the best kind of date night

 

my brilliant and overly generous parents gave us a mad fox restaurant gift card for our birthdays this past summer. right away i knew we needed to save this gift card for when we really needed it. last week wasn't a particularly rough week by any stretch of the imagination, it was just typical. and typical enough that a night out was just what we needed to kick off the weekend right. and maybe the week was a wee bit annoying. and maybe i just wanted to go have a drink and a conversation with my husband without reciting jake bakes a cake, go dog go and there's a bird on my head. so sue me! luckily for us, we also have nelson's parents, who not only live very close by but are willing to grandsit mr. buns on any occasion. all of this meant, we could decide to go out on friday night at 4 p.m. on friday afternoon. hey, when you're a parent, this is considered spontaneity.
we rolled up to mad fox, ready to sit down at a table and enjoy some pub food and a few drinks. of course, our hopes were semi-dashed when the three hostesses (yes, three) semi-smugly told us there was an hour and a half wait for a table. in our spontaneous moment, we had sort of forgotten that 7:30 p.m. on a friday night was probably a pretty popular time to go out. we paid it no mind and stuck to the bar area. we semi-stalked a couple of lovely older birds downing pints and sharing a deelicious looking pizza till nelson managed to charm two other cozy seats that i'm pretty sure were the exact seats we sat at last time we went to mad fox.
we celebrated our seats by ordering samplers of beer that sparked conversation ranging from the verve never getting paid their proper dues, the league's steve razzazzisi's escape from the twin towers and escape to LA, IPA's win over pumpkin beer (by me! can you believe it?) and the likelihood of goo wearing the glow in the dark sideburns with his elvis suit on halloween (we both voted no on this one, i'm voting that nelson wear them!) important stuff i tell you. we ended the night by spiting a medium-rare burger crowned with an onion ring and nestled on a brioche bun accompanied by some ehhh mussels and salty fries with too sweet ketchup. p.s. i also got to go to the bathroom alone. hey kids, i'm just living the dream.