for the first couple bites, but the flavor was so rich, I felt slightly tortured by the end. It was a chicken roulade with beet puree (the beet puree being the amazing yet overwhelming part). It also had gnocchi, pearl onions, and black radish.

Chris's second plate was sturgeon, which I don't really remember because I only had one bite, and I think the beet just blocked out my sense of taste. The sturgeon was served with black trumpet mushrooms, spaghetti squash, and spaztle.

Then we both splurged on dessert. We talked about sharing dessert because we were both stuffed by this point, but when the waitress described the desserts I was suddenly sold on a dessert we hadn't planned to try, so I surprised Chris by ordering my own. It was a good thing too because he didn't really like my dessert, and I didn't really like his. He had a rum cake with lime sorbet, cola gelatins, and a vanilla tobacco mousse. I had a caramel genoise (spongecake) with parsnip ice cream, pecans, graham cracker crumbs, and a caramel vanilla mouse. Mine was a salty, creamy sweet flavor which completely appealed to my dessert flavor preferences. It was the most amazing dessert.

After dinner we went and saw The Artist. If you know me, you know I like actiony science fiction and fantasy movies. I read for mental stimulation, so I want mindless entertainment from movies, but Chris thought I might like it anyway. I was suspicious I would be bored. Surprisingly, I did like it...a lot. In fact, Chris and I stayed up really ridiculously late speculating on the significance of the film--how it deviated from mainstream film, how it captured old silent film, what it did that was new. It was a brilliant film, and as Chris put it, it gave you time to think, which might be why I liked it more than other deep films. There was plenty of room for me to think, so I didn't have to feel overwhelmed trying to catch everything and process at the same time. The time to think wasn't boring time either, the pace was still quick. I might need to see it again because I have questions and ideas I need to test in rewatching. I loved it.

This morning I was trying to read while Chris was getting his news, but I don't do well with auditory distraction, so I kept watching his news instead of reading. Then I was interrupting his news by commenting and asking questions, but he's pretty tolerant, so he put up with me. For example, I always wonder about the "jobs crisis" because I know it's not really possible to be at 0% unemployment, and I wonder how we compare to other developed countries in unemployment. (Don't get me wrong, it's a concern to me, but I think "crisis" might be a bit overdramatic.) He explained that we're still probably better off than most of Europe (not surprised) and that 5% unemployment would be a healthy rate. It's sort of the natural rate the occurs with recent graduates, people deliberately choosing to change jobs, etc. If we dip below 5% that could actually be problematic--think Japan and how young people are moving away so they have a hard time drawing people into the workforce as others retire.

So that was my weekend. It was full but had a nice amount of down time, and I got a lot of brain time in, which I miss since grad school is over and the circle of deep thinkers has been dispersed across the country.

Friday, Friday, Friday!

Oh wait. I don't know anyone in this town, and I have nothing to do. Fortunately, the book I'm reading just got interesting, so I have that. I also have the giant dish of tiramisu in my fridge. Let vegging Friday begin?

Tomorrow I plan to get up and go to the YMCA for another yoga class. Then I want to do some cleaning and laundry because I am just that cool.

On an awesome note, Mariya and Lacey will be here this weekend, and we are going to see the new underworld movie at the IMAX. That's the absolute highlight of this whole next month I think.

I also have the need to go to the library to see if they have the book Take the Cannoli  by Sarah Vowell. Christy swears she stole elements of my life for the book. I am interested to see what someone else (Christy) thinks I am like as a character and to see if I see myself the same way. Should be an intriguing self study.

Mmmm Soup...& Friends

So it was a pretty good weekend. Lindsey drove out on Friday, and we went to a local crappy bar, that has great chicken tenders and fries. We won't go there during busy bar hours, but for the dinner hour, we love it. Then we went to Mae's, our favorite local dive bar, and chilled for a while, drinking bullfrogs.

Saturday, I drove to Omaha in some unpleasant rain and then snow to visit Chris. We went to an art show(ish), then we went and saw The Descendents--it was good. Dinner was had, followed by Futurama watching and some nerdy conversation. Overall, braving the weather was a good choice.

Sunday when I got back to Juli Anna's, she had homemade chicken noodle soup on the stove. Yum!

Then I went to an open house at the new hotel with Deborah. We went to the Arts Center to look at local artists' works so that she could buy a Christmas present for a friend. We closed the afternoon with coffee.

Then I went to the store to buy a ham (they only had giant ones of the smoked variety and we didn't want brown sugar or honey ham). The ham was essential to go with the split pea soup Juli Anna made for dinner. Two homemade soups in one day. Both were awesome.

I was spoiled this weekend.

Today, I'm vegging and working on more job applications. Tomorrow is the interview. Fingers crossed.