The Friday Five, 9/11/20: 5 things I've been up to this week

Quarantine, end of week 26, which makes this 50% of the year. But more importantly: where were you on 9/11/2001? I still remember it: I was in my freshman year English class, and they announced over the loudspeaker that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I turned to a friend and was like "What's going on?" and she said something like "I don't know but this is very bad." All after-school activities were canceled that day (swim team, for me), and for most of the day we just watched TV coverage. Pretty crazy that it was 19 years ago today.

Grand Haven, MI beach and pier
Grand Haven, MI beach and pier

What I've been up to this week:
  1. A much-needed vacation. My last vacation or even my last trip was January in Vegas, before COVID-19 began. I've literally taken 0 days off of work this summer except for the Monday after the weekend of July 4th. Between that and my house stuff, I really needed a vacation. My boyfriend has Mondays and Tuesdays off work so we traveled to the west side of Michigan from Sunday to Tuesday, and stayed in Holland at the Baymont there (which ended up being old, so I don't recommend it, however the price was really good ... like $150 total for 2 nights). We ate at all our favorite places and went to the beach in Saugatuck (Oval Beach, first time for me) and also the Grand Haven beach. That Tuesday we packed up and headed to Portage, with a stop in Fennville at Crane's (best pies!), to visit friends, and then after that we headed home. Grand Haven is one of my favorite cities so it was a good trip. 
  2. Trying new TV shows. Last night I started Away (Netflix, Hillary Swank) and also Julie and the Phantoms, both of which I liked. I tried out Woke on Hulu this week too and it was okay, I might return to it at some point. I'm still trying to finish up Teenage Bounty Hunters, Trinkets, Ugly Betty, and others. 
  3. Going out for a birthday/anniversary dinner. My boyfriend's birthday is 9/5 and our anniversary (4 years) is 9/3, so usually I take him out for a combined birthday/anniversary dinner. We wanted to do The Chop House (Ann Arbor) because last year's dinner there was fabulous, and they do half-off on your birthday (has to be the actual day though), excluding alcohol. However, I had an infusion that day and he got out of work a little late, so we did Eddie V's in Troy instead. It was ... okay. All the food was tasty and we sat outside on their patio, but I feel like TCH was a lot better last year. He's taking me to Prime + Proper next week (also patio, I'm not dining inside right now due to COVID) and I'm more excited about that ... it's been on my list to try for a while now. 
  4. Not cooking ... I had a HelloFresh box scheduled for Wednesday—I specifically did HF instead of my usual Dinnerly this week so I could get it on Wednesday, instead of Tuesday, and also the menu looked really good. However, HF really dropped the ball this time: tracking has not been updated since Tuesday, and I haven't received the box, so at this point I'm going to assume it's lost :( they did make it up to me, they gave me a credit for a new box, but I'm now trying to figure out what I will cook this week. I froze some chicken from Fresh Thyme a while back so it will probably be that. I did have one more Dinnerly meal from last week, Sticky Chicken with Scallion Rice, that I was able to cook Wednesday night though. 
  5. Bringing my Honda into the dealership. Literally like 10-20 minutes into our trip, my car's warning light went on, which was fun ... I was hoping it wasn't a major thing, and luckily it was not. This was specifically the tire warning light—although I didn't know that until yesterday—and we had just added air to it last week. I brought it in to Troy Honda yesterday and it literally took them 5 minutes ... the warning light only had to be recalibrated, so now I know how to do that. 
One of my favorite restaurants: fried chicken and honey butter biscuits at The Southerner, Saugatuck
One of my favorite restaurants: fried chicken and honey butter biscuits at The Southerner, Saugatuck

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