Ariesna and I went with a bunch of our friends to Davenport on Saturday. When we got there; we met up with Laura and had a quick tour of her house that she’s been remodeling on her own. It’s pretty impressive; in particular, I liked her bedroom’s ceiling that looked like an oil painting of a blue sky. Then we went off to this little tea shop in the village area. That was really something else; they gave us a menu of about 30 different teas and we selected 4 to start with: CherryBanana, Indian Spiced Chai, Monk’s Blend and Blue Lady. The Monk’s Blend was good, the CherryBanana wasn’t to my taste, I don’t do chai and the Blue Lady had grapefruit juice in it (bleech!). Shortly after bringing out the teas, came out the food. Oh. My. God!
The food came out on 3 layer stands….
- Bottom (Breakfast) Layer: Sausage/egg quiche, roast beef sandwich and some sort of tomato, cucumber spread on something like a fancy cracker. The quiche was ok and the tomato was alright, but that roast beef was exceptional.
- Middle (Snack) Layer: Cantaloupe, Grapes, fresh Strawberry scones, homemade shortbread cookies, pumpkin yeast bread with an almond spread of some sort (which was divine) and an orange slice to cleanse the tongue before moving on to the final layer.
- Top (Desert) Layer: Toffee squares drizzled in chocolate, a little apricot jam filled cake like thing (very nice), chocolate dipped strawberries (num, num) and the piece da resistance! Caramel apple cheesecake.
Wowsers, that was some good eating! While we were finishing off our deserts, Ariesna & I had another pot of tea. This time we choose one called Bourbon Street Vanila and it was very, very good. After we’d all eaten far too much; we walked around the village for a bit, wandering through some of the local shops. Including a used book store that from the outside looks very small but inside is much larger. Kind of a Tardis effect, only not. 🙂
Then we headed back to Laura’s house as Ariesna was getting sunburned and needed to get into the shade. We just hung out there for a while, playing with Laura’s dogs and then Laura talked us into going outside to relax in her shady yard, on the theory that it would be cooler (it wasn’t). We had fun anyway, Bryon was seriously enjoying Laura’s hammock and then Laura asked for some help getting a rope strung up in a tree for a hanging chair. The initial suggestion was to tie the rope to a softball and toss it up, but that wasn’t working so well. I suggested tying the rope to a stick and tried standing farther back than the rest had. They kept going to the base of the tree and tossing straight up; I was standing farther back and slightly uphill, allowing me to toss the stick in an arc but my aim wasn’t so good and they took it away from me. *seesh* It’s not like I was hitting anybody or anything important and I just know that I would have gotten it in place with another few tosses. Oh well, Bryon did eventually get it tossed up into place and the hanging swing was in place. I tried it out, but it wasn’t too comfortable for me; though Laura looked releaved that the swing would hold someone of my size.
Shortly after that, we headed down to the Brew & View. B&V is a local, indepentant theater and if you’re in the area; it’s definately worth checking out. Tickets to the B&V didn’t cost any more than the mall’s multiplex theater and the B&V is more comfortable. We got there at just the right time (we had our choice of seats and the movie started shortly after we arrived).
The movie that we’d driven for an hour to see was Bubba Ho-Tep. It was an interesting movie. The acting was pretty good but the story was…. umm, let’s just say it was way out there. Here’s the plot summary from IMDB.com:
Based on the Bram Stoker Award nominee short story by cult author Joe R. Lansdale, Bubba Ho-tep tells the “true” story of what really did become of Elvis Presley. We find Elvis (Bruce Campbell) as an elderly resident in an East Texas rest home, who switched identities with an Elvis impersonator years before his “death”, then missed his chance to switch back. Elvis teams up with Jack (Ossie Davis), a fellow nursing home resident who thinks that he is actually President John F. Kennedy, and the two valiant old codgers sally forth to battle an evil Egyptian entity who has chosen their long-term care facility as his happy hunting grounds.
Yeah, anyway after the movie we headed over to a local japanese restaurant called Shogun and had another large & tasty meal. AWelkin ordered some sort of apetizer made from squid; while Ariesna & I had a bit of sushi while we waited for our main course. I had the smoked salmon; Ariesna had octopus & sweet shrimp. I’d wanted some Uni (sea urchin) but they were out of it and according to Laura; they’re always out of Uni. She doesn’t know why, but it drives her nuts. Then I had a lovely meal of Shogun Tempura (a mix of seafood & vegetables). Ariesna had the yakisoba, but wasn’t able to eat it all and now it’s sitting in our fridge waiting to be reheated. Then we went back to Laura’s place to pick up our cars and head home; but while we at Laura’s place, some how it came up that I like the occasional bit of Scotch and Laura had gotten a bottle of it in a raffle and she can’t stand the stuff. So she gave it to me. Awww, that’s so sweet of her.
Note to Self: I’ll have to return the favor at some point and I hear she likes honey mead.
That finished off our Saturday. On Sunday, it was the 9th anniversary of SWAMP (our local anime club); so Ariesna & I headed over to that and presented our fearless club leader with some cake and a gift card to Best Buy. We would have prefered to get a better gift but usually we find out what he likes by him showing it to us and we figured at Best Buy he could either buy more computer parts for his home network or some more anime for his collection.
The building where we hold the anime shows was doing a crack-down on having food in the rooms; so we had to keep the cake down in the diner area, but that was fine with me as I was feeling somewhat anti-social and wanted to work on my sketches rather than sit in the dark and watch anime. After a while though, the cake was gone and Ariensa wanted me to sit with her; so I packed up my stuff (I’d made some decent progress on a couple of sketches but the hands still look rotten). We watched a bit of anime and then took off for home. I played a bit more UT2004 and after it crashed*, I thought about reading my book for a bit. But I decided against it and started watching some of my backlog of fansubbed anime. I download a lot of fansubbed anime and in the last couple of months, I’ve downloaded gigs more anime than I’ve watched. So last night, I watched 1-5 of Paranoia Agent, which was cool in a trippy way but no where near so weird as Interlude. Wow, Interlude is weird enough that Bubba Ho-Tep seems rational in comparison. Here’s a summary of it from the fansubber:
For one close-knit group of friends, life is all about high school, strawberry milk, and karaoke. Each day is the same, and nothing interesting ever happens… or at least, until their peaceful fantasies were shattered starting with a series of prophetic nightmares. Now, they do battle zombies, hellbeasts, and living shadows in their fight to discover the line that separates the sleeping world from the waking one.
Then it was time for bed, so that I could be rested for work today. Oh, in case you’re wondering; I’m trying to get the latest version of our software installed on my station and today the network seems to be running on 2 tin cans with a piece of rotting string, so it’s taking forever (hence my having time to write this entry). Alas, now I have nothing more to say so I guess you’ll have to be satisfied with this for now.
* That’s just something it does that every once in a while and I’ve not figured out why yet, but since it happens so rarely, I’m not too likely to look into it right now.