Yarusso's

Last Wednesday, my mom's side of the family got together for our quarterly Yarusso's dinner.  We were a little bit late doing it but my grandpa thought it would be good to do it during the week of the anniversary of my gramma's death.  We were missing a few but it's amazing how many of us can get together with just a couple of weeks notice.

My Two Valentines

I had two Valentines for V-Day...Michael and my grandpa.  (Dad, I didn't forget about you.  I wore the heart necklace you gave me when I was a kid.) We asked my grandpa if he wanted to join us on Valentine's Day for our traditional Valentine's dinner at White Castle.  It was the 5th time M and I have gone to White Castle for V-Day and our 8th together.  My grandpa didn't want to intrude on our dinner but we insisted he was not intruding at all.  We picked him up, gave him a homemade card, some chocolate and Jelly Belly jelly beans and we went to the Stillwater location, which is one that just opened in 2011.  

For those that don't know, you need reservations for White Castle on V-Day. They have a hostess, bring you to your candlelit table, have a server take your order and they even take your picture and put it on their website.  We sat at a high-top table right in the middle of the restaurant and we ordered a bunch of things for all of us to share including fish nibblers, mozz stix, chicken rings, onion chips, fries and we each ordered our own sandwich.  We even received a little cheesecake dessert but M and I gave ours to my grandpa to take home and eat later along with all the leftovers.  What surprised me most about the night was that I felt a hand on my shoulder so I looked over and it was my cousin John and his wife Jen!  It was so funny to see them there and after experiencing it one time, they plan to make it their V-Day tradition to go to White Castle!  John told me that his parents (my aunt and uncle) were there earlier in the evening too!  See, all the cool kids are doing it!  

I spoke to my grandpa on Wednesday night and he told me how much he loved going there with us on Tuesday.  He said that it is something that he'll remember forever and that he had a blast.  I love that!

Hi John and Jen!

Grandpa, Me, Michael

John, Jen, Me, Michael

Me, Michael and the fire extinguisher

One Year

Today marks the one year anniversary of my Gramma passing away.  I went to the cemetery today to visit her.  The sun was shining and it was 40 degrees but very windy.  There was no snow on the ground at her grave, which is very different than it was a year ago as a huge snow storm was approaching and almost made me miss her President's Day funeral.

This past year has been hard at times but I recently had a dream about my Gramma.  In the dream she was very healthy and happy and to me, that signifies she is in a good place right now.  I even wore her birthstone necklace and earrings today as an extra reminder of her. I still miss you though, Gramma.

Belated Birthday Dinner

A week ago I went out with my bestie Tanya for sushi.  She took me out for a belated birthday dinner.  We met at Bagu which is about a block from Pepito's in South Minneapolis.  The place is very small as you'll see below that both walls are in the photo.  It also has the worst lighting ever, again as evidenced in the pictures of  the sushi.  It's almost like a pale green fluorescent lighting, which as you can imagine is not very flattering on your skin. Would I go there again?  Probably not but it was ultra convenient for our plans that night.  

After dinner we went over to Tanya's house, had a glass of wine and chatted away until it was almost 10:30 pm, which is really late for this girl on a work night!  Thank you Tan-Tan for dinner and great company!

Lenny!

Only a handful of days passed from the City and Colour show until it was time to see Lenny Kravitz at the State Theater on Tuesday, February 7th.  Neither of us had seen him before as we've passed seeing him live a couple of times, mostly because I didn't have huge interest as well as it really matters to me what venue they play.  This time around I felt it was time to see him and I'm so glad we did!

We were on the main floor, 22 rows back on the aisle.  Trombone Shorty opened the show.  We have a couple of songs from him and we knew he'd be a good opening act so we got there with enough time to see most of their show.

There was a good mix of all different sorts of people in the crowd and actually, M and I were on the younger side of the crowd.  I would say a good majority of the audience was 42-46 years old.

