Date Nights
---------------
We're trying to have a date night a month. I am forgetting too many details about them.. I should have written about them right after.
The best date night was our first date night (our Anniversary) in September. It was a Wednesday night, and we went to the Macao Trading Company and then the Comedy Cellar. The food at Macao was good. Good enough that my husband wanted to go back sometime, and he almost never likes a restaurant well enough for a second try. The Comedy Cellar had Sean Donnelly as the MC. He was great. There were some nerds who did machine learning in the audience, and he worked on them.. so "what is that? what do you actually do?" .. the guy was acting like "it's above your intellect". I got so upset (being a machine learning researcher myself) that I yelled out "It's like artificial intelligence.", knowing that the MC would be more familiar with that term. He said "you insulting my intelligence?" Marina Franklin was a pop-in. She had funny lines about... my boyfriend said "I'm mad, I'm going to the other room." and she was like "Wow, he's so rich, he has another room?" Us just moving to NYC, that hit the spot. Judah Friedlander, Rachel Feinstein, and others were very good too. To walk from Tribeca to the Village, we went through the art galleries in Soho -- very nice walk.
October -- I told my husband that he picked what we were going to do. And of course, he won't plan or pick. So, we ended up walking around Chinatown. We walked back and ended up going to Tertulia in the Village. It was OK.. nothing to write home about.
November -- I hosted Thanksgiving at our place in Philadelphia for 27 people and had hoards of family in and out of town. P.S. no date night
December -- We went to the Google Holiday Party. Needless to say, the extravagance was unbelievable. Too bad, we were so tired because it was in the middle of the week. But the food was outstanding with almost every room with a different theme... lobster bisque, sushi, duck pate "cherries", chocolate mousse in the shape of a shoe. Dancers on stilts. Fabio (which we didn't see because the room was too crowded). Weird performance artists -- one doing "free insults". I should have blogged about this after we did it because I lost too much of the senory overload.
January -- So, I originally scheduled my birthday outing the afternoon of the big 2016 snow blizzard. I booked the Colin Quinn -- the New York Story and a reservation at "The Catch" restaurant. P.S. by noon that day, the restaurant and babysitter canceled on me because De Blasio enacted a travel ban. Then I had to hunt online and found the play was canceled. Had to rebook everything for the next weekend -- fun. Needless, we did go out to dinner that weekend to Korean BBQ in Koreatown, that was really good and fun with the kids. Next weekend, we went to Catch and the Colin Quinn thing. Catch was great. Got the Lobster Bisque, mashed potatoes with Lobster, and I forget what else. The lobster was the most memorable.... because they're really big into giving you lots of claw. It was a good, very pricey but hey, we do this once every two months? Colin Quinn was ok. A favorite was when he talked about how when New Yorkers ask a question, it's more like "questioning by interrogation"... "Where'd you get that donut?" in an accusatory tone. What turned me off is he went on some "we live in too sensitive of a society" Seinfeld-esque rant at the end, where he said that it was the good old days when the black bus driver would yell about the white man being the devil and they could rile him up and laugh about it. OK.. that's funny for them, but was it funny for the bus driver? It's ok to be insensitive sometimes but to note that you are being wrong. I think the sanctimonious, why can't people be racist because it's funny just doesn't work anymore.
March -- Caroline's and Lupulo
So, February was too crazy. I finished up 3 proposals that I had been working on, we went to Florida during the school break, then I went to Rio de Janeiro for work, then I got the flu (which lasted a whole week). After all of that, I was so beat, that I haven't worked on proposals since. So, we couldn't really fit in a date night then. So, I was eager to see a Broadway play, but hubby and I just cannot choose which one "American Psycho"... too dark for him, Book of Mormon .. we already saw in Philly, Hamilton... not paying $1000 for tix, ... maybe eventually "Something Rotten" or something else... but right now, we couldn't decide. So, hubby said "How about a Comedy Club again!" so I wanted to try something new so we did a Caroline's "Brunch". I thought it would be all old farts like us. But I guess the comedians on the bill were young, so it ended up being all 20-something women at the brunch. If a guy was there, it was because their girlfriend dragged them (husband for me). The guy asked us how long we had been together... "I was like 'oh gawd...'" and he made some "too many blowjobs" joke. Oh well.. what it is to be young again! It was all jews and some Fox News girl. They were all ok.. some more engaging than others... but nothing could top our Comedy Cellar experience. After that, we walked all the way back and I had made reservations at Lupulo (hops in Portuguese). I had the Acorda and something else and hubby had the piri-piri chicken. The acorda had something missing.. it wasn't velvety like in Portugal.. it tasted like they forgot to put olive oil in and it really was just "mushy bread", which is what I call it anyway. Hubby was disappointed with piri-piri chicken, which didn't have much salt (to our suprise.. being portuguese.. but they way underdid that...)
April -- PS340 Fundraiser
We took the first crack at free time in Spring to use the babysitter time to walk to Hell's Kitchen from Chelsea. It was a nice walking, seeing the theater district and all. We took away paintings and tutoring lessons from the fundraiser.
April -- Macao Trading Company and Tribeca Film Festival (Special Correspondents)
Before being married, we used to see all sorts of foreign films. Now, we're just happy to be out and wanted to see a comedy. Only after I signed us up did I notice that this would be on Netflix the week after. I have to admit that it was way more fun with a live audience, laughing. The Macao Trading Company was great like always -- we had the fried rice -- I had the fish does asian style and the hubby had his favorite, the African chicken. He loved the fried rice, even with bacon and all... and it had an egg on top, done Portuguese style. This is his fave restaurant in all of Manhattan by far... since it's done well. Then we saw the movie -- It started with fuzzy audio and Ricky Gervais came out swearing, then it was a fun evening. Too short.
