Continuing this journey of "Appreciating What You Have" has been interesting. It seems that over the last week things keep occurring to make me really appreciate what we have.
Monday was Valentines Day. We'd made reservations a couple of weeks ago at a nice restaurant in town. I'd purchased a gift certificate from the restaurant for 1/2 off a few months ago (back before we really got into cutting our budget even) and we decided we'd use it for Valentines Day.
As I posted over the weekend, we had a really enjoyable cheap date on Friday. For many, that would have been a perfectly acceptable Valentines celebration. And to be honest, by the time Monday rolled around I would have been fine with it as well. While I knew that about half our meal would be covered by the gift certificate that had already been purchased I still had a really hard time with the knowledge that we'd still be spending a good deal on this dinner out. It really bothered me all day Monday and I had to just keep reminding myself that we had this gift certificate so it wouldn't be as expensive as my brain thought it to be and that we should just go and enjoy it. "Stop being cheap!" is what I kept telling myself. So by the time Paul got home from work I'd decided I was just going to go with it and enjoy it. I got dressed up and we headed out to dinner.
The restaurant we went to (Pauli's Bistro, for those who are local) is a very nice place and the type of place where I would feel very uncomfortable walking in in jeans or simply not dressed up. They do have an attached bar that I see as more fitting to a more casual type of dress. I say this because while we were eating our salads a group of 4 young people were seated next to us. When I say young, I'm guessing that at least half of them were not old enough to drink. They were all in blue jeans and the girls looked uncomfortable. They guys looked uncomfortable with the prices on the menu (going straight for the cheapest red meat on the menu). But, the capper was the cap; a ballcap to be exact, that one of the guys was wearing and did not take off throughout his entire meal. It annoyed me.
As far as the food went, I should have probably stuck to my original plan (or ordered what my husband ordered), but the Veal special sounded so good. It was just ok, mainly the meat was tough and it just left me wanting more. We ended up ordering desert in an attempt to fill a void that we felt our dinner left and it didn't satisfy either.
All in all, we ended the night talking about how we enjoyed our cheap date at Chili's much more than we enjoyed this "big night out" at a fancy restaurant.
This is a big change of corner for us because it wasn't that long ago that we were discussing how we needed to go out to places like Chili' more often in order to appreciate all the nice places we'd been going. At one point the conversation actually came up of what are we going to do for a special event do top what we do on a regular date because of the level of the places we would likely go.
I'm learning to appreciate my kitchen. and I've learned that just because something costs a lot doesn't mean you'll really value it to the level of the cost.
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