Tag Archives: dinner

An Almost Free Meal (or Amazing Food And Crazy Dating Stories)

Posted on August 16, 2018 | Comments Off

I don’t have a ton of birthday traditions, but one that has been a part of my life for quite a while has been getting my free birthday meal at Truxton’s. I have been doing the free birthday meal pretty much since the restaurant opened in 2006 so I’ve been doing it for 11 or 12 years. And it has been a tradition with my birthday twin Joanna for about a decade now (we aren’t totally sure when we started going together).

Since we’ve been doing this I don’t think we have missed a year. It’s too good of a deal to skip! In the beginning it was a free entrée and a free dessert for each of us. That was a ton of food but we had fun with it. Then a few years ago it changed to $20 of free food for each of us but they would combine them on a single bill so it was easy for us to plan to spend under $40. Then it had to be on separate bills and we had to be strategic. We realized that it was going to be too difficult to have a totally free bill, but we still only ended up owing a dollar or two.

Going into our birthday dinner this year, we had every hope that we could go for a totally free meal. We went to dinner the day after our birthday and I was so excited to have a great dinner and to hang out with an awesome friend!

Since now we aren’t restricted to a free entrée and dessert, we usually get an appetizer to share, an entrée for each of us, and a dessert to share. And for our appetizer we almost always get Monkey Bread because it’s so good! Since we knew we’d be getting that plus a dessert, we picked out our dessert to figure out how much money we would have for entrees left over.

While we could have gotten things cheap enough to make everything free, nothing that we wanted was in that range so we had to decide if it was worth getting things we weren’t totally wanting in order to have a totally free meal or if it would be better to get what we want and owe a little bit of money. We both agreed that we would rather have a meal we wanted and owe a little bit. We both were craving burgers so we got those with the parmesan garlic fries that I love!

The Monkey Bread was awesome too and we got a churro sundae to split as our dessert. We were both pretty full when we were done but it was so good and we were so happy to have a great meal together.

We also took a while to eat because we were busy catching up on life with each other. We both have had some crazy dating stories lately and we were going back and forth sharing some of the weirder ones. She was telling me a story of a guy who seemed like he was trying to gaslight her but was making it so obvious that he just sounded insane and confused. I was telling her stories of some of the guys who have ghosted me recently and how odd it was that someone could go from texting me every day to disappearing and not feel like they should say they aren’t interested. I will never understand guys who ghost, but at least we were both having a laugh in sharing our stories.

When we got our bills, we knew we would both owe a little bit. But we owed so little for our dinner that it was like we had a free meal!

Plus, we had free parking at meters since we had a later dinner so we saved money there! If we had to pay for parking, it would have been more than the cost of the dinner! And another one of our favorite things about this free (or almost free) birthday dinner is that we can leave a bit tip and feel like we are doing something great. Our bill was basically $40 before the discount and we each left $10 for a tip. So we were able to tip our server almost 50% on our meal! I know that some people don’t tip well when they get a discount, but we want to do the opposite since we know how much servers depend on tips. It also makes us feel like badasses because we can say we tipped 50%.

We stuck around after dinner chatting and catching up some more (we didn’t feel bad because there weren’t people waiting for the table and our server seemed fine with us hanging around). It was nice just to chat and have fun with a good friend. And I really did like that we were sharing dating stories because sometimes it feels like the crazy things only happen to me. While I don’t wish that anyone else has to deal with what I deal with, it does make me feel less weird and alone when I hear a friend has similar situations with the online dating world.

Joanna and I don’t really get to see each other in person that often because our schedules are crazy and we aren’t usually in each other’s part of LA. But I’m glad we have this tradition as well as our holiday time tradition so we do get to see each other at least twice a year. And I know that in a year we’ll be doing our almost free birthday meal again!

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Posted in Celebrations, Food, Fun Stuff

Tagged birthday, birthday deals, birthday twin, dinner, food, friends, fun, meals

The Last Show Of The Season (or Ending On A High Note)

Posted on August 7, 2018 | 1 comment

This past weekend was the last show of the current season at the Pantages for my group. It’s been a pretty amazing season and I’ve loved having these Sunday adventures with my friends. The next season for us will be starting in 5 weeks, so it’s not that much of a gap between this season and next. But one of the members of our group won’t be joining us next season. She is going back to school to get her doctorate so she won’t have the time to commit to the season. We do have another friend who will be joining us, but it was still a bit sad to know that this was going to be the last show for this group that has been together for 2 seasons.

