Summertime

I am certainly enjoying having a little more free time now that I don't work at Bibelot anymore. Tuesday, June 16, I met Michelle Goryl for happy hour in a part of E.P. I hardly knew existed. We met at Woody's Shady Oak Grille, which was pretty hopping for a Tuesday night in the suburbs. The manager must have been new, because he stopped by several times to say hello, ask if he could do anything for us, etc. He even offered to buy the next round, but we were ready to go at that point. He did give us coupons to come back again, which was nice.

Friday night we met Chris and Mark at The Bulldog in NE Minneapolis. I had been there before for a drink or two but never had their food. For appetizers we got bacon wontons (tasty!) and Bavarian pretzels. I had the Bulldog martini but it tasted like orange cough syrup, so I switched over to Strongbow. For dinner we all had burgers.

Saturday afternoon was Melissa's baby shower, and then Chris and Brett came over for dinner. We camped out in our side yard and had beer and burgers on the grill.

Sunday we went to the Stone Arch Festival, which I try to go to every year. It is mostly artists, but they also have a classic car show of sorts, a kids' area, food booths, a performance stage and a beer/wine garden. We were in and out somewhat quickly as rain was pending – it started to sprinkle just as we were leaving. The cool thing is there were a lot of artists that were different from last year, but there were also a lot of artists whom we had just seen at the Edina Art Fair a few weeks ago. I believe we are good on art fairs for a while!

I did buy a small, fairly simple piece of stained glass that I really love and felt was priced well. Granted, we don't really have a place to put it right now, but that's never an obstacle in my world ;)

Last night (Wednesday), we went to something called "Power Balladz" at the Lab Theatre in the Warehouse District (Mnpls). Tickets were half price this week so we paid $15 and the show was well worth the price of admission. There were basically three performers – two guys and a girl – and they had a five piece band, and they played your typical power ballads – Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," Ozzie Osborne and Lita Ford doing "Close My Eyes Forever," Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home," etc.

People really got into it, dressing up '80s style, whipping out lighters and singing along. If you grew up in the '80s and listened to music at all, I think this show is a pretty good bet.

Prior to going to Power Balladz we hit up Emily's Lebanese Deli in NE for dinner. It was featured on a Food Network show a while back and I've been wanting to check it out ever since. The food was all right, but I prefer Christos. It is a super-small room with zip for atmosphere and the servers certainly aren't there because they love their jobs. You do, however, get a lot of food for pretty cheap, and if I lived in the neighborhood I'd probably swing through on occasion and grab some food to go.