Good Things Come to Those Who Bait

Well, this was a joyful weekend. Friday will mark two years of wedded bliss (no, seriously) and we'll be on duty, so we took the chance to run away together while we could. Michael is supposed to have a fishing tournament near Plymouth on Saturday, and he was supposed to meet a fishing buddy to scope out the good fishing spots. Of course I figured we should turn it into a hotel weekend. Michael was afraid I'd be bored. Please.

Sadly (for Michael) his fishing buddy wimped out when he heard the cold and rainy weather report. Which meant no bass boat either. Which meant no checking out the good fishing holes. awwww.

But we persevered. We threw the boat on top of our car (how great is it that our boat is small enough for that?!) and started the short, hour-long drive away from our life in the dorm. We stopped at a sushi place I found online and were excited to find some pretty creative rolls, which cheered Michael up quite a bit. But he was still sad about the impending, unfriendly weather.

Rosie (my GPS) directed us to our hotel...or tried to. Apparently GOOGLE (of all places) had the wrong address for our hotel. It wasn't Rosie's fault--she took us right to where Google said the hotel was. But when we called the hotel to try to figure it out, it turned out that we were about 25 minutes away...and that we had actually been only a few minutes from the hotel when we stopped for dinner. Argh. Not the best start to our weekend. To Michael's credit, he really took it in stride. I was driving though, and it made me very cranky. It's good that we balance each other out that way a lot.

We (finally) checked into our hotel--a Hampton, of course--and found that it was within walking distance to lots of restaurants and shopping, which was good since I'd be stranded without a car if Michael went fishing.

On Saturday, we slept in and had a leisurely hotel breakfast before Michael decided to set out and see if he could find some fish before the weather turned bad. This left me quite happily stranded in the hotel, where I proceeded to read TWO magazines, take a bath, and continue setting up my new laptop. Which I'm happy to report has a battery life of over 6 hours. Awesome. I had some sour skittles and some Dr. Pepper and before I knew it, Michael was back to take me to lunch.

When we went to the Cape last year, we ate lunch at Yarmouth House and Michael had an AMAZING lobster club sandwich (with BACON!) that we've both been craving ever since. So I had found a menu for the Blue-Eyed Crab in Plymouth, which is the #1 restaurant in Plymouth according to Trip Advisor. It was TINY without the outdoor seating available in summer, and we were lucky enough to get the last table. We decided to be adventurous with our appetizer and skipped the seared tuna (which we love but always get) and went for these really fancy sounding swordfish skewers instead. They were DELICIOUS...and very pretty, too. Then we both had lobster clubs, which were also pretty delicious--even though they took forever to come out of the kitchen and they had cheese on them, which they weren't supposed to. But they were still great. Not quite great enough to satisfy our Yarmouth House craving, but good enough to put it off for a while. =)

After lunch, Michael dropped me off at my spa appointment and went out fishing again. The spa was BEAUTIFUL. I know, they're meant to be. But even the bathroom/changing room was amazing. I could have lounged around in there all day. The ceilings had silvery glitter dust in them. It was magical. The massage was pretty great too, especially since I've been exercising so much lately, and my arm has been bothering me for weeks. Afterwards, I walked into town to do a little window shopping. Michael's a good sport about coming with me, but he doesn't enjoy it like I do. I can wander in and out of 15 stores and not buy anything and still have fun. While I was wandering around, I found the shirt pictured above (Good Things Come to Those Who Bait) which is just so perfect for Michael on so many levels, but they didn't have it in his size.

When he was done fishing, he picked me up and we went to an early dinner, so we could rent a movie at the hotel. There's something so fun (and so expensive) about climbing into a fluffy white cloud of duvet with an armload of snacks and watching a movie. *contented sigh* We watched "The Invention of Lying" which was actually pretty good. Not the best movie ever, but a really interesting concept.

The weather looked better than expected on Sunday, so Michael dropped me off at a mall and went to do some more fishing. I know what you're thinking--that we didn't spend that much time together on this weekend, but it was actually perfect. We love spending time together, and we even love fishing together. But there was something just really satisfying about me getting to do EXACTLY what I wanted to do, at my own pace while he got to do the same. And I would have been cold and whiny after an hour or two of fishing, and he would have been bored and whiny after an hour or two of shopping or meandering. With all the time we spend on duty, it's also just nice to have some time to ourselves. Both Michael and I actually like spending time alone and don't get to very often. And it was so nice to come together for meals and movies and hotel time.

There was a movie theater at the mall, so I went to see "The Bounty Hunter" which wasn't quite as good as "Date Night" but was pretty entertaining nonetheless. I shopped for a while after that, but didn't find anything to buy so I wound up in Borders. I settled down in the cookbook aisle, of all places, and found some great looking cookbooks. I'm definitely getting inspired for cooking month, which I think will happen in June. The one I decided on had stains on it thought, so I didn't buy it and figured I can probably find it online cheaper. It was a Cooking Light book filled with 15 minute recipes with only 5 ingredients...AND it included a shopping list for each recipe. Nice.

I have plenty of books right now (gasp) since I'm slower at reading meditation and diet books than I am at reading fiction, so I decided not to let myself buy anymore and instead settled into an armchair with my Eckert Tolle book "New Earth" which Tiff had gotten me for Christmas. It was a little hard to get into, but it's actually pretty amazing. More on that later.

Michael picked me up from Borders after having a VERY successful fishing day, so we were both in a good mood. We were planning to go to Finz for dinner--we've gone the last two years, but when we got there it was closed so we had to come up with a plan B. There was a Legal Sefood C Bar nearby, so we went there. I had declared the weekend "lobster weekend" so we figured we could still get lobster there. It was really different than most Legal Seafood locations, and we were seated on this second floor loft that was kind of industrial and dark but kind of cool because it was quieter and less crowded and we could watch everyone in the restaurant.

We had these amazing little lambchop appetizers and then Michael had tuna and I had a stuffed lobster. Which was great except they hadn't cleaned all that green gunk out of the middle. eewwwwww. Michael had a good laugh at that. We noticed the table next to us was getting way better service than us (including free fried pickles!) and we were guessing at the possible reasons. We finally figured out that the guy was Glen Davis, who plays for the Celtics. Haha. When we were leaving dinner, they were in front of us so I made Michael pose for a picture with him in the background. But you can't really tell that it's him, because it's a far away cell phone picture. But still, it was a little exciting. Even if I really don't follow basketball.

So that was our weekend. Overall, a great getaway. We felt like we got a whole vacation in, and we actually got some good relaxing time, which is rare on our weekends. We're usually traveling or on duty or fitting in all the stuff we can't get to when we're on duty.