valentine's day

joel and i celebrated the day of love on saturday (instead of wednesday). we had to be practical and admit that school rules our lives and that we could not afford the time during the week.

i really wanted to dress up because i had bought the secret weapon dress and really wanted to wear it (plus, i love when joel dresses up).



for christmas, my mom got gift certificates to maggianos. she gave them to us because she thought we would get more out of them.

neither joel nor myself are planners so when we went to the restaurant day of, they only had reservations for 9:30. no problem...we'll go to the movie first. unfortunately, i couldnt remember where the theater was and we didnt have our cell phones with us (i hate those things until i dont have it on my hip).

joel, being the sweetheart that he is, let me choose the movie (we went to a real theater...not the $2 theater in la mirada...although, it was still cheap because he had free passes). i wanted to see the queen but it wasnt playing so we say because i said so.

horrible movie! about 40 minutes into i turned to joel and could tell he was suffering...as was i. so we left and went back to the brea mall.

we decided to do a little shopping but too bad for us all the stores closed at 8pm.



but we still had fun walking around, taking pictures and talking. i also loved getting multitudes of compliments on my dress.



around 9 we went back to the restaurant. we had a fantastic meal! its really nice to feel unconstrained by money. for an appetizer we got mussels. for dinner, joel got beef medallions and i got chicken cacciatore with garlic mashed potatoes. for dessert, joel got espresso with ice cream and i got spumoni. we also had some wine. it was wonderful (and we had left overs the next day).



crying over spilled wine...



now i'm back to the grind of studying and outlining. although, tomorrow is the much talked about bluebook competition.