There was a decent wait before Lenny came on but when he did, WOW.  It was the perfect storm musically...seeing an artist in a small venue like the State Theatre yet it was like an arena show.  The sound was fantastic and there was a huge video screen behind the him and the band.  He played a variety of his songs from all different eras including a new one called "Black and White America" which completely painted a picture of his life detailing photos of himself as a kid with his white dad and black mom.  The crowd stayed on their feet the entire show.

For the encore, Lenny played "Let Love Rule" and jumped off the stage and made his way up the aisle and so when he passed I of course had to touch his bicep before he headed off and made his way into the balcony.  Ladies, yes, he is just as beautiful in person and looks damn good for being almost 48 but I was super surprised to realize that he is 5'6" or 5'7".  I pictured a 6 foot+ giant in my mind.

We got some good photos of the night so enjoy!  Warning: Lenny photo overload!

Here he comes

Hi Lenny!

See ya!

Here's the video of Black and White America we saw:

Here's a video from that night I found on YouTube.  I picked this one because it had the best sound and was closer than the rest.  Enjoy!

City and Colour

M and I met our friends Joey and Chris out for an evening of one of the best artists of 2011.  City and Colour played at First Avenue on Saturday, February 4th and it was in a word, amazing.  From the moment I heard him, I loved them. The singer's name is Dallas Green, hence the alias, City and Colour....spelled that way since he is from Canada.

Before getting to First Ave, I wondered how busy it would be since none of his music is played on Minnesota radio.  I'm always surprised at how packed a show is but with the internet, there are so many bands that can be discovered that you never could have heard of years ago.  The place was packed and after Dallas asked how many people were from Canada, there was a very big part of the crowd that screamed.  I guess that makes sense.  His last show was in Winnipeg, Canada, which is only about 385 miles from Minneapolis.

I only took a few photos which all came from my phone.

On our way home, we saw this message being projected on a building in the warehouse district.  Weird, huh?

I'd love for you to listen to probably my favorite song by City and Colour.  Tell me what you think!

Another one of my faves:

And the Winner Is....

Using Random.org, Ang is the winner of the Very Jane giveaway!  An orange necklace is coming your way!

Winterfest

Friday, February 3rd was the 11th annual Winterfest which was held in St. Paul at the Minnesota History Center.  Winterfest is a craft beer event in which there are multiple Minnesota breweries that are there to feature their beers and you can sample them.  This event sold out in about a minute back in December and M was pretty lucky to have scored tickets the week of the event due to someone having to go out of town and not being able to use the tickets.  First, I was excited to go to the history center because that was the first time I had ever been there.  Secondly, my lovely boyfriend gifted me the hefty-priced ticket and said he would rather me be his guest than anyone else. Awww...

We were given a small souvenir glass at the door to use for tasting and a booklet that detailed all the breweries and the beers they were featuring that night and the location they were in the building.

There were 24 breweries there which most were from the Twin Cities but there were a couple from Duluth and a couple from Cold Spring, which after looking it up is somewhere near St. Cloud.  They had a DJ playing really good music throughout the three floors as well as food on each floor including a creamy soup, different kinds of cheeses, crackers and breads.

I didn't taste that many beers.  I'm not a big beer drinker but I've come to love the idea of beer, especially craft beer as M's casual hobby of beer has turned into borderline obsession and I now view him as a true beer connoisseur.  I do help him though at home when he cracks open a beer and is going to do a review on it (nerd) and I look at the beer and tell him what I see and I smell the beer and tell him what I smell and I taste the beer and tell him what I taste and then he does the same and we compare notes. (nerds)


I had fun and appreciate that M wanted me to come with him but I realized I'm just not that into beer and will probably not go to another one of these events unless it's in the summer outside and I can be distracted by other things like beautiful weather.

Here's a few photos of the night:

The live Paul Bunyan

I was practically laying on the floor to get down that low to be Babe!

The artist for Harriet Brewing