dating
diary
valentine's day
Valentine's Date 2016
7:19 PM
Between Jeremy and myself, Valentine's Day isn't anything special. Every month we have a day we set aside as our "Date Day" and it's this little tradition we've kept going since we started dating, just as a way to always appreciate each other and take some time for us. Because Valentine's Day is in February, and because you can get some fairly sweet deals on Valentine's—that's the day we go on our monthly date. That being said, I personally have nothing for or against Valentine's Day. I'll get into that at a later date.
Anyway, I have to admit last year's Valentine's was a bit busier. We went exploring downtown, visited our favorite tea shop, I got some pretty flowers from Jeremy, we went to a chocolate shop together and discovered everything was insanely over-priced, discovered a new Thai restaurant that we now love, and then went and got my anti-helices pierced. Pretty sweet.
This year wasn't like that very much, but the simplicity of it all was nice. We explored downtown again—that's usually our go-to thing. Downtown is always changing. The stores are constant but the activities are always different, and so it's fun to just walk it with Jeremy and window shop and pop into some of our favorite stores just to explore. I never thought I'd actually find someone I could window shop with, of all things. But that's my Jeremy for you! This time, instead of exploring stores like usual, we were mainly focused on scoping out food places for our Valentine's Day lunch and also for future reference. There are a ton of food places we've yet to try, and whenever we say we're going to go somewhere new, we don't. So we forced ourselves to find somewhere new to try.
First off, my day actually started by waking up to this cutie pie's face:
Ghost woke me up with the treat of him gazing down at me lovingly (or maybe he just wanted me to wake up and open the bathroom for him, who really knows) and purring. So Jeremy and I cuddled with him for a while and set about getting ready for the day. We discovered in the midst of getting ready that our water heater was acting up again, but I told Jeremy there was absolutely no way someone was coming out today because we had plans.
Anyway, I have to admit last year's Valentine's was a bit busier. We went exploring downtown, visited our favorite tea shop, I got some pretty flowers from Jeremy, we went to a chocolate shop together and discovered everything was insanely over-priced, discovered a new Thai restaurant that we now love, and then went and got my anti-helices pierced. Pretty sweet.
This year wasn't like that very much, but the simplicity of it all was nice. We explored downtown again—that's usually our go-to thing. Downtown is always changing. The stores are constant but the activities are always different, and so it's fun to just walk it with Jeremy and window shop and pop into some of our favorite stores just to explore. I never thought I'd actually find someone I could window shop with, of all things. But that's my Jeremy for you! This time, instead of exploring stores like usual, we were mainly focused on scoping out food places for our Valentine's Day lunch and also for future reference. There are a ton of food places we've yet to try, and whenever we say we're going to go somewhere new, we don't. So we forced ourselves to find somewhere new to try.
First off, my day actually started by waking up to this cutie pie's face:
Ghost woke me up with the treat of him gazing down at me lovingly (or maybe he just wanted me to wake up and open the bathroom for him, who really knows) and purring. So Jeremy and I cuddled with him for a while and set about getting ready for the day. We discovered in the midst of getting ready that our water heater was acting up again, but I told Jeremy there was absolutely no way someone was coming out today because we had plans.
For my outfit of the day, I chose my favorite red lace dress purchased from SheIn. I actually got this dress as a gift from Jeremy in the spring of my 2014 college semester, and we'd only been dating a few months at that point. My Korean friend Minjeong had actually told him not long after he got me this, "Never buy an angel a dress! Because they'll break your heart after!" Which we both found hilarious because she had no idea he got me this dress at the time that she had said it, and also my nickname with her and my roommate Seungin was "Angel" because the last four digits of my phone number is 1004 (which stands for angel in Korea).
I also recently invested in a pair of thigh high socks, except because I'm a bit on the taller side they ended up being over-the-knee socks/really low thigh highs. Pair them with my boots I got for Christmas and my favorite gray cardigan, and I was feeling super pretty and extra cute and stylish!
Now—back to the beginning. We forced ourselves to try somewhere new for our Valentine's Day lunch, which meant we spent quite a bit of time going up and down and across streets of downtown Flagstaff until we ended up in an alleyway with a few restaurants and some other stuff I wasn't quite sure of.
