The (Long) Weekend

Pin It now! I took a couple of days off from work and this past weekend felt like a whole week off.  It was great.  On Friday, I started my day trying to find vanilla vodka and then making a test batch of orange creamsicle jello shots (more on that in a bit).  We agreed to dog-sit our friends' dog which seemed like a fantastic idea - I've always wanted a dog.  Our friends came by to drop off Allie, an adorable poodle mix, and told us she wouldn't be trouble at all.  Generally, she was a delight and such a cutie.  Specifically though, she freaked out wen we put her in her cage at night to go to bed and wouldn't stop crying and barking.  We felt bad so on Saturday night we let her stay in our room, but she was up all hours.  Every hour, she would circle the bed, want to play and tried to jump on the bed.  It felt like we were new parents with a newborn!  So sadly, I've changed my mind about having a dog.  Or only having a dog that doesn't shed and sleeps through the night.  I also met up with the girls that night to watch Crazy, Stupid Love.  Loved it.  It makes me secret crush adore Ryan Gosling, although not as much as when I saw him in the Notebook (in case you needed a frame of reference).  The movie was sad and funny at the same time, Steve Carrell was good like that.

On Saturday, Hubs and I were exhausted (him more than me since he got up to take care of the dog a few more times).  He was still able to haul massive bags of meat and vegetables back from the Meat Market in Hell's Kitchen (near our old apartment) back to Brooklyn for the party we were going to throw (more on that in a bit).  I'm not sure how he got all that food home in one try, but he did and saved a ridiculous amount of money since that meat market is so inexpensive!  The meat section is a big meat locker that you walk into and the butchers are inside butchering the meat right in front of you.  I'm not sure why it's so cheap though...  Saturday night, we celebrated our anniversary and Hub's birthday at Zenkichi.  We've passed this place every day and it's like a secret garden on the outside and a haunted house on the inside.  It sounds strange, but if you go there, you'll know what I mean.  We had the omakase menu and sampled eight delicious small dishes: Japanese yam miso soup, a late of amuse-bouche (my favorite was the baby yellowtail sashimi), asparagus-scallop-corn tempura, homemade tofu salad, miso cod, lamb chop tataki (I wish she had ten of these!), tuna donburi and frozen black sesame mousse (hubby had the Mineoka Tofu that tasted like panna cotta).  The meal was absolutely amazing!  We were both ridiculously full and ridiculously content after dinner.  If only we could go every night...

On Sunday, we continued our long weekend of anniversary and birthday celebrations, and Michael planned a full day of surprises.  I have to say I hate surprises... ok, not true.  I hate not knowing what the surprise is, I love the other side of the surprise and the end result of whatever the surprise will be.  I asked Michael dozen of times what we were doing but he held strong.  Finally, I found out (when we were actually there) that were were having brunch at Maison, one of favorite crepe places, AND the Cirque du Soleil show Zarkana.  The show was amazing - my favorites were the Wheel of Death, where two brothers are doing leaps and somersaults, at one point blindfolded, on two gigantic spinning wheels, and Ellen Chen who fingerpainted in blue sand these amazing (AMAZING) images of the first half of the show and then a preview of the second half of the show.

Ok, I think we need a little break before I get to the rest of the weekend....