Z is for Zoom In

Z isn't the hardest letter in the alphabet, for sure, but it's not really the easiest either. See, Z suffers from the stigma of having the obvious date of going to the zoo. Ed wanted to be a little bit more creative than that (especially since I volunteer at the zoo every Saturday). Soooooo...he chose Zoom In. In Birmingham, each year the Birmingham News sponsors a scavenger hunt at a location around the city. It's called the Itty Bitty Magic City Scavenger Hunt. Since you have to "zoom in" on different objects to complete the scavenger hunt, it was the perfect challenge for the end of our alphabet date! This year, it was at Railroad Park, a new park downtown that's really nice! We found all but one of the 20 clues. The one we didn't find, we were told by the security guard that no one could find it. So, we're hoping that maybe we'll be in the running for a prize!! If you're in the Ham, I definitely recommend Railroad Park, and you should certainly try the scavenger hunt next year too!!

Y is for Yellow and Green

Y is for sure the sixth vowel! It was a little tough. I came up with a couple of words, but couldn't find an appropriate date to plan for those words: yell, yehaw, yellowhammer, yard...that's about it. Ed's been mentioning over the past few weeks/months that we need to go to some UAB athletic events, and well, they're only really good at basketball. Since UAB's colors are green and gold (errrr, yellow), I figured we could take this as an opportunity to go to a game! There just so happened to be a men's basketball game during my Y week. I even packed some UAB tshirts, and Ed's yellow hair so we could be for real fans! It was really a great time. Ed got in free since he's a student, and I got a student ticket for onlly $12. We had great seats and UAB won, so that made it even better!! We're definitely going to go back for another game!! After the game, we went to a new dessert bar nearby called YOLO (you only live once). I bought a $20 groupon for YOLO a couple weeks ago for only $5. We tried their version of a banana split, 3 different kinds of cupcakes and their organic coffee. It was awesome!! Next time I feel like I need a $3 cupcake, I'll be back!

X is for XOXO

I have to say that I think Ed really lucked up that he had X on the very week of Valentine's Day! Our anniversary is also in February, so we take turns being responsible for planning the date for such occassions. He had Valentine's Day and I had our anniversary. X being the tough letter it is, I think he hit the jackpot with having our X date as our Valentine's XOXO Day date. We decided on a good steak place, that also had yummy margaritas. And, that day, he delivered a basket to my office full of goodies. My favorite? Definitely, the dancing gorilla (who I have appropriately named George) who also sings "Can't Get Enough of Your Love"! We had a wonderful dinner...I have the greatest boyfriend eveeeeer!

W is for Wet Your Whistle

I found this wonderful charity event that I wanted to attend called Tapped, which benefitted the Autism Society of Alabama. It was partially sponsored by Free the Hops, which is a fabulous organization that's trying to improve our outdated beer laws here in the Heartland. Anyway, it was the very weekend that I was due to have a W date, and I thought it would be fun. So, along with some friends, we managed to come up with a W word (or phrase, as it may be) to attend this even for our W date. Since it was a Beer Tasting event, and sponsored by Free the Hops, we decided the best way to go was "W is for Wet Your Whistle". I thought it was very clever! It was held at Ted's Garage downtown. This is a huge warehouse where people really store their really awesome cars. We forgot the camera :( so we weren't able to take pictures of them. It was great!! There were lots of restaurants there serving food--Blackwell's, Jackson's, Mafiaoza's, The J Clyde, and Maki Fresh. All the food was yummy, and the beer was great, of course. The best thing was that you could walk around and drool over all the expensive and/or old vehicles that were stored there. Including one fine Mercedes that I think Batman may own!

V is for Vaulting

I am a huge fan of anything Alabama. So, Ed's choice for V was a great one in my opinion. He got tickets to an Alabama gymnastice meet for us. He'd never been to a gymnastics meet anywhere, so it was a great experience for him too! We had a great time. We even joined the Rewards Program so that everytime we got to a sporting event on campus, we get a point. After each 10 points, you get a prize!! Very exciting! The meet we went to for this date was Alabama vs. Boise State. We had great seats. Buuuut, we never caught a tshirt which was a real bummer--I'm going to need them to throw more of those next time! Lol. Alabama won by over a point, and we both really enjoyed ourselves, so it was a win all the way around!