There were three restaurants down the alley. One had live music and seemed to be more of a coffee place. Considering I don't like coffee, we didn't end up there. The live music was okay, though. That left us to choose between a Hawaiian BBQ place and a noodle shop. We ended up sticking the continent of Asia, since that's our favorite food-wise, and went to the noodle shop, called SoSoBa. I'll try and do a review for the places Jeremy and I have eaten recently, but basically I'd describe SoSoBa as a knock-off ramen and pho shop. It takes the ingredients common to both of those and combines them with other ingredients you'd commonly find in, say, a noodle dish that's not meant to be a soup.
To start my own meal off, I ordered a Mai Thai...and let's just say I was very amused by the name being spelled on the menu as Thai instead of Tai. Either way, it was your typical Mai Tai, but it did have an earthier flavor to it. I'm wondering if it's because of the Thai basil that came as a decoration that I mixed into the drink, haha.
For food, Jeremy and I, in Rainemy fashion, both ended up ordering the same thing. It was called the "Hostile Takeover" and was basically a soupy soba noodle (I'm going to save the deliciousness that is ramen and not refer to this dish as ramen) bowl with Korean bulgogi, mushrooms, cilantro, broccoli, shishito, hoisin, and scallion with a soy and konbu broth. The broth left a strange aftertaste in my mouth, especially the more I ate and the colder the dish got with us sitting outside. The bulgogi was delicious, as were the soba noodles. The combination of food itself was yummy...but there was something about the broth that makes me think both Jeremy and I would have liked it better if it hadn't been that broth, or if we had chosen something else. To end our meal, we ordered mochi. The mochi came in flavors of mango, strawberry, and cookies and cream on a plate decorated in pocky. It made the whole dining experience at SoSoBa a lot better than it initially started out to be. Even Jeremy loved the pocky and mochi. I was so happy to have finally found a place in Flagstaff that served mochi, too!
So, I won't completely right-off SoSoBa as an eatery in Flagstaff, but I don't see Jeremy and I coming back anytime soon. However, I do see us coming back to at least try some other dishes to determine if we actually like the food and restaurant or if it's one of the very few we just won't ever like. Because while Jeremy and I have eaten at restaurants we like better than others, we've never had terrible food. This food wasn't terrible, either, but it also can't even be compared to some of the other places we've eaten at.
To end our day, we went and browned at Barnes & Noble, which is what we usually do after eating and on dates where we need to kill time. In the midst of browsing books and getting ready to buy...the fire alarm went off. While we were in Barnes & Noble. I was confused because I thought it was some sort of other alarm, especially because I was already searching for Jeremy at the time that it went off. It was like Barnes & Noble was saying, "Hey! Jeremy! Where the heck are you?!" and I found that fairly amusing. There was no commotion, though, so I knew there wasn't an actual fire. Still, everyone exited the building in an orderly fashion and there was this cute little kid who asked a manager if this was just a drill. The main manager of the store ended up coming out and thanking us all for being so calm and told us that, basically, someone went out the fire exit door and along with going out, not only tripped off the alarm, but also stole the fire exit door sign, too...? I don't know why they stole the sign, but whatever.
Jeremy and I checked out with our books almost as soon as we got back inside Barnes & Noble, then headed off to the movie theater to go see Deadpool. On the way to the theater, I had to laugh, because there was a fire truck heading in the direction we were coming from—to the Barnes & Noble who had no fire at it.
I mean, better safe than sorry. But still pretty funny.
The showing for Deadpool we wanted to see ended up being sold out, so we had to wait around the theater for an hour for the next showing. But by those standards, we ended up being really early to the next showing and got a good place in line to wait and ended up getting prime seats to one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. Raunchy humor—but what else is there to expect from Deadpool? I won't go too much into the movie, I'll try and do a review or something later on. But just know it is so worth the money seeing it in theaters and it is also not okay for kids and it is also extremely funny.
Okay so I lied. Maybe compared to others and their Valentine's Day dates ours was tame and comfortable and maybe uninteresting. But it was about as evenly interesting as our date last year. Either way I'm happy to share Valentine's Day with someone other than my dad, whom I still love dearly, and instead spend it with Jeremy. He always makes simple dates like this, where we don't go anywhere fancy and where we have no idea what exactly our aim is, a ton of fun and memorable.
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