the long-awaited weekend post

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This weekend was Ben's and my third anniversary. Wow! He came to see me Friday night, which was nice because I was totally exhausted and stressed out. Unfortunately Ben was a little sick! We stopped by Marie Callender's and I got a piece of Boston Cream Pie and cornbread to go. I gave him his anniversary presents which I had bought earlier that evening -- in particular, a fluffly fleece blanket, a pair of soft pajama pants, a little book of 401 fun facts about dogs, and a food thingy with sausage and cheese. Went to bed early :)

Saturday morning we woke up kind of early and got up. I went to get my hair cut at a salon in the minimall at Claremont and Foothill called 582 East. Ben walked me over and we stopped on the way at Starbucks and had some breakfast (muffin, croissant, scone). I had an appointment at 10:00 with Anna, and Anna turned out to be late and kind of (okay, very) ditzy. For the most part I really liked the salon. I do think that if I go there again it might be a good idea to get someone other than Anna to cut my hair!

Her first attempt was sort of failed. It looked really strange. However, with poking and prodding and lots of snipping, over the course of another 40 minutes or so it turned out okay. I think it will look fine when I blow-dry it myself. She did show me some cool de-frizzing lotion that Aveda sells that I'm thinking about trying out sometime.

I came back and showed my hair to Ben, then we did my laundry. I despise doing laundry. I really really hate it. So I was grumpy for the rest of the day because I had to do the laundry and it took sooooooo long! Finally, once the laundry was all done, we went to Long Beach. I had wanted to go out somewhere during the afternoon, but we didn't get to LB until 4, and Ben was still feeling kind of sick, so we went back to his place and had tea. Ben gave me my anniversary presents! He gave me a Bath and Bodyworks gift set with ginger scented lotion, candle, body cream, and shower foam, and also the little sampler set of their other new line of products! He also gave me a box of cherry cordials from See's candies! :D However, most of my present from him was our lovely dinner! :D :D :D

We got dressed up and everything and headed to The Sky Room where we had a dinner reservation for 7:00. The place is at the top of a retirement home that was originally a fancy hotel. It has the whole floor and windows on all possible surfaces, so it has gorgeous views of the harbor and of the city, addition to having a dance floor and a live swing band! We went in the private entrance and a guy in a suit showed us to the elevator. They had an elevator man (also in a suit) who pushed the buttons to take us up to the top floor.

A lady in pink led us to a window table (almost all tables are window tables) with a view of the ocean and part of the city (we could see the oil islands and the Belmot Pier). A waiter came by and gave us the wine list.

After mulling over the wine list for a while, we decided to get a half-bottle of champagne to celebrate our anniversary. We ordered the champagne, and the waiter came and gave us champagne flutes, then poured it for us. We relaxed and enjoyed the view while sipping for a while. The waiter came around again and asked if we wanted to see a menu or if we wanted to wait a little longer, and we told him we'd like to wait a little longer. We chatted and looked at the view and sipped champagne for a while, then he came back and gave us menus.

We ordered the four-course tasting menu with wine pairings, which basically gave us small portions of four different courses and about a third of a glass of wine with each course.

The first course was butternut squash ravioli, which was very tasty! It came with a sweet white wine and I have completely forgotten the names of all the wines (partially because they went by quickly, partially because I am not that familiar with wines, and partially because I was kind of out of it after drinking so much champagne and wine). The dish came with two ravioli on it, topped with parmesan cheese (slices of it) and some very tasty sauce.

The second course was skate wings with beluga lentil salad. Since it was the tasting menu, it was really skate wing, but . . . In case you don't know, a skate is a kind of stingray-like sea creature. Ben was kind of weirded out because we always pet the rays at the aquarium in the touch pool and they're really adorable, so it was unnerving to eat one. Moving past that though, it was pretty tasty and the texture and taste were pretty similar to fish (at least, it was more similar to fish than to stuff like crab or lobster). I'm unclear why the lentil salad was "beluga" lentil salad, but my guess is that it maybe had beluga caviar in it, because that was also on their menu. The wine for this course was a drier white wine.

The third course -- the "main course" -- was Muscovy duck breast, with red cabbage and fig. Again, since this was the tasting menu, it was only about half a duck breast. It was really good! The red cabbage was spicy -- I never really had red cabbage before. It came with a baked black fig that was also delicious. The wine was a red wine and all I remember is that he said it was "easy to drink."

We had a nice long break before the dessert, partially because their pastry chef screwed up, but that's okay because I didn't mind spending more time there. After drinking all that wine, a few trips to the restroom were in order! In the women's restroom there was this big statue of a Dick Tracy-like detective with a drawn gun! There was also a gorgeous view, and some interesting erotic art. According to Ben, the men's bathroom had a statue of Marilyn Monroe and more erotic art than the women's bathroom had.

I convinced Ben to dance with me for a little bit, which was very nice!

Eventually, they brought the dessert (another reason I was glad it took so long was that it gave me a chance to sober up somewhat!). This course was basically a sampler of the desserts that they have, and it included a chocolate souffle, creme brulee, a chocolate mousse-type thing, and a sort of cheescakey chocolate thing that was made with some sort of liquor (I forgot which) that made it vaguely orangey. This one came with two wines (so we had to share them) -- a red wine that went with the chocolate souffle and a white wine that went with the creme brulee. Again, very tasty!

We sat around a little longer after eating dessert, and it started raining outside. Luckily, by the time we actually left the rain had pretty much stopped! We walked back to Ben's apartment and went to sleep. We had spent a whole three hours eating dinner!!



Sunday, Ben and I got up bright and early so he could drive me back to school so I could catch the hum field trip leaving at 9:45. Luckily, we had gone to sleep at like 10:30, so it wasn't hard to get up early! The trip was interesting -- we mostly drove around Jewish parts of LA and formerly Jewish parts of LA, though it was kind of hard to see from the back of the van. We went to Cantor's deli for lunch, which was nowhere near as good as Langer's IMO, and possibly not even as good as Brent's in the Valley. However, I managed to pick up some chocolate macaroons, which made me happy!

It was kind of interesting to see old synagogues converted into churches and stuff like that, and it was also interesting to see the huge active synagogue we went into.

The trip was pretty fun -- I chatted with Jason in the back of the van and once again realized how much better I get along with gay men than with straight men (in terms of being friends) and even better than many women. Anyway, it was an interesting ride through a lot of LA that I'd seen before and a lot of LA that I hadn't seen before.

Though I have to say, if you're going to go to a deli, make it Langer's instead of Cantor's.


Whew! Anyway, now back to working on my hum proposal. Wow, it's really exciting that for once I don't have to be at orchestra for the full 2.5 hours! I can't play the Vivaldi because the friday noon concert is a day I'm going on a clinic site visit, and that takes up the first half hour of rehearsal.

Grad school stuff is coming along -- I'm almost completely done with my application to Brown (recs need to be sent and I requested transcripts but they haven't been sent yet), and as soon as USC's online PhD app is back up I can finish that up too. This morning I ordered GRE score reports for everything I'm applying to, so now I just need to get the rest of my apps done. Next up after USC: Berkeley, MIT, UT. After that, CMU and UMass, then the NDSEG fellowship, and finally CWRU. I'd like to get them all done ASAP so that they can start considering my applications earlier.