U is for Up

Ok ok. I've been told that my choice for U could possibly be considered a stretch. But, this was all I could come up with. Well, sort of. I thought of up, underwater, and underground. If you have an aquarium in your town, underwater is easy. If you have better timing, you can visit a cave or cavern (they're closed in the winter). So, up it is! Birmingham is home to the Southern Museum of Flight, and they have a flight simulator. I figured we could go tour the museum and fly "up" on the flight simulator. I have never been to the museum, and I don't think Ed even knew it existed. It's near the airport, but it's not something that you'll just pass by on your way home or anything. And, most of the signs are faded and worn, so you'd be hard-pressed to notice them. Annnnnyway, it was a pretty cool way to spend the afternoon. First, we stopped by this awesome Homewood restaurant called Urban Cookhouse. They specialize in foods prepared from sustainable ingredients and sources. We'll definitely be back there--it is delicious! On to the Southern Museum of Flight. We spent a couple of hours wandering around. It's a pretty large place, with lots of history. There are lots of planes and helicopters on display indoors, and then outside there are planes and helicopters for a couple of blocks. They even have a scavenger hunt. For a small fee, you get a list of questions to answer, and when you're finished, correct answers will earn you a really neat patch from the museum. Oh, and yeah, we did the flight simulator--Ed did well, I crashed EVERY time (see the frustration in the picture?)! It was a really great afternoon, and something we probably wouldn't have done if it wasn't for our fun alphabet dating!

T is for Thompson

As in....Josh Thompson. After a couple month hiatus due to the holidays, we got back into our alphabet dating. Ed planned for our T date to be a Josh Thompson concert. If you've never heard of him, check him out--he's great (http://www.joshthompsonofficial.com/). Anyway, he was the headliner for the BBVA Compass Bowl Pep Rally and Street Party. It was really awesome. I mean, yes, it was outside in January, but it was manageable--it being Alabama and all. We got some free coffee, hot chocolate, and some free swag. Then, there was some good street food, and of course great music! The best part--it was a free concert sponsored by a local radio station--thank you 102.5 the bull! My new favorite song may very well be "Way Out Here".

S is for Symphony

S came about kind of randomly. I subscribe to Groupon, a daily deal site. If you haven’t checked this out, you should—it’s saved me some hard core cash! One day, the groupon was for an Alabama Symphony Orchestra performance where they were having a guest saxophonist! I checked with Laurel to make sure Ed wouldn’t totally hate this before I bought it. We went to the Alys Stephens Center for the performance. It was the first in a series of performances that they are calling “Classical Edge”. It was really cool. The man who composed most of the arrangements is on staff at the ASO, and he was there to talk about them and how he wrote them and everything. It was a really casual performance, with the composer and conductor having conversations about the music on stage. That provided a lot of insight into the music, which is great, because I don’t pretend to know anything about composing. We both really enjoyed ourselves—part of the time, I just closed my eyes and listened. The music was beautiful—the ASO does an excellent job! After the show, we went to Maki Fresh to get some sushi (if you get there within the hour before they close, all premade sushi is half-priced). A great evening, and first for the both of us!

R is for Rolling

As in…rolling a ball! Ed chose dinner at a restaurant and bowling for our R date. He paired bowling with R saying that you’re rolling the ball. Works for me—I love bowling. And, it was pretty cool because we were supposed to go bowling on our first date, but the alley was so busy that night that we didn’t get to bowl. Here, 8 months later, we actually went bowling. It was a blast! We went to Saigon Noodle for dinner—it’s a yummy Vietnamese place near the bowling alley. Then, when we got to the alley, it was dollar bowling night. Oh, and we had a pitcher of beer…which just makes bowling more fun!! About 8 or 9, it turns into cosmic bowling where they put neon pins in some of the lanes. If you get a neon pin for your head pin, and you bowl a strike on that roll, then you get to spin the wheel of prizes. I actually won one—can you believe that?!?! I’m not so good at the bowling, but it’s always been fun. My goal was just to break 100. And, I did. On both games!! I won the first game and Laurel won the second game. Buuuuut, cumulatively, I won. Ok, maybe only by 3 points! Haha. We had a really great time, and we’ll definitely be going back again!

