Valentines Day in Pictures (and Words)

Brendan and I had a wonderful weekend - I have been crazy busy since January 1 even though we've gotten to have a few weekends together, and it was nice to have him visit me for a change.  It was really a very nice weekend, even with the little snafu we had on Saturday night (more in a sec).  Here is our Valentines Day weekend in pictures:

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After sticking around for a little lab work (boo for having to bring Brendan back to lab when he got in early!), we headed over to City Tap House for dinner.  It was a nice, laid-back meal, and we got to sample a few different beers by having their custom flight.  We were going to go to the movies Friday night, but it got a bit late when I had to go back to lab to finish up an experiment at 9pm.  Instead, we ate homemade chocolate cheesecake and watched King of Kong on Netflix instead.  It was actually quite interesting!

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Saturday morning, we went for lunch at a sushi place, then went on our own little chocolate tour of Philadelphia.  Instead of spending $90 for the two of us to go on a touristy tour, I got some ideas from the internet and we went on a little walking/chocolate-tasting tour.  The highlights:  Brown Betty Petite, Teuscher Chocolates, Marcie Blaine Artisanal Chocolates, and 4th Street Cookie Company.  My favorites were the sweet potato cupcake at Brown Betty and the truffles at Teuscher Chocolates (which should be perfection, at $3 a piece!).

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The big night out for Valentine's was dinner at Moshulu, which is a restaurant inside a restored historic grain-running boat.  The restaurant was beautiful inside, and it was very neat that we were on a boat - which mostly made up for the lack of particularly beautiful scenery out the window (concrete walkway, anyone?).  The best part was really the food - some of the best seafood I've ever tasted.  It's too bad we didn't take any pictures while we were all dressed up, but we had a lot of fun!

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There is a dearth of good movies out there, but we did both agree on wanting to see Black Swan.  It was a total mind trip - and a pretty decent movie.  I'm sure it will give me bad dreams for days!

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.....And here is where our evening takes a bit of a turn.  When we got out of the movie, we walked back to where the car was parked......and found no car.  There was a bit of scrambling and walking around a bit to make sure we hadn't forgotten where we parked, but we hadn't.  A call to 911 later, and we found out the car had been towed.  Turns out what we thought was a legit parking spot was actually a no-stopping zone.  Brendan handled everything like a champ and kept me calm - and the whole thing wasn't too terrible.  I hate Philly Parking Authority, though!  We refused to let them ruin our night, though, and enjoyed a bit of SNL and eggnog ice cream when we got home.

Sunday was stay-in day, and we had yummy heart-shaped red velvet pancakes for breakfast. We did go out to get heart-shaped pretzels, but other than that we had fun watching TV and making shrimp scampi for dinner.

All in all, a wonderful weekend.....even with the little adventure thrown in!