Seema's Most Excellent Adventure

Miss me?

Anyway, had a most fabulous weekend. I went to the Big City to the North on Friday afternoon to visit A. A is a good friend of mine - actually, we're childhood friends from Vermont and generally have been friends for our entire lives. So that makes everything just really comfortable and we are pretty easy-going when we're together because really, when you've known each other for 26 years, it's really hard to have any secrets or weird ticks the other person doesn't know about already. We also don't really ever have plans to do anything - we play everything by ear, so sometimes it's hard for us to end up somewhere.

Anyway, I got there around 6 pm on Friday. It's a three hour drive from here and I made four stops - gas, money, onion rings and Half Price books. A and I usually swap books every time we see each other and so I picked up a few on my way - paperbacks are 50 cents apiece there, so I picked up three John Grishams I hadn't read yet. BTW, it was pouring rain when I finally got to her place. Evidentally, we got four to five inches of rain that night. It was pretty miserable and I was soaking by the time I made the short distance between my car and her apartment door.

We went out for dinner, which was a story in itself. Both A and I enjoy a variety of cuisines and since we're on the same wavelength when it comes to what we will eat and what we won't, there's really no fuss when one of us suggests something. Anyway, we drove around in the swanky part of the swanky city and finally settled on a restaurant. We got out of the car and walked there and the valet who was guarding the door looked at us with a bit of disgust. A was at least wearing nice pants - she had come from work, but I was wearing jeans and we both had sneakers on. The valet told us that it was a five-star restaurant and basically turned us away. We got a good laugh out of that - we've never been turned away from a restaurant before. We figured the valets at the door must have gotten a kick out of our utter cluelessness as well.

When we go out to eat, we have some very specific criteria: no chain restaurant (mention Chili's to A and smoke comes out of her ears), must have people and must have parking (non-valet). Anyway, we finally settled on a Mediterannean cafe which fit all of our criteria and got a couple of platters to share. The food was quite good, though the hummus was a little too smooth for my taste and A didn't particularly care for the pita bread. We then had the second adventure of the night when we went to a wine bar but no one would wait on us - we realized that the wine bar had actually closed at 10 and we walked in just a few minutes later. We finished off Friday night by going to a swanky Irish Pub, where we ran into some of A's coworkers so we ended up having to stay there for a while and chat with them (because of that whole workplace mentality, y'know?). I got a glass of "sweet" white wine which wasn't so good. So we hung out there for a while and then we went to another neighborhood bar near A's place - which I preferred and which had a pretty darn good margarita as well.

Saturday, the skies looked threatening, and I checked the weather map. I had originally intended to come back on Saturday night, but the weather map showed a wide band of rain south and I had no desire to drive through that rain again. Plus, we had plans to go to the State Fair - which is apparently the biggest and the best in the country and so I figured I might as well stay Saturday night as well and just leave early in the morning. So we had a leisurely morning - watched the Top 20 Video Countdown on VH-1, and then walked to the grocery store, where we got eggs, vegetables and a few other things. A made scrambled eggs with veggies and I made homefries. Toast and salsa finished off the breakfast and we were both very, very satisfied with the meal we had made. Around 1:30, we decided that it was worth going to the State Fair - the skies didn't look so bad and we thought we'd take the chance. So we got to the Fair around 2 pm. We got really lucky with parking and ended up a block away from the fairgrounds in a free spot (both A and I have a "thing" about paying for parking, so we drive around a lot looking for free spots - we figure we can always walk the distance).

The Fair was really cool, not like the country fair we'd grown up with in Vermont. We saw several shows, including an Irish dance spectacular, a free-flying bird show (with talking parrots - Lori, you've got to teach your parrots how to sing!), African acrobats, Japanese drummers, the flag ceremony and a light/water/fireworks show. We also visited a few displays, like the JFK memorabilia exhibition, the movie exhibition, an auto exhibition and Barbie mania. We finished up with the fair around 8 pm and then headed home.

Dinner was at an Italian place - yet another family-owned one - and we then walked to Blockbuster and rented Kissing Jessica Stein which I highly recommend (but would advise you to first read the movie summary carefully before renting just in case). Watching a movie like this is always fun with a friend because you can talk about it (and I actually called the ending in the first five minutes - crazy!). But it's cute and funny and well-done, so consider that a movie rec.

Anyway, so I drove back this morning around 9:30. A wasn't up yet, but that's the other good thing about good friends - I just helped myself to breakfast and then let myself out. I'd have waited but I have a team meeting at five and have much work to do to get ready for that.