Category: CREATURE FEATURES (Page 27 of 37)

Last night, as we were approaching the restaurant that my wife selected for our weekly “Date Night,” my wife began to worry that she had made a mistake. She felt a gnawing hunch that we had gone to this particular restaurant before, potentially violating one of the basic rules of the “Date Night” tradition. By definition, it has to be a different restaurant each time – no repeats. The whole purpose is to try different places, in search of favorites to recommend to others or take them to when they come to visit. Wednesday nights were originally set aside for this purpose, since at the time we were both working, so it provided a mid-week opportunity to share some time together and compare schedules. On occasion, “Date Night” was moved to Thursday nights, if a meeting or travel interfered, but for the most part it was designed to be a “Hump Day” activity for just the two of us lovers. (See Date Night Poem in Post #55). 

As others became familiar with our “Date Nights,” I would gladly share our plans, as laid-out by my wife months in advance. As we discussed last night, it started because my “favorite foodie” would collect reviews and articles related to restaurants and stick them on our refrigerator, saying “we need to try this place.” We were living in a cramped apartment in Austin, Texas at the time, so it allowed us to escape any kitchen responsibilities, and enjoy quality time together. After a few months of doing this religiously, co-workers in both of our offices began to ask where we headed on that particular Wednesday night, and I began to print a schedule, including feedback on the restaurants we had already tried. It also became a popular topic of conversation with our friends and family, as my wife continued to add to our growing list.

Just recently I inadvertently deleted the list of over 1500 different restaurants all over the world that we’ve tried in our near-20-year relationship. I do, however, as the family “diary keeper” have a record of each one we’ve been to during this time frame. Yes, I’m a bit obsessive in the interest of a poor memory that is now retired. My wife, on the other hand, remembers most of these dates, including what both of us had to eat. She’s one of these people that has a special “chip” that allows her to remember dance steps, song lyrics, and food. My diary comes in handy on those rare occasions where she can’t think of the name of a restaurant where we dined ten years ago. As you can tell from the variety and quantity of restaurants that we’ve “frequented,” we’ve always been “frequent” diners-out. As a side note, I recently secured a hard-to-get table at the French Laundry in Napa that has always been on my wife’s bucket list. We’ll get a chance to critique it in a few months.

With my wife’s eidetic memory, it surprised me when she started to doubt our dining reservation last night. Would we break our streak of new “Date Night” restaurants, and accidentally return to a repeat situation? Instead, it turned out to be just a familiar location. We had, in fact, been to the building twice before, to restaurants with different names. In this case, we’d dined there a few years ago when it was Gustav’s, and then again when it was called Small Bites. This time it had just been renamed Bistro Agnes. Gustav’s was a very good German Restaurant, but now French chefs controlled the menu. Small Bites, a short-time occupant, was comparably unmemorable. Nonetheless, our “Date Night” streak remained intact, as it also inspired a conversation about how long we’d been maintained this dining tradition.

Once we got home last night after a great meal, I consulted the diary that I’ve kept through the years. “Date Night” started over 6 years ago (5/16/2012) at a restaurant called Foreign & Domestic that still exists in Austin. For the most part, the non-returning aspect of “Date Night” is not necessary a good thing for restaurant owners. However, in this case, we did return to this particular restaurant on “Non-Date Nights,” for special occasions and a celebrity chef event. Bistro Agnes may get second life as friends come to town, although there a several such “go-to” restaurants that we’ve found in our four years here in Portland.

I’ve estimated that about 325 Wednesdays have passed since our very first “Date Night.” We’ve probably missed no more than ten weeks of doing this, if you don’t count vacations where you’re always trying new places. That means that over 310 restaurants have benefited from our dates. My weekly “Date Night” budget is $150 for the two of us, but we’ve well-exceeded that investment on many an occasion. Overall, you could say that we’ve spent in excess of $50,000 over this time period. It’s hard to believe when you put it in that perspective – all for the sake of our stomachs! In defense, I’m also glad to say that we are regular contributors to food banks and the homeless, among other important causes. 

As we were headed to Portland’s Chinese gardens yesterday morning, I started humming “China Grove,” by the Doobie Brothers. Even though we saw them perform the song a few months ago at the nearby Moda Center, I was still thinking “China Garden” and had trouble working it in to the melody, until my wife corrected me. “It’s China Grove, not China Garden….!” I’m not really sure how she ended this admonition, but this is not atypical of my memory for lyrics (or anything these days for that matter). On the other hand, she remembers every word of every song, but was just glad that I was willing to be her companion on this great outdoors adventure.

As I’ve made perfectly clear, I enjoy staying home, but she wants to be very active on her days off work and is always looking for something to do. We discussed the Coast since it was such a beautiful weekend, but were concerned about Fourth of July traffic. After we took the dogs on their walk/run and I got my 3-mile daily run in, we decided to go to the Lan Su Chinese Garden. It was on our shrinking list of Portland destinations and just a short drive from our house. She reasoned that if I took the time to visit the Lauritzen Botanical Gardens in Omaha during the rain breaks of the College World Series, then I could certainly handle one of our local gardens. She knows that I “hate nature,” but at least step outside to run for 35-40 minutes every day. It’s more than enough of the great outdoors as far as I am concerned, especially after 5 different outings every day for the dogs. I much prefer air-conditioned comfort, so it’s surprising to most people that I have a dark tan. I do put down the top on the convertible and sit on the back deck, so I’m not totally against fresh air and sunshine. We also travel at least one week every month and these adventures typically take me outside my comfort zone.

