Back to Business (Anniversary Part II)

Alright, back to our planned activities for our one year anniversary. In case you have forgotten or missed it, our list went like this:

Saturday (day before anniversary):

Morning: Stay at home. Build a garden fence. Plant a garden for the fence to protect. Hope the fence withstands giant dog and discourages small dog.  Done! Except for the hoping part. That's continuous. 

Afternoon: Recover from doing rare physical work (Recovered in hammock). Clean selves and try to look somewhat nice. 

Evening: Off to Park City! Overindulge at Ghidotti's, because it's delicious Italian food and that's what one does. Immediately walk next door to the theater. Commence watching Iron Man 3. Go home. 

Sunday (actual anniversary):

All day: Wing it. 

After we made our garden pretty, we recovered from our rare physical work, cleaned ourselves and tried to look somewhat nice for our fancy date. 

Check.

Then the evening festivities began. We hopped in the car and took off for Ghidotti's in Park City, and our timing was super impressive. We walked in those fancy double doors with minutes to spare. Then we proceeded to eat the most delicious food I've had in a long time. We started with an appetizer--because we were trying to be extra fancy, you know--and I decided to try their asparagus/pancetta thing (don't remember the name). OH MY GOSH. It was so ridiculously good. Best part of the entire meal (including dessert, which we also got! We're the fanciest!) We both had fish (Joe, the halibut, and I, the salmon ((of course. do you know me at all?))) (excessive use of parentheses), and for dessert, some tira misu. I thought I didn't like tira misu, but it turns out that a single serving tira misu in a plastic container is not the same as restaurant-quality, real, delicious tira misu. So, if you were under the same delusion, now you too are free to explore the wonders of desserts.

We finished dinner with over an hour to wait until our movie time. Whoops. So since we were both sporting some healthy food-babies at this point we decided to walk it off in the little plaza around us, which was quite nice except that everything was closed. Bummer. After 20 or so minutes of that we decided to just go to the theater, which as I mentioned was right next door to the restaurant so that took no time at all. They gave us our stubs and let us in, and the theater room we were supposed to go to was still finishing up a showing of Iron Man 3 from earlier. No! Spoilers! So I ran away while Joe listened to see how close it was to the end (he'd seen it a few weeks earlier). It was pretty close. Splendid. So we found a theater that was showing Star Trek and listened to the loud parts from outside the door like creepers. Joe tried to get me to go inside (that little rebel) but I was overcome with moral anxiety and refused, despite some deep conflicting feelings that told me to just do it. I really like Star Trek. Sigh.

After waiting for 40 minutes for the other Iron Man showing to end, and then another 10 minutes for the clean up dudes, we got prime seating and were able to watch the film, which was pretty excellent I must say.

Hooray successful date!

You may have noticed there are no pictures of any of this. Did it really happen? Oo, mystery. No, not a mystery. It did happen, I just forgot a camera and then decided it was too much effort to whip out the phone. Plus I was on a date, after all. And anyway, who wants to see pictures of the outside of a theater and us stuffing our faces? Nothing to see here.

I do have some really exciting pictures of our Sunday winging-it, though! First we went to Joe's cousin's son's baby blessing, and I got to meet his mom's side of the family which was quite fun. They're delightful folk. Then, as a surprise twist, I found out that my mom had saved some wedding cake from .... well from our wedding, of course, and still had it frozen for us if we wanted to do that inexplicable "eat a year-old piece of cake" tradition. So after we got home from visiting family we went over to pick that up and had a lovely time sitting around watching all our dogs frolic together.

We took a ridiculously long nap when we got home, followed by an "eclectic" dinner...which means we had leftovers. Are you thrilled by the details of our lives yet? Haha. I guess we'd used up all our fanciness the day before. We did have Martinelli's, though. A must for any fancy occasion.

It was around this time that we broke out....the cheesecake. Joe was extremely unexcited at this aspect of the anniversary, but he was a good sport and went along with it anyway, because I insisted on upholding this bizarre tradition. Cause we had a cake! Why not?!

"Joe! Look happy about it!"
Close enough.

The cake. Looked pretty decent for being frozen for a year. 

There wasn't really a way to make the slices look
appetizing. I'm sorry. 

We tried a tentative, simultaneous first bite. I watched Joe's face as he chewed, inspecting, searching, wondering. A mildly disgusted look crossed his face. My cake had been slathered in delicious raspberry sauce, so I couldn't taste the cheesecake itself. "Well?" I pressed. "Is it awful? Explain!"

"I...I don't know..." he said, frowning slightly. He took another bite.

This time the reaction was more swift. A distorted grimace crossed his face as he chewed at the gooey morsel. A verdict had been reached. It was, in fact, pretty disgusting.

Joe did not like.

One last pic of the cake before it was
unceremoniously sent to an early
(or very delayed?...) grave.

It was the texture that did it. Gluey, thick, chewy. Shudder. I am fairly certain that there are things able to be successfully frozen long-term, and cheesecake is not one. But we did the tradition, and now can sit pretty knowing we didn't give up on that sad little ice-encrusted cheesecake.