Q is for Questions

For all the vowels I’ve had, I couldn’t believe I would get another letter so hard. I’ll grant you that there are a lot of q words in the English language, but try planning a date with one of them—it’s not easy, my friend! This one came to me out of nowhere though. Laurel had text me asking if I wanted to go to Blackwell’s Pub (see P date) for dinner one night. I didn’t get the text until about an hour after she sent it, so she was already there. When I responded, she let me know that I should have come because they had live trivia. It hit me right then—I could do q for questions and we could play trivia! There’s actually a Birmingham Live Trivia League (which I didn’t know), but they do live trivia just about every night of the week at different bars and restaurants around town. I called around and found a few options. I talked to some friends to see when they might want to participate—let’s face it, you need a lot of minds to do well in trivia! We ended up going to Buffalo Wild Wings on a Friday night. That worked out well because we had a great time! We even won first place, and were awarded a $50 gift card to BWW!!! Our team name, which had to start with a Q, was qqchacho. While we were there, we learned about the trivia league, and, since we had gotten the first place points that night, we had the potential to make it to the league semifinals. Members of our team have gone back every Friday night since then to build our points, and we made it into the semifinals! That’s next Sunday night—we’re really excited! If things work out well, then our Q date may just earn us some cash. I mean, it’s already gotten us some free food!

P is for Pedicure

Can you believe that my wonderful boyfriend chose pedicure as our P date?!?! I could not have been more surprised or more excited! There are quite a few things you can do with P, I’m sure, but this man chose something totally for me!! Of course, this was Ed’s very first pedicure, but it may not be his last because he said his feet felt really good afterwards. I tried my best to talk him into a pale pink color, but he opted for none. Lol! We went to a nail place in Cahaba Heights. He had even called and made an appointment so they were waiting on us. The ladies that worked there were really carrying on about him getting a pedicure. They told him he should do it more often, and they have lots of men who come in there. We told them all about our alphabet dating and everything we were doing. They were super nice, and I’ll definitely go back to this place again. I was so overdue for a pedi too—this could not have come at more perfect time. After we were finished, Ed said that he needed to do something manly “like drink beer” so we went for some pub food at Blackwell’s. I love Blackwell’s Pub—they have great burgers! P date was the best!!

O is for Opener

As in the season opener for Alabama Football! Woooo Hooooo! Being a graduate of the University of Alabama, I’m a diehard Bama football fan. But, Ed isn’t from Alabama, and really doesn’t have a college allegiance since he’s gone to all those smart, Northern schools that excel in all things non-sports, and some ice hockey too. So, he’d never been to a big football game, and of course, I’ve been looking forward to football season since it ended in January! When the time finally came to buy tickets this year, I bought 2 tickets to the opening game in hopes that he would want to go with me. Then, I had the bright idea to somehow include the game into our alphabet dating game. Ok, a friend of mine told me this was cheating, but I just don’t think so. It was still a date I had planned, Ed didn’t know about it yet, and I really thought it would be a fun date! With some friends help, we figured out that our alphabet game would probably land perfectly on the letter O….so Opener it was! Ed did figure out what it was—I had to tell him the date, and approximation of the time, and I had to tell him we were going to Tuscaloosa that day so that he wouldn’t make other plans. He put two and two together and just asked me about it the day before. So, I was a little bummed that I didn’t get to see his excitement when he figured out what it was, but we had a blast either way. And, he was totally excited to go to a big college football game. Might I add that since that game, he has become somewhat of an Alabama fan….oh, and he doesn’t care for Auburn, which is just a winner in my book! Roll Tide Roll!

N is for Nifty

Ed had to get creative on N because it was a tough one. I’m not sure what all he was able to come up with, but he ended up with lunch and an event—one I was supposed to wear jeans and a tshirt to! We went to New York Pizza—it’s a great pizza place in the heart of Homewood, and one of my favorites! Buuuut, it was Sunday and apparently, NY Pizza doesn’t open until late on Sundays. We decided, since we were hungry, to just go get some Nummy sandwiches from Firehouse Subs. Then, for the big surprise, we went to find some “Nifty” at the Bessemer Flea Market. We had been talking about going to a flea market—Ed hasn’t ever been to one, and I’ve only been once. You never know what you’ll find. Maybe something I need for cheap, or just random stuff that I didn’t know I needed! Lol. Bessemer’s Flea Market is supposed to be one of the biggest around Birmingham, so it just seemed like the perfect one to go to. Let me tell you—it was huge!! If you need socks, sunglasses, or a cell phone, this is the place to go! There were authorized dealers from just about every major wireless carrier—that’s hardcore! There was a couple of booths that really interested us. One had a lot of tools, including sockets that you could buy. Ed really liked that one. There was also a man there selling appliances….pretty damn cheap too. Oh, and if you’re interested, the taco truck is there every weekend, and that’s probably enough motivation to go right there! In the end, we didn’t buy anything nifty, but we sure did find a lot of neat and nifty stuffs!

