There. I said it. I’m not even all that embarrassed about it.

I’d originally ordered The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxed Set off of Amazon for The Kid. He likes reading AND getting stuff in the mail, which means it’s a win-win, right? Turns out, just like with the Twilight series, the adults in the house were more enthralled with these books than the child teenager. I’m not sure what that says about us.

The Hunger Games: Way to draw someone in.

Catching Fire: Way to F with my head.

Mockingjay: I was muy decepcionado with this book. I didn’t know how I wanted it to end, but I do know it wasn’t the way it ended. How’s that for a spoiler?

This series was candy, just straight candy. I wouldn’t let myself try to think ahead; I just wanted to read things chapter by chapter. I knew if I thought hard enough, I could figure out the entire series and I didn’t want that to happen. It was a perfect trilogy for reading from around a campfire or in the bathtub. I couldn’t pick it up and drop it off mid-chapter and not worry about it. And it made me more than a little excited for the movie(s) to come out.

Maybe I’ll try challenging myself with a book this time around. Or not. Because I like pictures.

The fine dining of hamburgers and beer wasn’t exactly our first choice for dinner to celebrate our 3rd anniversary.* We’d originally planned on hitting up Blackbird in south Minneapolis for dinner and then heading to a show in downtown Minneapolis, which started at 8pm. A haircut for The Kid, a trip to Old Navy, and a trip to Target filled our afternoon a bit too much and it was 6:15 before we were ready to leave the house. We decided to head downtown and, if nothing else, just grab a drink and an appetizer and worry about dinner later.

We weighed our downtown options and because Rock Bottom Brewery is always busy and/or always too slow to serve anything in an hour and a half, we opted to check out The American Burger Bar. The downtown location is relatively new and it also happened to be right across the street from the theater we’d be heading to later.

The hostess offered up some window seating, which is always prime on Hennepin Avenue, so we grabbed a couple stools against the bar and a server was over to us shortly. She guaranteed we’d have time to eat and still make it to our 8pm show, so we ordered… what else? Burgers. I went the American Classic road and, like she does anywhere there’s a burger involved, The General opted for a burger involving bacon and bleu cheese.

The food took a while, giving us plenty of time to mock the guy that sat next to The General and ordered nothing but a milkshake and the other guy who was taking up the entire bar telling all the single (and not so single) ladies to call him Sam. If I heard “Call me Sam!” one more time, I was close to dry humping him. To the bar’s defense, the Twins game had just finished after 11 innings and Prairie Home Companion had just ended next door, so there were crowds of all varieties filing in and out. I ran into a former co-worker of mine who was taking his kids and parents to the same restaurant after the game, so clearly it was something he deemed somewhat kid-appropriate.

Our burgers came with skinny fries and we love skinny fries. They were delicious. The burgers were perfectly cooked, but they probably should be since the word burger is in the name of the restaurant.

For a Saturday night, we didn’t have to wait long at all for a restaurant downtown. The service was fast and friendly, without chatting my ear off about shit I don’t care about, and that’s my favorite kind of service. For under $30, we both had burgers, fries and a drink apiece. So, essentially, we’re sold and have already made plans to visit again.

*This is a lesbian anniversary we’re talking about here, so that’s clearly about 24 regular years.

Current residents and visitors of the greater Twin Cities area, it’s very important that you read this.

Short version: Find the Chef Shack and eat there. Breakfast, lunch, it doesn’t matter. I had a beer bacon brat for breakfast Saturday morning and it was the best breakfast ever.

Long version: Find the Chef Shack and eat there.

They just started parking one of their trucks at 5th and Hennepin, which is just a short couple of block walk from my office. A couple of weeks ago, the first day they were downtown actually, I headed down for some lunch. I ended up having pulled pork tacos (and they threw in some bonus mini donuts, probably because I had awesome hair that day) and they were ridiculous. There was slaw involved on the top of my tacos. I hate vegetables, but you know what Chef Shack does? They make vegetables delicious.

I don’t often talk about food and that’s mainly because my idea of a good sammich contains Wonderbread, Oscar Mayer bologna, a processed American cheese slice, and maybe some French’s yellow mustard if I’m feeling confident in my abilities not to leak it all over myself.

This weekend Amelia and I went to the Northeast Farmer’s Market. While we were trying to find a parking spot, we noticed Chef Shack was there, which clearly meant breakfast. I had the aforementioned beer brat with bacon on the inside and Amelia had a very large salad that looked like a garden on a plate, which was deemed the “Vegetarian farm salad with grains and peach vinaigrette”. I don’t even know what was on it, but it was good. It also marked the first time I’ve ever tried quinoa and I’m convinced that I could go a whole week without meet as long as I had some quinoa. (Also, I just love the way it’s spelled.)

