The story of two weekends

Here's the latest updates with me. Two weekends ago, Tiffany and I took advantage of the fact that we live in Miami and went to the beach. Friday night, we drove out to South Beach to sit in the dark and have cocktails on the beach, just because. We ended up staying a while and talking to this guy who was a tattoo artist with two cute dogs. It was relaxing, and nice.

Here's a view of South Beach at night, kinda pretty.

The next day was a perfect beach day, sunny, breezy, a few clouds, hot but not too hot. Perfect. So T and I went out to Crandon Park at Key Biscayne and chilled for a while. We lay in the sun until it got boring, then headed out to a sand bar to explore what was out there. We found these birds...

a blue heron...

and these cute little tree plant thingys.

I also witnessed a sting ray swim right by me, which freaked me out, but then he was kind of majestic and nice (and farther away) so I was okay with it. I wish I'd taken a picture of him, now. Oh well.

The next weekend was a long one, thanks to Martin Luther King Jr. having a dream. We didn't have kids at school on Friday so I decided to make the most of it and head to the Miami Science Museum. They were having a music exhibit--not amazing, but fun nonetheless. Mellie and Margarita went with me. I must say my favorite moment was the karaoke exhibit where you were supposed to sing in a microphone and the other person was supposed to manipulate the voice to make it sound like the person was singing in different areas (the shower, a sound booth, whatever). Anyway, so I'm busting out some "The Shoop Shoop Song" by Cher, and this kid and his mom came and started staring at me. It was hilarious.

So anyway, I snapped a pic of us rockin' out to some jams. We are nerds and awesome.

On Saturday, I headed to Boca for an art festival and dinner with Annie. Traffic was a nightmare, as per usual, so I got there a little later than expected but it was all good. Annie and I headed to the festival and walked around for a bit. She bought a print of a manatee picture. I bought nothing but took some cards. Some of the stuff I've seen before but it's always fun to walk around and hang out with artistic folks.

After, Annie had made a reservation for dinner at a new restaurant that had just opened. She had a gift card, which was a big incentive. It's called Zed 451. Apparently, there's one in Chicago and now one in Boca. Let me tell you, the place was expensive but SO worth it. It was a Brazilian style restaurant, where you get up and have salads and sides buffet style, and then chefs bring out the proteins on skewers and serve you small pieces. It. Was. Delicious. All of the ingredients were extremely fresh, and everything was made on site. My favorites included the squash soup, the spicey green been salad, and Moroccan chicken. This chicken was SO GOOD I can't even describe it to you. I'm not sure if I can ever feel about a man the way I felt about this chicken. It was love at first bite, for sure. A. Mazing.

That's not even mentioning dessert. Dessert was s'mores pie. Oh yes, I said it. S'mores PIE. Basically a graham cracker crust constructed in a cup, which was awesome because I don't generally enjoy crust and could completely avoid it. Win. The inside was filled with melted chocolate ganache, and on top of THAT, there were home made marshmallows that were fired and kind of crisp. Oh yeah. On one side of the plate was home made peanut butter icecream on top of bananas with peanut butter sauce. On the opposite side of the place was home made vanilla ice cream over strawberries. Basically, I saw the face of God when I ate that dessert. It was so worth every cent. Hands down, it was the best meal of my life. I need to start saving up to eat there again!

Then Monday, my lovely day off from school, I headed to Fairchild Tropical Gardens but not without complications. I got a speeding ticket on the way (um... yeah, I don't wanna talk about it) and then, once I got to the garden, my camera decided to die. I have no idea why, but it's totally dead. New batteries, old batteries, nothing helps. Hence the reason I have NO pictures from my beautiful excursion. It sucks, too, because the gardens were TOTALLY pictaresque and I could have taken some really pretty pictures there. You can see some of them on the website and that's about the best I can do.

It was still a great experience and I enjoyed myself, but it was kind of a crappy day otherwise. Boo.

In other news, our pool has finally opened up, just in time for the two coldest days Miami's seen in ages. Seriously, it was so "cold" that the kids at school had two dress down days so that they could "bundle up." It was kind of funny, I can't lie. I'm hoping to enjoy the pool soon, perhaps tomorrow. It's not that warm, and the water will certainly be on the chilly side, but it'll be worth a try.

Anyway, I'm gonna go walk Bubba and enjoy some sunshine. Chances are I'll be writing less because I won't have pictures to post until I can buy a new camera... which will be a while considering I just spend $800 at the vet and have to now pay a speeding ticket. Um... sweet.

Much love.