M is for Museum

M wasn’t a hard letter for me. There were quite a few options, but I decided to do something on the less expensive side because we weren’t experiencing a windfall! Lol! I decided a museum was the way to go. We have quite a few museums in Birmingham, but I really wanted to go to the Birmingham Museum of Art. First, we went to Momma Goldberg’s Deli for a yummy Sunday lunch—their nachos just rock my world. Then, on to the Museum of Art. There was a special exhibit on Japanese kimonos called Fashioning Kimonos—absolutely beautiful!! It was a really cool time; neither of us had ever been there before to see the exhibits, so it worked out wonderfully. We walked through all the Asian-inspired art, the Wedgewood Collection, and of course the special Kimono exhibit. We even looked through the museum shop for our very own kimonos—they were a little pricey, so we didn’t purchase one, but they sure were pretty!

L is for Loaf

Looking back, I’m realizing that a lot of our alphabet dates were centered around food. Oh well, at least we agree that life pretty much revolves around making food lots of fun! I had no idea what Ed had up his sleeve with L. When I was thinking about it myself, I was drawing a blank! He actually beat me home from work on L day, which was a total shocker. He had gone to specialty health food stores and bought all the things we needed to make 2 different kinds of flourless, yeastless bread. We made a flaxseed bread and an almond flour bread. They were both very different to me. Ed had made the flaxseed bread before, but not the almond flour one. I was pleasantly surprised with both. We made the mini loaves, and I had a couple slices of the flaxseed bread while we waited on the almond bread. Let me just tell you—that almond flour bread was dyn-O-miiiite! I had quite a few slices with some of our strawberry jam on top, and that’s what I had for dinner that night!! Ed had Leftovers, but I was completely content with the bread and jam! Sad, I know. I did love this date idea because I had never made any kind of bread before. Mostly because I need instant gratification and bread usually takes a day or 2 of waiting on things to happen. And, this showed me that I can make bread in less than an hour and it really is quite good. Overall, I was really impressed with it after having such low expectations about flourless bread!

K is for Kite

K wasn’t all that difficult a letter. I had a few really good ideas like kiln (ceramics) and kayaking. The ceramics place I wanted to go was closed permanently—ugh! And, I couldn’t get the kayaking trip booked in time. So, Ed’s sister helped me come up with Kite! It’s a mighty good idea, if I may say so myself, and a very cheap, fun date. First, I made a key lime pie to follow up the steak sandwiches I prepared for dinner. Key lime pie was the only food I could think of that started with a K—maybe I just wasn’t thinking outside the box, but that’s all I had! Lol! I got the kites at Target—way cheap! Since it was the end of summer, I got them for only 79 cents each! I mean, for that price, I went ahead and bought 2 so that we could see who was better at the kite-flying! I searched the web for various public parks near me that have large green spaces. I found a nice cozy park that also had a laKe and some ducKs. When we got there, we walked around the lake to the open green area. And, what do you know—even with a lake, there was no freakin wind! Can you believe that?!?!?! We roamed around the park a little while, let Sweetie chase at the ducks, took in the nice evening. And, what do you know—still no wind! Since wind is kind of vital to art of flying kites, we had to postpone K. Wind 1, Amy 0! We did end up going to another park on a mighty windy day and had a great time playing with the pups and flying kites!