We went to the downtown farmer’s market and, on the way home, decided to stop at the Mill City Farmer’s Market. Guess who was there. No, guess. More Chef Shack! We split some burnt caramel ice cream and I thought we were going to die from deliciousness. It was fantastic and now we’re determined to find out where the ice cream’s at every weekend. I’m not sure what will happen when winter rolls around, but until then, we’re so fans of becoming Chef Shack regulars.

Ever since I got Little Danger the iPod Touch, I’ve been nothing short of obsessed with it. Games, apps, contacts, mp3s — I’ve pretty much decided to keep everything on it. Well, maybe not everything, but close. Now that iDrive has included the iPhone (which may as well mean the iPod Touch) in their free trial of Online Backup options, I’m one happy camper.

For free (yes, free), I have 2 GB of online storage that I can easily access via Little Danger. This means that sense I don’t have a photo-taking option on the iPod, I can pull up photos from the 2 gigs of space I have online pretty much anywhere I am, and that makes me pretty happy. It’s pretty much vital for me to be able to pull up a picture of me standing in Cozumel in front of a U.S. Coast Guard ship with a penis-shaped balloon hat in one hand and a yard from Senor Frog’s in the other. I mean, who knows when I might meet someone at the laundromat that would want to hear my sordid tales and see all plenty of pictures of drunken debauchery, right?

2 gigs probably isn’t a lot of room if you were using the site as an online backup option for an actual computer, but considering Little Danger only holds 8 gigs of incredibly important information anyway, the 2 GB options works really well. And anything free works really well in my opinion, too.

Tonight, mi familia and I had a date involving dropping off Christmas donations and hamburgers full of molten lava cheese, thanks to the fine folks at Matt’s Bar.

Jenni, Matt, Stephanie and I had adopted a family via The Aliveness Project. Since Jenni and Matt are somewhere in the Southern Caribbean right now, I volunteered to drop it off tonight. The General and I decided to take The Kid with and just give him a chance to see what happens when a ton of people get together to help others. He’s so damn hard to read sometimes, I have no idea what he really thought about the whole thing. Seeing a back room that’s stacked to the ceiling full of donated Christmas gifts is always a feel-good type of vision, so I hope he was able to at least take a little bit away from it.

Following the do-good portion of the evening, we decided to have dinner at Matt’s Bar. We figured taking a 12 year old to a bar was the appropriate thing to do after exposing him to charity, right? (FYI, it’s not really a bar. It’s a restaurant that has bar in the name.) Dinner was just like it always is at Matt’s — greasy and delicious.

And then, before he went to bed, I gave him ten minutes to write what he liked or didn’t like at Matt’s Bar. I present to you a 12 year old’s review on his dining experience tonight. (Keep in mind, he probably would have went on and on had I not limited his time.)

I liked the Juicy Lucy because it had the cheese inside like a volcano!!! The fries were kinda boring and flavorless. The cheese was AWESOMAZINGLY DELICOUS!!!!! I wonder what kind it was. I always forget how little amount of sprite is in the can. This often leads me to drinking it all right away. The restaurant was very nice and small. This was cool because it made me feel more comfortable and relaxed.

Clearly, you should all go visit. And, since it was his first time jumping on the Jucy (Juicy) Lucy bandwagon, so we took pictures.

The sign says hamburgers, but I think if you ordered just a hamburger while at Matt's, the jukebox would stop playing, the waitress would drop your can of Coke, and everyone would stop and stare at you.

I love Matt's because they give you a can of soda. Oooh, and a bendy straw. WIN.

Taken by The General in my fancy new Old Navy sweater, yay for $12 v-neck sweater sales!

Ketchup at Matt's Bar! With pre-teen bokeh!

The Kid at Matt's Bar! He wanted to take his own pictures and I wasn't about to argue. I'm all about fostering creativity... or something like that!

DINNER. A Jucy Lucy (or is it Juicy Lucy??) at it's very finest. And now that's all in my belly. And coating the inside of my arteries. BUT I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT.

A month or so ago, I’d purchased a $25 gift certificate from restaurants.com for Joe’s Garage. A few years ago, Joe’s Garage used to be a weekly stomping ground of mine when I worked my call center job at Best Buy. We’d drink our customer service blues away and have a good time. Since I quit working at Best Buy, I’ve been four times, including what will be my last visit in quite some time tonight.

