Weekend Things

Lauren2 Comments

I’m hardly a Taylor Swift fan, but sometimes life is so good that all I can think to say is “today was a fairytale.”  Because sweat pants are extra comfy on a Friday night, avocados are at their creamy dreamiest, the Whole Foods kombucha section is stacked, Sloan’s Lake is a beauty, friends are throwing BBQs and picking the coolest new breweries to try, five mile runs don’t even feel like work and I’m totally motivated to make our yard look clean and cute.

It’s the little things, ya know?

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Welcome to married life.  Where you leave work early on a Friday to go look at River Rock and make your weekly Whole Foods stop.  For whatever reason, I find myself suddenly really into cleaning up our front yard.  Like the whole manual labor thing even!  Who am I?

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Avocados are the best right now, aren’t they?  They make taco leftovers taste extra good.  They don’t make The Wire any better though… I wanna pretend I’m enjoying the final season of this show, but instead, I extra dislike it.  Oh and we finished The Amazing Race.  The contestants had to catch a football in the end zone at AT&T Stadium and I got sweaty just thinking about how long that would probably take me.

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Night cap!  We literally check the freezer section every week for The Tonight Dough and it’s either not even carried or out.  Lori snagged the last two pints last week and surprised us with one on Thursday night.  Continuing to earn her “Best Mother-in-Law” title.  Guys, the hype is for real.  And that’s it for this week’s episode of “Admitting You Had a Boring Friday Night and Liked It.”

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We started Saturday at a walk for Cystic Fibrosis.  Mother Nature gave us a beautiful morning at Sloan’s Lake.  It was our first time there too!  Afterwards, our team leaders hosted a BBQ for the team.  They live a few blocks from us and just re-did their backyard so I got some extra motivation to get ours done.  Post-nap, we headed to Joey’s cousin Chelsea’s college graduation party.  She had quite the Mexican spread.  Tamale snack for the win!

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Saturday night dinner + drinks, followed by beer + Scrabble with Hannah and Josh, who, get this, we hadn’t seen in EIGHT WEEKS.  Unacceptable!  I have this weird fear of games (I do not like being on the spot!) but agreed to a game of Scrabble and actually won.  I think it was my play of SQUEAK with Q on a triple letter score that did it.

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Sunday: woke up, ran 5 miles (that Bolder Boulder is next Monday!), refueled with iced coffee, bought gardening gloves (that my finger broke through the seam of moments after putting them on…) and got to work.  I don’t know if it was that running victory, the bluebird sky or the caffeine buzz but I kinda liked the shoveling and sweeping and sweating.  The front section is ready for stone and sod.  Or something.

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Ended Sunday like the rest of America, watching Mad Men.  What’d everyone think??  I’ll resist any spoilers and just say something seemed kind of off to me.  For me, it wasn’t a satisfying ending.  Though it was leaps and bounds better than the Dexter or HIMYM finales.

Happy Monday!

Dinner at Ophelia’s

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Sometimes you plan on going on a run after work but then it rains.

Sometimes you plan on staying up to watch the Rockies game but then you can’t keep your eyes open past 9:30.

Sometimes you plan on posting a glowing review of the new restaurant you went to but the experience turns out to be less than glowing.

What can you do but press on?

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Joey and I’s 8 year dating anniversary was last night and I’m not sure what the rules are for anniversary celebrations after you get married.  Do you stop celebrating the dating one and start celebrating the wedding one?  Do you kinda celebrate one and really celebrate the other?  Do you continue celebrating both because you’ll take any excuse to go out to dinner?  Yeah, I think I’ll stick with that last one.

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Ya know how I’m head over heels in love with Linger and Root Down?  Well they just opened a sister restaurant called Ophelia’s in a building that used to be a brothel.  I booked a res as soon as the restaurant opened a few months ago, figuring it’d be the perfect spot for an intimate anniversary dinner.  First stop, cocktails!  When in doubt, order the cocktail with ginger beer.

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Second stop, cheese!  We split two starters to… uh start.  The first being Peppadew Poppers, stuffed with cream cheese and served with cheese curds, a blood orange marmalade and mustard dipping sauces.  Uh yes please.  It worked out perfectly because Joey was so into the peppers and I was so into the cheese curds.  Also, we got a huge kick out of that tiny fry basket.

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You know what this meal could use?  More cheese!  This is the Spring Cheese Incident and it gets my vote for puniest dish name and my vote for best thing we ate.  Basically, it was a skillet of melty cheese with asparagus, tomatoes, zucchini and almonds on top plus pita for dipping.  Though we totally just dug our forks in it too.

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For the main event, we split the Wagyu Beef Sliders and the Bolognese, Mozzarella, Roasted Carrots & Basil Flatbread.  We both thought the beef sliders were just okay.  I actually compared them to White Castle sliders which might be good and might be bad depending on who you are 😛  But I did love the flatbread.  Who knew roasted carrots went so well on a pizza?

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For dessert, we each ordered a Smoked Salt Caramel.  A dessert for those of us who are so full but find it incredibly difficult to pass up a post-dinner sweet treat.  These were teeny so it was the perfect bite at the end of the meal without putting you over the fullness brink.  Also, we were like “do we eat these petals?”

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While the food was all phenomenal (and we actually liked it better than the food at both Root Down and Linger — what?!), there were a handful of service-related disappointments that really added up.  Maybe they were new restaurant kinks, maybe I’m hard to please or maybe it was all just a fluke but I expected more from this place.  I’m sure we’ll be back but maybe I’ll just set my standards a little lower next time.