Yes! I am Melissa....Garcia

How could I possibly go so long without telling of the amazing adventures I've been having? Oh, maybe it's because I never have any spare time and the spare time that I do have is spent sleeping. But I'll do my best to tell you of all the new places I've discovered. Starting with yesterday and working backwards of course.

Yesterday was my only day off...ever. Around 3 I went in to work for a wine tasting. (Usually reserved for the servers...but I went anyways). We tried an excellent Chilean cabernet (Montes Alpha is the name) and a less excellent cabernet from California called Dynamite and that was it.....leaving my good friend Molly and me wanting more. So! We set out in search of the best happy hours around South Congress. First we headed to The Woodland. A former hostess and friend from SOCO Cafe works there now so we got to catch up with her while we had the most delicious drinks of all time. I got a French 75 which is becoming quite the hip and cool drink around these parts. This particular version was a mix of gin, champagne and lemon juice. It was perfectly refreshing and a dollar off due to happy hour! The food looked really good as well. A girl near us got Fish n' Chips and the fish was easily the size of a small child. There is absolutely no way to eat there and only consume a healthy amount of food. I am up for the challenge.

After The Woodland we wandered back north to the Snack Bar. One of the expos at SOCO Cafe is working as a manager so she came out and said hello (they close at 4 so we couldn't go in). Word on the street though is that this place hasn't really gotten their stuff together. Apparently some people came into our cafe recently and said that they had been at Snack Bar and left after waiting 45 minutes for food that never came. Yikes. We parted ways with The Snack Bar and headed to Botticelli's. I've walked past this little place a million times, noted how fancy it looked, and moved on. What the fancy looking front doesn't tell you is that there is an adorable patio out back. There was a small stage with a man playing his guitar and excellent happy hour specials ($2 Mexican beers, which doesn't really make sense since it's an Italian place). Apparently the food is good too, although again we didn't try anything big. I did get to try their Botticelli Bread which was bread dough wrapped around sliced meat, cheese and more and then baked. It was excellent. Someday when I work 45 hours a week PAID I will go there and eat more Italian food then is humanly possible.

The most important adventure of the evening: the Mexican American cultural party. This party was held at the Mexican American Cultural Center that I accidentally stumbled upon somewhere on Cesar Chavez and Rainey (maybe?) Anyways, Molly was on the RSVP list and with some quick thinking on her part, so was I. For the rest of the evening I became Melissa Garcia. Apparently Melissa Garcia's life is grand because the party was sponsored by Grey Goose. That translates to FREE Grey Goose, by the way. Sadly, I had to be at the internship at 8am and thus had to leave the flowing supply of Grey Goose much too early.



Well, once again my time is cut short by work. I'm still very far behind and have loads of adventures to tell you about including a magical parking lot called Cheer Up Charlie's. Get excited.