Restaurant week, hanging out on the couch

The weekend got off to a good start Friday with a work happy hour at Breakers, a bar/pool place at the “Bavarian Monstrosity” (some still call it the Clock Tower Shopping Center). Some nice beers (hadn’t had a Blue Moon in a while), appetizers, and music (ok, I picked a bunch of songs of the jukebox). As I was leaving work to go, Jill called me and told me to eat there as she’d just picked up Five Guys. Of course I didn’t think of the double entendre until one of my coworkers pointed it out while we were playing pool. Fun, and it started early so I was home by 9 (got out at 8:30, but I stopped at Shoppers’ Food for essentials). Just watched some TV and read the paper when I got home, we were both pretty tired.

Saturday was the busy day. Jill went out and ran some errrands, and met me at Shear Pleasure, the place we go for haircuts in Reston (ever since I went there when I was working down the street, and Jill declared Blanca was the only one allowed to cut my hair from then on). We both got shorn, then went home for a couple hours before we dashed off again. It was Restaurant Week again, and we hadn’t managed to make it anywhere, but since we were going to the Birchmere, decided to stop at a participating restaurant on the way there. We decided on Sette Bello, a traditional Italian place in Clarendon (I wanted to go to Willow, but they had nothing open). It was a good choice. I tried their Restaurant Week menu, starting with polenta with braised sausage, then the pork shank ossobucco with lentils. Jill had the bean soup to start, then a mushroom pizza with a side order of steamed asparagus. She wasn’t that fond of the prosciutto on her pizza, but liked everything else – we both really liked the asparagus. My favorite was the pork, its flavor twined nicely with the lentils. For dessert we shared the prune and torrone pastry with almond ice cream that Jill compared favorably to a hot fig newton. The real treat was the almond ice cream, we nearly fought each other over that.

I’d made reservations for 4PM, so we had plenty of time to stop at the Clarendon CD Cellar for me to pick up some CDs and Jill to go next door and pick up a purse. We made it to the Birchmere about 6:30, and it was filling up fast, but we still got a decent spot. I’m not sure at this point if there’s any need to get there so early for a table and wind up eating their overpriced, bland food. We just got some drinks and waited for the show.

Apparently the set for eddie from ohio’s show was very similar to the previous night, just one song substitution. Still, it was a great set, highlighted by the return of “Tommy The Canexican” and covers of Shawn Colvin’s “I Don’t Know Why” and Lowen and Navarro’s “We Belong” (known for being covered by Pat Benatar). The opening act, Antje Duvekot, was also very good. She had a funny story about trying to play a Scrabble like game with young relatives being raised by fundamentalists, and knowing since they didn’t teach their children evolution, they probably didn’t want her using a word for a body part that rhymes with Dolores, even if it would have been a 26 point score. The best moment from efo’s show was a bachelorette party complete with a scavenger hunt which included “kiss a bald man on his head” to which Robbie reluctantly complied, while wearing the bride to be’s pink boa (Hmm… bachelor party at an efo show, that sounds familiar). We stayed up for a little bit after the show, Jill read and I wanted to see some of the NFL playoff highlights, as I hadn’t caught any of the games that day.

Sunday was my do nothing day, important on a three day weekend. Jill went out to run errands and I made pancakes and veggie sausage. I finished just in time to start watching the playoffs. We had leftover wings at halftime (sometimes it’s good to be one of the last ones leaving a happy hour) of the Pats/Chargers game. Neither game was thrilling, but both were close to the end. I’m looking forward to the conference championships next weekend. I caught up on newspapers, then watched another “Rome”.

After that, I spent the rest of the night on the computer. Some time was spent starting an eBay auction for some comics, more just hitting my regular sites, but most of the time I was looking for Dave Matthews Band songs to download. I’ve been a long standing fan since I first saw them in 1993. I was renewing my membership in Warehouse, the fan club (always a source of fantastic seats) and I stopped by antsmarching.org, the best site with news on the band. They had an article detailing the Lillywhite sessions, the story of the shelved songs that were later mostly released as Busted Stuff and were eventually leaked on the Internet. The news in there was that there was a song from the sessions, “Build You A House”, that leaked out two years ago, and I’d totally missed it, so that started a search not just for that, but other rare trax out there (I won’t download things I can buy legally, but unreleased stuff and live recordings have always been of great interest to me).

Jill was up early Monday to shadow some CRNAs with her classmate for her research project, so I slept in (since I didn’t go to sleep until after 3). She called home at one and wanted to go to Clyde’s for lunch, and I joined them. We both had the cream of crab soup, then she had the steak salad and I had a caesar salad and a reuben. We got home and Jill went upstairs to study while I worked my way through “Rome” and read the paper. Now I’m going to make a turkey dinner with turkey frozen in November – hope it still tastes good.