The General, The Boy, and I decided to go out for dinner. We’d both had really good days and decided just have a nice night out. We got there around 7:45 and it looked like the Happy Hour crowd was just heading out. We stood at the podium, where one would think there would be a host/hostess, for about ten minutes. Normally, I would have seated myself, but in all the times I’d been there, someone’s always seated me. I didn’t figure it’d be any different

After comparing everything in the restaurant to a game of Diner Dash, we were seated in the backroom and given menus.  Another ten minutes rolled by before our server, whose will remain anonymous since I’m nice, dropped off our waters. She came back to take our drink orders (two Cokes, one Sprite) and as she brought them to our table, some other employee came bounding down the stairs, slamming right into her. Carbonated drinks went everywhere and it took another 5-10 minutes to refill them and bring them out to us. By this time, we were more than ready to order.

The host that eventually seated ended up bringing our our appetizer round – a basket of fries for The Boy and I, a starter salad for The General. The food? Pretty amazing, as usual. They use sea salt and fresh cracked pepper on their fries, making them so good that I kinda didn’t want to stop eating them.

An ample amount of time passed before the same host brought out our burgers.  The General had ordered fries, but instead wound up with mashed potatoes. The Boy and I were set with our burgers and garlic mashed potatoes. As the host was getting us situated, the server came over and The General pointed out the incorrect side dish that was brought out. Instead of, you know, apologizing or saying “my bad”, the server says “I thought you said fries” and walked off. We assumed she was getting more fries, so didn’t think too much about it.

(Fries. Garlic mashed potatoes. Just wanted to double check and make sure they didn’t sound the same.)

Eventually, The General’s fries came out and we were pretty much set on stuffing our faces with as much food as possible. The burgers? Holy Lord, they were good. We’d all opted for bacon cheeseburgers and were kind of in love with dinner.

It took a while for the server to come back, but she eventually, after we were all sitting in completely over-stuffed mode, asked if we needed dessert or coffee. We said no, and I handed her our gift certificate. When she brought the tab back, it had the original dollar amount on it with her handwritten “-$25″ underneath the total. No big shake, I thought, and handed her my debit card.

She ran it and came back with the receipt for me to sign. I looked at it and noticed she’d charged me the complete total of $61.28. I waited for her to come back, thinking it was an honest mistake, but as soon as she saw me looking at her, she came over. The only word I could get out of my mouth was “hey” before she responded with, “Oh, did I put the whole amount on your card?” She grabbed the card and receipt before I could really say anything and walked off to fix it.

I got a completely uneasy vibe off of it and so did The General. It was almost as if she’d done it time and time again, just to see if she could get away with it. We’d specifically discussed it with her when I handed the certificate over to her, making sure she knew what it was. When she originally handed the receipt back to me, she said she took the $25 off. It was just an incredibly weird vibe; I just got a funny feeling from it all and not in a good way.

And the more I’ve thought about it in the 45 minutes we’ve been home, the more pissed off I keeping getting. Sure, it could have been an honest mistake, but I just didn’t buy that with the server. It seemed way too rehearsed when she brought the amended receipt back and said, “Both charges will show up on your statement as pending, but this first one will eventually fall off”. That’s nice and all, lady, but now I’m sitting here with $100 worth of pending charges, meaning that’s a lot of money I don’t have access to, because you’re either A) a world class scammer or B) completely retarded and inattentive to what you’re doing with customers’ credit cards.

Whatever the case is, Joe’s Garage has me feeling really icky right now. I love them and can’t imagine it being a restaurant-mandated rule of trying to fuck over local patrons. I’m probably overreacting, but I’m just super angry at their server’s unethical actions.

When were in the St. Louis area over Thanksgiving, we headed for a day of touristy type fun in St. Louis proper. Since it was nearing lunch time before five of us got around to leave the house, we opted for stopping for some lunch before sight-seeing at The Gateway Arch. Our lunch spot of choice? Iron Barley. In the several times I’d made visits to The Cuz and fam, I remembered us talking about the place, but I’d never been. Now? I’m adding it to the list of MUST VISIT places when I visit.

The menu was almost impossible to pick from, but I think it’s safe to say we were all extremely happy with what we ordered. Our appetizer, though, is work writing in detail about. Either B. or The Cuz mentioned it and after giving it a lot of thought, we decided to go ahead and order one to split between the four of us. And, because we’re nice, we gave Clara Jane crackers.

What is the Ballistic Elvis? Oh, let me tell you.

American cheese, strawberry preserves, sliced bananas, peanut butter and red pepper flakes. (Read that twice, just because you’ll need to in order to remember it and make it at home.)

All grilled on what looked to be Texas Toast. And, because we couldn’t say no, we added bacon, as the menu suggested.

