What a wonderful week and weekend.

What a wonderful week and weekend we had.

On Wednesday night, Anna and I met up with Sonia and Jeff (her fiancé) for dinner. They will be headed to India for a couple of months so it was most definitely good to catch up with them before they left. Sonia prepared a roasted chicken and it was more than yummy to say the least. All in all a wonderful evening.

Something that’s been on the calendar for some time was a talk by Maya Angelou on Thursday evening. Needless to say, she’s a living legend and her writings have proved inspirational internationally. The talk was scheduled to start at 7PM and the doors were to open at 5:30PM. Prior to the doors opening, Anna and I had dinner at a restaurant within walking distance to the Knapp Center where the talk was going to be held. It’s a dinky little place, but very famous for their tamales. We had a good dinner and were in line by 5:20PM. There was already a good crowd there and this was a good hour and a half prior to her talk. I saw a number of people I knew in attendance and read the papers to pass the time. When Maya walked on stage, all of us gave her a three minute long standing ovation. Everyone was pumped to hear her speak. Her talk lasted not more than 45 minutes, but she really did not need to speak any longer. Her message came across loud and clear and it was about rainbows in the cloud and how all of us are rainbows to one another whether we realize it or not. Such powerful words delivered to a captive audience.

After work on Friday, Anna and I went to our second cake tasting, and I believe we’ve decided that Sweet Binney’s (www.sweetbinneys.com) will be preparing our wedding cake. Anna was more than impressed with the cakes we tried. She even got a taste of the cake I had for my 30th birthday! The meeting went very well and right now, it’s down to finalizing the contact, etc. It’s one more thing to cross off our checklist. We proceeded to the East Village to be part of the World Food Festival. A number of vendors from many different countries were there preparing their food and I got to taste some really good food and some not so good. Anna had a pupusas from El Salvador and liked it a lot. The food I loved the best was a dish prepared by this vendor from Ecuador. I told him that I knew a couple of guys from Ecuador who work at Paradise and he knew them. The food was very flavorful and too bad he does not have his own restaurant. Later that evening, we went to the Kurt Elling concert at Drake. Anna’s a huge fan of Kurt and the best way to describe his genre of jazz would be vocal jazz. The auditorium was almost sold out and it was a fantastic concert. Jazz music is very much alive and well and it has a great following in DSM. After the concert, we attended the post concert reception at Lucca Restaurant which is in the East Village. We ended up chatting with the bass player for some time because he’s originally from England and we talked about football. Later that evening, Anna got the courage to approach Kurt Elling and talked to him. She even got a photo taken with the guy and was all giddy that she has a photo with Kurt Elling. It was very cute because she was like a little kid and was beaming the rest of the night.

I got up earlier on Saturday to get groceries and some cooking done because later that evening, we had some friends over for dinner and I had a busy Saturday. I got two dishes cooked then it was off to our monthly men’s lunch. After the luncheon, I headed to Joel’s place because he needed my help to get a curtain installed in his garage so when he washes his car, the water does not splash all over. We could not get it all done that afternoon, but we did get the majority of it taken care of. I then went to Cownie soccer field to watch one of my former religious education student play for his college. He did fine, but I know overall, he was disappointed with the way his college played. They were down 0-3 by halftime and I had to leave to get more cooking done. It was good to see him, and we’ll catch up during Christmas break, I’m sure. Our friends arrived at 6:30PM and everyone loved the food I cooked. Needless to say, this was the first time they had Malaysian cooking. I prepared beef curry, ginger chicken, baby bak choy, friend omelette and fish curry. While eating dinner, everyone chatted with one another and it dawned on me that I was the odd person out because everyone there was a teacher. In so many ways, it was good for Anna to have her teacher friends because they all could relate to one another. I do a pretty good job emphatizing with her, but at the same time, I realize I’m not a teacher and there are things other teachers can help her out with. All of us had a grand time and there’s nothing like having great food, wine and company.

So, talk about a busy week and weekend. On Sunday, I had 2pm-5PM off because the owner kind of goofed up my schedule. It worked out A OK because Kristi came by the restaurant and we got to catch up with one another. It’s been a long time since we connected so that was really good. I ended up leaving the restaurant at 8:30PM which was later than I expected, but that’s OK. We had a nice flow of people and that’s always good for business.

That was the week and weekend that went by. It’s not going to be as exciting this weekend for sure. Anna and I celebrate our one year anniversary of dating this Friday and I’ll be taking half the day off from work and the evening off from Paradise. She has the day off from school and we’ll probably have lunch at the restaurant where we’ll have the rehearsal dinner then it’s off to watch a movie before a nice dinner somewhere. I’ll have to pick my brain to figure out a nice restaurant for us.

Oh, I did forget to mention that we had out first snow fall on Saturday morning. When I got up there was snow on the ground. The weather has most definitely changed and it’s not cooler than usual which is a little weird, but A OK by me. I’m not quite ready for snow yet because it seems that the middle of October is just a little too early, but crazier things have happened before.