Today’s shout-out goes to Surprises. Despite being a planner—a must plan every detail of everything all at once without even meaning to kind of planner—I LOVE surprises, especially when those surprises include someone else planning things out for once and giving me the rare but lovely gift of spontaneity. Which makes the new tradition Comet and I have of alternating surprise date-nights absolutely brilliant. I plan a date specifically steered towards Comet (the last one entailed gourmet hot dogs from Dog eat Dawg at Good Food Here on Belmont, some Lord of the Rings Pinball and a movie at the Hollywood Theater complete with snuck in VooDoo Doughnuts for snacks) and then the next time its on him to plan something for me. Lucky for us, we love virtually all of the same things and live in portland, so we have an endless supply of cool date ideas.

It was Comet’s turn to plan this weekend and the night was perfect. First, meandering through Powells on Hawthorne, one of my favorite past-times, which was completed by getting some great pacific northwest field guides for both of us to read/ to prepare more for Outdoor School. Next, it was dessert-first (the only way to do it) at Swirl on Hawthorne. I had a glorious combination of strawberry and chocolate frozen yogurt with strawberries & blackberries, hot fudge and chocolate peanut butter cups on top. Comet, a fro-yo virgin on the other hand, went a little crazy with the freedom of self-serve toppings and had praline pecan with fruity pebbles, captain crunch, graham crackers pieces, marshmallows, and marshmallow sauce…

Next we went to one of our favorite of Portland’s gigantic repertoire of independent/last run/ cheap movie theaters, The Academy on Stark, and saw Tangled, which was REALLY charming actually. No, really, it was. Really. I swear!

 The evening ended at Sub Rosa, a lovely self-proclaimed ” friendly neighborhood joint” on  SE Clinton. It was casual, pretty, warm, and full of delicious pastas and pizzas.

Overall, the whole date was a great, and filled with reminders of favorite things like; southeast pdx, dusk, Disney movies, books, berries, chocolate, pasta and comet!