We started our evening out at Wood & Vine like we have for so many shows. We love going there for dinner because it is always great and the staff spoils us there. But they also just got a new menu (they change the menu seasonally) and we really wanted to see what the new offerings were and checking out what some of our new favorites would be.

I had looked at the menu before going and had picked out a few things I knew I wanted us to get, but I still took a look to see if my mind had changed. And our group quickly decided that we wanted all 4 main dishes that were on the top row of the menu plus the street corn. We thought all 4 of those main dishes were new ones, but it turns out the lamb burger has always been on the menu and we just never got it!

Our veggies came out first. We ordered the corn but the manager also wanted us to try the salad.

The salad was nice and fresh, but the corn tasted so luxurious! It was perfectly seasoned and the creme on it was delicious! We quickly ate it all and were excited to get the main dishes we ordered.

The 4 things we got were the pork belly tacos, the lamb burger, the pasta with prawns, and the tequila chicken.

Without a doubt, our absolute favorite was the tacos. The pork belly melted but was also nice and crispy. It was so good that I wish I was having it again right now because my mouth is watering! The lamb burger was a bit spicy so I only had a small taste of it, but my friends said that it is a must-order for the next time we have dinner. And the pasta with prawns and the chicken were amazing too! We all were tasting everything and most of the time we were eating we were much more focused on the food than talking.

And the dessert menu at Wood & Vine was expanded recently and the manager wanted us to try 2 of the new desserts.

I don’t like pineapple (it hurts my mouth), but I loved the ice cream in the pineapple sundae. And my friends said the pineapple was beautifully grilled and tasted amazing. And I loved the chocolate truffles! They were really rich, but the perfect size to enjoy them and not feel stuffed.

As always, the food at Wood & Vine really amazed us and we were having the best time having dinner there. I have a feeling that we will continue going there for dinner before our shows multiple times in our next season. The manager also told us some ideas they were thinking for the fall menu and we cannot wait to see what they go with and try out all the new things!

After dinner we walked across the street to the theater to go to our show. This time, we were seeing “Waitress” which was one of the shows I was most excited to see this season.

I love the movie “Waitress” and it’s one that I watch over and over. The story behind the writer, director, and one of the actors is a sad one and that makes the movie even more special for me to watch. She created this amazing movie and was waiting to find out if it got accepted to Sundance but was murdered before she could find out it got in. The movie was critically acclaimed and she never got to experience that. And I love that her legacy is continuing with the musical being loved by so many people.

Since I was familiar with the story and characters, I was excited to see what changed they made from the movie to the musical. Sometimes adaptations skip some of my favorite parts or I feel like there is something missing. But this time I was so happy with how the musical took elements from the movie and expanded upon them. I felt like so many characters were built upon and they were even more lovable. And the main story and plot was very true to the movie and that made me happy too.

I’m so glad that this musical didn’t disappoint me since it was something I had been looking forward to since this season was announced. It’s not that often that I am disappointed by a show, but it can happen and I’m always a little worried that something I’m really excited about will do that. But this wasn’t that situation and it really helped to end our season on such a wonderful high note!

I’m already so excited for the next season and the season after that will be announced in a few months. Hopefully that season will be another one that many of us want to go to and the tradition will continue with getting season tickets. I’ve said this pretty much every time I go to a show, but going makes me so happy and I’m just grateful that I have friends who do this with me and make these evenings feel so special.

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Tagged dinner, friends, Hollywood, Los Angeles, musical, Pantages Theater, theater

Remembering To Have Some Fun (or Hangouts Don’t Always Have To Be Events)

Posted on July 25, 2018 | 1 comment

For a while I’ve been working on making more of an effort to see my friends. Sometimes I get too wrapped up in work, or I get sick, or life just takes over and I neglect some of my friendships. I know that I’m not the only person guilty of doing this, but I also know that I can be better about making plans and not letting too much time go by between hanging out with friends.

But at the same time, I feel like I see some of my friends a lot because of things that I have scheduled to do with them. When I have parties to go to, musicals that I have tickets for, or Disney days in the calendar those are events and I make the time to go to them. Those events are usually in my calendar for a while so I don’t really feel like I’ve been making plans. I just am going to something I knew about and they are really fun things I get to do.

But not all of my friend hangouts need to be events like that and big awesome days. I have forgotten about just going to hang out with my friends or doing something easy and casual with them. This may be because I do try to save time for dates and am trying to keep myself available and open, but that is no excuse. My friends should always be a priority to me whether or not I’m dating someone.

