This evening arrived with no New Year's plans made. I decided I didn't feel like cooking anything because I didn't want a mess to clean up. We decided against just getting take-out and eating at home because just sitting at home for so long would make us feel like bumps-on-a-log. So through this process of elimination we decided we wanted to go out for a dinner, but not know where.

We didn't want to get dressed up for a really nice restaurant partly because we just didn't feel like it and partly because those kinds of places were probably already booked with New Year's reservations.

We wanted to do something a little bit nicer than our normal haunts. We decided to drive downtown (as opposed to the Loop or the City) and walk around and see what sounded good.

We stopped in Catch 35 first to look at the menu. Too much seafood for Sheri. It was also a little bit more formal than we were dressed for. The wait staff was all black tie.

We started walking south. We thought about the Brick House Pizzeria, but that wasn't different enough. We were really close to going into Buonaro's Café, but for some reason it just didn't turn us on.

We ended up walking to Sullivan's Steakhouse. We weren't dressed for their dining room, but they also serve food in their small bar area. We sat at a small, but tall, bar type table. To make eating a meal a little more formal in the bar area she folded a cloth napkin in half and then placed it in front of us with the fold facing us and the point pointing away. I thought that was clever.

I was thinking about just getting a big hamburger, but they do not have hamburgers on their menu. Sheri loves their lettuce wedge with blue cheese dressing so she got that, a side order of their creamed spinach, and a side order of au gratin potatoes. I knew she wasn't going to be able to finish all of that so I just ordered their 24oz bone-in "cowboy" ribeye medium-rare and nothing else. It worked out perfect! Sheri had a bite of my steak, but she was mostly in the mood for their lettuce wedge.

Our waitress was a cute little darling thing, and the bartender was built like… whew! We liked it when she bent over in her tight low cut top to wash glasses in the sink facing us. Jiggle jiggle jiggle!

Anyway, we are home now. We put on our comfy lounge clothes and are getting ready to go downstairs, put in a fire, and watch The Manchurian Candidate while waiting for the new year.