The Yard House

Heidi's new job is in Glenview, and she's near The Glen, an outdoor shopping center something like Old Orchard but for the even more affluent. As it happens, there's a Metra stop a block away from her workplace, so I can take the train up after work and we can go have a lovely meal or whatever.

In any case, we chose last night to go to the Yard House. It's a chain restaurant, but it's a new chain restaurant, and I remember going there back before it was a chain. This was in Long Beach, mind you, but it was good there, it's pretty good here, too.

The Yard House's big claim to fame is that they have 250 beers on tap. Some of them are Budweiser and it's various American kin, but most of them are either microbrews or foreign or both. This makes each trip to the Yard House a lovely little experiment. The food is good, too.

In any case, I came in and asked if they had anything like Goose Island's MBA (Masters of Beer Appreciation), where you drink so many beers, you get something free. They didn't (I kind of already knew the answer; the one in Long Beach didn't, but I wasn't sure if they had initiated something like that). The manager told me no, but then he subsequently bought me a beer (a Spatten Optimal, I believe... oaky and a little sharp, but sort of complex). Yes, the manager of the restaurant gave me a beer on the house. For no reason than that he was in a good mood.

Speaking with him later, I mentioned that I just started homebrewing, and he said, "Hey, I'm a homebrewer, too!" Just from speaking with him, it was obvious that he was much more experienced than I am, but it opened a pretty cool door for us to talk brew stuff (as a result of that conversation, I have ideas about how to proceed with this Hefeweisen... could end up being very very good).

The Spaaten was stronger than I expected it to be, and I'm still a bit of a lightweight, so I ended up being less enthused about the rest of the night. Still, I know from experience that this is a good place to go, and now I know from experience that this particular Yard House is that much more worthy of my patronage.

Rhythm

For Mensa, I organize an event called The Long and Winding Crawl. Effectively, it's just going out and drinking at places around town. Last night we went to this place I wanted to go out and drink at for a long time, a place called Rhythm, which is either a bar with a drum-circle theme, or a drum-circle establishment with a bar built in so they can make a living keeping the place open. In any case, it was a huge kick in the pants. This is me bringing my and Heidi's drum down from the rack into the drum pit. People were quite pleased at my apprent new-found chestiness, so Dave, who shall henceforth be named Schmutzy, due to an inside joke that happened during a game of St. Petersburg several months ago, took this picture. Jeni, the drum queen/dancing dervish, took the picture below of me, Schmutzy, and Heidi (who's peeking in from my left, your right) while we were banging upon our drums. Today, my hands hurt. But I fully intend to go back there because that was such a hugely entertaining time.

A Fine Saturday

I still don't have internet at home, so I couldn't blog about this until today, but I just want to talk about how wonderful Saturday was. I got a few errands done in the morning, then Heidi came in, and we did nothing. She lay around and read my second copy of Harry Potter (I pre-ordered a copy from Amazon.com, and forgot that it was coming, so I ordered another copy), while I did dishes and crap. I had to wait around for the DirecTV guy to show up, and he was late, but I'm OK with that. If he's late, that means he's doing things right for other people. And, sure enough, he was the most competent of the six technicians I've had in the apartment over the last two weeks. I now have HD DirecTV with Tivo, and DAMN! That's the way to watch TV!

Also, one thing I really like about DirecTV, is that with Comcast, the best I can do to avoid the temptation of the "naughty channels" is to lock them. With DirecTV, I can remove them entirely. Out of sight, out of mind, capische?

Anyway, while waiting for Mr. Tech, when not reading, Heidi and I had a really good conversation, and the opportunity to pray together about some big stuff.

Then we went out. The weather on Saturday was quite nice after the rain. A little humid, but the temperature was quite pleasant. I did a search on Citysearch for a good date restaurant, and found Deleece. It got a fairly high rating, but I'd never heard of it, so I thought I'd take a gamble. We ended up having to change our reservation because of the lateness of the DirecTV guy, but they were able to take it. The inside was crowded and noisy, and the outside was practically empty and freakin' gorgeous, so we chose to sit outside. The waiter came up and gave us the specials, and my mouth was beginning to water already. We chose a lamb thingy and a beef tenderloin thingy and we split them. We also had a beef satay appetizer and a brownie dessert. To anybody reading this, wherever you may be, if you are ever anywhere near Chicago, I recommend coming to this restaurant. This was the best dining experience I've had for years. The waiter was the best I'd had in probably two years, and the food was freakin insanely amazing. When I commented this to the waiter, he even chose that opportunity to suavely complement Heidi, ensuring that she would have an even better time (if she was previously insecure, which she isn't). And yes, the company made the evening, but that was a kickass restaurant.

Yes, Saturday was a wonderful wonderful wonderful day. Sunday was a pain in the ass because of the heat, but Saturday made up for it all.