mdlbear | The right kind of noise (Reply)

The flower_cat and I went to ciarhwyfar's b'day party for a while this afternoon (where I did a fair amount of singing and noodling, and finally got a face to go with soojaebi), then out for dinner. The kids weren't even out of bed when we left the house at 2pm, and weren't interested in exploring new restaurants when we got back, so we headed out to the wilds of Los Gatos intending to try out a Romanian restaurant called (of course) Transylvania. Amazingly enough for a place on the main drag, we found a parking space in the same block. The menu posted in the window looked fascinating, but unfortunately they were closed. A block over was a Mexican place called Pedro's. Always up for a new Mexican place.

The first thing that hit me when we went in was that it was noisy. But not obnoxiously so -- it wasn't loud music (in fact there was no music at all) but happy people. Kids giggling, people laughing and talking. What the Cat called "the right kind of noise." The waitress was fast, friendly, and happy. The food was excellent: I had chile verde, and the Cat had the enchiladas con mole rojo. Yummy, even if they don't make their own tortillas. Colleen took one look at the desert menu, said "I know what I'm having", and handed it over to me. When I spotted the fried plantains, it was immediately obvious why she wasn't having flan. We shared; the golden slices of fried plantain came on a layer of chocolate sauce surrounding a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with whipped cream and streaked with a little raspberry sauce.

It's a keeper.

Went for a bit of a drive afterward, just to enjoy being together. We started taking long drives back when we had a grumpy baby in the house -- chaoswolf was always soothed by a drive. Her younger sister less so, but we still went for drives. Now we do it to get away from the kids (and they'll often tell us to go out for a drive after dinner presumably to get away from us, but that's OK). We seem to do it about once a week on average.