Date Night

Today Susan and I are celebrating 17 years of marriage.  We had a big party last week (remember?), and it included our kids; so tonight was a kids-free evening in the form of a date: supper and a movie for just the two of us.

Back when I made tonight's reservation for us at the BrickHouse Grille, I let them know that it was for our anniversary.  So when we arrived this evening and I told the hostess my name, she wished us both a happy anniversary!  We had a delicious meal.

I ordered a bottle of Zinfandel for us to share, and we sampled each other's appetizer, too: a crab cake with corn relish and lemon crème fraiche for her and a bowl of borscht for me.  The server also brought us bread and a plate of seasoned olive oil for dipping.

For our salads, Susan and I each selected bleu cheese dressing.  For the main course, she ordered grilled hamachi (a tasty fish) with angel hair pasta in a lemon cream sauce, and I ordered cioppino, a seafood stew with ahi tuna, scallops, shrimp, clams, and calamari in a thick, tomato-based broth.

For dessert we shared a rich crème brûlée topped with blueberries and a strawberry, and we each had a dessert drink: a scotcheroo for her (a coffee drink with butterscotch liqueur) and a brandy Alexander for me (which came with a scoop of vanilla ice cream floating in it).  Faithful Reader, do you remember my having praised the BrickHouse Grille when we ate there for Susan's birthday several months ago?  Yeah, still feel the same way about the place: it's great.

Then I took Susan to a movie: we saw  Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.  It was a very stylized movie with one foot in the world of reality and the other in the world of fantasy.  When twentysomething Scott falls for Ramona, her seven exes react to the new relationship by forcing Scott to battle them one by one.  And by "battle," I mean "fight in a hyper-violent, videogame-inspired manner, including the use of apparent superpowers and/or weapons in mortal combat."  The movie doesn't take itself too seriously, so we could enjoy the special effects and the silliness of the battles (e.g., onlookers who react as though nothing unusual is happening as Scott and an ex leap at each other and engage in a fistfight while hovering in midair above the floor of a dance club).  And it's all rooted in the very real situation of falling in love and making discoveries about yourself and the object of your love as you overcome the hardships that are a part of establishing a relationship (albeit comic-book-style hardships).

When we got home, we opened a bottle of Moscato and looked through our wedding scrapbook and photo albums from our dating days and our early years of marriage.  I would assert that our hairstyles and wardrobes have evolved for the better since the early 1990s (which, style-wise, were a lot like the late 1980s).  Also since then, we have weathered hardships (e.g., the deaths of both our mothers) and celebrated joys (e.g., the births of our three daughters) and lived a very blessed life because of our having one another.  This evening was a terrific way to remember that.