As a special treat to the new parents, my parents gave us an evening on the town for my birthday. The one suggested stipulation was that it be used within the first few months of the kid’s life.

Fortunately, I’m a boy so I can count to 11. That is about how many a few is for me. So yesterday evening, Anastasia and I favored the neighbors with several rousing refrains of Go Tell It On the Mountain by Alexei while we took a walk and grabbed a bite to eat.

A month or so before we began dating in the Fall of 2003, we both happened to take in a recital at the University of Maryland on a Saturday afternoon. When it was finished, neither of us had anything better to do, so I asked if she wanted to go walk around a lake. She jumped at the opportunity and off we went to Greenbelt’s finest: Lake Artemesia.

To relive our bygone day, we once again headed to Artemesia for a walk. The weather cooperated with us despite the gloomy clouds and we spent a good hour or so meandering through goose poop.

<rant>
Who invites geese to lakes? Geese flying overhead (way overhead) are nice. A crisp autumn morning with a wisp of smoke rising from your log cabin practically begs for some southward bound “V”’s trumpeting their progress. The same birds on the ground are a nuisance. All things considered, Artemesia isn’t that bad on the poop-o-meter. The two places in the world that top my poop-from-the-goose list are (in no particular order) Garden State Academy and Shenandoah Conservatory. So on second thought, maybe geese are providential. They are, after all, one of the main reasons why I didn’t wind up in Winchester, VA for school. Maybe I have some foul fowl remains to thank for this walk with the wife in a round-about sort-of-kind-of way.
</rant>

Since I can in fact count to eleven, I don’t remember what we talked about exactly, but we probably had some sort of minor conflict that was resolved shortly after it started. I do remember watching the Metro zoom by as the twilight was fading and wishing I had a camera and a tripod with me. Of course who would ever look at the result if I did? In that case, it’s probably for the better that I didn’t have them on hand.

Feeling more or less happy with the world, I made the executive decision to go to Mamma Luccia’s Italian something or another diner. When I saw the location, I should’ve probably changed my mind - a shopping center isn’t usually a recipe for quasi-romantic dinner fare.

The food was quite delicious, but the venue was not so. The portions were a little on the large side. I had some kind of lemon chicken and Anastasia had a hamburger (NOT! My manly observation skills are showing through again. In other words, I have no idea what she ate). Our conversation had been good until the point when we arrived for dinner. At that point I shut up because it was loud. The wife, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind all the chatter and wanted to continue our conversation. Fortunately we had the food to distract us; I got off without saying too much.

When my dessert came out (which I didn’t want, by the way), the fork had something on it. So our waitress brought me a new fork. Funnily enough, she didn’t look too closely at the new fork either as it had a huge piece of lettuce stuck on it. Yummy!

We got back to the ranch maybe 20 minutes after the Mountains had been harked to and after a brief chat/thanks to my folks; they went home and our date was over.