Rings on our fingers!

I believe I mentioned that Kyle has been at home for three days this month because of an inordinate amount of business travel, well, he was home for a day and a half this weekend. Yay!

First of all, shameless restaurant plug:

This is Sonata Restaurant, a B.Y.O.B. in Northern Liberties (North East Philadelphia). It's the bee's knees! We love it. We went there this weekend, it was our second time, but I wasn't blogging at the time we went the first time. You should go!

It's small and intimate, quiet and romantic. Everyone's really nice, and the chef is young and really impressive!

This is probably the best little plate of food you'll ever hope to find anywhere: The crispy pork belly, smoked tomato marmalade, sweet crunchy little compressed apples, and some sort of molasses I've never heard of. But the point is, four ingredients, and that's about how many is in all his dishes, simple, classic, spectacularly executed Contemporary American cuisine!

The tenderest short ribs I've ever EVER had. This meat literally melted on my tongue. And the flavor? MMMmmMMmmmmMMMMMM. Again: meat, gravy, pureed celery root, and gnocchi (really really good gnocchi!). And that was just Kyle's dish... he got to eat most of it himself.

I had a spectacular lobster pot pie. Kyle doesn't like lobster and he tried a bite of mine and said that if lobster was cooked like that all the time he would eat lobster all the time. And this is coming from two people who grew up at Ocean City... MD/DE is just not known for its lobster though, I'm not made at our beach states. But I was so pleasantly surprised at the quality of lobster coming out of Philadelphia, a place not at all known for its lobster.

Anyway, I also recommend the duck ragout croquettes app and the potato-wrapped cod filets entree is fantastic, perfect fish, crispy potato. My favorite part about this restaurant too is the price. Because it's a BYOB, you're only paying for your food, and it is amazing how much cheaper your meal becomes when you're not paying $12 for a glass of wine (don't be shocked, come to Philadelphia, go to a non-BYOB, this is how much you will spend on a glass of wine). Philly has such an amazing BYOB scene, it would be a huge waste not to take advantage of it. We have vowed to go to a BYOB a month for the rest of our time here in Philly, before I get my Ph.D. and we move out of our hell-hole townhouse... that has baby roaches right now. Yay!

Next up, Fond. Look for my review next month!

Anyway, we also went wedding band shopping, which was really fun! I was surprised it was so much fun, but I think that since I knew exactly what I wanted and Kyle is so easy to please, it was just easy, and easy = stress free = FUN!

Kyle had originally professed his love for black tungsten carbide:

Well, Barsky Diamonds had one!

I had to laugh to myself because when we went in, he said we were shopping for my wedding band, but I insisted he try some on too, and it turns out he did not like the black tungsten carbide against his skin tone. We found one right next to it that was a chrome color and he really liked that one.

It's hard to tell if Kyle 'loves' something, he rarely gushes. But I loved it and he insisted he really did like it. It was also wider, and I like a wider band on his large fingers:

This is obviously not thee one, because this one is from some company called T Kay, but Barsky did not have this band on their website even though it was in their store. The one he tried on was a little darker, more chrome-colored. Macho man-looking.

So with that out of the way, we moved to me. Now I think I sensed both from Kyle and the guy behind the counter that this was going to be painful. Well poo poo on both of you, because I said "I want five small diamonds in a compression setting."

He said "... OK."

I said "There's one right there."

He said "... OK." and he pulled it out of the case. I tried it on. I said "Yeah, that's it."

He said "... OK." Kyle then spent the rest of the evening asking me over and over again if it was really what I wanted, and I spent the rest of the evening rolling my eyes and saying yes! yes I love it!

I've already posted it, but here it is again!

Love it love it love it!!! Thanks once again to Keri who photoshopped the ring onto my finger! It fit just right with the engagement ring, they set each other off beautifully! I was worried it would be too showy, but it's really sweet and modest and romantic. Just a quick side note, I am working on a Mac right now and you know how they automatically put the red line under any word you spell wrong? Well, I assumed 'photoshopped' would be a word that was underlined, but it is in fact a word now. How funny is it that we've made photoshop a verb?!

Anyway, lastly, I promised I would post some more pictures of possible honeymoon venues. Kyle and I both agree that this is something that needs to be addressed very soon, but I've been going through a lot of options and I don't have all of them picked over yet. As soon as I scour TripAdvisor for a few more hours, I'll post about honeymoon adventures. And as anal as I've been, I don't mean to toot my own horn, but you're going to be able to write a Foder's book chapter after this post. I'm just warning you, it's going to be huge!