The Lexington Makes Wife Forget Her Shitty Job for A Magical Night

It's hard to shake off a horrible week at work sometimes, and Saturday was no different for the wife. She spent the morning in a familiar pit of "When the fuck will one of my resumes hit and get me out of this horrible job?" Her pit has the added benefit of mice and bats. She used a microphone at a meeting to tell the entire staff and administration about the mice and bats that live with her. The next day, there was a box of mouse traps in her office.

It's hard not to think it was a prank, rather than a really lazy custodian's way of dealing with the issue.

But we had plans, and I was able to talk her out of the pit to take a short nap before one of the best nights out we've had since moving here.

First, we drove over to St. Paul to the block where they filmed Grumpy Old Men. The three houses were nestled into a block with beautiful trees. The colors in Plymouth are absolutely the best I've seen anywhere in years. Seems that fall is always a bunch of yellow trees that lose their leaves with the first stiff wind. This year, with the drought, the leaves are all sorts of reds and oranges and yellows. Everywhere you look, it's like the label on an Oktoberfest bottle.

Our next stop, Fitzgerald Theatre for the Prairie Home Companion. Wife has always wanted to go to this. We had tickets for the top corner of the top balcony, which is vertigo inducing. After I walked back down to get a couple drinks, whiskey for me for some reason, and rum and diet for the wife, I walked the five million steps back to the top. The last few steps before I got to my row, I seriously wondered if my legs would give way while trying to tip toe down the row to my seat. I made it though.

The Minnesota Opera opened the show, and got us both misty eyed even though we had no idea what they were singing. It was a wonderful evening of music and drama, but the thing that oddly enough got to me the most was the program notes about the show.

After the show, we went to The Lexington, where we had our groom's dinner last December but hadn't been since. That was a serious mistake, because their food was amazing. We started the dinner with some Old Fashioneds, which were whiskey central and took one sip for the wife to get a bit loopy.

I'm good at making steaks. They look weird, but they taste better than anything I have had in a restaurant, so I don't get steaks. I got the seafood linguine, which was excellent, particularly the whitefish part of it. Wife kept reading about their steaks though, and took her chances on a steak, medium rare.

I swear, they must age their meat in a room filled with shamans and Buddhist monks who do nothing but put out positive energy, then douse the steaks in angel tears and Care Bear blood because holy Jebus Wife's steak was incredible. Absolutely incredible.

We then got this Wellington thing for desert on the house brought out by our awesome goddess of a waitress. It was a pastry wrapped around a brownie, marshmallow and melted chocolate and even though I don't care for chocolate I would sacrifice my future children for this desert maker to live with us and make us deliciousness every day. We topped it all off with some Irish coffees and called it a night.

Slight Reboot for Less Bitchin'

You may have noticed a few changes in the ol blog lately. Guess word of my blog had spread a bit to people I was not comfortable having know of it, namely wife’s employer. So after some panicked deleting and whatnot, I calmed the hell down and managed to save most of it. However, I lost most of the summer’s updates, but as they were mostly about how wife’s job took a turn for crazyville, an office she shares with mice, lice and a couple bats (really, REALLY), it was hard not to let my anger about the whole situation bleed into every piece of the writing here.

The place is horrible, and worth all the anger, particularly the many ways they circumvent things like employment laws and health codes. She had a day-long meeting of the kind they do to pretend that they listen and respond to concerns, but really don’t. However, after 30 minutes of people complaining that they don’t have access to filtered water or a fridge, wife stands up and says “Filtered water would be nice, but I would really appreciate not having to work with five mice and two bats. My students have now named them. If one of them falls out of the ceiling on me, I'm gone. No notice, I'm gone. I guess it's hard to for me to care about filtered water because of that.”  That kind of shut up all the other complaints for seeming frivolous by comparison.

But, I didn’t start this whole endeavor to become a repository for gripes about my wife’s work, and I think she feels bad when it takes over my blog. So, in a way, this is a good little partial reboot.

Time to take a breath and note the things that are going right:

I’m married to the woman of my dreams.

Phone calls from creditors has gone from 12 a day to 0.

Last week, we got to do a day trip to Red Wing. This weekend, we will be going to Prairie Home Companion for the first time. Next weekend, we will go to Duluth and the North Shore for a mini vacation.

I have a great job, and it’s only a matter of time before wife does too.

I get to be creative and write for a living.

I’ve got an amazing group of coworkers.

I get to carpool with wife nearly every day.

We have enough money to cover food, gas, bills, and rent.

I can do cute jigs for the wife, and make up new lyrics for songs on the fly as I serenade her.

Octoberfest season

Things like this Cowboy Pumpkin Duck in a Hula Skirt exist.