6th Anniversary

We went back to work this week after a nice long vacation. It felt good to get settled back in at home. We cooked in each night Mon-Thurs with Nicole cooking on Monday and I took care of the duties Tues and Wed and then we made a roast on Thurs. I am getting more interested in cooking and we have even signed up for some cooking classes. We hope to start cooking more with Brent and Courtney Snyder. We are thinking an evening where the men do everything, from the shopping to the prep, cooking, serving, and cleaning. Then vice versa the following week. The one class we signed up for but for right now we are on the waiting list is a "sushi" making class. We stopped by Coastal Seafoods yesterday which is in St. Paul and learned more about what fish to buy, and we have the equipment necessary to roll sushi, now we just need more recipes and the lesson in doing it. We are going to try to perfect our cooking a little more this winter. Nicole is pretty good in the kitchen, she makes some nice things from scratch and can whip up tasty things in no time. For me, it is more of a process. I like to plan it out, I make a huge mess in the kitchen (I haven't quite perfected the "clean as you go" theory). I actually enjoy it but it is a little "unsatisfying" at the end because it takes me so long to make something and so short of a time to eat it. It is something fun though that Nicole and I can do together.

So work was quiet this week as the majority of my customers are still harvesting corn, which is very late to be doing so. So far though the weather has been cooperating and November has turned into a very nice month. If we would have had a lot of snow thus far we would have been in some trouble with that much corn in the fields.

Anyway, we worked all week and talked about what we wanted to do for our 6th Anniversary, which was Saturday Nov 21st. We didn't really decide until Saturday on our way to Room and Board Outlet. This has kind of become our Saturday ritual where we go to Golden Valley to this outlet store. It is our favorite store and we are still trying to find more furniture pieces for our home. We need a nightstand for Nicole's side of the bed, we need a media console for the bedroom so we can put the TV on something in there along with the components and we need an ottoman for downstairs, and some end tables downstairs would be nice too. We are spending the majority of our time in the basement now and we each sit on the couch with our computers. Speaking of computers, Nicole got a new one on Friday. When she bought her 1st computer, that HUGE Sony Vaio I thought she was crazy. I thought she spent way too much money on it and it was like 8 lbs and I couldn't understand why she wanted such a big computer. Well, after more than 6 years, the Sony finally went dead, but she really got her money's worth on that computer. Well anyway, she got a new Macbook Pro. She has been laboring over this decision for sometime now. She has wanted to try Mac as Emily and Ryan speak so highly of Mac and now Michelle has a Mac, and Ally and Ashley have always had Macs. So, now we are a split family with one PC user and one Mac user. She spent a lot of time at the "Genius Bar" at the Apple Store asking questions, most of them around her billing program at work called Procentive. She needed to make sure she could use this PC program with her Mac as she uses this program daily. It really is amazing what Mac has done to be able to isolate part of the hardrive for PC programs and then leaving the rest for Mac programs. She can actually log into each different part of the hardrive seperately. If she wants to run Mac programs she logs into one part, if she wants to use Internet Explorer and other PC programs (ie Microsoft Office, which includes Powerpoint, Excel and Word) and most importantly her billing program she just logs into that part of the hardrive. She is also really excited about the Photo opportunties that she has with Mac as she just loves to take pictures.

Anyway, back to our Anniversary Saturday. We Tivo'd the gopher football game so we made sure we didn't listen to the radio on our way home. We found a nice rug for our entryway coming in the front door and we also got a desk chair for my new desk downstairs. No luck on end tables or media console for the bedroom, and no luck on the ottoman. On our way home we stopped and had lunch at Cafe Latte, our favorite St. Paul spot. We made it home and watched the pathetic game where the Gophers went 2 consecutive games without scoring an offensive TD. We need to make a change at QB next year, and I'm tired of hearing this "bowl elgible" talk. Who cares about the Insight Bowl or whatever terrible bowl they will qualify for. If you are 6-6 and have a losing record in your conference, you should be DONE! No bowls.

So our plan for the evening was to do a little "sushi tour" of Mpls. We wanted to try some of the best sushi restaurants in the city and see which one was better. We know which restaurant that is always voted Best Sushi and that is Origami. We had never been there so we knew we would hit that, then we were thinking Sushi Seven, and then finish the night at 20.21, which is Wolfgangs restaurant at the Walker Art Center. We were judging the sushi on two things, actual quality of sushi, but also on atmosphere of the restaurant. The sushi at Origami was decent, nothing fancy, just solid. The atmosphere was a little slow but we were there early, about 6 p.m. From Origami we stopped by Surdyk's and took a browse of their wine sale. We found some good deals and then made our way to Sushi Seven. This is a very fancy place. Everyone was dressed very nice, (we were not, jeans and sweaters). The restaurant is very cool, but you have to be into that type of place. The lights were dim which we didn't really like. We sat at the sushi bar and talked it up with Tao, the sushi chef. He asked us what we liked and we told him spicy tuna and unagi (freshwater eel). He said, no problem, I'll make something great for you. So he went to work and came back with an 8-piece roll that was VERY GOOD. This was the best sushi we ate of the night, and it did win the coolest restaurant award. It really isn't our style of a place though, we are not really into getting decked out and high priced dinners. There was a table of 8 behind us, all dressed up in suits and nice dresses and they ordered "The Sushi Boat" which is a wood boat filled with sushi, at least 100 pieces of sushi in this boat. Well, they ate like 20 pieces and threw the rest away. They just wanted to be SEEN! We think the best way to eat sushi is to sit at the sushi bar and talk with the chef and they always take good care of us. They usually throw something special in for you if you sit at the sushi bar as well. Nicole was full now after 2 sushi stops and our last stop was 20.21. It was now 9:00 p.m. and 20.21 was dying down. We again sat at the bar and learned that they didn't even have sushi at 20.21. They had ahi tuna and other seafood, but everything was cooked, so we had kobe beef burgers (3 mini burgers). They had a sweet pickle on them and they were excellent. From our sushi tour we now needed dessert so we went back to Cafe Latte. We shared our favorite Turtle Cake. After dessert we walked across the street to Billy's to help Ashley and Johnny Larson celebrate their 25th birthdays. Ally was there too so we had a few hours of fun with the youngsters. Honestly, they probably kept us from going home to bed as us 30 year olds (I'm 31) get a little tired after 10:00 p.m.

We had a great day, the weather was perfect, the company was perfect (I love you Nicole) and we ate some good food and tried some good wines.

Nicole posing outside 20.21
What a beautiful wife!