Grownup Dinner (or Seeing A Gym Friend Outside Of The Gym)

Even though several of my plans over the weekend had ended up not happening, the one thing that didn’t get rescheduled was my dinner on Monday evening. I had dinner plans to hang out with my friend Dani.

Dani and I pretty much see each other every week at Orangetheory, but it’s not that often that we see each other outside of workouts. We see each other for our Pantages shows (although she didn’t come with me to “The Illusionists”) and we also sometimes hang out like at her birthday party or at the Disney musical show. But usually our hangouts are at the gym and we catch up on life before class starts.

So when Dani asked me if I wanted to get dinner with her on Monday night, I was super excited to get to hang out with her! She suggested a restaurant in downtown Culver City and it worked perfectly for me. Downtown Culver City is only a few blocks from my house. And since the clocks changed it was still pretty light out when I was leaving for dinner at 7pm. So I took advantage of the late sunlight and walked to dinner.

I don’t walk to restaurants in downtown Culver City too often because I don’t walk home at night alone. But Dani said she could drive me home after dinner, so I was able to walk there (and get in a bunch of steps for the day).

We met for dinner at Akasha. I had been there before, but I hadn’t been there in a long time so I was excited to go again. When we got there, we went to the hostess stand to get a table and found out that since we didn’t make a reservation it was going to be over an hour wait! I couldn’t believe it because it was a Monday and so many tables in the restaurant were empty. But since we didn’t want to wait that long we found seats at the bar to eat there (the entire menu is available at the bar so that’s good).

As soon as we got our seats at the bar, the first order of business was ordering drinks. I don’t drink that often (I can’t because of taking Vyvanse), but I can have a couple of drinks a month if I want to. I haven’t had a drink in a while, so I figured that getting a glass of prosecco would be nice (I ended up only being able to drink about half of the glass). Dani and I kept joking that this was a grownup dinner since we were in normal clothes and not gross and sweaty after a workout. It was a nice change of things.

The conversation was pretty awesome. Dani has a really cool trip coming up so she was telling me all about it and I was sharing with her how nice it was to have a lazy weekend the past weekend (sadly, I didn’t have too much to share since I hadn’t really done much lately). There was also a guy also sitting at the bar who looked really familiar to Dani so we spent a little bit of time trying to figure out if he was on a tv show or something.

As far as dinner goes, I’m still trying to eat healthy so I ordered a bit differently than I probably would have in the past. I got a salad and a small plate (I think it might technically have been an appetizer but it was the perfect size for me). That isn’t that different from what I would get most of the time, but the salad was me testing out a food I don’t like: kale.

I know that kale is super hip right now and everyone seems to be eating it, but I don’t. When I was a kid, my family had a pet lizard who ate kale. Back then it wasn’t something that most people ate (I’m guessing it was super cheap because of that) and I only saw kale as lizard food. I really believed that until a few years ago nobody ate kale. But once it became super popular I tried it and didn’t really like it.

I have a rule that if there is a food that I claim to hate that I have to try it at least twice a year. I do make my best effort to try the foods I don’t like that often but I know that it doesn’t always happen. The only food that I have decided I don’t have to try again is pineapple. I tried it the last time in Hawaii and I still hated it. Even though I love my Dole Whips, I hate pineapple. So I don’t try that again anymore. But since kale has still been on my hated food list, when I saw it on the menu as a kale caesar salad, I figured I’d try it.

Honestly, I think the reason I liked it was because of the dressing and not the kale. But I still ate most of it and did enjoy it! So now I know that if kale is prepared with other flavors I love, I might like it. Good for me to know!

My dinner was the small plate of potato gnocchi with mushrooms. It was pretty small (especially compared to Dani’s dinner with was a giant plate of awesome food), but it was tasty and just enough food for me.

We were hoping to go on a quick shopping adventure after dinner, but since there was a line to get out of the parking structure we ended up skipping it. But I know that the shopping adventure will be happening in the near future.

It does feel like a bit of a luxury to go out for dinner with a friend like this. Normally going out for dinner is Chipotle or Lyfe Kitchen (ironically I had a dinner with a friend at Lyfe Kitchen the next day). There’s nothing wrong with those places, but they are not nearly as nice as a sit down dinner where you have to spend more than $20 to eat. It’s not something that I can do that often, but it’s not unreasonable to do as a treat. It does feel really grownup to do that since most of the times I go out for a nice dinner I’m with my family. It’s just not something I get to do with a friend normally.

But after splurging on going out to dinner with Dani, I realize that treating myself like that every once in a while is totally worth it. Yet another thing to work on planning into my schedule to make my life the best it can be.

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