A Sophisticated Date Night for Two “Sophistimacated” People.

This weekend T & I went on a rather classy date (since we are classy people………fart). We went and saw the Toledo Symphony perform Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony at the Toledo Museum of Art.  Yep, can you handle all that sophistication?!

I believe I have mentioned before that my dearest husband is a rather complex individual.  He really is an enigma that I am still trying to, and most likely will never, figure out.  There are tons of discrepancies with Terry’s interests, but that is of course why I love him.  So you could understand my shock and excitement when this metal loving, t-shirt wearing man text me and said he was buying tickets to see Beethoven’s 9^th at the Toledo Museum of Art. Really?!

Terry has always loved classical music.  He was in show/concert choir, played the violin in high school and he loves the symphony.  And he just doesn’t like the music he knows, understands and fully appreciates the music.

So it was planned, we would do an all day date together!  Wake up late, go get a late lunch/early dinner, walk through the Museum of Art (as I have never been there), and go to the symphony that night. Sounds lovely!  And as T.’s schedule the past two years has been so busy and left little time to have fun dates like this and even spend time together I think this was very much needed!

However I think we confused Mother Nature with our level of class as that day we got LOTS of snow DUMPED on us.  We decided that we would adjust our schedule slightly by sleeping in longer and just wait and see if this snow would slow down before we headed to the museum.  It did nothing of the sorts. So we changed our plans slightly and decided to save the museum trip for another day and just get ourselves some grub and go to the symphony.  After taking 45 minutes to dig out of the driveway, we were off in the shit-tastic weather to begin our half day date!  Half day dates are just as wonderful as full day dates!

We made the trek up to Toledo in the horrible weather and decided to eat at a place we had never gone before, The Mango Tree.  It was actually really good, plus no one was there for at least 30 minutes while we were there so it was a quiet and sort of a private dinner.  As we hadn’t eaten at all that day we enjoyed two great appetizers (crab cakes & stuffed mushrooms), French onion soup, and we both had steak for dinner.  We rolled ourselves out of the restaurant and waddled to our car to head off to the museum!

Now let it be known T & I are not as familiar with the Toledo area as we should be.  We knew how to get to the TMA from the highway but we asked the waitress if there was a quicker way and she said yes.  (Mistake) She told us to take Reynolds to Bancroft, make a right on Bancroft, and a LEFT on Collingwood.  Everything was going fine as we plowed our way through tons of snow and unfamiliar roads until we made a LEFT on Collingwood.  Now both T & I thought we should have taken the right as it appeared we were close to downtown, but as instructed we went left.  We kept going and going and realizing that this was not correct.  Luckily we called my sister and parents who managed to eventually (after somehow getting on Cherry street) get us to the museum with plenty of time to spare. PHEW!  It was an adventure, though at the time a little stressful as we traveled down unfamiliar, snow covered roads.  But we had full bellies and when we are full we are happy so no biggie!

We got to the museum and got seated about 10 minutes before the performance.  Our seats were fantastic!  Lower level in the last row.  

There was a whole row of seats missing in front of us so people could walk (which they didn’t during the performance) and there was a marble wall behind us so no one behind us kicking our chairs! Plus we were dead center.  And the room (sorry don’t know the name of it) was BEAUTIFUL.  Looked sort of like a Greek or old English outdoor theater.  The ceiling had a blue glow to it. Loved it.

The Symphony started and as I have never been to anything like this, I was blown away by how powerful it was.  Hearing things on TV or CD’s doesn’t do it justice.  The BGSU choir sang during the 4^th movement as well as did some soloists.  It was really amazing. 

I will say this though…..I am a multi-sensory kind of person.  Terry can focus on one thing and be lost in it forever.  Me on the other hand, well I get easily distracted and start thinking about other stuff.  Like I started thinking about all the people on the stage and what they were thinking about, I thought about how I want to play a musical instrument, I thought about how much the guy beside me was moving around, I started thinking about the dancing brooms/mops from Fantasia, I started to think how it would be funny if there were people dressed up and dancing around on stage…or better yet doing acrobats like in cirque du soleil. You know, just stuff like that.  Yes, I see a shiny object and I am easily distracted.  But, even so, it was still a great performance and I was excited to experience something completely new!

So this long post is to say nothing more than it was a wonderful day and though it is not something we do very often, I think it is important to find time to do stuff like this as to keep things exciting and avoid being in that relationship rut.  And we are already talking about when we can go back!

P.S. I don’t know if it was just because we were with people who were not drunk or maybe a little older and politer, but getting out of the parking lot was easy.  People were patient and taking turns letting each other in.  I am use to going to concerts and people are honking and cutting each other off….nope, this was a sophisticated and polite group. Thank you people!