$500

Sunday night (yes, it is Thursday and I am still blogging about my weekend past) we went to dinner and a movie with some friends. Not just any friends, our famous friends.
You have heard me mention Charles and Alpana before, he is a writer and she is the belle of the Chicago food and wine ball. Charles is the only person that I speak to on a regular basis who knew me in high school (well, at least the only one I am not related to), so he is officially my oldest friend, and it is always good to remember what he looks like eventhough we email throughout most days. We rarely get to see them, but Charles needed some software for his computer so they hauled it out to the burbs for an evening out.
So we went to see The Namesake, a favorite book of mine turned movie. My movie review is simple, read the book and then go see the movie if you are not creative enough to give the people faces. I think a lot was lost about what the point of the story was, but it was pretty to look at and I was able to have a good cry in a dark room which is sometimes just what a girl needs.
After the movie we went to the Mafia Hangout- Cafe Lucci. Tim and I hadn't been there in a while, and we were happy that Chach and Alpana wanted to go back. The owner is a friend of Tim's dad (hence it being the Mafia Hangout) and he is very kind if not a wee bit solicitous.
I always feel bad for Alpana when we go out for dinner because she is often recognized. I am sure it is hard to establish any kind of anonymity when you are on TV every Friday night and your picture is in the paper next to your new book all the time. While I realize that I may sound like Eddie Haskell saying that, I really don't mean it because I do see how irritating it is to have someone interrupt your meal, or to just have people starring at you. Regardless of some random guy in a yellow shirt tilting his chair toward our table and randomly making kind of random statements through the better part of our first course, we had a good time. Bobby, the owner (Charles likes to call him Ricky Bobby), is a wine guy so he and Alpana talk shop a lot and I like to learn about wine and all that. The food was fantastic (I even ate pork if you can believe it!), and we always have a good time with them. We tried a wine that tasted like a saddle and we also had some after dinner wine that was the yummiest thing ever (Alpana kept calling it grown up punch, whatever it was it was fantastic). So we close the place down and retire to our respective abodes for the night.
I couldn't sleep that night because of all of the rich food topped by bottle after bottle of wine. When I woke up the next morning I was glad I hadn't succumbed to the heart attack that I was sure was coming after the insanely rich meal, and stopped acting like the guy in Sanford and Son.
Later that day Charles text messaged em to let me know that we had drank about $500 in wine the night before which leads me to the best part of hanging out with them- you never have a bar bill.
Seriously $500?
That was one hell of a pair of shoes we drank.