It came out and I wanted it to be absolutely disgusting. How can you combine all of that and have it be delicious? I love each of the ingredients. On their own. Or perhaps PAIRED together. But all in one? I was scared! I didn’t want one sandwich to ruin my love for bananas or bacon or discount American cheese slices!

It wasn’t disgusting. At all. It was fantastic. So much, in fact, that neither one of us Ballistic Elvis virgins have been able to stop thinking about it ever since. Now, we have groceries to make our own version of it. I hope we get it right, but I’d imagine more testing will be necessary when we return to St. Louis.

• From Riverfront Times
• From Sauce magazine

A month or so ago, I really wanted breakfast. Since it was during the week, there was no way in hell I was going to get up and cook breakfast at home. Cereal, for me, is not really a breakfast option, because if I’m going to put forth some effort to eat a meal, it better be hot and have some sort of meat thrown in the mix. On the way to work, we stopped by Super America to get, what we call in our house, a fizzy pop. (“Fizzy pop” is a fountain drink, complete with ice. I don’t know. It just sounded cute.)

While waiting in line behind either the thugs, the homos, or the families of 8 where each kid gets one treat as long as it’s under $1, I had the opportunity to look over the fine selection of breakfast sandwiches. I saw one, for the low low price of 99 cents, that I just couldn’t pass up. On the label, it claimed to have gravy INSIDE the biscuit. That particular morning, nothing sounded better than a gravy explosion in my mouth for less than a buck.

And let me tell you this: it was worth every single one of those 99 cents. As far as I’m concerned, very sandwich should contain some type of gravy in the middle. I could live on Super America’s Gravy Explosion Sandwiches every morning for breakfast. Unfortunately, I think everyone in the vicinity of 35th and Nicollet has the same thought, because lately those sandwiches are nearly impossible to get your hands on!

One thing I’ve always meant to do since moving to Minneapolis (or the Twin Cities in general) is to actively participate in the theater… as an audience member, of course. This past summer, The General and I went to a couple of Fringe Festival shows, which marked my first visit to any type of Twin Cities theater/theatre event… unless you count free tickets to “We Gotta Bingo!” a couple of years ago. One of my new Work BFFs is big into the theater scene, which led us to Fringe in the first place, and subsequently to “Bright Lights, Big City” last night at the Illusion Theater.

It was awesome. It really was. My Work BFF gave me goose bumps when he sang, and I think that’s because when he sings at work, he always sings ridiculous songs in ridiculous voices, but holy crap – all of the reviews that I’ve read say things like he gives his character “a soul that soars vocally and emotionally” (via the StarTrib) and “[the] shocker here is [my Work BFF], who turns in an absolute masterpiece as Jamie’s left-behind, lesser-known brother” (via howwastheshow.com). And as we were walking into the lobby, The General overheard someone talking about how awesome his performance was. Of course, had someone said something bad, I probably would have gotten into a rumble…

I really loved it, and if you’re local, you should probably go see it before it’s run is over. It’s only about an hour and a half long, but it goes by so quickly, it seems like you’re sitting there for even less time than that.

Like a good Minnesotan, I read Diablo Cody’s book a while back. I looked through my archives, but realized I must have read it prior to Fake Tits™ from my former job finding my blog, and then me taking everything down and becoming not too sure how to put it all back up. (Oh so sorry, Fake Tits™.) In short, I loved the book very much. I loved that it was based on places I’m somewhat familiar with and I loved the way it was written – I guess in language that sounded like exactly something I’d find myself saying. To continue filling my role of the ideal Minnesota resident, I went to go see Juno this afternoon.

When I walked into the theater, I was kind of surprised at the crowd. It was mainly older people, and by older, I mean quite possibly old enough to be my grandparents. Jodi ran into the same thing in her neck of the woods, and it’s kinda funny! The previews they’ve been showing on TV don’t exactly scream Your Grandparents Movie.

The whole movie was pretty fantastic – the cast, the soundtrack, and obviously the script. I hoped it would be a great movie and worth my $7.25 matinee price, and it didn’t disappoint at all. After hearing all of hype and the five billion awards it’s been nominated for already, I had some doubt in the back of my head going into it, but they were easily erased during the first five minutes. If Hollywood allows Diablo Cody to maintain the type of writing style she’s become known for with Candy Girl and now with Juno, then I’ll be more than excited to see or read anything else with her name attached.

And, because I’m a super nerd with way too much time on my hands and a New Years Resolution to keep track of all the movies I watch, I made a spreadsheet! And because I thought it’d be fun to look at later in the year, I also added worksheets for movies and sporting events, too. SUPER LAME. At least I know this will last all of about six weeks before I get bored with it.

Other things to write about: the Wolves game last night, the Dragon afterwards, and how I need to pack really bad.