So after the last musical I went to, my friends and I were saying that we needed to do a fun dinner or something soon. Normally our dinners out are before the show or at Disneyland and they are a part of a bigger day. It’s so easy to forget that we can just go out and have a dinner and maybe go see a movie or something. I always think that hangouts have to be something amazing and awesome and forget that what makes them amazing and awesome is usually the company that I’m with. So this week we decided to do a dinner and movie hangout.

We had a bit of a snafu with our original dinner idea. We picked a restaurant that normally would be easy to park at with street and neighborhood parking. But the neighborhood parking ended at 6pm and the street parking was a rush-hour tow zone until 7pm. And of course we were trying to eat at 6. So we made a quick decision to switch restaurants and picked one in the same shopping center as the movie we were going to. This worked out fine and I really love the food at the restaurant we went to. I was planning on having a cheeseburger at the original restaurant and got one at the one we ate at.

Dinner was a little rushed so we could make it to the movie, but we still had time to catch up on life. I’ve been struggling with some things lately (more on that later this week) and I really did need to talk some things out. It’s so nice to have friends who relate to what I’m going through and have advice to give. And they aren’t afraid to ask the hard questions or bring up things that I might not want to hear but need to. And I try to do the same for them when they are struggling.

After dinner we went to the movie which was something we were all looking forward to seeing. I’m not going to share what movie it was because I didn’t really love it, but it was fun to go to a movie with friends. I’m so used to going to screenings alone that it is a rare treat to go to a movie with someone else. And it’s pretty rare for me to see a movie that is in a regular theater and it is a different feeling compared to a screening venue. I think that because I go to so many screenings I forget about going to movies with friends. My friends both have MoviePass which I have debated getting. I’m still not totally sold on getting it because I don’t know if I’d use it enough, but it’s something I know I could get one day if I do end up going to more movies that aren’t screenings.

Seeing a movie with friends was so fun. We were chatting about what we liked and didn’t like after it was done and we all had pretty different opinions. One friend loved it, one friend didn’t, and I was mixed (as I put it to my friends, “I have thoughts about it.”). But it didn’t matter that I didn’t love the movie, it was nice just talking to them about it after the movie was done. When I go alone, I don’t get that experience.

I’ve said this a million times (and will probably say it a million more), but I am working on being better at seeing my friends. But this dinner and a movie out was a good reminder that I can do things that don’t take much planning or effort to see my friends and still have a great time.

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Tagged dinner, friends, hangout, movies

On Your Feet (Good Food And Good Music)

Posted on July 19, 2018 | Comments Off

I can’t believe that my current season of musicals is almost done! Then again, right after this season ends in August the next season starts in September so I won’t have that much of a break (unlike last time when “Hamilton” was here for several months). But this past weekend was the next to last musical of this season, and we made sure we had a good night out!

We started at Wood & Vine again. It really is our favorite pre-musical restaurant and we knew they’d be changing the menu soon so we wanted to go back before the change. We loved so much of the food we had last time and we wanted to have those again in case they were not on the new menu. We were seated on the patio which was nice since the weather had cooled down a bit since the heat wave.

We ordered the mac and cheese, asparagus with tomatoes, and tortellini again that we had last time. But we switched it up and decided to try the rib eye steak as well. It is a bit of a splurge, but it’s a huge steak that was more than enough for the 3 of us to share. If I was only sharing it with 1 other person, I think the steak and a veggie side would be enough to make me full.

The steak was so amazing! We all miss the bone marrow (and hope that it will be coming back to the menu soon!), but the steak was delicious and I have a feeling we will be ordering it again the next time we are there!

We were just deciding which of the desserts we wanted to order when we discovered that they were sending us all of the desserts! They really do spoil us there and I love getting to have all of them awesome food. But we really weren’t expecting to get the desserts sent to us and we were all so happy to try them. They had made some changes to the desserts and they were even better than they were the last time.

After we finished dinner, we headed across the street to the Pantages for our show. This time, we were seeing “On Your Feet” which is the Gloria Estefan musical.

I’ve seen a few different jukebox musicals and expected it to remind me of “Jersey Boys” or “Beautiful“. We although thought maybe it would be similar to “The Bodyguard” since some reviews said it was similar to watching a concert. We all went into the show with an open mind and excited to see what it would be like.

