Fretting the Small Stuff

Friday Fun

Nothing beats having the owner of your favorite restaurant know your name.  Perhaps going to said restaurant with three of your favorite people does.  Last night, the Prof (one of my favorite people) and another couple who I just adore went to dinner and then a musical.  Yeah, big city living here in northwestern PA.  Um, right.  So we went to my favorite restaurant here called Latinos and I ate my usual:  cheese tamales and cheese enchiladas with mole.  Holy mole are those enchiladas the best.  I could eat them every day.  And what else did I learn last night?  They make killer mojitos.  Not too strong but not so weak that you feel you must consume four more.  I would have consumed four more but I doubt being completely drunk at Dirty Rotten Scoundrels would have been very lady-like and we all know I'm all about being a lady.  The own tempted us before we left with fried plantains.  Oh yeah, what a great end to a fabulous dinner.

The thing about this restaurant I love is that no one is ever there.  Typically, that would cause palpitations because I would fear my beloved restaurant would close due to lack of patronage.  Not so here.  Our fine restaurateur  also owns a software company and all he cares about is serving fine Mexican food in our humble city.  I could kiss this man, but I won't.  The Prof might think it a bit odd.  I almost talked our table into giving the piano player a group hug because the man was about 80 years old AND SO ADORABLE!   We all know about my weird obsession with old men. 

After spending eons searching for a parking spot, seriously, eons, we found a spot just in time to be late for the opening of the show.  And then the fifth person in our party couldn't find a parking spot, apparently, my fair city can't handle a Broadway tour, The Cable Guy, and the local production of Little Women.  Finally we found our seats and enjoyed the musical. 

Now it's Saturday night, and we are going to have a relaxing evening eating a lot of food and watching Slapshot.  Because we are just classy that way. 

I Done Gone and Got Myself Cultured

Last night I went with my husband (he's a fancy science professor who even though the circumference of my head is bigger - seriously my head is enormous - his brain is way bigger than mine) to a multi-cultural dinner at the university.  After dinner and a semi-boring speaker who ended up being an interesting speaker once she began talking about her experience, a gung fu troupe came out and did a lion dance.  And yes, it's gung fu and not kung fu.  I double checked.  The lion dance can be described as a-maze-ing.  And this is where I KICK MYSELF for not bringing my camera.  Stupid me! The lion head mesmerized me for the full ten or twenty minutes the group did the dance.  Honestly, I lost track of time.  When a student stood up to take pictures and blocked my view, I almost went over and scolded him but my husband did not think that was such a good idea. 

Anyway, the lion.  The lion's head sparkled with mirrors and for an inanimate object, it had so much expression. The eyes blinked, the ears twitched and the mouth chomped up and down to the beat of the drum.  The dancers improvised on a very small stage and did all sorts of twists, turns, and leaps without having much of view of where they were going.  Basically, it was five ways of excellent.

After they finished, the drummer explained the history, blah blah blah I can't remember because I was wondering where I could get one of those lion puppets for my very very own, and how a creature that really did not resemble a lion very much was actually lion.  The abridged I-might-be-making-stuff-up-so-don't-get-to-mad-at-me story is that an emperor around 2,000 years ago had a dream where a lion saved him from something.  He woke up and decided that everyone needed to get down with the lion so he commissioned his artisans (where can I get my own artisans?) to create a lion.  Here's the problem: China has no lions.  SO.  No one knew what they looked like so of course, as I am doing here, they improvised.  The artisans picked the three luckiest animals, a dog, a dragon, and a phoenix, and created this wonderful creature.  If you want to read more about the lion dance, you can go here.  If you want to see a  pretty picture of one because of course I DO NOT HAVE ONE, please looky here.  And if  you want to send me a  life sized Chinese lion, please go the my About page and email me how you are going to send me one.  Kidding!  No not really but I would like one for my very own.  I promise to be nice to it.  Please?