J is for Jam

Oh my goodness—this was an awesome date! I’ll admit when Ed walked in with a pallet of strawberries and said “We’re making Jam!”, I had my doubts. I mean, my mamaw makes jelly, and though I’ve never watched her closely, it looks like a lot of work! Well, I’m here to tell you that jam is 1) easy to make, 2) really really good, 3)healthy, and 4) a real blast to make with someone! Ed brought home strawberries—6 pints, a case of small jars, and some Sure-jel (maybe I spelled that right). Our strawberry jam is healthy because we substituted Splenda for sugar. I was skeptical, but it was DELICIOUS! After we macerated the strawberries, we had to boil them for “exactly 1 minute” according to the directions. So, we whipped out the iphone timer and it was on. The tricky part was actually jarring the jam. We have to pour the jam in the jars while they’re sitting in boiling water, then we have to cap them with one tight turn. Oh, and that lid, it’s been sitting in boiling water too! We did it though, and apparently we did it right because all of our jars went “POP”. It was likely music to my ears!! The sound of success! Hahaha. The only problem I see with making jam is that you have to wait 24 hours for it to set up. I couldn’t wait the whole 24 hours so the next morning, I had some on my bagel and looooved it! Whether you’re alphabet dating or not, you need to make your own jam. I’m in love with the strawberry splenda jam, which is obvious by my eating it every morning! And, there are directions in the Surejel packages. Trust me, you don’t have to be Martha Stewart to pull this one off—it really is easy. And, now that we’ve done it once, we’re ready to make a lot more jars (since I go through it so quickly). We’re going to pick peaches ($4 for a big basketful) and make peach jam as well. This data was an A in my book, or should I say a J?!?!

I is for Ice Cream Sundaes

I was a little difficult—again with the vowels. I did come up with a good many options (Incahoots restaurant, ice skating), but discounted them all for one reason or another. When asking for suggestions, all I got was ice cream. And, well, that just seemed a little boring since we get ice cream once a week or so. One day it occurred to me that you can actually make your own ice cream, and that’s really cool. I lucked up—my grandparents have an ice cream freezer that I could borrow so that I wouldn’t have to buy one. It sat in the garage for almost 2 weeks, along with the ice cream salt, and Ed never noticed it. I felt really sly! I got the recipe for simple vanilla ice cream—eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, and of course ice and salt. It did take us a few minutes to figure out how to work the thing, but we got it going! While it was making the ice cream, we had Italian food out on the patio. I had decorated the table with a red and white tablecloth and put candles out—a little Tuscany in Alabama! About an hour or so later, we had some really good soft serve ice cream. We doctored it up with caramel and chocolate syrup, berries, and pecans. The ice cream alone was delicious. And, we both did something new—neither of us had ever made ice cream before!

H is for Bargain Hunting

This is probably the most creative alphabet date we’ve had yet. All of them have been a blast, but this one is definitely the most creative with the letter. And, it was a real adventure. Ed came home with $20—we each got $10. This is all the money we could take, and we were going to go places like thrift stores, second hand shops, pawn shops, etc. We started at an Unclaimed Storage place near home. I pass it every day going to work, but had never been in there. There were some real finds in there! I found a book by my favorite author for only $1 and Ed got a salad bowl set for $8 (we’re going to refinish it). From there, we visited 2 thrift stores and a pawn shop or two. Our treasures included 2 books, a lego piece (for my cousin who loves legos!), and a salad bowl set. With our remaining $8, we went to a dollar movie and then to Krispy Kreme for Hot Now Doughnuts!! It was a great date, and we went to places that we’ve never been.

G is for Go Karts and Mini Golf

I’ll start by saying that I had a really hard time with the letter G. Now, that it’s behind us, I can come up with all sorts of stuff—gardening, Gardens, grandparents, golfing, Great Outdoors, gazpacho—but at the time, I was pretty stumped. Maybe it was just a bad week. With a friend’s help, I found a location, and go karts and mini golf is about as fun as it gets! We went to a place called Treetop Family Adventure. If you’re local to the Birmingham area, I highly recommend this place for a great time. They have go karts, water balloon wars, 18 holes of mini golf, laser tag, and a really cool arcade. So, it’s good for a fun date or a family day out! When we got there, I told Ed what we were doing and he was totally stoked. Ok, so was I!!! It’s really cool how they do things there—you get a card, load it with any amount of money, and as you do things, you swipe it and it deducts the money. We got there kind of early because there was a chance or rain and we just can’t have that. So, there weren’t many people

there, and we were the only ones racing go karts. The track was awesome—full of curves with no straights. This is helpful if you’re in the lead, as I was the whole time, because you can block people from passing you. The track was slick and the karts went a good speed. Very fun! After that, we decided we were in for 18 holes of mini golf. The course was really nice and there were a few holes where it took a lot of strokes to get the ball in the hole, but we managed. I got 1 hole-in-one and that’s just a miracle in itself. Ok Ok…in the end, Ed beat me by a few strokes, but that was only fair since I kicked his butt on the go karts. We had a great time and will probably go back again for play some of the other games they have there!