I’m familiar with Gloria Estefan’s music, but I knew that I didn’t know all of her music or that some popular songs were hers. And I knew for sure that I wasn’t too familiar with her story of how she got to where she is now. So I really liked how the musical really did tell her story of her family and how they came to America as well as how she got started as a teenager. It really was a great telling of her life and even though there were a few brief flashbacks it was almost all chronological so it was an easy story to follow.

And as expected, there were a ton of songs that I knew and loved and a few songs that I loved and didn’t know were hers. Every time a song started you could feel the energy of the audience perk up. Fortunately nobody was singing along (a problem we’ve experienced before at shows) but everyone was enjoying the show and loving the performances of the actors. They were all really talented and there were times I forgot I was watching someone play Gloria Estefan and not watching her sing.

I definitely learned a lot about her story and it made me admire her so much for all the work she has done for her career. It was impressive to see how she had to fight to be a crossover artist and sing in English. And I didn’t know about the bus accident that she was in and how doctors thought she might not walk again. In the car ride home from the show, I was looking up so much about her story because I realized how little I knew about her. While my mom enjoys musicals, she doesn’t love them the same way I do so I usually don’t recommend shows to her. But this was one that I called her about as soon as I was home and told her she needed to see it when it was touring near them.

Our last show of the season is about a month away and then we’ll be in our next season. And of course we are already looking at the 2019-2020 season which should be announced toward the end of this year or beginning of next year. They’ve only announced one show so far, but I have a feeling we will be getting season tickets again because of how fun these nights are for me and my friends.

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Tagged dinner, Hollywood, musical, Pantages Theater, theater

An Amazing Dinner and Show (or The Food Might Have Been The Highlight Of The Night)

Posted on June 26, 2018 | 1 comment

It was already time for another musical this past weekend! It’s been so fun having our shows back to back and I’m happy that it’s going to be that way for a little while. And with all of our shows, we try to have a fun dinner as well. We realized recently that it had been almost a year since the last time we were at Wood & Vine so we had to make a plan to go back there! Because we have gotten to know the manager from the times we had been there before, I sent him an email once we made our reservation to give him a heads up that we’d be there.

And the manager really hooked us up while we were there! First, we sat upstairs and got to sit at his favorite table. We had a great view of the theater and it allowed for some fun people watching.

The menu had changed since last year so we took some time figuring out what we wanted to eat. The bone marrow we love wasn’t on the menu this time (but they did mention it might be coming back in the future), but there were still lots of options that sounded good to us.

Everything on the menu is designed to be shared. In the past we’ve gotten a few things that we all wanted and then one or two things that only some of the group wanted. But this time, we seemed to agree on everything we wanted. We got the cheese plate, the scallops, the salmon, the lobster mac and cheese, and the asparagus and tomatoes. But when the manager saw what we got and noticed we didn’t have the tortellini, he sent some to us because he said we needed to try it (he was right). And he also spoiled us by sending us all the desserts from the menu! It was so much food, but nothing was too rich or heavy so we didn’t feel overstuffed.

All the food came out pretty quickly so we were able to enjoy our time and relax while we were eating. We didn’t feel rushed (which has been an issue in the past with other restaurants) and we felt like dinner was a nice starter to a fun evening out. It feels like such a splurge to eat there even though it really isn’t. But it feels so much nicer and the food is so delicious that it does seem like a treat.

We ended up staying there until about 5 minutes before the show started (the benefit of eating right across the street from the theater) and got inside with time to spare. This time, the show we were seeing was “Cinderella”, which was one of the shows I saw when I went to NYC a few years ago. I enjoyed the show when I saw it then and I was excited to see how the tour compared to the Broadway production.

I was impressed with the tour production. It was almost exactly the same as the Broadway show with the sets and costumes. I know that it’s not always possible to do that when it’s a tour since they have to be able to pack it up and move it from city to city, but they were able to keep it all the same as I remembered it. I’m sure there were some differences, but nothing noticeable or that I could tell.

Dani and Michelle hadn’t seen this musical before so they were excited to check it out. And they both enjoyed it. It was a nice show to see when life has been a bit stressful. We could watch and escape and there was nothing too heavy and dramatic. And of course since we are all Disney nerds this was nice. I know the musical isn’t the same as the Disney cartoon, but it’s close enough.

