Anyway, a few weeks ago, there was a 50% off deal for an evening of wine and chocolate pairings. Who could resist that? So, I bought a ticket. I swear I read the thing. Or at least I thought I did. My understanding was that it was a chocolate bar in my neighborhood that I hadn't heard of before. I am always interested in supporting local small/independent businesses so I was excited about it.
Well, it turns out the ticket I bought was a couples ticket so I asked Sarah if she'd like to go with me. Her response was "it's a couples ticket" to which I replied "well, yes, but people probably think we're a couple half the time anyway so who cares?" Then she sent me a calendar invite and we were all set for our date night with chocolate and wine.
Last night was our date night. We headed over from the office to what we both assumed was a business, i.e. a chocolate bar. I drove, Sarah pulled up the info on her iphone. As we pulled up to a big fancy apartment building, she said, "Flirt Fest? This thing is called Flirt Fest? I am not prepared to flirt with anyone tonight other than you."
Ok, wow. Really? Neither of us knew that this was not an actual business, nor did either of us know this thing was actually called "flirt fest" but we ventured forward nonetheless.
The security guard in the lobby escorted us to the elevators and gave us directions to the event: "go to the second floor, get off the elevator, go left, right, down the hall, through the white double doors, across the patio toward the pool, into the clubhouse..." She saw the completely blank look on my face and said (as the elevator doors closed on us) "it's not that complicated!"
After a couple of wrong turns, we found it: the clubhouse of a fancy apartment building where a nice young lady and a few helpers had set up a chocolate fountain, mini cupcakes, rice crispy treats (Sarah was VERY excited about these!), and bite sized brownies. There was a table where said young lady had 3 bottles of wine covered in satin wine bags to conceal the labels and 3 corresponding bowls of chocolates. You know those chocolate buttons you use to melt for coating candies or for making hot chocolate? That's what she had in the bowls.
Not really melt-in-your-mouth delicousness.
As we approached the wine & chocolate table to being our pairing experience, the nice young lady gave us a note pad and pencil to write down our thoughts about he wine, such as appearance, aroma, flavor, and a guess for price range. Then for some inexplicable reason she told us "don't worry about it too much. You'll probably do great. Better than me. I don't really know anything about wine." Huh? Ok...
Anyway, the wines were fine I guess. The first one was a syrupy sweet California dessert wine, the second one turned out to be a $10 bottle of Menage a Trois blend and we didn't stick around to find out what the third one was.
The good news is that we did laugh a lot because it was a fairly ridiculous event but the wine and chocolate part was not worth the money. The friend time was worth if of course. :)
So, here's to date nights, living social, bizarro flirt fests, and stepping out of familiar worlds!
