Valentine's Weekend.

Sorry for the late note. Monday was a federal holiday and our agency closed to observe it. Yesterday, it was about playing catch up at the office. Today, I’m at a good point so I can write.

Not too much happened last week. Joel and I had a presentation at a university on Thursday and that went really well. Later that evening, Anna and I met up with some friends for dinner at the Vietnamese restaurant. She and her husband had pho in NYC, but did not know where they could find good pho in DSM which is why I brought them to my restaurant. They loved it! We’ve not seen them in quite some time because they stopped coming to church at St. Kate’s. Prior to dinner, Anna and I met with our parish priest to fill out the marriage paperwork that’s required by the diocese. Looks like we are set on that front.

Friday was the start of Valentine’s weekend. The restaurant was expecting a lot of people and I have to say that we were busy, but never overwhelmed. The three servers who worked did a fine job and I did not need to take any tables until later in the night when I let them go. Anna went to bed early because she had to be in school for an all day piano festival the next day.

It was a pretty laid back day for me. I went to the library before heading to the monthly guy’s breakfast/brunch. We had a blast! Once that was done, I went to Anna’s school to drop off something for her to eat since she could not really leave the festival. For Valentine’s day, I had gotten her a singing valentine from Drake. Basically, two Drake students who sing in the choir would go to where she was and sing her a song. They also brought her a dozen roses. The funniest part is the song they chose was one of the songs her students had in their repertoire of songs to sing for their singing valentine. She kind of chuckled when the Drake students started singing. Needless to say, she really appreciated it. I then went back home to watch a couple of dvds while waiting for her to come home. I had thought of cooking, but that was just for a second. I decided we would go out to eat and called a restaurant close to home to see if they had an opening. Lo and behold, they had a cancellation and we managed to get that reservation. The dinner was OK, but I had an issue with my dish. It’s a long story and I’m not going to bore you with it. Hey, as long as Anna thought her meal was fine, that’s all that really matters.

After Mass on Sunday, I worked at the restaurant, but it was not too busy. The others informed me that the night before, they were slammed which was to be expected since it was Valentine’s weekend. Aaron had scheduled four servers for Sunday dinner. At 5PM, there was no one at the restaurant so he let me off since I had worked from noon. I’m not sure how busy the restaurant got that night. Anna had told me earlier that she was going to be cooking me dinner. She made some friend potatoes, green beans, and a cheese stuffed chicken. Most of it turned out OK, except for the potatoes because some of it were not cooked. Hey, she tried her very best and succeeded. Oh, she also made some brownies for dessert and they turned out very well. We ended up watching a movie that night.

Both of us had Monday off so we had breakfast and got more wedding stuff taken care off. We’ve finalized the people who will have a role to play at the wedding Mass and also selected the music. Later that morning, we went to a store to register for our wedding gifts. Trust me, we did not register for a lot of stuff. I watched move dvds while she had her piano lessons with her students.

Yesterday was our one year anniversary of my proposal and we went out for dinner at the restaurant where I proposed. I had requested the table where I popped the question, but someone else was already sitting there so they sat us at a different table. Our regular server had the evening off which was kind of a bummer, but later that evening, he actually came in so we got to chat with him. He’s actually headed to Los Angeles to work at the same restaurant and is looking forward to it. Anna had scallops while I had duck. Both were very good and we more than thoroughly enjoyed our meal. I gave her a couple more gifts to commemorate our anniversary.

That was pretty much the week and weekend that ended. Nothing too extravagant or exciting to say the least.