Octoberfest: Day 10 "Double Dose"

Delicious (not kidding)

Today is your lucky day, you lucky ducks. Lucky you. I'm going to give you TWO pieces of advice. Not one but two. And I'm not even charging you for it. Heckuva deal. Why the good fortune, you may be wondering? Because I'm simply in a giving spirit - especially the closer I get to my actual birthday. Which is Sunday. And I would accept a singing telegram from any one of you. I'm just throwing that out there in case you were still looking for a good gift idea. I digress. So today's Octoberfest activity was a double dose of fun. For lunch I decided to try a new restaurant in honor of not only Octoberfest but also my friend Hannah's birthday. We strolled on over to the East Village and decided to try Lucca - a small bistro off of Locust Street next to Jimmy Johns. The atmosphere was very pleasant, not overly crowded, not too noisy just simple and modern. You order at the counter and then choose a table to sit at. My only requirement was that I had to choose something I either haven't tried or wouldn't normally choose. I went with the pastrami sandwich with a greek salad. I do love greek salads so one out of two fit my requirement. The sandwich was divine. The bread alone was to die for. Probably some of the freshest softest foccacia bread I've ever had. The greek salad was definitely in my top 3 favorite greek salads in Des Moines. It was so good that I took a picture to share, of course. Hannah thorougly enjoyed her sandwich as well. We gave the place two thumbs up for lunch. I'm told that dinner is quite a bit pricier but for our lunch today it was under $10. Not bad for a splurge when it comes to lunch. It was more like a sit-down restaurant but with the convenience of a more fast-food type deli. I highly recommend going to Lucca and we plan to make a return trip back sometime soon.

Dazzling (not dragon)

After work, I met up with my friend Karla for a much needed pedicure. When I say much needed I mean the nails on my toes resembled dragon claws. You know you need a pedicure when you're scratching your own self. Unacceptable. Well here's the other piece of advice: Wednesdays are apparently the "ladies night" of pedicures. We thought we could just pop into any joint for two walk-in pedicures. We thought wrong. After searching East Village high and low, we called a couple joints on Ingersoll that were questionable, a few down Fleur that were booked, until finally we found a place down in the Kaleidoscope at the Hub. Ahh this brings back memories of when I worked for Principal down there on the 1st floor, right next to Burger King, I'd get a pack of cini-minis and walk back to work until the day I almost got ran over by a lady driving a Rascal at a ridiculously high speed. She didn't even honk, she could have just mowed me down. I'm certain she didn't have a license and was probably not carrying insurance either. I attract those kind of hit and run type drivers. Those were the good ol' days. So we walked into Cali Nails & Tanning to find that they stayed open just to accommodate us. I don't suppose they get much business because once regular office hours are over, everyone leaves that area. The people there were so friendly, we were the only ones so they took their time making sure we had an enjoyable experience. It's refreshing to get that kind of customer service. In a world that is always in a hurry, it was nice to just slow down and have someone really treat us right. And to top things off, the lady who was working on my feet said that I had really nice, soft feet that hardly needed any work. Well how about that? Guess they weren't dragon claws after all. Hey, since the hand modeling gig is out, maybe I should change my dream to a foot modeling career. I mean let's be honest, being blessed with great feet has nothing to do with luck, am I right?

I'm signing off early tonight - tomorrow's activity requires all of my limited strength so I'm resting up...until then!