Date Nights

Three very different date nights:

Thursday, while technically NOT a typical date night our original plans disappointingly fell through and we were on our own for entertainment.  Lucy was in a remarkably cheery mood until about 7pm when we put her to bed. Jason and I cobbled together a dinner of bbq'd red meat and left over chicken and pasta.  We sat down with a bottle of a new favorite "drinkin'" wine CMS ($9.99 @ costco) and talked for hours.  The topics varied from Lucy management, planning of the families arrival for next weekend's baptism extravaganza, follow up on a 'challenging' discussion from earlier in the week (sometimes you have to clarify the difference between what you hear and what was actually said) and 'did I ever tell you' stories.

Our time together is pretty much always good, but this night felt especially date-ish.  The business of the day was done and we just were together.  NICE.

the wine tower @ Purple

Friday, Auntie Jody and her new, wonderful man came over to hang out with Lucy while Jason and I zipped downtown for dinner and the Symphony.  While I did go through the list of emergency numbers and re-told her where everything was my confidence in leaving Lucy was high.  Jody is awesome with kids and she's in love with Lucy (maybe we all are) so you know that Lucy couldn't help but be a happy, sweet thing.  Well I know that those two things are unrelated, but it is a nice theory. 

Thanks to a still not recovered economy Jason and I were able to get into our favorite pre-symphony restaurant, Purple,  without a reservation. We strayed from our normal appetizer (three cheese platter) and went kooky with a selection of a baked brie.  True, we didn't stray very far... we're a couple of wild and free people.   While we dined we noticed that most of the wait staff shared a common trait.  No, not big boobs - that would usually be a safe bet but at Purple we noticed that most of the wait staff were, um...how to be delicate...'designed to never bump their heads on low clearance items.'  Yes, I'm saying that if you're over 5 feet 5 inches tall, Purple in downtown Seattle might not want you on their team.  At one point I saw a wait person scaling their wall of wine to get to a shelf that even I could reach.  Meanwhile, the song "We represent the Lollipop Guild..." was swimming around in my head.

The reason I won't see you in heaven.

After dinner we walked down to Benaroya Hall and took our most excellent seats and enjoyed a tribute to Barbara Streisand. Marvin Hamlish, the conductor of the Pops Symphony season has not only worked with Ms. Streisand but was an integral part of her first (of many) come back shows in Las Vegas. 


He composed the opening number to the show and said it was designed to enhance audience excitement as key selections of her most known songs meshed together until Babs came out onto the stage and gave the audience what they had paid (literally) thousands of dollars to see.  As the Seattle Symphony played the tune at the moment when in Las Vegas Barbara Streisand would have walked to onto the stage Marvin Hamlish pointed dramatically to the stage door and then pointed as the spotlight moved across to the microphone.  It was if an imaginary Barbara had entered and took her spot.  The audience cheered. Very funny.


There was a vocalist for many of the songs and she was quite good in spite of being very much affected by our lovely Seattle allergens.  After the intermission a different performer came out as Barbara herself.  She was quite lovely and sounded great, but her song was one of Bab's many duets and it was confusing how that would be handled until "she" started singing both parts and the male part was just a tad bit more natural sounding.    It was a riot.

The sweet (old) couple behind us were confused at the end of the show when all the performers took their bow and Stephen Somebody came out in a tuxedo.  "Who is that guy?"  But when the original vocalist and Stephen both sang Barbara parts sounding VERY Barbara you could feel the light of understanding go on behind us.  "Wait...that woman was a man."    Tee Hee


We were home by 11 and in bed and asleep by 11:15.  Happy night on the town.

Saturday, we again waited for Lucy to go to bed before we made dinner.  (A super yummy Shrimp Scampi)  Instead of lingering over our plates we decided to quickly clean up and start a movie.  The movie played, I watched the whole thing while Mr. "I don't ever need a nap" watched it with his eyes closed. As an aside, he has an amazing skill in bed that I'm going to share with you.   Don't worry it's not related to THAT, but he can be in bed with me we're watching a tv show and even though he's sleeping through the content of the show he is alert enough to hear the commercial breaks and he'll wake up just long enough to fast forward through them for me.  I can do this myself, but if he falls asleep with the remote in his hand he'll do it through at least one sixty minute program.  So cute.  Back to our date night, the movie thankfully ended (Just Go With It was mildly amusing and maybe worth the $1 rental fee) and we moved our operation upstairs.  I popped into Lucy's room to find her awake an needing a feeding, Jason offered to do it, but I could see he wasn't long for our world.  I told him I'd take care of it and by the time I got back to our room, a mere 20 minutes later the lights were off and my boy was snoring.    The time...10:15pm  I know, you're envious of our rock n' roll life.


So there you go, detailed insight into three different date nights at our house.