37 Started With a Bang

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My Favorite Winery

The weekend before my birthday we celebrated at my favorite winery. They have the most delicious food. The weather was great and Journey loved sitting outside.
Right after our waiter took our drink order he proceeds to bring our drinks to us spilling diet Coke down my backside!
Not too much but enough to tell.
He looks at me and says “did that get you”?
Ummm yep, yep it did.
He then begins wiping the back of my dress with a napkin while I’m pretty sure everyone seated around us stared.
Awkward!
Although it was embarrassing, I didn’t make a fuss I just wanted to crawl under the table and move on with the evening.
And we did and it was fine, well not the actual crawl under the table part.

A Lowkey Birthday

On my actual birthday, the following Monday the 26th it was a long pretty typical day. My sister came down to be bored with me….true comradery with that one.
We waited for my mom to grab the pizzas after work and had planned to head to her house to party with homemade turtle cake and pizza…yum!

It started storming, party delayed until the storm stopped and we were willing to make the little drive to her house. Meanwhile, still waiting on the significant other to get home, he had to pick up my present last minute and was running late…. men! Okay fine, more waiting.
By the end of the night though, candle blowing and cake eating were achieved. Some time in between there I cried, cause ya know it was my party and I can do that sort of thing, just as the song indicates.

The Weekend Getaway….into a Tornado Shelter!

Skip ahead to the following Friday after my birthday where I had a weekend out of town planned with the sister. Room booked, concert tickets bought, fancy restaurant reservation made, swimsuits packed, kid watching arrangements set up……let’s go!!

Anytime we go to the city we have to stop at The Cheesecake Factory. We love it there and it never fails us.
Had a great lunch and took some cheesecake to go.

Got to the room and got unloaded and were ready to head back out for some shopping.
Hit our first store found some good stuff, check out and head to the car. Surprise, surprise, we just missed a heck of a rainstorm. Lucky us. Head directly across the street to the big outlet mall, get out of the car and the tornado sirens are going off and our phone weather alert apps are going crazy!

I freaked out!

No time to grab umbrellas. We run into the first store we get to only to be directed to the tornado shelter.
Tornados are a huge fear of mine. I’m not really sure why I’ve never experienced havoc from one. Just the idea of the unknown, the whipping wind, and the blaring sirens stimulates this already nervous girl right on over the edge.

Spending the next 35 minutes in a tornado shelter panicking with over 50 seeming calm strangers is definitely not how I wanted to start my weekend getaway.

After several whispered prayers we made it through the tornado warning okay, trembling, while my sister made fun of me…. but okay.

We were there to shop and that’s what we were going to do!  Except it was pouring rain and we had no umbrellas.  We muscled through and hit the stores we really wanted to, and realized getting soaked just wasn’t that much fun.

The Melting Pot

Later at the hotel, we changed out of our drowned rat look and got ready for our dinner reservation at The Melting Pot.  We had an 8 o’clock reservation and were excited to see what all the fuss was about.  After all, we loved fondue and thought the whole thing sounded so cool. 

The restaurant was very busy and very intriguing on the inside.  We quickly got seated in a private little area, which all the seating seemed quaint, quiet and private, with most tables being in small little nooks.

We got the menu and our excitement quickly turned to confusion.  So many things and “packages” to pick. Our waiter was very good at giving us the DL on what was what.  Still a little confused we picked our package which came with our choice of cheese fondue, salad, and entrée combo, as well as our pick of chocolate fondue for dessert.

The Longest Dinner

So, there we sat with a steaming empty metal pot in between us on a built-in burner on our table, waiting for a cheese fondue concoction to appear.  Our waiter brought out the ingredients which included some beer, shredded cheese and a few other things he mixed in there to make the fondue, along with a cutting board full of RAW vegetables, bread, and apples……. WHAT?!

Raw vegetables do not go well with melted Wisconsin Cheddar fondue.  Honestly, the cheese fondue even seemed pretty blah.

It’s okay, it’s fine, we still have a lot of different food coming.  Except, it wasn’t okay, the next couple of rounds weren’t any better.  My salad was covered in blue cheese, and if you hate blue cheese you know how it taints everything, my bad for not realizing Gorgonzola was in fact…. Blue cheese.

In between each dish, there was about a 30-minute waiting period for our waiter to prepare the next course. We were running out of patience with our food and with having steam and smoke in between us.

What Did We Get Ourselves Into

Then comes the entrée, or as l like to call it, the straw that broke the camels back” with this dining experience.  We were brought a pot of broth, which we did pick the flavor of earlier before we knew exactly what it was for, along with some more raw vegetables and………RAW MEAT!

On a long plate in front of us sat raw chicken, raw steak, raw pork, and raw shrimp.  We were to boil said raw meat in the broth.  Wow, we really didn’t know what we were in for.  But we put on our big girl panties and did what we were supposed to do. 

We boiled our meat.  They provide a nice little chart for your table on just how long to boil each type of meat.  So, there we are, horrid.  stew broth, weird steaming smelling, pot in front of us dropping each type of meat in one at a time and timing it. Then so carefully fishing out our cooked meat and putting on our plates and staring at it.  It didn’t smell good, it didn’t look good, but it was expensive and we were bound and determined.

We ate what we could stomach, which was basically nothing while listening to the other couple seated in our nook talk about how much they were loving their experience and food.  Then with very little patience left and tired of breathing in heavy stew smells we were ready to get to the chocolate.  Surely that wouldn’t fail us, it rarely does.

We picked the candy bar chocolate fondue and after replacing our pot, again, our waiter brought out all the ingredients and combined in the pot.  To dip in the fondue, he brought along a tray of delicious cookies, brownies, marshmallows, and fruit to dip in it.  Okay, THIS did not fail us! 

However, 3 hours later and over 100 bucks later, having some good chocolate fondue definitely wasn’t worth the whole experience. 

But now we know.

Click Here to see what was in store for us the next day