Hanging out with Carey, Rachel, and Paul

With all the wedding stuff going on, it's been hard to have a lot of time to visit with friends, but on Wednesday and Thursday we finally managed to get together with Carey, Rachel, and Paul. The four of us used to hang out all the time when we were in High School. Now Rachel has a baby, Carey lives in NYC, and I live in DC, so it's hard to get together. But we always try to meet up at least once over the holidays.

On Wednesday night Rachel, Rachel's husband Drew & baby Ari, Carey, and Jeff and I (Paul was still at work) met at a restaurant called Apertif in Woodbury. The food was really good - Jeff, Carey, and I shared oysters, green bean and onion salad, lamb shank, and shish kabob. They also had amazing rosemary bread that they served with Parmesan cheese, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. It's always fun to chat and catch-up - they're the kind of friends where even if you haven't talked in months, it feels as if you saw them yesterday.

After dinner, we stopped at Cub Foods for some snacks (cheese and crackers and icecream sandwiches), and then went to Rachel's house. We hung out and talked for a while, and Paul showed up around 10pm after he finished work. We ended up watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which Paul and Carey had never seen, and then a few episodes of 30 Rock, which we've all seen, but we all love. We stayed at Rachel's until after 1am.

We actually ended up getting together less than twelve hours later for lunch. We went to Pho Quan, which is one of Rachel's favorite restaurants in the Twin Cities. It's a tiny Vietnamese restaurant (probably less than 20 ft. by 20 ft.), with a handwritten sign on the door, and it serves mostly just Pho. The food was really good - and Jeff and I had some tea that we liked, also.

After lunch, Paul went to work and the rest of us went to the Minneapolis Central Library, which is on the same street (Nicollet Ave.), though it's about a mile away. Carey and Rachel had never been there, and we thought it'd be fun to see it and tell them how the wedding would be laid out there. After that, Carey gave us a ride back to Maple Grove and became the first friend to see my parent's new house!