Tally it up

Yesterday was my 7th anniversary. I try to avoid saying "wedding" because we eloped on that date back in 2000 and had a wedding the next year on July 7th. Complicated, yes but it boiled down to some old-fashioned sensibilities [My grandmother was not about to let us live together and reasoned that we were already engaged, so we might as well get married] and his unwillingness to tell his parents that we had gotten hitched in a civil ceremony. What the title boils down to is trying to figure out, based on all the pros and cons, how great of an anniversary we had. It'll make sense soon, I hope, so let's continue....

We decided to have our dinner at a place called Basi Italia. We thought it was going to be a more formal place than it turned out to be; the people dining were in various stages of casual dress (from business casual to work-out clothes) but the prices were high-end. We were seated outside, which turned out to be a bad idea because it had been threatening to rain for most of the day and the sky opened up soon after we got our entrées. We had never been to this place before and we were treated as if we should know how the experience should go from the outset. It was never explained to us that the menu wasn't everything that you could order, and that we could've gotten some sort of pasta or pizza instead of what was listed. The waiter wasn't that great and there was a large party seated outside with a woman who was so loud an obnoxious that I wanted to go over to her table and tell her to stop embarrassing herself [she was loudly talking about money, and something about selling a boat or property]. It's the kind of behavior that I would get stared down for if I did that myself. Anyway, what almost made up for everything else was the food. The salads we had were great, but our entrées were fantastic! I had a mustard-crusted trout that was very well done, and my husband had his first Cornish game hen and he enjoyed it thoroughly. The wine list actually explained what each wine tasted like, which made it easy for us to choose a wine without asking our less-than-helpful server for suggestions. It was also rather cool that the chef brought out our entrées (but mine didn't come with a starch; it was just a huge piece of fish sitting on cooked pieces of red and yellow bell peppers).

I'm used to going to places where people ask us if this is a special occasion...you know, getting a little fuss, but that didn't happen here. They also didn't seem to notice that we were both dressed up, while the rest of their clientèle wasn't, but these are things I can overlook. Overall, it was a decent experience. We had always wanted to try this place ever since we found it during our evening walks a few years back, and now that we've had it we'll probably never go back, but I won't say it was terrible [That would be Valentine's Day 2002 at Rigsby's]. It was just too expensive for what we got out of it.

We then went out for dessert and after going to a place that was closed, we ended up at a local coffee shop where we each got a dessert and a hot chocolate. Unfortunately, I ended up taking a spill into the street on our way back to the car where I ended up hitting the ground pretty hard on both of my knees. We got home and he cleaned me up as best he could, but I insisted upon getting gauze for my knees. We (eventually) found what I could use, got home to clean me up again, and settled in to watch 'Willow' and eat our desserts. We didn't get each other gifts this year (partly because we thought we were going to be spending even more than we did at the restaurant), but we each got nice cards that made the other laugh. The evening ended with him falling asleep to the History Channel's 'The Universe', while I played a little in the Trivia dome on the World Series of Pop Culture site [I've got to find a way to abbreviate that web site!] and put a newly-acquired ice pack on the worse of my two knees.

Overall, I think we had a very nice anniversary. :-) I'm still having a hard time walking on the left knee (and going up stairs seems to be the worst of it) and my two favorite forms of exercise [walking and Dance Dance Revolution] are completely out for the next few days, but it all turned into a memorable moment in my marriage that I'll keep with me for a long time.

Tally: 8/10 on the remembrance scale.