Pizza at midnight thirty

February 27th.  It's a Saturday night and yes, it's cold.  Long nights, cold air, slushy, icy snow coats the ground and moods are dark.  I, for one, am feeling the result of a long winter. Being creatures of habit, we often pick up a movie at Redbox, throw on sweat pants and munch on white popcorn.

Despite the cold, we decided to throw caution to the wind, paint the town red, or insert whatever other goofy catch phrase you want here, and have ourselves a date night!

Our night began with a trip to Barnes and Noble.  The actual impressive part is that our night began at 9:30pm.  Lil' miss Ashley is usually asleep or close to being asleep by this time.

The game we played at Barnes and Noble was to enter a section and see who could find the given topic first.  For instance, we started with Biography and the topic was to find a book cover with a black woman on it.  We would then each share the synopsis of the book.  Competition makes everything more fiery.  Plus, we learned a bit about those two women.  The night at Barnes and Noble ended by reading some good ol' Calvin and Hobbes.  It was cute to see Caleb get excited as old memories of the Calvin and Hobbes comics came rushing back.

We then moved on to Rockwood Tap House in Downers Grove for dessert.  Caleb was given a giftcard and we carefully made our selection: the Brownie Sundae Supreme.  It was warm, gooey, delicious, and gone in about 5 minutes.  The restaurant is fairly new, had a warm and romantic ambiance and the prices on the menu won't break the bank.

Our next stop: Family Video.  The plan was to pick up the first season of MadMen and have a MadMen marathon - unfortunately, it had already been rented.  This was probably a good thing as we quickly realized we probably wouldn't be able to stay awake too much longer.  We left Family Video empty handed.

While we knew we couldn't watch many episodes of MadMen, as we were reaching the midnight checkpoint of the date night, we decided we could handle at least one episode.  We stopped at Papa John's and picked up a pizza.  This, we never do.  And after we paid, I suddenly remembered why.  Ordered pizza is outrageously over priced.  But it was one of the moments where we decided to not regret purchasing the over priced pizza but to enjoy the delicious, pizza perfection taste with every bite.  The best of part of Papa John's... garlic sauce.  

As we ate our pizza at midnight thirty, we watched MadMen.  This is quite the interesting show.  It takes place in the '60s.  About 90% of the scenes contain someone(s) smoking cigarettes and drinking hard liquor.  I foresee someone dying of lung cancer or liver disease.  The men are suave with slicked back hair, dapper suits, and rule the advertising world.  Here's Caleb pictured with Mr. Don Draper.  The name itself is genius enough. 

Date nights are essential.  Spicing it up every now and then is a good thing for a marriage.  What happens when you pop in your regular DiGiorno's frozen cheese pizza every Friday night?  It's expected.  You know exactly what it will taste like before you even eat it. You know you can eat exactly 2.25 pieces to be full.  Last night, we took that pizza and added some pineapple, ham, olives, peppers, sausage, anchovies, and then picked off the anchovies, figuratively speaking. We spiced up our date night.  I had a hot date and we shared a spiced up pizza at midnight thirty.