Here is a catch-up of some stuff we did for fun in the last few weeks.
One Saturday morning, the weather looked great so I suggested we go kayaking at Balboa Island. So up on the car roof went the two-man kayak that I hadn’t been in since our first date almost exactly 5 years ago, and we had a great time kayaking, watching a seal swim right by us, discovering a great seafood happy hour for lunch.

On another day, we decided to see “Eat, Pray, Love.” It was playing at our favorite very uncrowded theatre in a historic quaint small-town district. When we were in line, we heard two women in front of us complaining about their tickets to the showing that we wanted to catch, wanting refunds or exchanges to a different showing time and location. Turned out that the noon showing we were aiming for was playing in a special theatre. You pay like $16 a ticket instead of whatever movies cost nowadays, and it’s in an upstairs VIP theatre where the leather seats are farther apart, fully reclining, the armrests have swiveling table trays attached, and a pushbutton for service and a wait staff brings you real restaurant food and wine. I had a chardonnay with a Mediterranean curried chicken and cous cous salad. (YUM.) Mr. W had some sort of red wine with a kobe burger and garlic fries. We definitely want to go back to that theatre again, altho we’ll be sure to get in a little earlier next time so we don’t miss movie parts while we’re picking cous cous out of the bed of lettuce.

Earlier this week, our Disneyland annual passes kicked in again after a summer-long blackout period, so we decided to go to Disneyland after work to see the new show at California Adventure, “World of Color.” A friend who works there tipped us off that if we had dinner at one of two restaurants in California Adventure, we could participate in a program that gets us perfect spots for the show without having to line up when the park opens for a Speedpass ticket into the show. The restaurant we chose to go to was Wine Country Trattoria, and the deal is we eat before 6:30 p.m., ordering from a “Preferred Dining” 3-course prix fixe menu at $39 a person, and after eating, we get show tickets to the special section. The food was flippin’ amazing. It was easily $60/pp quality fine dining. Soon we were in our section, from which I had this great view across the water:

Unfortunately, since this was an impromptu trip and I was still in my work dress and high heels, and it’s standing-room only at this show, I had to stand for nearly 2 hours waiting for the show to start and then for the half hour show to end. My feet and back were killing me. Even more unfortunate, an older lady and her friends who were next to us started inching their way in front of me, severely encroaching upon the space of a family of 4 in front of us, so that one old lady was nearly in the father’s lap as he sat on the ground with his kids by him. So when the show started, this, instead, was my view. Story of my life.

On Wednesday, we decided to stop by The District, an outdoors shopping and and restaurant area, for dinner at vegetarian restaurant Native Foods Cafe. I met the most gorgeous, well-behaved Japanese akita there! The owners let me pet him. Turns out he was only 4, so I asked how they trained him so well. They said they’d only gotten him a year and a half ago as a RESCUE. They were unsuccessful in finding out why an owner would let such a gorgeous, mellow dog go, but he ended up at a city kill-pound. An akita dog rescue group saw him, took him, and contacted this family, who’d just happened to put their interest in for an akita the week before. They met the dog and fell in love. Both the akita and the family got lucky! This dog was not territorial, didn’t have problems socializing with other passing dogs and people, and was silent. The owners say that at home, he knows to be a guard dog, and would alert them if someone lingered by their front lawn too long, or a stranger came too close to the house. Petting this large gorgeous animal, I felt like I was playing with the giant wolves in “Twilight.” Mr. W and I hung out over coffee a bit more there, and he said, “I love not going home with you.”

YESTERDAY was WONDERFUL. A high school acquaintance extended an invitation to me for a tequila tasting event, hosted by Tequila Ocho, at Mexican restaurant Olamendi’s in Laguna Beach. We got to the restaurant about 45 minutes before the event, so we walked across the street and stared at this for awhile:

I had never heard of Tequila Ocho before. Apparently it’s a higher-class sipping tequila, made the old-fashioned way. You treat and drink it as you would wine, such as letting it breathe first to expand the flavors, and it definitely has a nose and a palate that sometimes differ from each other. The chef at Olamendi’s created an exclusive menu to pair to each tequila and it was delicious, paired more perfectly than any wine or other pairing I’ve never tried, and the food wasn’t bulky or greasy! The tequila was amazing, too. They take the bitter core of the agave out, so their tequilas are sweeter. We got these nice bottles of 2010 plata to take home as attendance gifts.

On the social networking site where I posted the above photo, this conversation ensued when I got home:
Claudio: I soooo could use a drink right now.
me: I am dizzy. D-I-Z-Z-I-E-E-E dizzae!@#$ I hope I’m not gonna have my first hangover ever tomorrow morning, cuz I still gotta work!
…duuuuude, my fingers feel weird. like I can’t really separate ’em to type.
Maggie: LMAO!!!!
Claudio: If you tequila tasting, you should have at least SOME kind of hangover. Wear it like a badge of honor.
me: they did better than “tasting.” they started with a mixed drink (plata in a mint pineapple margarita — tasted like a tequila mojito; we had TWO each), then did generous pours in wine glasses of a 2009 plata paired with a cheese appetizer folded in some sort of native leaf doused in a tomato-based sauce, then we went to a 2009 reposado with a spicy cream of bean tortilla soup, then a 2010 reposado with an amazing tender chicken breast with baby pearl potatoes in a chipotle mole sauce (hubby had beef and what looked to be some veggies in a dark sauce), and finally a 2010 anejo (not yet released on the market) with a light dessert of broiled mango and another native fruit that tasted like apple/pear over Monterey jack cheese on toasted bruschetta bread.
Claudio: Sounds amazing. Glad you guys had fun. 🙂

I texted Claudio at a little past 10pm, “dude. my mouth is numb. is this normal? the food was flippin amazing tho! omg.”
He responded 2 minutes later, but I’d already konked out. I woke up at 2am to see this from him: “Normal? No. The tequila is prob eating away at ur nervous system. Enjoy the food while u still have the ability to swallow.” Then 5 minutes after that, when I didn’t respond, “Did u go to sleep already????? Geez!” Well GOOD THING cuz he would’ve scared the crap out of me in my buzzy state! I got out of bed, went downstairs for water as Dodo followed me closely, and ran into Mr. W in the kitchen. He had fallen asleep in the cool weather outside and had also come to the kitchen for water. “What are YOU doing here?” he asked me.
“Taking Dodo for a walk.”
Today, no hangover. Nothing. I feel GREAT!