Balentime's Day

The fireplace was a nice touch, but just the novelty of sitting in the Omni sipping cocktails was by itself enough to make yesterday a memorable date night. "Happy Balentime's Day," T said to me. "Happy Balentime's Day," I replied. And we toasted, he with a Jack and Coke, I with a gin and soda. We chatted about office gossip, what our lives will be like when we're old, and whether money is a romantic topic of conversation. (Me: Yes. T: No.) Over by the bar, a group of hotel guests were huddled together, strangers acting like old friends, watching the 2010 Winter Olympics. I was grinning.

We hadn't intended on having a "Valentine's" date. I just suggested that we go see a movie. But then we realized we still didn't have food in the house, and we were hungry. So we decided to walk over to our favorite Thai restaurant a few blocks away. It was a brisk walk, what with the snow and my refusal to wear my new boots to dinner. But when we saw the neon lights and the inviting sign, thoughts of cold disappeared. Instead, we began to wonder why nobody was eating at the restaurant.

"Welcome!" said the lady who greeted us. "We have a prix fix menu for Valentine's Day. $35 a person. Would you like to see?"

"Um, are you doing your regular menu, too?" was my classy reply. Predictably, the answer was no.

After a quick huddle, we decided to throw caution to the wind. Kind of like we did the last time we decided to splurge on dinner out. And the time before that. And I haven't even gotten to last week!

Kidding! (Sort of.)

I'll fast-forward through the delicious appetizer course, scrumptious dinner and so-so (hey, just being honest) dessert, except to say that our dinner conversation consisted of deciding that we should look for a new apartment. The glory of being on a month-to-month is that we can pretty much move out whenever we want, except for the whole 60-day notice thing. After a year and a half of being in this little firetrap, we've official been in Big City and in this apartment for as long as we were in Richmond (and our nice, big apartment). Other exciting topics of conversation included gushing over our fat, "just married!" tax return, and the speed with which we will now be able to pay off credit cards. T quickly wiped my hefty student loan debt off the table of conversation.

Anyway, after dinner, we had a good long stroll down the main drag of our neighborhood, where we stopped in to some of the charming local shops (Condom Kingdom, Beyond the Wall). I considered buying a journal for logging, uh, bathroom functions. Mostly I pretended I was 15 again and hanging out at the mall. I even saw a group of my old high school friends (or their doppelgangers) sharing fries at Johnny Rockets.

Eventually, we wound our way up to the movie theater, where we were 45 minutes early. I guess Condom Kingdom didn't have enough to keep us occupied between dinner and movie. Cue T's brilliant idea to get drinks at the Omni Hotel, which is right next to the theater. Yes, I had to use my passport to get my drink, since I lost my driver's license at that stupid 1/2 to JD party a couple weeks ago. But no, they did not kick us out for looking like vagabonds wandering in off the street.

But the whole point of this post is to tell any reader lucky enough to have read this far that you must go see Fishtank. If it's not playing at a theater near you, rent it on Netflix when it comes out. This was a beautifully stark, well-shot and never-dull "coming of age" story about a 15-year old girl growing up in public housing in England's East Side (?). I hate the concept of "coming of age" movies, which usually seem to be about boys trying to have sex for the first time. But this one was awesome. I can't recommend it enough.

That concludes my obligatory Valentine's Day post. Thank you for reading :)