"Fun Time is Over . . ."

. . . for now, at least. :)

Back to life, back to reality!

OK, enough cheesy song lyrics. Dan and I had a GREAT "28 hours of fun!" Friday night, Dan picked me up from work and we went to Saigon on University avenue for excellent, CHEAP banh mi. I ordered vegetarian spring rolls and a fried tofu banh mi (complete with spicy mayo!) and Dan ordered a small chicken pho, a pork banh mi, and an iced tea, and our entire bill came to around $16. CHEAP! It's an amazing thing, being able to go out to eat and gorge yourself silly with your partner for under twenty bucks, including tip!

After dinner, we stopped in at the Wedge and picked up dessert -- Dan had a piece of blood orange mousse cake, and I had a slice of chocolate cake layered with mocha buttercream. (Shout out to my mom, who always had "mocha torte" for her birthday cake. This slice was very similar, but sadly, not topped with chocolate-covered espresso beans.)

After dessert, we bundled up and walked over to First Avenue, where we were luckily on the list to see a friend's band play. They were great! While their music wasn't really my thing, all of the guys looked like they were having a blast, which for me, always trumps the music anyway. Tired people that we were, we left right after their set and were back home (and warm!) by 10 pm.

Yesterday, "fun time" was briefly interrupted by a couple of errands, (picking up meds for the cat at the vet, ordering a book at Magers and Quinn, getting Dan a flu shot,) before we hit the Uptown Diner for brunch. I had a half-order of the "Veggie Tex Mex," which was covered with way too much salsa, but still awesome.

After brunch, we saw the Shaw Collection of Native American Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which was neat! They had the pieces organized in different rooms by region, and had huge, floor-to-ceiling photos of the landscape in each room, which really helped put the art in context. One of my favorite displays was a pair of hand rattles used in dance by the Inuit.

After the art museum, we chilled at home and had leftover black bean burgers for dinner, before heading over to the Theatre in the Round to see "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean." We had a two-for-one coupon, (I LOVE being on their mailing list!), and the play was excellent. From the description it sounded like it would be sort of goofy and quirky, but it was much more serious and intense than I was expecting. A great play and well-acted, too!

So yes, fun time is over. All sorts of errands and laundry and cleaning and whatnot to get done today . . . blah. But it will be worth it! We had a great time relaxing and doing fun stuff during the last day and a half, and thankfully, this tradition will continue, at least into next weekend!

What are we up to? Well . . . since it's a 3-day weekend, we reserved a camper-cabin at a state park for some skiing, snowshoeing, and relaxation! Wahoo! We're going to take books and board games and maybe even the laptop with speakers, so we can watch a movie. :) The only drawback is that there is no cooking allowed inside the cabins, except for Crock Pots and coffee makers. (I'm thinking an electric teakettle is OK? We can't NOT have hot water!) So, I'm going to be taking instant oatmeal for breakfast and some kind of soup in the Crock Pot for us to eat off over the couple of days that we are there, plus probably Pioneer Woman's Cheese Muffins, since cold weather calls for extra calories, right? :) I don't really feel like making chili again, since I kind of burned myself out on chili over the holidays, and the only other soup that is coming to mind is lentil, for some reason. Anyone have any awesome suggestions for an amazing soup we could take with us that would serve us several meals? (I'm making minestrone this week, so that's out, too, unfortunately.)

Off to flip through Love Soup in hopes of finding some amazing recipe I'm just not thinking of!