![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Valentine's weekend, busy and lucky
Feb. 14th, 2010 08:49 pmThe lovely Bruce acquired us tickets to Avenue Q, which he presented to me for Christmas. Because he bought them so very early, they came as a combo with a hotel reservation. So for Valentines, we set out to celebrate Christmas.
We dropped the kid off at his mom's, and arrived at the theater promptly at 10 to 3. Only to discover that in our careful planning, we'd made a slight error. Show started at 2. Horror!
All was not lost, however, as the very friendly entry-gate lady directed us across the way to the ticket office, where I admitted to feeling fairly idiotic, and commenced to beg. First person we spoke to passed us to her manager, who took pity on us, and switched our tickets out for a different showing. Without even charging us an exchange fee! So huge thanks and kudos on beyond-excellent customer service to the ticket folks at INB/Tickets West.
Now, we'd made dinner reservations for fairly late in the evening, because we expected to be at the show. So we had several hours to fill.
We hit Ben & Jerry's for a sundae to tide us over until dinner, and then caught a showing of The Wolfman. It was about what you'd expect from the previews. Dark, fun, pretty gory. I enjoyed it, and Bruce didn't complain much. ;)
Then, just to see how our luck was holding, we stopped by Twigs, the restaurant at which we had 8pm reservations, still a couple hours early. The hostess laughed (but not too mockingly) when we asked if we could sneak in early, but said she'd take our number and call if anything opened up early. Being right at the dinner rush time, we had no real expectation of a call significantly before our reservation. We headed off to browse some stores, but hadn't made it very far at all when the hostess from Twigs called and said there was an open table! Not even 15 minutes after saying they were booked solid for hours! It was our first time at Twigs, so we pestered our waitress with a ton of question about the food. She was grand; cheerful and peppy and very helpful. She was also REALLY flirty and fun, and at one point modeled for our suggestions how to properly flaunt her cleavage in order to win favors from the cooks. All in all, a good time, with excellent food. If you're ever near a Twigs, I highly recommend the fries, they are wonderful! Rice wine vinegar, salt, pepper, cayenne, and basil. Yum.
Dinner accomplished early, we messaged one of Bruce's friends to see what he was doing for the evening, and were invited to a Pasties and Paddles show he was photographing. Fairly amusing and the performers were obviously enjoying themselves, but the space left much to be desired...a good view of the stage primary among them.
After that, we dragged our tired selves off to the hotel, only to discover that despite our paperwork clearly stating that our reservations were for 13 Feb, the hotel had us as a no-show for 12 Feb. Again, however, this was quickly resolved with minimal fuss, and we found our way to comfy warm bed without having to make the 50+ mile drive home. Once again, hurrah for good customer service! That seems to've been a theme for the weekend, and a pleasant one it was!
Rolled out of bed at the luxuriously late hour of 11 this morning (it is sadly rare that we get to sleep in together, due to our offset work schedules), and went in search of brunch. The Kalico Kitchen was pretty busy, but the waitstaff was friendly and moved people in quickly. They do need to update their menu, as some items listed are no longer available (sad me, no coconut syrup for chocolate chip waffles), but the food was good and try as I might I really can't come up with anything significant to complain about.
From there we headed once again to the INB, and this time arrived in plenty of time for the show. Avenue Q was not exactly what I expected, but was an excellent show. The cast is a mix of people and puppets; I had expected a sort of Muppet-like puppet/people interaction, in which the puppeteers are behind or below the set and full-body puppets on stage, but the puppeteers were actually out on stage, carrying half-body puppets around and controlling them. Interesting. There was some editing/censoring of lyrics in the songs, and Bruce and I are wondering if it was "toned down" because of the area, or for the entire tour. Primarily, the word "fuck" was essentially removed from the play, though oddly, "shit" and "ass" remained in several places. It was quite a good production and I'm really happy that we were able to get tickets exchanged and see the whole show instead of having to step in at intermission yesterday!
One interesting point; in the original show/soundtrack, George Bush is mentioned passingly. That was changed to Glenn Beck in this one, and Bruce wonders now how that makes Mr. Beck feel--to be the new "ultimate evil bad guy" to all the liberals. I think he's probably pretty proud of it, if he even knows.
Wandered through a thrift store and tried on a couple dresses, picked up a couple toys, then headed northwards. Stopped at Flamin' Joe's for dinner. Bruce had the quesadilla, and declared it probably the best quesadilla he'd ever had. Wings were good, and the sweet potato fries were not bad. Not the best ever, but solidly in the good range. And hey, sweet potato fries! You have to try pretty determinedly to make those bad.
Then we stopped to get my Valentine's present (remember the whole Avenue Q thing was Christmas!). Picked up a shiny, slim, sexy, black .... keyboard! Hah. get your brains out of the gutter. My old ergonomic keyboard was fast on the way to uselessness, with stiff/sticky keys and an annoyingly loud clatter. The new one is much softer and easier on my hands. Also easier on Bruce's ears, so a win-win.
