Date Night - Take 4

Steve and I have been trying to go on a date since our anniversary in November.

In November, for our anniversary, Negina came down with the swine flu (H1N1), so we had to quarantine her.

In January, for my birthday, Savion became a professional at projectile vomiting.

In February, for Valentine's Day, Negina came down with chicken pox.

So on Feb 27th, Steve and I decided to go on a date just because.

Our friends, Josh & Elissa, agreed to take the kids early so that we could take as long as we wanted and still get home at a decent enough hour to get enough sleep so we would be alert at church the next day.

We wanted to watch a matinee and then have dinner. Our movie was supposed to start at 3:45p.

You'll NEVER, guess what happened.

On our way to drop the kids off, I felt the steering wheel stick. I thought that maybe we needed more power steering fluid so I mentioned that to Steve. As we got closer to their house, it became harder to steer. I was literally fighting with the steering wheel to get it to just turn a slight bend in the road. By the time we turned onto their road, I actually had to have Steve help me turn the wheel so that I wouldn't crash into the building. For those who are familiar with steering before power steering became standard, it was harder to drive the van than it was to drive my 1967 mustang with manual steering. Yeah, not fun.

We parked the van and I took the kids in while Steve was going to fill the power steering fluid. I went back out to tell Steve that the kids wanted to say goodbye and he showed me a belt had come off and to ask if Josh could help him. Come to find out it was the serpentine belt. you kind of need that because, according to Wikipedia (as i am not under-the-hood savvy I have to rely on their definition): 

A serpentine belt (also known as a multi-vee or multi-rib belt) is a single, continuous belt used to drive multiple peripheral devices in an automotive engine, such as an alternator, power steering pump, water pump, A/C compressor, air pump, etc. . . The drawback of this single belt is that if the belt breaks, the vehicle loses all of its peripheral devices

So Steve and Josh try to put the belt back on, but they couldn't figure out how to release the tension so that the belt could slip on and then re-tighten it when the belt was in place.

Yeah, they couldn't figure that out so they called Chris, who came by and helped them figure it out. I went outside at one point just to see how things were going and to assess whether we would be able to go out or if we were going to be unlucky once again.

I got out there and Steve was the one fixing the serpentine belt. I was so proud. I have never seen him do anything under the hood other than add oil, antifreeze or any of the other fluids.

He finished it, took it for a test drive and we got on our way, two hours later. It was a good thing that we decided to go early, because instead of watching a movie and then having dinner, we had dinner and then watched a movie.

We went to The Muddy Rudder. We were NOT impressed. I had the spinach & artichoke dip and the Mediterranean Pasta. Steve had the fried calamari and the Ribeye. Neither of us liked our main course and Steve did not like his appetizer. He said the calamari was rubbery and had no flavor, even though he ordered the Kajun style. His steak had more fat on it than there was meat. The green beans were old and floppy, and the baked potato was cold. The Mediterranean Pasta had way too much pesto, the olives were mushy and the dried tomatoes were chewy. I did, however like the spinach & artichoke dip and chips. We didn't stay for dessert.

As if the terrible food wasn't enough, the service was worse. We had to wait for 10 min before our waitress introduced herself and took our drink order, both of us had hot chocolate. Then waited another 15 minutes before the drinks made it to our table and we ordered our food. The appetizers took another 20 minutes before they were served, and the main courses were served by the restaurant manager because our waitress took too long to serve us. Yeah, we're never going there again.

Because the waitress took so long to serve us, we were not going to make it to the mall theaters in time to watch Valentine's Day, so in our search for another movie, we saw that the Movie Magic cinemas was showing When In Rome, the movie we wanted to watch for my birthday, and instead of paying $8+ each for tickets, we only had to pay $3.50 each. Good deal, and tickets are only $1 on Tuesdays.

 

The movie did not disappoint. It was packed with good, clean humor with just enough romance to keep it from being cheesy.

It was nice to FINALLY, after three months of trying, finish a date.

Let's see how long it takes before we get to finish another one . . .