Last weekend, I had one of the most wonderfully relaxing and stress-free vacations I can remember.
Steph J invited me to join her for a birthday trip to her company's condo in St. George and I'm so glad we went! Four days of doing almost nothing but watching movies and laughing our heads off? Yes, please!
I haven't been out of town since last August, and I NEEDED this vacation! Can I just tell you how happy we were to be out of town? So happy that I made Steph take a photo in front of this palm tree to prove we were no longer in SLC Friday night:
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The phrase "It's palm-tastic!" pervaded
most of the rest of the evening :) |
There were a bunch of teenage sports tournaments going on, and since we thought that the restaurants would be crazy-full, we decided to cook at the condo as much as we could (the one exception being dinner Saturday night). Good plan. We ate like queens and had fun cooking for each other. Taco soup, fajitas, strawberry and spinach salad, turkey bacon -- I'll eat what Steph cooks anytime!
That night, we watched
Cabaret and
Ghost Town. I've been a tiny bit obsessed lately with the music from the 1998 Broadway revival of
Cabaret, and borrowed the
1972 movie from Netflix to get a feel for the show.... I really, really hope that the stage play is better than the movie, because I hated it. Liza Minelli was very good, and I enjoyed Joel Grey's seriously weird performance, but they seemed to remove a lot of characters and story lines from the play, and the way they chose to juxtapose the climate of post-World War II Germany with the cabaret numbers was confusing and disjointed and not terribly clever. When we finished the movie, we needed something lighthearted with a happy ending, which was why we chose
Ghost Town. How I love Ricky Gervais in this thing! And Kristen Wiig and Tea Leoni are so funny! Have you seen this movie? No? Go rent it. It's delightful!
Saturday, we didn't change out of our pajamas until well after noon. We watched the first two DVDs from the first season of
Gilmore Girls, and watched golf carts avoid the geese that were waddling around the golf course outside our back porch (one walking golfer decided to chase the geese which seemed a little mean). Finally, about 4:30 I thought I should probably start getting ready to go out for dinner that night. Steph had already done so, but didn't rush me, which I thought was very nice, considering it WAS her birthday.
The original plan for Saturday night was to drive to Las Vegas and catch a performance of
Jersey Boys, a play Steph has seen and I
very much want to. Sadly, it's on hiatus this month while the show moves to another stage. I'll get there someday!
We drove for about an hour to Mesquite, Nevada to eat at a nice steak place called Katherine's in the Casablanca Resort & Casino. To get to Mesquite we had to drive through Arizona for a few minutes, which tickled me to no end, having served my LDS mission there. We even stopped for a photo at the border!
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| I think this is the first time I've had a photo under this sign. Yay! |
We were about an hour and a half early for our reservation (forgot about the time zone change -- whoops!) but they very kindly seated us right away. The food was WONDERFUL!! We got appetizers, soup, steak (Steph's main dish involved steak and crab), and the most butterily-wonderful cheesecake with raspberry sauce for dessert. We even liked our waiter and his dry humor, and my water glass was never empty. The next time you're in Mesquite, I recommend this place. It's pricey, but sooo good.
During those first few episodes of
Gilmore Girls, Rory tells her Grandfather that she wants to go to
Fez. I'd never heard of it, so we looked it up; it's in Morocco. Imagine our delight, though when we saw this in the casino outside of the restaurant:
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Sometimes it doesn't take much to amuse me.
Also, this is the only photo I have of both
of us together. |
We were pretty tired by the time we got home (those long days of doing nothing with do that to you), so we just watched the
2007 version of Persuasion and then went to bed. Well, I spent some time working on memorization for
The Importance of Being Earnest before falling asleep. I'm starting to panic about needing to be memorized by this Saturday!
Sunday after breakfast, we walked over to the LDS ward that happened to be meeting literally across the street to participate in
Sacrament meeting. If we had known there was a Samoan ward that met earlier in the day we would have gone then, but we didn't know. Ours was a strangely eventful meeting. Because of the holiday weekend there were a
lot of people there, and they misjudged the number of cups needed for the Sacrament, so the boys needed to pour more and re-bless. Being in a singles ward at home, I rarely get to see teenage boys passing the Sacrament, and it was pretty adorable how stressed out they were. Everything was fine! They did a great job and everyone who wanted to was able to participate. I enjoyed the talks about missionary work, and Steph and I had a good time singing the hymns together, though I should have warned her beforehand that I tend to sing different choral parts at each verse. Sorry, Steph!
Since Steph
St. George Temple. We walked around a bit to take photos, and then explored the visitors' centers (there are two!). We read about the history, watched a film called
Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration (during which, I tried not to be distracted by all of the actors I know personally), meditated in front of the Christus statue, played with a computer kiosk where you could digitally build or color a temple, and talked to many sister missionaries. The sister missionaries were from all over -- Hawaii, Austria, South Dakota, Brazil, Indiana -- and all had interesting stories to tell about the temple and about themselves. I loved hearing their testimonies and feeling the peaceful spirit there. It was a lovely way to spend the afternoon!
That night, Steph visited a friend in town, and I spent some time catching up on Google Reader and Facebook, before watching the latest episode of
The Big Bang Theory. When she got back I was excited to hear all about Steph's friend's family and home. Then we got ready for bed, cooked up some popcorn, and Steph generously offered to help me with my memorization. I'm getting closer!
Monday we slept in again... and decided we weren't quite ready to go home yet. Since we'd both napped through one or more
Gilmore episodes during the first go-around, we wanted to rewatch the ones we'd missed. However, when we had arrived on Friday, we discovered pretty quickly that there was no remote for the DVD player. We could switch it on, eject, play, and pause, but we couldn't do anything else. So... we watched the entire second disc again! Haha! Why not? We were on vacation!
It was sad to say good-bye to St. George, but at least I had time to convert Steph to
Stuff You Missed in History Class during the drive home, and were home early enough to relax (because that's what the weekend had been all about) before having to go to bed.
Actually, the first thing I did when I got home was vacuum my place, then I relaxed. I love having a tidy home; that doesn't happen very often when I'm in the middle of rehearsals!
My very favorite thing about this weekend was learning how alike Steph and I are. At least, our cultural reference overlap a LOT. On more than one occasion after one of us said something that sounded like a movie line or lyric, we both started quoting the exact same line! It was a little crazy. I loved it!
Thank you for the awesome weekend, Steph. Looking forward to our next adventure!!
