Click through to the extended entry to read more.

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.

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.

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.

As I said above, it was busy, with stops at the Metropolitan Museum of art, a specialty rice pudding place, and everywhere in between (including meeting with a plethora of long-unseen friends).

One evening found us without a scheduled event, in search of dinner and with an eye toward seeing a neighborhood we hadn't yet made it to. We decided to go to SoHo. Following a subway discussion of the pronunciation of "Houston" in New York, we disembarked and found that modern-day SoHo is pretty dead at 9:30 on a Tuesday night. The city as a whole, perhaps, does not sleep, but parts of it certainly do. After bypassing several Italian and French restaurants, we crossed a street and found ourselves in front of Hiroko's Place.

They little sign in front admonished us that there would be no smoking inside, and that Hiroko's Place does not serve sushi. Good to know.

This late (apparently) on a Tuesday, we mostly had the place to ourselves, which was very sweet for a night out together. As we checked out the menus, we also took in the decor, which was a mix of small pieces and large quilts by Kayo Aiba. It was charming and cozy, in the sense of comfortable and welcoming (rather than as a euphemism for small).

We surveyed the menu and eventually settled on mentaiko noodles and a Japanese the omu white (that's a Japanese-style omelette comprising a thin layer of egg wrapped around a rice-mix filling, with bechamel sauce).

The dinner was tasty and a fun experiment in trying yet more food that we hadn't had before. We shared, although littlestar preferred the mentaiko and I probably enjoyed the omu white more. We topped it off with a dessert that was, suiting both our tastes these days, just mildly rather than overbearingly sweet.

We reluctantly made our way back out into what was proving a somewhat blustery and vaguely cold evening; I think if we could have swung it, we might have just stayed in the lands of fine art quilts and tasty foods. Nonetheless, we had a little happy glow as we rode the subway back to our hotel, and a little bit of the evening lingered with us for the remainder of the trip.

As the peripenultimate date of the last semester of littlestar's schooling, we chose to go to Cascal. As I was remiss in not writing about this until now, I can hardly recall much of the details, beyond good food and good company. Those seem sufficient for a good date, though.

We'll call this post elegant, like the meal at Cascal, and move on from there.

Not, you know, that we've ever done that.

This time around, we had a packed day in the city, seeing a movie, the art that led to the movie, and more. Click through to the extended for the full explanation.

Click through to the extended for more.

It seemed like a good way to spend the evening.

Click through to the extended for more.

Not for the whole semester, you understand, but as a final break ahead of it.

Consequently, the discussion focused on North versus South. A friend had drawn a lovely picture of the unsampled joys of the central coast region, which made it tempting, but at the end of the day Napa won out with the promise of pampering. This just seemed right for littlestar ahead of the final semester's sprint.

So, as early as was reasonable on a Saturday morning, we got in the car and drove north.

Click through to read the rest in the extended entry.

Just so you know.

Knowing that we both wanted to head by the library, I asked her to meet me there, then join me for some hot chocolate afterward. As I said, we aren't really drinking coffee these days. For me, I've decided that as much as coffee may help with the boring parts of work, it also makes me unnaturally awake at odd hours. littlestar, in contrast, turns into a hyperkinetic fast talker when she's under the influence, which is at once entertaining and, after a number of hours, worrying. So we're probably both better of abstaining.

Note that this rule may be broken from time to time.

We tromped around the library for a while, then after that realized that we were both actually hungry, it being evening and all, and decided that rather than just going straight to a dessert of sorts, we'd get real food. littlestar was feeling a need for Indian food, so we strolled down Castro to Godavari (formerly Sue's), where we shared a lovely little dinner.

This is where, of course, the coffee - chocolate - chai transition comes in. Having reasonably eschewed coffee for the idea of chocolate, littlestar decided to change things up during dinner and instead of ordering a sweet lassi as she sometimes does, chose to fight off a cold night with a hot chai. That prompted this exchange:

"I guess you don't mind staying up tonight?"

*shrug*

Just like that.

After a nice little dinner together, we decided we were way too full for hot chocolate or any kind of dessert after all, and wandered off home instead.