I’ve had more and more opportunities lately to see musicals for the second (or third) time and that’s still a treat to me. I love being able to compare productions and see the little changes that are made. The shows are still pretty much the same but I do like to notice the little differences or things that make each production special. While this show was so similar to the Broadway show, it still felt special and different in a way. The performers were all awesome and the way the audience reacts is always different too. I seriously just enjoy being in an audience with a group experiencing any show. And that was exactly what I did.

While our next musical is in a few weeks, we’ve actually already been back to the Pantages already! But that will be shared on here tomorrow!

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Posted in Food, Fun Stuff

Tagged dinner, food, Hollywood, Los Angeles, musical, Pantages Theater, show, theater

The Henry (or Checking Out A New Restaurant With A Friend)

Posted on March 22, 2018 | Comments Off

Sometimes because of this blog I get invited to soft openings of new restaurants and I get to write about them. And sometimes a friend of mine is invited and then invites me and it inspires a blog post. This is about the second type of invite.

My Orangetheory friend Lindsay texted me the other night asking if I was free and could meet her in West Hollywood in 30 minutes. She had gotten an invite to the soft opening of The Henry and her boyfriend couldn’t make it and she wanted to know if I was free. She apologized for it being so last minute, but since I was free it was fine and I quickly got dressed and got in my car.

I wasn’t familiar with The Henry, but it turns out that the restaurant has locations in Arizona (when Lindsay is from) and they also own North Italia which is an amazing restaurant that has a location in Santa Monica where I recently had a date. Lindsay was so excited to get to go The Henry and once I took a look at the menu I was pretty excited too. I got there right on time for her reservation and we went inside. It was a bit crowded and people were taking a bit longer enjoying their dinners than I think the staff expected so it was a long wait for a table. But there were 2 seats at the bar left so we grabbed those.

Since this was the soft opening, the meal was complimentary. We were given the full menu as well as the rules for ordering that night.

We each got to pick an entree and we split an appetizer and dessert. That seemed like a good plan to me (I probably would have done that even without the rules) and we had a pretty similar plan on what we wanted. We got the truffle fondue with pretzel bread to start, we both got steak dishes as our entrees (I had the NY strip), and we got a chocolate peanut butter thing for dessert.

Everything was delicious and I was so full at the end of the meal! Also included with the soft opening menu were drinks! Normally alcoholic drinks aren’t included in those sort of things, so it was pretty special that it was. I’m not a big drinker (my last drink was back at my birthday party), but I figured I should at least try one of their drinks. Since it was free, it didn’t matter if I didn’t finish it. So I decided to try a drink with vodka and berries. It was really good and I drank more of it than I expected to!

But of course, with any meal out, the highlight was getting to hang out with a friend. Lindsay and I used to see each other pretty much every week at Orangetheory. But we haven’t been working out together for a long time. So we have made an effort to stay in touch and we try to get together from time to time. We had dinner together a few months ago so to see each other again was nice. Sometimes it can be way longer between seeing each other so I was grateful that I was able to join her for dinner (although I did feel bad that her boyfriend had to be sick so I could be her plus one).

Our conversation was just catching up on lot of randomness. She wanted to hear funny stories from online dating and she was telling me fun stories about her work. And we shared updates about people we both know from Orangetheory. Some people are still people I work out with and others are people that she knows from social media and was able to update me about. We kept getting distracted by how good the food was, but we had a pretty lively conversation too.

We were there for a few hours and then I had to get back to my car to head home. But I really could have spent more time there to hang out more with Lindsay and to maybe try another drink. I know I’ll have to go back to The Henry once they are open (which is this weekend) to try more of the entrees. Plus, they are supposed to have an incredible brunch and I love finding new brunch places!

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Another Friend Happy Hour (or We Both Know We Need To Do This More Often)

Posted on March 9, 2018 | Comments Off

I’ve definitely been focusing on trying to have more time with my friends lately. I’m aware how crazy all of our schedules are and when we can figure out a time to meet I make it a priority. My friend Rayshell and I had made a few attempts to have a happy hour dinner, and things just kept happening to make us reschedule our plans. I was probably more at fault because of schedule changes and then being out-of-town. But we both understand that neither of us are rescheduling because we want to. Life just gets in the way. But fortunately, we were able to figure out a time to meet up this week.

I originally offered to drive to the valley because we try to alternate which side of town we meet on. But Rayshell offered to stay on my side of town after work and we went to Westside Tavern. We both were having a craving for the food there so that was fine with me! I had some time after work before meeting her there, but I underestimated how crazy traffic would be in my neighborhood and ended up meeting Rayshell a bit late.

