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, crème brûlée, 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.
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