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Showered in Spring Dates
April was pretty grey (gray?) in Minnesota, and May was marginally better, but we welcomed spring with as many outdoor dates as possible!
I like when we can involve animals with date nights. Our first April date night had us exploring an Alpaca farm in Prior Lake called Whispering Oaks. After chatting with the owner and watching several stunning long-lashed friends in their paddock, we got to take an Alpaca for a walk (unsupervised, no less, lol). Also on the farm are chickens and donkeys and all sorts of other furry friends.
HWSNBN knows I have a thing for history — especially in the form of cemeteries (don’t judge). He found an online self-guided tour of the old Oak Hill Cemetery in Excelsior. I have always wanted to visit it, but had just driven past on my way hither and yon for the past 20 years or so. Glad to have a solid reason too get out of the car!
The tour told us about many prominent citizens and founding families buried there. I was dismayed at the awful conditions of many of the graves (a fact that was further highlighted by the contrast with the well-kept historic cemetery we visited in Boston a few weeks later. More on that in another post). Nonetheless, it is worth a walk around, especially if you are into that sort of thing, like I am.
You may have seen the footage awhile back of a drone flying around a vintage bowling alley? Well, that was at the Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis, and that was the site of a particularly fun date night. Thanks to social distancing rules, we got a set of lanes and ball return all to ourselves, with a waiter bringing yummy drinks and food.
I worried about my tennis elbow flaring up, and I did have to keep switching ball weights, but I did pretty well. We absolutely sucked at score keeping — I haven’t had to manually add up bowling scores in decades. Math does NOT belong on a date night.
But cocktails definitely DO belong on date night! For one of his picks, HWSNBN signed us up for a virtual cocktail class. We joined two other couples from other parts of the country and made three different tequila drinks, thanks to the the website Cozymeal. The class was called Tequila Cocktails with a Twist, and our Mixologist, Anthony, was great (follow him on Instagram). We made a life-changing margarita, a Paloma (I don’t dig grapefruit juice, but everyone else raved), and a Mexican Old-Fashioned. I was surprised how much I liked that last one, given it’s brown-liquor roots. But I’ll try any drink once, lol. And often twice.
When we finally got a glorious day, we struck out with resident dog Stevie Nicks and foster Ebby the Westie and enjoyed some of Minneapolis’s beauty. Everyone was out and about, loving the weather. It was so wonderful to be in a crowd of happy people again! Weddings, street musicians, prom pictures, families and friends and other “daters.” Glorious!
Some of our “dates” aren’t always official one-on-ones. Since the pandemic hit, we regularly spend time together giving platelets. Not exactly fun and games, but it IS something that we both get great satisfaction out of doing, and it’s something that helps bond us together. We’ve also done a lot mope double dating. For example, we went with a couple to a Minnesota Twins game.
Luckily, it was a great one, and we enjoyed watching the Twins shellac the Kansas City Royals after meeting up with two other couples at Fulton Beer. Another double date night? Adults night at the Minnesota Zoo for zoo babies! The zoo is always more fun with a cocktail in hand, and when you don’t have to let little kids get in front of you. Sometimes it’s fun to be selfish!
Our last two date nights of May couldn’t have been more different. For one, we attended the Oddities and Curiosities expo at the Minneapolis Convention Center. I didn’t know what to expect, except for, well some odd and curious things. We were not disappointed, lol. We thought we might find something cool for our Halloween party (which is back on this year, BTW!), but the stuff was way too weird for my guests, lol.
I mean, the beautifully framed butterflies and beetles would’ve worked, but the taxidermy two headed calf, purse made out of skin, and the mass murdered memorabilia was a bit too far off for us. The people watching was fantastic, though! No regrets going (regrets are hard to come by in my world), but I wouldn’t go again.
Last weekend we got to experience live music again for the first time since I think February 2020. We got front row seats to the Lonesome Losers show at The Hook and Ladder Theater for a Yacht Rock tribute. Almost three hours of groovy soft rock — just what the doctor ordered! Oh and the burger from the Gentleman Forager food truck was delicious!
As always, food played a prominent role in our dates.
The setting at Charlie’s on Prior made for some picturesque apres-Alpaca noshing.
