The Great Anniversary Dinner of Twenty-Ten

Today was my wife’s and I 11th anniver­sary. We had decid­ed we were going to just go out to eat.

Ini­tial­ly, we were going to go to the Flame restau­rant in Roseville, but decid­ed it may be too busy and decid­ed to try the Chi­anti Grill in Roseville instead. It’s a bit more upscale.

We made reser­va­tions for 7:15 and arrived there at 6:58 p.m. They had us at a table before 7:15. We ordered some drinks and told our wait­er to take his time, as we were din­ing with­out our four chil­dren and were in no hur­ry. We want­ed to enjoy our dinner.

The drinks were ter­ri­ble. Amy ordered the Pome­gran­ate Mar­ti­ni and she said it was way to strong. After just one sip, she could feel a “fire­ball” in her stom­ach, and her cheeks were already flushed. I ordered a Pome­gran­ate Lemon­ade Cock­tail, and it had a fun­ny taste (did­n’t taste like lemon­ade at all) and after awhile, I real­ize the fun­ny taste was very sim­i­lar to that taste you get when you spray bug spray on and for­get and lick your “bug sprayed” fin­ger. I could­n’t fin­ish it. He removed the charge from the receipt for my drink, but Amy opt­ed to try hers mixed with a sprite. She said it still was nasty.

We ordered a starter of their Spinach, Arti­choke and Parme­san Ramekin (Spinach and Arti­choke dip). That was deli­cious. Not very cheesy, but very creamy (Amy said it was more on the spinach side).

Amy ordered the Fet­tuc­cine Alfre­do with Chick­en & Fresh Veg­eta­bles and I ordered the Spinach Ravi­o­li, but I could­n’t decide on the choice of sauce (it came with an option between two). The serv­er sug­gest­ed I try both, and that they would just split it down the mid­dle. So I did. I had pesto-gor­gonzo­la cream sauce on one side and Mari­nara del­la Non­na on the other.

Amy loved her dish. She said it was very good. And I liked both my sauces, although the pesto-gor­gonzo­la cream sauce was more of a favorite. the ravi­o­lis were large, I had to cut them in half to eat them and I got about 6–7 on the plate. They also came with the house sal­ad, and bread. Their ranch dress­ing was very creamy and very good. The bread was deli­cious! We kept dunk­ing it in the ranch dress­ing or our sauces.

We then fin­ished off with dessert. We were not pre­pared. They brought a tray for us to choose and the tray had this ENORMOUS slice of choco­late lay­er cake, HUGE lay­ered Car­rot Cake, Huge Lay­ered Lemon Tart cake, good sized tiramisu, creme brulee, Cheese cake or a small choco­late lava cake with ice cream. We set­tled on the Lemon Tart and Amy only want­ed one bite, as she was full. But she could­n’t help her­self, it was so good, she ate half of it with me. Dur­ing our dessert, she was watch­ing the win­dows and com­ment­ed that there was a lot of light­ning and a lot of cops dri­ving by.

About this time, the wind out­side start­ed to pick up and you could­n’t even real­ly see the patio, the wind was mak­ing the rain look like snow flur­ries. My dad was tex­ting, and call­ing, Charmin was call­ing and tex­ting, Kel­ly was call­ing and Katie was tex­ting.  Amy was try­ing to field all of these on her phone while I checked the weath­er on my phone.  Amy went to use the restroom and see if she could get a bet­ter sig­nal and qui­eter space while I wait­ed for the check.

She came back (I was wait­ing to get my cred­it card back..I had the signed check, just need­ed my card) and she had these big eyes. She had got­ten a phone call from her mom telling her about the storm and the lights had went out for a cou­ple sec­onds in the bathroom.

Peo­ple ask me why I am always “hooked in” and have my phone out and check it all the time, and this is why. All night I felt it going off. But I ignored it, because we were on our anniver­sary date and I want­ed her to have my full atten­tion (I was­n’t wor­ried about the kids, cause they would have called her phone…which they did). But if I would have checked my phone I would have got­ten the Weather.com App alert­ing me to “SEEK SHELTER NOW” (for Cir­cle Pines AND Roseville).

We turned and looked behind us where this gigan­tic wall of WINDOWS was and could just see the wind and the water and how dark and nasty it was. I pulled out my phone, saw the alerts. So we just sat at the table. We were offi­cial­ly stuck. We could­n’t go home cause some­one told us there was a fun­nel cloud out there and that it was real­ly bad and to stay were we are. We could­n’t leave the restau­rant and go any­where else, cause the rain was com­ing down so hard and it was real­ly bad.

So we sat there look­ing at my phone. Our serv­er said that they had the weath­er on at the bar. So we moved over there to watch the news. That when we saw that the fun­nel cloud was at Snelling and Laurpentur.…which was two stop lights away from where we were…nice.  I talked with some oth­er peo­ple who were stuck at the bar watch­ing the weath­er while Amy kept her eyes glued to the TV screen and peri­od­i­cal­ly nudged me when the weath­er­man talked about Roseville and/or Cir­cle Pines.

After almost an hour of sit­ting at the bar, Amy texted my dad to see how it was look­ing by home.  He said it was pret­ty much done and just rain­ing now.

When it start­ed to look bear­able and not windy out­side, we ran to the car. Just before we got to the car (a few steps) it just dumped on us. We got inside and the radio was telling us that a Flash Flood warn­ing was for the Roseville Area until 3 am. Amy turned to me and said, “I am not stay­ing here until 3 in the morning”.

SO, that was our very nice din­ner and excit­ing evening.