Valentine's Day and our trip to North Carolina

These past few weeks we've been trying to survive in Boston with all the dang snow and really cold weather; it is getting a bit better but we are still buried under many feet of snow.  On Valentine's Day, another big snow storm hit, but it didn't come until the evening, so we decided to do our evening date in, and go out for lunch instead.  We went to an Italian place in Beacon Hill we've been wanting to go to, Figs, which had really delicious, fancy pizza.

 Nate's present for me was another place setting of our china. We had an odd number, so we needed one more to make it complete. The idea was he'd invited some other guys from the ward to bring their wives and they would make a fancy meal for us on the fancy china, but the other couples both ended up not being able to come, so that left Nate to be the master-chef all alone.  After lunch, he dropped me off at the appt he'd made for a gel manicure while he went grocery shopping for the food.  I've never gotten a manicure so it was super exciting and I got the kind of nail polish that stays on for a super long time.  They looked totally perfect and I'm still admiring them, even after a few weeks. 

My dark purple mani 

 

I just got Nate a tie, so I felt pretty lame

The surprise dinner menu was supposed to be spicy orange duck, which sounds pretty good, but it turns out our nearby grocery store didn't have duck. As an alternative, Nate got some Turkey necks... yes...they look about as gross as they sound....I was being extremely skeptical of eating a throat, so I made some pasta sides as an emergency back up plan. We made the necks the same way as it said to make the duck.  Turns out cook time for baking a duck is only an hour, but for turkey necks it is like 3-4 hours, so when we took it out, it was still totally raw...So... that emergency back up plan turned out to be our entire meal.  A candlelit dinner of pasta sides.  It was just pretty funny and really cute how much work he put into it.  I know he really doesn't like cooking and I am always asking him to cook for me, so it was a very sweet gift. 

Apparently, this is what turkey necks look like uncooked

  

We ended up leaving the turkey in the oven for another few hours, and it tasted great once it was cooked.  Dessert was a bit too much to do on the same night, but the following day he finished it off with Baked Alaska, a brownie with ice cream and merengue on it that you put in the oven for a few minutes so it is kind of warm and cold.  It was delicious!

To finish off the V-day date we watched a great Indie movie, Lars and the Real Girl, a movie about an awkward guy who becomes delusional and falls in love with this sex-doll he ordered named Bianca.  It's cute because the whole town pretends she is a real person because his doctor said it would help him overcome the problem. It sounds really weird but is actually really good.  

Lars and Bianca

All dressed up for Church.  JK.. 
SNOW DAY, so we had church at home in our slippers.

This past week, Nate was in Durham, NC for a training about CDFIs (Community Development Financial Institutions).  He works for a CDFI, so it was useful for him to learn more about his field and visit the South.  He really enjoyed the conference and said he learned a lot, and met some really cool people. Durham has one of the biggest CDFIs in the country and they hosted the conference.

Even with Nate gone, we had to watch Downton Abbey
together on Monday night, our weekly FHE tradition. We also found out about all the cool
 special effects that google hangouts offers.

I met him in NC on Thursday night to spend the rest of the weekend with him there so he could show me around more of the South, trying to convince me of all its merits, and we could enjoy some warmer weather.  Turns out Durham had a freak snowstorm the night before I got there, which never happens to them (which was very apparent because they were all acting like it was  natural disaster). 

I AM SO SICK OF SNOW!!

At least it was warmer than freezing, which I hadn't felt for a while. We explored Duke and UNC campus, some of Durham's museums, shops, and lots of their GREAT restaurants. Dame's Chicken and Waffles and Monuts Donuts were my favorites. 

The Duke Chapel was SUPER fancy

The Duke Gardens

The Statue-like heron that was in the pond at the Duke Gardens

The really pretty duck I found

Nate is always trying to convince me to live in the South, but I am pretty against that whole idea, one of the few exceptions to that rule I've considered is the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, which consists of Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh. It has 3 good universities and lots of Pharmaceuticals and Biotech start-ups. So, like Boston, it would be a good place for either an academic or industry career in Science. Nate loves the idea of one day living there also, possibly during an MBA, or later on in life also.   The trip was really fun until we arrived at the airport, turned in our rental car and got through security before our Delta flight was cancelled from more snow in Boston. We had to stay another day, find a nearby hotel and try to work from there all day.  

Found this in front of Duke's Neuroscience buildling,
I thought the mouse was very fitting for a medical research building.

That is fried chicken on a waffle.
Yup... I thought it'd be gross but turns out it is DELICIOUS,
even with strawberry shmear and maple syrup.

I got Llizi this new super cute bed from Etsy.
She didn't love it quite like I did until I flipped it over and made it into a fort though.

This is a food co-op that Nate's work is funding
 in Durham that he was able to visit while he was there.

Duke's East Campus before the snow

And after...

When in the South, you find weird things like this.