Lots of Work & A Little Play

I would say this past weekend consisted of a nice balance between work and play.  I worked from early morning into mid-afternoon Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but each of my days had a sweet finish.  On Friday, I came home to Jason and my aunt Kandace, who had dropped off my cousin Kody and some of his friends at a nearby state park for a camping trip.  Instead of driving all the way back to Houston that same day, to my delight, she decided to spend some quality time with us.  We chatted about this and that for a few hours (as per usual) before Jason served up a most delicious supper for the three of us - pulled pork sandwiches with baked beans and homemade potato salad.  After gorging ourselves and indulging in a little fresh-from-the-box Beer of the Month Club craft beer, aunt Kandace introduced us to the newest Netflix original series, Orange Is The New Black.  We watched the first two episodes and decided we'll have to continue watching, whenever we have time that is.  (Side note:  Both of our schedules are insane and all over the place right now.  We rarely see other for more than a few hours at a time these days, and it's the absolute worst feeling in the world.  We've been sitting on two Netflix DVDs for two weeks now, and we're falling behind on our weekly shows!)

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On Saturday, we both got home from work around the same time and quickly got ready to drive up north to meet some friends for dinner in celebration of Corey's 29th birthday.  We were all first-timers at Foreign & Domestic, a little neighborhood restaurant in North Central Austin off of 53rd Street.  The food was pretty pricey, but overall very enjoyable.  We ordered a couple plates of crispy beef tongue which was actually really good, and I ordered corn soup with pickled shrimp, which was interestingly served cold.  That was my first time to try cold soup, and I'm still not sure that I liked it.  For my entree, I got braised goat over corn pudding and pickled cherries.  I wasn't a fan of the cherries, but the goat and corn was a brilliant combination.  Jason and I shared the rocky road sundae for dessert, which was pretty tasty.  My favorite part of the whole meal was probably the cocktail I ordered three times - The Cyclist, a lethal mixture of Session lager, preserved lemon and ginger beer.  SO delicious.

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Yesterday,  Jason and I both got off work about an hour late and came home exhausted.  After sharing our unpleasant work stories, we brushed off the day and made another trip northward to see his parents and grandpa where we enjoyed some light conversation and a light dinner of Thundercloud Subs.  Despite our exhaustion, we decided to power through and see a movie at Alamo Drafthouse since it had been quite a while.  We chose Only God Forgives, the new Nicolas Winding Refn film starring Ryan Gosling as a quiet maniac.  It was a really pretty movie that showcased brilliant cinematography akin to that of Lynch and Kubrick, paired with a beautiful score that I would gladly sit and listen to all day long.  The story was pretty basic and the dialog wasn't much to be desired, but overall I found it entertaining, which is indeed the whole point of a film.

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