This weekend was Meghan & I’s first wedding anniversary. The year has blown by really fast, and while it’s definitely had its ups and downs, Meghan has made it a great year for me, and I couldn’t be happier.
Friday night, we decided to go out to dinner because we didn’t feel like cooking. We went to Granite City Food & Brewery, due to its convenience, and beer. Meghan had fish and chips (she was jealous of my earlier outting to Kip’s for lunch) and I had a chicken wrap. Meghan ended up sending her fish back because it was cold when it got to the table. We decided to order dessert as well, since we were celebrating, but as it turned out, they didn’t have any of our chosen dessert in stock. As a result, we ended up getting a different dessert free of charge. Woooo!
Saturday I woke up to find that Meghan had gone out and gotten coffee and apple fritters, and after enjoying our breakfast in front of the TV, we decided to start work on decorating our newly painted family room. Meghan had printed out (like 4 years ago), some photos she took on a couple trips to Duluth in 2004, so we decided to go buy frames at Ikea. Normally, we would buy the simple black frames, but the particular size and matting combination we were looking for was apparently out of stock in black. So we ended up with white frames instead. As it turns out, I think that was the better choice anyway.
After Ikea, we attempted to run another errand, but the place Meghan needed to go was closed, so we went to Best Buy instead. I’d been wanting to buy a new receiver for a while, since the one we’ve been using cuts out the right speaker at random, and doesn’t have any digital inputs (HDMI, component, etc). I had found a Sony receiver that seemed to have everything I was looking for, and I had a couple Best Buy gift certificates from my birthday. We bought the new receiver and went home to set it up.
After setting it up, I learned a couple things: HDMI pass-through is stupid, and this receiver wasn’t exactly what I wanted*.
Saturday night was our planned anniversary dinner (even though it was technically the night before our anniversary), and Meghan had made reservations at Loring Kitchen & Bar. So we got ourselves fancified and went to dinner. The restaurant was nice and we got to sit outside, which made for a romantic setting, so that was nice. We ordered appetizers (Calamari and Grilled Chorizo Meat Loaf), which is rare for us. I especially enjoyed the meat loaf. For dinner, Meghan had the Cracker Crusted Walleye (fish again ??) and I had the Hanger Steak, which, after reading the Wikipedia article, now freaks me out a little. It was tasty, though. For some reason, they brought me two steak knives to eat a steak that was already cut when they brought it to the table. We also had a side of “Fat Tire mac & cheese” which as it turns out was actually rigatoni in cheese sauce (apparently made with Fat Tire?). It was good, but not exactly what I was expecting.
All-in-all, dinner was good. We took our time and enjoyed being in the romantic atmosphere.
On the morning of our actual anniversary, I made us french toast for breakfast and we exchanged cards and gifts (“paper” anniversary-Meghan gave me a couple books, including The Zombie Survival Guide, which is basically the awesomest thing ever;). After breakfast, we hung up the frames we had bought the day before:
Hanging photos involves math, which is what makes it fun.
Then it was time to watch the football game, which as we all know, was an exciting one.
Around halftime, I decided we should try out the “anniversary beer”, which was a Belgian Trippel I had brewed over a year ago, with the intention of opening and drinking for the first time on our anniversary. I came up with this idea because in the instructions for brewing the Belgian Trippel, it suggests that the beer would benefit from aging for 6 months or so in the secondary fermenter. It failed to mention that that length of time in the fermenter will likely cause the yeast to go dormant and settle hard to the bottom. So by the time you bottle it, hardly any yeast gets into the bottle. As a result, even though I bottled the beer two months ago, our anniversary beer was barely carbonated and tasted a bit sugary. We took a couple sips and that was about it. Ah well. I’ll shake up the bottles and hopefully given more time, at least some of them will carbonate properly.
After the game was over, we decided to celebrate with cake. We had saved the top of our wedding cake, as it custom. Unfortunately, I didn’t read the directions when I put it in the freezer and had just put the box in the freezer. Apparently, we were supposed to have wrapped it after it was frozen and definitely not have frozen it in the box. Luckily, since it was encased in fondant, the cake inside was still delicious. I tasted some of the frosting on the outside of the cake and it was kind of nasty, but everything contained within the fondant was perfectly preserved and delicious. Still the best cake I’ve ever had.
After that, Meghan had to make some calls relating to her friend Naomi’s bachelorette party, so I continued reading the new Dan Brown book**. The rest of the day went as most Sundays do. Watched TV, had leftover tacos for dinner, went to bed early.
* – I decided I’m going to return the new receiver and get a different one. Apparently, since this one just passes through the HDMI signal, you still need to hook up audio to the receiver separately, which in my mind, negates the whole purpose of HDMI. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
** – The Lost Symbol, which is basically The Davinci Code, with every reference to the Holy Grail replaced with ‘Ancient Mysteries’ and any mention of Christians replaced with Masons. Still, it’s a fun read.