Fine dining and extreme bluegrass

Yesterday was Mrs Notthat and my 27th anniversary (otherwise known as "Pansy Day)! Due to odd schedules and such, the big celebration will be later, but for yesterday, the two of us spent it eating good food and watching a play that featured a fiddle.

The day didn't start out all that good though.

First, I woke with the beginnings of a cold, probably passed on by Grandboy Riley the previous week.

Next, once I got to work I decided to get some hot tea and throw away a plate filled with crumbs at the same time. Being the graceful moose that I am, I naturally dropped the plate and spilled the crumbs all over the hallway carpet.

Rather than ignoring the crumbs, I grabbed one of those floor sweeper things that pretend to be a vacuum cleaner. Its handle fell off as I was carrying it to the crumbs, and as it hit the floor, its contents spilled out everywhere (I guess it is better at picking up things than I thought).

So I put it back together, spent several minutes trying to clean up the mess I had just made with it, then finally attacked the crumbs. Once I got the carpet to the point where the mess was spread out enough to not draw undo suspicion, I finally went to get my tea. Except the water bottle was empty.

I swear that I was ready to crawl under a rock somewhere and wait the day out with the way it was going.

The good news is that the evening went fantastic.

First we got all dressed up. (It turned out that I was WAY overdressed - there were very few guys in any kind of suit at all at either the restaurant or the theater. It's not like guys were wearing cutoffs and a tank top, but I stood out a bit. I looked good though. And Mrs Notthat of course was ravishing!)

(I love how it looks like I'm wearing a stylin' hat!)

We had dinner at a place called Bentley's. This is a place that buys adjectives by the ton to describe the various dishes on the menu.

My double-cut pork chop came with Yukon Gold Mash, Haricot Verts, and Apricot Cherry Chutney. It was really good, although I'm glad they didn't make me identify the various bits.

Mrs Notthat ordered the Mahi Mahi special that had so many adjectives to describe its sauce and pile of barley that I failed to remember any of them.

Here's a cool thing - I ordered the sorbet (made from Myer lemons and blood oranges) and Mrs happened to mention that it was our anniversary. So they added a nice touch to the edge of the plate.

(I didn't think to take a picture until I had already eaten it - sorry.) The cooler thing was that they ended up giving us the Sorbet as an anniversary gift!

Once dinner was done, we headed up towards San Francisco to the Golden Gate Theater to see Fiddler on the Roof. We were at the tail end of rush hour, so I was a bit nervous about making it in time. I checked the route on the iPhone, worked out how to avoid the biggest messes, and we made it fine.

The Golden Gate Theater is one of the old restored places that is really nice inside. They claimed to strongly enforce a "no pictures" policy, so I only snuck these two while the photo police were not looking.

 We were in the last row of the orchestra area. There were very few open seats once the play started. (This is a few minutes before the curtain was yanked up.)

The sound guy was right behind us. Two things of note: the MacBook Pro to the right and a Wall-E toy to the left.

The play was great - great orchestra, actors, dancing, and best of all, a great Tevye, played by Harvey Fierstein (he of the voice like a backhoe - thank you SFGate for that mental image). Sadly, the play still has a depressing ending, but also has a lot of good laughs and a few good songs.

Once it was over, we managed to find our way out of SF (although I had to pretend to be a taxi for a few blocks when I got into the wrong lane on Market St - what a weird road).

We had a great evening, The Boy scored some leftover bread and the dog scored a small bone. And nobody complained about my carpet mess.

That's it - move along...