For our April 14 birthday (yes, we share the day), we checked out opening night at Josefina, the new Italian place in Wayzata. The cocktails weren’t my style (too dark liquor or Aperol-bitter), but the home made pasta was a thing of beauty.
Now that Singer Girl is home for the summer, we invited her to go on one of our date nights. I’d been wanting to try the St Paul restaurant Estelle since pre-Covid, and we finally made it. Granted, it was cold and rainy and we had to sit outside, but good food, drinks and companions can compensate for pretty much anything!
All this yumminess makes me hungry — which is good, because we have dinner plans soon and I need to get ready! Hope you are having fun dating. Please let me know if you have any awesome suggestions for us to try!
(Oh: and if you haven’t already, please support my Bark in Your Park Fundraiser for Secondhand hounds! This weekend I pledged to walk 10 miles for the cause, and hopefully earn $7500 in pledges to help save more animal lives. Please donate here: https://charity.gofundme.com/o/en/campaign/stevie-nickss-landslide/donnitorres
Dated
Haven’t posted about our date nights lately, so I here goes a multi-month dump!
(For those who don’t know the background: when Singer Girl left for college in fall 2018, HWSNBN looked at me and said “we’re in a rut.” Guess dinner on the couch Netflixing wasn’t keeping the love alive. But I was exhausted from always being the planner, and fighting for something new to do. Thus the plan was hatched: we alternate planning date nights, and the other person has no say in what we do. We all know how it goes? What do you wanna do? I dunno, what do you wanna do? Let’s do this. Nah. How about that? Eh. And so on. Now we just tell the other person what to wear and when to be ready!)
We didn’t go out so much during the months that our kids were visiting (December-February), and there was one big extended date night in February that I’ll talk about in a later post. But we managed to find some moments to date, albeit pandemically. In December we did a few drive-by things, including light displays at Sovereign Estates Winery in Waconia and inflated animals at the Minnesota Zoo. TBH, the first was more interesting, while the second was underwhelming.
I was thrilled when things started opening up so we could have more options for fun. On one of my weekends, we visited the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis. I hadn’t been there since I was a field trip chaperone for my son in elementary school. This small but detailed place focuses on science and technology and is very interactive. It’s housed partially inside a beautiful old house, and is located on the shores of Lake Bde Maka Ska. We agreed this would be a stunning place to have an event. We had fun making music, watching the Mary Shelley Frankenstein exhibit, and especially going on the hunt” for hidden Lego figurines (all the figurines represented famous people in science).
Next weeked it was his pick, and we wandered the beautiful Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chanhassen. We’d never been at this time of the year. You’d think it would be boring, with nothing blooming. But it made it easier to see things, and we found areas we’d never explored before. I’m so glad I gave him a membership for Christmas. We need to go back every month to see the changes! I really loved being there with all the maple syrup harvesting!
We both love looking at homes, so for my next pick we visited several of the pricier homes on the Parade of Homes. It’s always interesting to see what people highlight in new construction. We usually found something here and there, whether it was a really cool light fixture, a second “parallel” kitchen (that was cool) behind the main one, or a stunning view. We rarely find a home that we would trade for the one we have, and that’s a good feeling.
For our last March date, HWSNBN booked us a great one. We went to REM5, a virtual reality “parlor” in St Louis Park. I went first, and found myself under the ocean, touching sea anemones and coming this close to a passing whale. He tried golf and football. Then I got back up, and attempted a cooking show. Maybe our fave one was Google Earth. Sounds dull, but we were able to fly over places we’d visited, retracing steps n favorite vacations in places like Rome. Then we “visited” Sailor Boy’s new location in Sicily. We were just about to see our childhood haunts when time ran out. Guess we have to go back!
For awhile for dinners it was takeout like the yummy spicy crispy goodness from North Coop. Or we had to eat outside, even in a Minnesota winter. It wasn’t that bad, as long as you dressed for it!
Once restaurants and bars were allowed to open their doors, we rushed in (safely, of course). Thanks for the food, fun and hospitality to the following places: Tequila Butcher, Hazelwood, Birches on the Lake, Pub 819, Constantine, and Whiskey and Soda.
How are you spending date nights? Do you have any suggestions for us? We’ve already had fun in April — with more to come! Stay tuned!
A little Ado About Everything we 