Coldstone for dessert (can never go wrong there), and now we are happily home, with a fire going and the critters happy to see us (mostly because it means dinner, I think).
We dropped the kid off at his mom's, and arrived at the theater promptly at 10 to 3. Only to discover that in our careful planning, we'd made a slight error. Show started at 2. Horror!
All was not lost, however, as the very friendly entry-gate lady directed us across the way to the ticket office, where I admitted to feeling fairly idiotic, and commenced to beg. First person we spoke to passed us to her manager, who took pity on us, and switched our tickets out for a different showing. Without even charging us an exchange fee! So huge thanks and kudos on beyond-excellent customer service to the ticket folks at INB/Tickets West.
Now, we'd made dinner reservations for fairly late in the evening, because we expected to be at the show. So we had several hours to fill.
We hit Ben & Jerry's for a sundae to tide us over until dinner, and then caught a showing of The Wolfman. It was about what you'd expect from the previews. Dark, fun, pretty gory. I enjoyed it, and Bruce didn't complain much. ;)
Then, just to see how our luck was holding, we stopped by Twigs, the restaurant at which we had 8pm reservations, still a couple hours early. The hostess laughed (but not too mockingly) when we asked if we could sneak in early, but said she'd take our number and call if anything opened up early. Being right at the dinner rush time, we had no real expectation of a call significantly before our reservation. We headed off to browse some stores, but hadn't made it very far at all when the hostess from Twigs called and said there was an open table! Not even 15 minutes after saying they were booked solid for hours! It was our first time at Twigs, so we pestered our waitress with a ton of question about the food. She was grand; cheerful and peppy and very helpful. She was also REALLY flirty and fun, and at one point modeled for our suggestions how to properly flaunt her cleavage in order to win favors from the cooks. All in all, a good time, with excellent food. If you're ever near a Twigs, I highly recommend the fries, they are wonderful! Rice wine vinegar, salt, pepper, cayenne, and basil. Yum.
Dinner accomplished early, we messaged one of Bruce's friends to see what he was doing for the evening, and were invited to a Pasties and Paddles show he was photographing. Fairly amusing and the performers were obviously enjoying themselves, but the space left much to be desired...a good view of the stage primary among them.
After that, we dragged our tired selves off to the hotel, only to discover that despite our paperwork clearly stating that our reservations were for 13 Feb, the hotel had us as a no-show for 12 Feb. Again, however, this was quickly resolved with minimal fuss, and we found our way to comfy warm bed without having to make the 50+ mile drive home. Once again, hurrah for good customer service! That seems to've been a theme for the weekend, and a pleasant one it was!
Rolled out of bed at the luxuriously late hour of 11 this morning (it is sadly rare that we get to sleep in together, due to our offset work schedules), and went in search of brunch. The Kalico Kitchen was pretty busy, but the waitstaff was friendly and moved people in quickly. They do need to update their menu, as some items listed are no longer available (sad me, no coconut syrup for chocolate chip waffles), but the food was good and try as I might I really can't come up with anything significant to complain about.
From there we headed once again to the INB, and this time arrived in plenty of time for the show. Avenue Q was not exactly what I expected, but was an excellent show. The cast is a mix of people and puppets; I had expected a sort of Muppet-like puppet/people interaction, in which the puppeteers are behind or below the set and full-body puppets on stage, but the puppeteers were actually out on stage, carrying half-body puppets around and controlling them. Interesting. There was some editing/censoring of lyrics in the songs, and Bruce and I are wondering if it was "toned down" because of the area, or for the entire tour. Primarily, the word "fuck" was essentially removed from the play, though oddly, "shit" and "ass" remained in several places. It was quite a good production and I'm really happy that we were able to get tickets exchanged and see the whole show instead of having to step in at intermission yesterday!
One interesting point; in the original show/soundtrack, George Bush is mentioned passingly. That was changed to Glenn Beck in this one, and Bruce wonders now how that makes Mr. Beck feel--to be the new "ultimate evil bad guy" to all the liberals. I think he's probably pretty proud of it, if he even knows.
Wandered through a thrift store and tried on a couple dresses, picked up a couple toys, then headed northwards. Stopped at Flamin' Joe's for dinner. Bruce had the quesadilla, and declared it probably the best quesadilla he'd ever had. Wings were good, and the sweet potato fries were not bad. Not the best ever, but solidly in the good range. And hey, sweet potato fries! You have to try pretty determinedly to make those bad.
Then we stopped to get my Valentine's present (remember the whole Avenue Q thing was Christmas!). Picked up a shiny, slim, sexy, black .... keyboard! Hah. get your brains out of the gutter. My old ergonomic keyboard was fast on the way to uselessness, with stiff/sticky keys and an annoyingly loud clatter. The new one is much softer and easier on my hands. Also easier on Bruce's ears, so a win-win.
Coldstone for dessert (can never go wrong there), and now we are happily home, with a fire going and the critters happy to see us (mostly because it means dinner, I think).