Since I had been craving Westside Tavern I had been checking out the menu and picked out a few things that sounded good to me. And Rayshell had looked at the menu before I got there and picked out some things too. Somehow, we both picked the same things! We ended up splitting the burrata to start, I had a chicken sandwich (Rayshell got a burger which was something else I was thinking about getting), and even though we were a bit full we split apple bread pudding for dessert.

It was a lot of food, but it was so delicious! But as with all our hangouts, even though the food was awesome the company was even better! Both of us have had a lot of things and a lot of nothing happening in our lives. It’s weird, but it made a funny hangout with us each remembering random things to update each other on.

Rayshell is one of my friends who loves to hear all the craziness going on with online dating. She asked me about a story that I posted on social media about a guy who basically stood me up. He never showed up where we were supposed to meet and when I texted him he told me he was home which was just around the corner from the coffee shop we were supposed to meet at. I told him no and left because I knew something was fishy about the situation. Rayshell and I were joking about how he probably was some sort of weirdo and would wear my skin or something. I know it’s not good to joke about things like that, but I’m pretty careful with my safety so I know I wouldn’t be put in an unsafe situation.

I also have gone out with a few new guys lately and have had some good and some bad stories about them. A lot of it is about self-discovery and me allowing myself to express my opinion and not feel the need to conform to what someone else wants me to be. It’s a weird thing, but I think all of my friends get a kick out of hearing about the random guys I’ve met and the weird profiles I’ve found online.

Rayshell was telling me about the series that she produced that is currently in post-production. I can relate to wanting something to be done in post-production quickly when you don’t have control over it. I just hope that her project is completed soon because I really want to watch it! And Rayshell is also now a regular OTF person (but she works out at the studio by her), so we were talking a lot about our workouts and what we’ve been enjoying about them.

We were at dinner for a good chunk of time before we decided we should head out so she could get back to her side of town. It was just so nice to have a couple of hours to hang out with a friend one on one and be able to focus on them. We both agreed that we will do another happy hour dinner soon, but we also both know that even with the best intentions that doesn’t always happen. But at least we both put in an effort to make it happen and when it does we always have an amazing time!

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Holiday Cheesecake (or Birthday Twins and Twinkle Lights)

Posted on January 9, 2018 | Comments Off

The last few years it has been a tradition for my birthday twin, Joanna, and I to get cheesecake around the holidays. We haven’t always been successful with our timing, but we have been pretty good about at least doing it eventually between our birthday adventures. But this time, I wanted to make sure we were on top of it and I texted Joanna before around Christmas to find out when we could get cheesecake. Somehow, we both ended up being free right before NYE so we made a date for our cheesecake outing.

I was totally looking forward our hangout and then of course it ended up happening right as I was starting to feel my worst. But I wasn’t going to miss this tradition so I took some painkillers and hoped for the best. Fortunately, Joanna is such an amazing friend and understood that I wasn’t feeling so great. So she probably took charge more often in the conversation and I’m so grateful for her for that! We knew that it was going to be crowded and that there would be a wait for a table, but normally when they tell us it will be an hour it’s really just a fraction of that. But this time, we ended up waiting almost 90 minutes for a table. But we were determined to get our cheesecake and figured this just gave us more time to catch up.

We both have been having adventures in online dating so we were sharing stories about that. And she had just been to visit her family so she was updating me on how everyone in her family are doing. It was a pretty chill hangout and catch up but I’m always so grateful that we get to spend this time together. She and I both have weird and sometimes crazy schedules so we don’t get to see each other that often. More often than not, the only times we see each other are for our birthday and for the cheesecake. So we need to maximize each hangout.

Once we finally got a table, we ordered pretty quickly. We’ve both been to Cheesecake Factory enough to know what we want (although the flatbread that Joanna likes was just taken off the menu) and we got to looking at the menu at the cheesecake which was the most important part of the meal to us. I ordered a salad for my dinner and we decided on red velvet and tres leches cheesecake to have. We’ve learned that we can ask the server to split each piece of cheesecake in half, so we each get half of each slice.

Somehow I always have room for dessert even though I was still feeling pretty awful. But I knew I ate too much so we decided to walk around a bit after dinner. All of the Christmas lights were still up at the Grove and it really was beautiful. It was the first time this season that I had seen the lights and I’m glad I didn’t miss my chance to check them out!

We also went to check out the tree, but it’s so big that it’s almost impossible to get a photo of the entire tree!

