Girls' Night Out

"Nobody puts Baby in a corner."

Yep. I'm watching Dirty Dancing - Ultimate Edition right now. (Thanks, Thor and B-Dubbs and everyone on my team at work for putting that in my care package!)

So I grew up in a house with girls. My mom, my two sisters, and even our pets (both dogs and cats). My dad was the only male in the household. I feel bad for him as I look back on the times when all of us girls were PMS'ing at the same time. Poor guy.

It's only fair and kind of a poetic karma that I'm the only girl in my house now. Yep, even the cats are boys. I bet the fish are too, just to spite me. But really, I don't mind. It's kind of fun being the only girl. At least I only have to deal with my own PMS...

Because I'm the only girl in my household, every once in a while, I need an environment with more estrogen in the way of a girls' night out. Usually I go out with my best friend of 21 years, Suzanne. But last night I went out some friends, one from work, and her roommate, Marilyn.

I've known this friend from work for almost a year and a half. She is great. She's nice, sweet, and super fun. And she's not opposed to a mid-afternoon chocolate run. She's posted in the comments on my blog as b-dubbs. Last night b-dubbs was wondering why in the heck she picked that name, because she didn't really like it. Well, I'm not sure that this name suits her either, so I'm going to dub her (haha - get it?) Bette, because she has huge beautiful eyes like Bette Davis.

So Bette, Marilyn, and I (is there a glamorous 40's film star named Julia?) had a girls' night out on the town last night. Marilyn drove her convertible silver Mercedes. (It's actually a Honda Civic - a really nice one at that - but really, would a Marilyn actually be driving a Honda?)

So there we were in the MerHonda, heading to a gourmet pizza place in Minneapolis called Pizza Luce. I had never been there before, but I knew the general direction we needed to go (well, mostly).

Because of traffic (which you know I hate), at my urging we took a different way than what Mapquest suggested. (Which was a good thing, because Mapquest was wrong.) Marilyn and I had fun driving around ("I wonder if this street will get us there? Let's find out!"), while Bette was getting kind of worried and a little out of sorts. Being the type-A personality of the three of us, she would have followed the directions to a tee, and been lost because they were wrong.

But with a plan in place (and a phone call to Pizza Luce from Bette which resulted in a subsequent reverse in direction from Marilyn) we made it to our first destination.

Pizza Luce has a great atmosphere, and even better pizza. I got a small one called, The Luce, which has homemade Italian sausage, cheese, garlic, and onions. YUMMY. That was so darn good. (OOH! I have two pieces left over in my fridge. Hang on - I'll be right back.)

The highlight of the night was our trip to the Riverview Theater (which we arrived at just fine, after getting very detailed directions from our server) to see the movie, The Devil Wears Prada. The Riverview is an old-fashioned theater which opened in 1948, I think, and looks the same now as it did then. The decor is quintessential 40's-50's, and in beautiful condition. The theater itself is huge and remodeled, but not so much that it loses its charm. The Ladies room has really fun vintage kitten wallpaper. And the popcorn has real butter.

We loved the movie! We had all read the book at one point, and had fun whispering and comparing the movie from the book. (I bet the people in front of us loved that.) Although I must say that it was surprisingly hard to get used to watching Anne Hathaway of Disney fame (think The Princess Diaries) drinking alcohol and kissing men. But Meryl Streep was deliciously evil in her role as Miranda Priestly. Her performance was well worth the $3 price of admission.

But alas, all good evenings must come to an end. So we all piled back into Marilyn's MerHonda and headed home. We knew exactly where we were going.