100 dates

This is a long story, but it ends well.

Click through to the extended entry to read more.

Continue reading "Date 47: Past, present, and future" »

Posted by parakkum at 10:09 AM | Permalink

Lush art and lush ice cream make for a good day in the city.

Continue reading "Date 46: Sleeping Beauty, Small Destructions, and ice cream" »

Posted by parakkum at 08:32 PM | Permalink

So, it turns out that we reward success with scallops and dessert.

Continue reading "Date 45: We reward success with scallops" »

Posted by parakkum at 01:09 AM | Permalink

We like desserts.

Continue reading "Date 44: Sweet things with a sweet person" »

Posted by parakkum at 10:49 PM | Permalink

Littlestar and I recently lost one of the bunnies we take care of together, a sweet girl named Pearl. We decided that we wanted to, among other things, find a good picture frame to show off a picture of her. This led to a discussion about whether it's sweet or morbid to go looking for picture frames for a departed loved one on a date. We decided, perhaps unsurprisingly, that it was sweet, so we were off to Aaron Brothers to look through frames.

This is perhaps only the second time I've look at frames with a specific person in mind for the frame. Littlestar and I walked through aisles, checking out and discarding frames that didn't seem to suit Pearl very well. We eventually found a design we liked, albeit not in the actual materials they'd used for the frame. With the image of a well-suited frame firmly in mind, we decided we'd be able to find the best possible version of that frame later.

I'm glad we found that right frame style together.

After browsing through Aaron Brothers, we went to fulfill our second goal for the evening and try a new restaurant. This time around our target was En in Sunnyvale, the latest in a list of Bay Area Izakayas that we've tried out.

We ended up with a shellfish-errific order, almost without realizing it, with...

Creamy Scallop Croquet

Bacon Scallops

Uni with Onsen Egg
Uni Gratin

...to which we added Bacon Enoki mushrooms.

Yes, that's double scallops, double uni, and double bacon.

Littlestar is, of course, a huge fan of uni. I'm not usually so much so, but it turned out that the Uni with Onsen Egg was just about my speed. Something about the sauce took enough of an edge off the taste that I really liked it...yet not so much that littlestar didn't. The Uni Gratin probably took too much of the flavor away, and might have been one too many rich foods on the night.

Everything else was lovely as well. It was a good remembrance of Pearl, and then a nice evening together at a new place.

Posted by parakkum at 10:40 AM | Permalink

Taking your date somewhere to impress her with your skills is one thing, but taking her somewhere where her skills can impress you might be even cooler.

While on the lookout for low-effort date options at the tail end of littlestar's schooling (which is now, blissfully, complete), I noticed that the Cantor Center had a potentially cool-sounding exhibit titled "From Pop to Modern." The content sounded interesting enough, and the promise of commentary not just from a curator but also from the artists and the people donating the work suggested it would be the kind of out-of-the-ordinary museum-going experience littlestar might appreciate. I also had the ulterior motive I hinted at above, as littlestar's background in art makes museums about a thousand times better. It's not just that she knows the artists and the surrounding history, although she does, but she can also comment on which things are easier or harder to do, and let me know just how impressive some of the work really is.

At the same time, she's not taken by everything, and that certainly adds to the overall charm of the experience.

We paused at the entrance to spend some time with the crazy sculpture that looks very much like it's a giant horse made of driftwood, but instead is a giant horse made of metal pieces that were molded off of driftwood and then painted very realistically to look like driftwood. Seriously, we hung out and started at that thing for quite a while. It's good to be able to share your amazement at how much something can look like driftwood with someone.

Once we found our way to the Pop to Modern Exhibit itself, we quickly acquainted ourselves with the color scheme that actually divided the art-associated commentary into four categories - curator, artist, donating individual, and student response. As it happens, you really only need to pay attention to the first and sometimes the second one, but the third and fourth were, well, interesting.

Recalling that littlestar is not necessarily automatically taken by all art, one might not be surprised that we spent a lot of time at this exhibit in a solid state of bemusement, especially when the more underperforming pieces were accompanied by glowing, and slightly overblown, praise by the people who did the donating (or the one student who thought a questionable sculptor was one of the greats of the last century). It's fun to stop in front of a giant, brown canvas and have her share your lack of engagement with it.

Eventually, we settled down in front of the work of the shockingly talented Peter Milton. I think we both could have spent even longer there, being in turns amazed by the images themselves and the process and imagination behind them. For us, this was the major reward of the trip together, and we spent a long time pointing things out, reading the explanations together, and being generally and comprehensively amazed.

Afterward, we escaped from the various silly pieces filled with the happy hum of this good stuff (and a few other things that were also pretty cool) and wandered off to have some dinner.

Posted by parakkum at 12:24 AM | Permalink

Being done with school has not yet equated to "not being busy" for littlestar, so we are not yet hewing off to distant reaches on dates (also, we're going to be doing enough traveling in the immediate future for non-date purposes that that might be a touch excessive anyway). Instead, we actually have time to go to a gym together, which is nice.

And no, visits to the gym do not count as dates.

However, at the gym one of the trainers enthusiastically recommended a local restaurant that I'd once lived within two blocks of, but had yet to sample - Bangkok Spoon. An enthusiastic recommendation for a kind of food we like was motivation enough, and our next date was set.

The restaurant is a nice little family place, which makes it homey and cute in an entirely positive way. The menu looked pretty good, and we settled on a green curry fried rice and something else (I admit I forget the specifics of this date's food, as we've since taken people there and gone again ourselves).

The food was really reminiscent of the food we'd shared on our trip to Thailand last year, and that was lovely. It was neither too sweet nor too rich, and as we ate we talked about that shared vacation, and things like riding an elephant (which is both exciting and scary) and eating food at the night market. We also both agreed we need to go back when we can, to visit friends we made there and maybe see the monkey temple this time (last time, it was the fish temple).

Littlestar and I both love good food (honestly, I picked up a lot of my real appreciation for food from her), but this date was more than a nice meal; it was a reminder of a trip we shared that can feel like a long time ago after a very full year.

But it is a good restaurant, too.

Posted by parakkum at 05:01 PM | Permalink