But we decided that the tree was the perfect background for us to take a photo together!

It wasn’t as crowded by the tree and decorations as it was near dinner, so it was nice to be able to walk around and not feel totally squished. The crowds are the main reason why I rarely go to the Grove, but whenever I go there I’m reminded about how nice it is there and how fun the holiday decorations are. But I think that it will probably be a once a year type of adventure. Plus, most of the stores and restaurants there are places I can go to somewhere else so I’m not always that motivated to drive over there. But it makes a perfect place to meet for our annual cheesecake dinner!

After checking out the decorations, it was time for us to head back to our cars. I really was trying to keep a smile on my face and ignore the pain I was in, but I knew I needed to get home to get some more painkillers in me (I ended up missing a party I was supposed to go to after dinner because I was feeling so horrible). But even though I wasn’t feeling that great, I’m so glad that I went out for cheesecake. It’s an important tradition for us and also it was a nice distraction from how I was feeling!

While I know that Joanna and I have good intentions to try to hang out again before our birthday, I know that there’s a good chance that the next time we will see each other will be for our birthday dinner. But at least we both know that we try to hang out more often and when we do get together we maximize the time that we have!

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Posted in Celebrations, Food, Fun Stuff

Tagged birthday twin, cheesecake, dinner, friends, holidays

Childhood Friend Hangout (or I Don’t Think We Look 18 Years Older)

Posted on December 19, 2017 | 1 comment

I’ve always considered myself lucky that I make friends easily. When I go to a party where I know nobody, somehow I will leave that party with a new friend. But the problem with fast friends like that is that the friendship can be fast too. I’ve had so many instant friends who aren’t really my friends a few months later. That’s fine, but it’s always nice when you have a friend that you’ve known for a long time.

My friend Abby is one of my first friends. We met when we were 2 or 3 years old and even though we weren’t in school together growing up we still saw each other from time to time. Abby is the friend who introduced me to my friend Kate (and it’s weird to think of a 9-year-old introducing other 9 year olds to each other). While we weren’t friends who saw each other every day or every week, we were always friends.

We aren’t 100% sure of this, but we think the last time we saw each other in person was when Abby came to my high school homecoming dance my sophomore year. We went as a group that year and she was a party of it. That would have been when we were 15 and we looked like this.

I don’t exactly know how we stayed in touch during college (social media wasn’t a thing then) but somehow we did. And since social media existed we’ve stayed in touch mainly through Facebook. We’ll message each other from time to time. I got her hooked on Old Navy workout clothes and whenever we see a good sale we’ll let the other know about it. And we’ve said that we wanted to get together but it never worked out (she lives in the Bay Area near where we grew up).

But this past week, she was in Southern California for a work convention and she ended up having a little bit of free time during a dinner break on Saturday evening. So I got into my car and drove down to the Anaheim Convention Center (which is so close to Disneyland but my pass was blacked out) to meet up with her. I was so excited to get to see Abby again and realized that we had gone over half of our lives without seeing each other!

We went to dinner at a restaurant near the convention center (but not too close since all of those were so crowded with convention attendees) and finally got a chance to catch up in person! We both remarked about how amazing it is that our friendship has stood the test of time even though we hadn’t seen each other in 18 years. It takes a really special friendship to accomplish that. And it wasn’t weird at all catching up. I think that being in touch on social media helps so we knew what each other had been up to.

She told me about the house that she and her husband bought earlier this year and caught me up on what her family is up to. I told her more of my crazy online dating stories and other bits of randomness that has been going on in my life. But what was the greatest thing about this dinner was how totally normal this was. It felt like we were catching up after not seeing each other for a few months, not years!

Unfortunately, our dinner was quick because Abby had to get back to the last session of the conference she was attending. But of course, we had to get a photo to prove that we hung out together!

But when I put the last photo I know we were in together with this new one, I really can’t believe that there is an 18 year difference in them! I don’t think I look 18 years older in the photo than the old one and neither does Abby. Maybe I’m not a good judge of how old we look, but it doesn’t look that different to me.

When I dropped Abby off at the convention center again, we told each other that we couldn’t let 18 years go by before we see each other again. I know that we can’t promise that it won’t, but we are both really going to make an effort to make sure that doesn’t happen. But if somehow that does happen, I know that our friendship will last and when we do hang out again that it’s not going to seem like that much time has passed (but seriously Abby, we can’t let 18 years go by!).

