It’s Monday and man am I dragging. A nasty bout of insomnia last night had be up between 12:30 and 1:45, and when I did get to sleep it was pretty shallow and I kept waking up. I’m looking forward to 4:30 when I can head home and collapse.
I haven’t really done a substantial update in a week, so I guess I should look back over the last seven days.
On Tuesday of last week takaza and I joined a large group of friends at Sal E Carvao (aka “The Meat Faucet”) to help celebrate genet‘s birthday. It was a delightful meal, and the company was grand. I got to introduce several folks to my drink of choice when at Brazilian steakhouses, the caipirinha. Also, apparently they’re now owned by a different company and have revamped the menu a bit. Gone are the red/green chips; now you put a polished rock in front of your plate when you’re ready for more. This is harder to see, though, and not much of an improvement. They have changed up the meats available, though, and the Parmesan pork loin was quite delicious, as was the very tasty linguiça sausage.
On Friday night we had another fun night out with friends, this time with daveqat and jimcyl (who does actually read and post to LiveJournal! I’ve got proof!). First off, Dan surprised me with a truly wonderful 90-minute massage from Massage Envy in Wheeling. It was so relaxing, and just the perfect thing to cap off a busy week. From there, I walked across the parking lot and we met Dave and Jim for dinner at Tramonto’s Steak and Seafood. Holy cow, but that place was fantastic!
We started with steak tartare (not much to Dan’s taste, but I enjoyed it). Dave’s mushroom risotto appetizer was to die for, as well. Dan got a thick strip steak that was very rare in the middle and quite delicious. I was feeling adventurous, so I went with the skate wing in a veal demiglas sauce, served with haricot vert, diced sweet potato, and chunks of veal cheek (delicious!). The skate was a nice departure from the usual and have a nice, non-fishy flavor. For dessert, Dan had the inside-out root beer float, which was root beer ice cream served with vanilla cream soda (made in-house), served with beignet “fries” and cherry “ketchup”. It was innovative and quite yummy! I had the chocolate malt bread pudding, served with chocolate malt ice cream and something that looked like a Kit Kat bar but was a homemade chocolate candy bar filled with malt nougat. It was good, but the preponderance of malt made it a little one-note for my taste; a nice light, sweet cream sauce might have helped. Dave’s key lime pie was perfect, and Jim’s “ultimate” chocolate pudding was just plain sinful.
The evening was made perfect by exemplary service by our waiter Matthew, who was quite plainly running quite high on the Kinsey scale. He was a bit stiff at the beginning of the meal, but after we joked around a bit and established that we were all “family”, he loosened up considerably and we had a great time chatting about the food and the restaurant in general. If we ever go back (and I hope we do!) I intend to ask for his section specifically. Surprisingly, the tab wasn’t nearly as outlandish as I was expecting; with two glasses of wine for me, an appetizer, two entrees, and two desserts, the total bill was less than what Sal E Carvao had cost us earlier in the week.
Saturday morning found me at the DMV. What fun! But this explains the subject of this post. On my way to pick up Dan on Friday afternoon, I was pulled over by one of Lake County’s finest, who proceeded to inform me that my license plate was linked to an expired driver’s license. Actually, what happened is that when I got my North Carolina drivers license they never surrendered my Illinois license back to the state of Illinois. When I registered our Elements in Illinois when we moved back, that started the fun. This was actually the third time I’d been pulled over for this, and since I’d been waiting to have a permanent address to put on my license, I figured it was time to do something about it (after, um, two and a half years). So I did my penance by spending an hour and a half at the DMV, taking the written test again (28 out of 28 correct, thankyouverymuch!), and getting yet another horrible drivers license picture taken. But hey, I’m all nice and legal now! (and registered to vote, too, which is a nice side-benefit)
Sunday, we had a pleasant lunch with roho and Genet at Scott Dogs (first al fresco meal of the year, yay!), then ran a few errands. Once we got home, what began as a quick job of shoring up the storage shelf in our garage became a full-blown cleaning of the garage. I’m now happy to say that I can park in the garage without bumping any boxes! I need to hang our extension ladder to free up a bit of space along the side of the garage, but other than that the garage is pretty much good to go.
And then there’s today. If all goes well, I hope to head home and collapse on the sofa and play some Okami and relax. Dinner is leftovers, which is nice and simple, and I suspect we’ll be heading to bed early tonight, since Dan didn’t sleep too well last night, either. And tomorrow…well, we’ll see what plans develop!