hot date(s)

$200 spent on a fancy meal (on a couple of anniversary celebrations) at one of our absolute favorite restaurants...actually is not my favorite date. Although, this downtown restaurant is amazing - fabulous wine selection, excellent service, and food of the Gods - on top of celebrating the most momentous occasion of our lives...my favorite date(s) with Clay actually take place at Barnes & Noble, for lack of a good local book retailer. We enter, as shelves of copious books - with their clever jackets constructed by marketing teams - scream for our attention (and are in the bargain section). We peruse the aisles for hidden gems, however most include those off-the-wall genres: tourist attractions in Iowa, how to tell fortunes, or a brew your own beer guide...maybe even a Windows 2.0 for Dummies book...hmmmm...how long has that been in the bargain section?

After finding zero books to our liking, we split off in two directions. Clay to the geek section. Nan to the garden and art sections. We take our time scrutinizing interesting titles and flipping through whatever catches our eyes. Then we carry our armloads of books to the magazine aisle - Clay to the geek section - Nan to the garden/home or graphic design section. We have an inherent sense of when to meet there. It's kind of odd. After gathering our magazine loot, we head to the Starbucks cafe to order drinks.

And, we complete our journey at a cozy table in the corner, with stacks of 23 books/magazines and our frappuccinos in the summer or hot mochas in the winter, squeezed onto a 3' x 3' table. But we love it...we sit across from each other with our legs just grazing and sip on our drinks. When I find a really cool garden layout or discover a talented graphic artist, I just have to interrupt his reading to share. Clay will find interesting stories about Geek X or Geek Y or just an article on the latest technogadget (or anything new from Apple!), and he explains to me why we need to buy them all...okay, not really. It's quite fun - a great way to share our interests for several hours. After I convince him that we cannot afford to buy gadgets x, y and z, we slurp down the last drops of our crackuccinos, and tally up the books we want to purchase.

Cheap date...a bit educational...quality time spent together...and we know we'll get a goodnight kiss at the end.