And that, my friends, was our first anniversary. We've loved our first year together and are excited to have many, many more. We love being married! 

Annivers---wait, chicken? (or, Anniversary Part I)

This past weekend, Joe and I celebrated our very first wedding anniversary! Yay! Our celebratory plans were grand at first, but then we remembered we're newlyweds (or have we officially passed that description?!?) and have limited funds. The "Plans" were therefore pared down until they became the following:

Saturday (day before anniversary):

Morning: Stay at home. Build a garden fence. Plant a garden for the fence to protect. Hope the fence withstands giant dog and discourages small dog. 

Afternoon: Recover from doing rare physical work. Clean selves and try to look somewhat nice. 

Evening: Off to Park City! Overindulge at Ghidotti's, because it's delicious Italian food and that's what one does. Immediately walk next door to the theater. Commence watching Iron Man 3. Go home. 

Sunday (actual anniversary):

All day: Wing it. 

Our Plans actually worked out pretty well. We slept in gloriously late, and then got to work on the fence. About a month ago the greenhouse across the street, which has been neglected since before we moved in, got some new management and they started cleaning up the place. And then...then!...they started throwing out pallets. SO many pallets. So we sauntered over and asked the clean up guys if we could have some. We could (for $1 a piece, which I'm pretty sure they just made up on the spot so they could buy some cigarettes. That's not judgey, they told us they wanted some.) $10 and a trip across the street later, we had a stack of pallets in our backyard. 

Fast forward to this weekend. The pallet plot came into play! We saw this video on how to make reasonably cute picket fencing from pallets without having to pry them all apart. Then we realized we have no power saws and that would take forever, so we decided to just throw that whole plan out and use the entire pallet. Then we planted our little garden. It's no masterpiece, but we're mighty proud of our morning's work.

Quaint, isn't it?

It's definitely not the most beautiful fence,
but it has a certain..."rustic" charm. 

Our little garden! It's mostly peppers. Joe likes peppers. 

We also spent a lovely chunk of time lounging on our new hammock, enjoying the view of the fence/garden and watching our ridiculous dogs.

The Hammock, and Joe.Also featuring bright sunlight.

Here they are. 

Want to see what silly dogs do with a spraying hose? Ok! 

Magnus is my favorite, so slow and methodical. Especially pawing at it at the end. Also, forgive us our weird laughter. :)

One more view of our lovely garden. 

The crooked piece is our temporary door. We don't know what to do about a gate so we just keep that piece loose and prop it back against the fence to keep out the dogs. So far it works. 

Speaking of dogs and fences, here's a story. We went out yesterday to check on the garden and admire our handiwork. I was looking at my (sad, wilty) tomato plants when I spied a chicken by that purpley tree! I suppose I should explain that this wasn't really that surprising, as the mechanic behind us keeps chickens on his lot and we hear/see them all the time back there. I don't know how that chicken got into our yard but for a brief moment I saw that chicken and was just delighted to have him visiting our yard. And then I remembered we have dogs. 

Magnus and Sawyer didn't immediately notice the chicken, but when they did they were extremely excited. They'd been staring through the fence slits for weeks at their feathered "friends," in a way that seemed friendly but I now believe it was decidedly more ominous in nature. The two pups charged at the fence, but stopped when they couldn't get in (it works!). Then Sawyer realized that, wait a minute, he could get in, and the chicken FREAKED OUT. Chickens can be really squawky, guys. Not that I blame him. 160 pounds of puppy were chasing him down after all. Then the not-so-bright bird fled the relative safety of the garden. Sigh.

Our dogs took off in earnest after that poor, dim animal. They were going to EAT that chicken! In seconds they had trapped him against a fallen branch as I watched, hopeless and horrified and certain we were about to witness fowl murder. Miraculously the chicken escaped, unscathed except for a few lost feathers (one of which hung from Magnus's mouth as a nice, horrifying touch). That's about when Joe and I realized our backyard was going to become a crime scene if we didn't do something. So I caught Sawyer (50 lbs) while Joe literally tackled Magnus (110 lbs) and had to lie on top of him to keep him from lunging after the chicken. We muscled the beasties inside...and the chicken disappeared. It was a bit mysterious, really. I was relieved that he was out of our dogs' reach, and not a little disappointed that our pups turned out to be violent, chasey, chicken-craving carnivores. Darn.

A few hours later I was placing my most recent project in our kitchen window (post to come!) when Joe said "the chicken! the chicken!" Sure enough, there he was, sauntering around our frontish/side yard. We ran outside and for a good thirty minutes we chased that ridiculous animal through our yard, our neighbor's yard, in and out of bushes, and finally he sneakily "hid" himself in a small flowery plant. He was plainly visible, but obviously thought he had been very clever and would never be found, because he didn't budge when I stood over him and picked him up. Silly chicken. We released him back over the fence to his home.

And that was our adventure with the chicken. 

Well, this is much longer than I expected. I think I'll post about our actual anniversary celebrations another time so you don't have to read too many words all at once. How exhausting that would be! Til next time :)