I feel so lucky to have amazing friends like Abby in my life. I know that not everyone is as lucky as this and don’t have friends that have known them for over 30 years. While it’s nice to be able to make friends quickly like I can, I am so much more grateful for the lifetime friends (or the new friends who will last a lifetime).

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Posted in Fun Stuff

Tagged dinner, friends, hangout

Not Quite Happy Hour (or Making Time For My Friends)

Posted on September 26, 2017 | Comments Off

I’ve been busy lately and I know I’ve been neglecting my friendships. While I’ve seen friends at various events a lot lately, those aren’t always conducive to catching up. And even at my birthday party I wasn’t able to catch up properly with most people because I was trying to talk with everyone there.

My friend Rayshell and I have been pretty good about doing happy hour hangouts, but lately we’ve both been bad at trying to schedule them. It had been a while since our last one and we tried several times to schedule one. But finally we both decided we needed to catch up and we figured out when it was a good time for both of us and put it on our calendars. I usually don’t go out after an afternoon workout, but I realized that I need to start doing that in order to make more time for my friends. So after my workout on Wednesday, I went home and showered and got into my car to drive to the valley to meet Rayshell for dinner.

It wasn’t during happy hour since we couldn’t figure out when we could both meet for happy hour, but that’s ok. We met up at MidiCi which is a pizza place that Rayshell had been wanting to try. She said that it was normally crowded when she thought of going, but since we were doing dinner a bit later she thought maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. She got there before I did and got us a table. It wasn’t too crowded, but because you have to go up and order at the counter we wanted to make sure we had a table before ordering.

I had checked out the menu before we met up and everything looked pretty good. And fortunately Rayshell and I like a lot of the same things so it was pretty easy to pick some food for us to share. We ended up ordering some burrata, meatballs, and a truffle pizza to split.

The food all arrived at about the same time which was tough because we had a small table, but we managed. And everything was delicious and I want to go back to try some more of the awesome things they had on their menu.

But obviously, getting good food isn’t the main reason I go out with my friends. It’s a great way to catch up one on one with someone and I know that Rayshell and I were both missing that. We see what each other posts on social media and we text, but it’s never the same as hanging out in person and having a real conversation.

And since it had been about 6 months since our last proper catch up, we both had a lot to share! Rayshell has been working on a lot of different acting projects lately. She’s got a web series that should be coming out in the near future that she’s been working really hard on. I can’t wait to see it because a couple of friends of mine are a part of it and I love having the chance to support their work.

And all of my random online dating adventures happened after the last time Rayshell and I had a hangout so she wanted to know all about that. I wish I had more positive stories to tell her, but at least she found my weird and negative stories funny. I still find it so funny that my friends are getting a kick out of all the craziness I’ve been encountering, but that does help me keep a positive mindset. If I didn’t have a reason to look forward to bad dates, I think I’d be too worried that I was going to have a bad date before even meeting a guy.

We also had general catch up stuff to talk about too. Both of us have been busy with work, acting, and life and it’s always good to talk about that stuff too. And since it had been forever since we had a happy hour hangout, we talked about how we both felt bad that it had been so long since we were able to talk! We know that we are both equally guilty for having busy schedules so we understand how we could have let so many months go by without figuring out when we could go to dinner.

Both of us had busy days the next day and I still had to drive home, so we didn’t stay at dinner too late. But just getting to hang out with Rayshell for an hour or two was awesome. She is such a great friend to me and I want to make my friendships more of a priority. It’s not easy to do that and I’m lucky that my friends understand that it’s not that I don’t want to hang out but I don’t have the time to hang out. But I want to stop using that as an excuse as often as I have and work on building up my friendships with my friends some more.

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Posted in Food, Fun Stuff

Tagged dinner, friends, hangout, happy hour

Tag Archives: dinner

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The Last Show Of The Season (or Ending On A High Note)

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Remembering To Have Some Fun (or Hangouts Don’t Always Have To Be Events)

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On Your Feet (Good Food And Good Music)

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An Amazing Dinner and Show (or The Food Might Have Been The Highlight Of The Night)

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The Henry (or Checking Out A New Restaurant With A Friend)

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Another Friend Happy Hour (or We Both Know We Need To Do This More Often)

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Holiday Cheesecake (or Birthday Twins and Twinkle Lights)

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Childhood Friend Hangout (or I Don’t Think We Look 18 Years Older)

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Not Quite Happy Hour (or Making Time For My Friends)

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