Fun Friday

It was a quiet day at work after a week's worth of intense meetings.  It felt good to relax a little bit going into Thanksgiving week.  Unlike most of my employees and colleagues, I generally work the day before and after Thanksgiving, since my family is local and I don't go out of town.  I can't even remember the last time I went out of town over the Holiday.  With so many out of the office, I love how quiet it is during those days, though my boss has already put me "in charge" which almost guarantees I'm going to have to attend a meeting or three.

My daughter's school is having a book fair, and it was kind of neat to stop by the school this evening and get a bunch of books for her for Christmas.  The teachers are really great at her school (as are most of Howard County's teachers!), and it was fun to see them in a "social" environment.  Teachers tend to be very dedicated to their jobs, but they also know how to have fun, and they sure appeared to be having fun, even if they had to stick around at the school well after their work day on a Friday.

Friday is date night, and Melody and I decided to grab a bite to eat at one of our favorite restaurants, Houlihan's.  Houlihan's is what I would call "upscale casual", and the food tends to match the ambiance.  We've been going there for a lot of years now, and their menu, which does change a lot, still has many of our favorites.  I got the fish tacos, which is always great.  Melody got chicken tenders, and it is a BIG platter of food.  While the tenders are rather bland, there are a lot of them, and instead of just fries, they also have green beans, which my daughter loves.  The restaurant was really busy tonight, and we had a good 20 minute wait before we were seated.

I like to people watch, and since Friday is date night, there were a lot of couples in the restaurant.  You can usually tell which couples are dating (and those who might be on first dates) due to the way they interact with each other.  There's a lot of nervous laughing, and there is absolutely no physical contact.  They just don't quite seem comfortable with each other, at least not yet.  Then there was a slightly older couple (about my age, I'd guess), who seemed a little more comfortable with each other, even if they didn't appear to be married.  After they finished eating, he started to massage her arm from across the table, rather intensely.  It was an awkward public display of affection.  A third couple seated nearby, who looked like they were married, seemed to be having a very serious conversation with the manager, and the young man was getting a bit heated about something.  His date/wife looked like she wanted to be anywhere else.  The manager kept shaking her head no, and he didn't seem to like that answer.  They soon left without ordering any food.  Melody and I had a good time, though, and we left the restaurant with a lot of leftovers.

Originally we had planned to go to the Bengie's Drive-in tonight, but it's just too cold.  It's their last open weekend of the season, and even though they do rent in-car dashboard heaters (for only $1!), when we found out that the Friday show only had two movies, we decided not to go.  They're playing BIG HERO SIX, which we really enjoyed when we saw it a few weeks ago, and ST. VINCENT, with Bill Murray, which I had wanted to see.  The Saturday show includes PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES, which is a classic Thanksgiving-themed movie featuring Steve Martin and John Candy.  I'm not sure why they decided not to show it on Friday.  Anyway, we decided to skip the movies since we wouldn't be able to see it.

And that's our Friday.  Hope you all have a great weekend!