I spent several hours this morning outside on our back deck cleaning our grill and the white deck rails. My wife has done an outstanding job with her plants, trees and pots trying to provide us with a colorful garden of privacy. We lost all the tall pine trees around it last year, and it appeared naked and exposed before my wife went to work on it. I try not to take-on extra projects in my retirement, but after she served us a steak dinner out there last night I volunteered to improve the nasty look of our grimy, stainless-steel DCS. It’s easy to just put the cover over the top of it and leave the clean-up to the next time. There had been too many next-times, so it deserved my attention. As soon as I started, I began to regret that decision and slowly removed several years of grease and char. The railings surrounding it took another half-hour of me being exposed to the elements. I just wanted to sit down inside and write.

The Lan Su Chinese Garden turned out to be a nice compromise yesterday, because I got plenty of indoor time. It only took an hour-and-a-half with a slow-moving tour guide, who provided us with a lot of good information. About half-way through her enthusiastic efforts, we had to break-off on our own. We did learn that the garden is a joint effort between Portland and sister-city Suzhou, and that Chinese gardens, as opposed to Japanese, are built around homes. I could definitely relate to the fact that this design was planned for an owner who loved to stay home. He surrounded himself with elements of the forest, the mountains, and the water, so he didn’t have to travel to enjoy them. I liked his thinking! 

It was an active weekend that started with dinner with our dogs at Veggie Grill. We watched a movie at home, I Can Only Imagine, spent time with the dogs each morning, went to see Ant-Man and The Wasp at the theater, and enjoyed breakfast at Biscuits before our drive downtown to experience some Chinese philosophy as expressed in a home & garden incorporated as one. I also thought of one more song, “Garden Party,” by Ricky Nelson, but please don’t ask me to remember the words. 

I’m letting the dust settle from several “blasts from the past” over the past few days. First, I got a Facebook message from the sister of a grade school and high school friend of mine. His father was my family’s physician growing up, and we had stayed in touch up until about 20 years ago. It was great to see his picture, as it brought back many memories – good and bad. On the awkward side, I vividly remember spending the night at his house when I was very young, and being too timid to walk down the unfamiliar halls in the middle of the night to the much-needed toilet. It was not a pleasant experience to wake up in wet sheets. I’m sure his mom was livid when she discovered my little “accident.” I don’t remember being asked to come over again, but I can assure you that this has never happened again.

My friend’s younger sister, who I did not know as well, made an inaugural business trip of mine to New York City in the mid-eighties an unforgettable memory. She was Director of International Relations at the luxurious Plaza Hotel, and upgraded my reservation to a massive suite with a walk-in safe, 5-large windows overlooking Central Park, a conference table, multiple television sets, and a bathroom larger than my apartment at the time. There was oddly also an access panel to the plumbing that contained stacks of porn magazines that I doubt were supplied by hotel management. When I finally got the chance to thank her for the stellar accommodations, she apologized for being put in charge of Prince Rainier’s three-week (turns out it was actually King Rainier III) visit to the city, which totally consumed any possible free time she might have had to get together with me. She did say that his majesty was staying in a suite similar to mine on the next floor, so on my first visit to the Big Apple I was definitely treated like Royalty. She also confidentially told me that “The Prince (King)” had given her a huge cash tip and some diamond jewelry for her efforts, items that hotel policies prohibited her from accepting. I suggested that she keep the cash and turn in the jewelry, and told her that I could only afford flowers as a thank you. It’s still by far the best hotel room I’ve ever experienced. I think she followed my advice after I ran into her a few years later.

At the same time I was responding to her Facebook messages, I found some Portland area pictures posted by an old acquaintance of both my wife and I during our years in Indianapolis. I made impromptu arrangements to meet him and his wife for dinner and drinks tonight, even though I can’t really remember how we actually met. I know we were both involved in the radio business, joined Ad Club together, worked with my wife when she was with an advertising agency, and partnered with BRG Sports Marketing, the racing group I was once associated with, on some Indy 500 sponsorship deals. I’m sure we’ll uncover the root of our relationship that I think dates back to South Bend, Indiana. My wife and I have know him for a long time, but not well, so I wanted to take advantage of his coincidental time in Portland thanks to Facebook. It’s one of many re-connections that I’ve made through social media sites. (See Post #232).  

Last night, in this spontaneous flurry of messages from long-lost “pals,” I also heard from a much more recent co-worker through Linked-In who wants to get together for drinks next week. We’ve already have reunited twice since I’ve retired, but in the process of changing jobs he had not responded to a message I had sent over a month ago. The timing of his note, along with these other re-connections has been one of the joys of retirement. By the way, this all was happening while we were meeting the “boyfriend” of my wife’s daughter for the first time, another new connection in life that we hope continues. 

I’m not seeing the same people every day at the workplace anymore or doing business networking, but rather renewing past relationships and making new connections through websites like Ancestry.com and 23andme that are assisting me in solidifying family ties. My wife, someone that I do see every day, has been very supportive of both my curiosity and social nature. It keeps me busy, while reminding me that friends and family are the most important things in life, even though they may come and go like the wind.