A Very Artsy Weekend

I'm gonna be honest.  My weekend rocked.  I tried to branch out from the norm and do different things.  And it was great.  Me gusta.

Here's a run-down of my weekend adventures:

Friday night I hung out with my best childhood friend, Andrew.  We've been in each other's lives for as long as I can remember - literally, it's been 22 years - so it's always nice to catch up and hang out.  (Fun Fact: I just found both of our desk name plates from Kindergarden in an old box from my parents' house.  Our handwriting was...super.  Remember when they had those dotted lines half way in the middle of two solid lines so you could practice writing 'capital' letters and 'lower-cased' letters?! It was cute).  But I digressed.  I lured him to my Uptown domain on the suggestion of going to dinner/drinks and then the art museum.  The third Friday of every month, the Dallas Museum of Art hosts a 'late night' and stays open until midnight with different exhibits, concerts, documentaries, classes, etc.  Sounds awesome, right?  It was.

We started the night with dinner and a delicious Mohito at Urban Taco before heading downtown to the DMA:

If you squint (and make believe) you can see the DMA in the back ground...

So I might have omitted an essential detail about this particular 'late night' when coaxing Andrew into coming with me.  It happened to be the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit (which was awesome) and completely centered around fashion.  Needless to say, Andrew's first request was to peruse the bar area.  We had gotten there a bit late but ended up watching a fascinating documentary about the "day before a fashion show" and walking through the JPG costume exhibit.  Let me be the first to tell you that that guy has some wacked out ideas.  But it was extremely interesting.  

We unfortunately (for me) missed the hat making class and the shoe presentation ("what do your shoes say about you and your psyche") but in hindsight that was probably good; I might have lost a best friend out of the deal!  You can only push a straight man so far:

I made him take this picture.  I wanted evidence he was there.  I told him to look "really excited about being here with me."  Coulda fooled me ;)

We ended the night with a quick walk-through of one of the DMA's permanent exhibits.  Although I must be honest, I had to read each description to understand why these strange groupings of things were categorized as "art."  The explanation definitely helped but I'm thinking I might go into the art industry if cutting a cat in half, putting a limp string between it, and spray painting the whole thing black gets the big bucks a'flowing:

I capped off the night by grabbing a drink with some friends back in Uptown (here's your shout out Blayne, Colby, and Bryan!) before heading off to bed.

Saturday morning I woke up and went rollerblading with my college roommate, Zach.  We saw entirely too many BCGers while blazing the Katy Trail on our skates and (as I had already fallen once), I just kept crossing my fingers I didn't fall in front of them!  I didn't, for the record.

After an hour or so of rollerblading and enjoying the beautiful Saturday afternoon, we showered and headed across the street to the "best pizza place in Dallas."  I'm not sure I would consider it the best, but it was pretty darn great.  Especially the 'breakfast pizza' we split:

Yeah. Yum. 

Two of my favorites things: breakfast and pizza.  Why haven't I thought of putting those together before?!  Genius.  After lunch we walked downtown to the 'The Sixth Floor Museum.'  I absolutely love history and have a slight obsession with JFK and Jackie O, so how I've escaped visiting this museum before I'm really not sure.  It was $13.50 and 2 hours well spent:

After the official tour we walked down to Elm to see the 'X' on the street, signifying the spot that Kennedy was shot.  It's all so crazy to me that such a catastrophic series of events began to unfold a mere mile from where I live today, in a world much different from the one we're in.  I made Zach take a picture so I'd have photographic evidence of both him and the 'X':

Later that night I met up with some work friends to celebrate the Chinese New Year in Chinatown.  Didn't know Dallas had a "chinatown"?  Neither did I.  And I'm not sure you would consider one strip center with 20 Chinese restaurants, stores, and dessert shops a "chinatown" but I'll roll with it.  Of the nine of us dining, three were Chinese and it was so awesome watching them speak in their natural dialect to the Chinese waitstaff.  It's so much cooler to see someone authentically 'in action' rather than just asking them to recite different words for you in a foreign language.  Authentic > Recreated.  

The food here was to-die for.  And cheap!  I split four amazing dishes with Kellee and Brittany: zucchini and chicken boiled dumplings, sweet and sour sesame chicken, fried rice, and spicy dan dan noodles.  Is your mouth watering, yet?  I should have gotten a picture of our delectable spread, but I was too busy gobbling it up!

I ended the night by grabbing a drink with the usuals at one of my favorite Uptown bars, The Gingerman, and watching a scene right out of COPS during our late-night Whataburger run:

Look at that delicious Stout.  Yum.

My Sunday was pretty typical: hung out with my parents, cleaned up my apartment, dilly dallied around, and went to church.  I did, however, go to the grocery store (which is totally out of the norm) and am proud to say have made two lunches and two dinners with no kitchen mishaps, yet!

I hope you enjoyed hearing about my artsy weekend as much as I enjoyed living it!