Our story
The Start Of Us
Brian and I met somewhere around 2012 when I started working at his same place of employment. We had our own lives going on, and other than being friendly with each other, we didn’t really know each other that well (my honest assessment of him, was that he was weird). Fast forward to 2021.
In March of 2021, I was hanging out with a good friend of mine in my backyard. On occasion during our previous hangouts, we would decide to randomly call other people we hadn’t talked to in a while. On this particular evening, my friend decided we should call Brian (she had also previously worked at our place of employment as well as went to high school with him). She suggested that I call him, because we both felt he had always kinda had “a thing” for me, so I said, “okay”, and placed the call to him through Facebook Messenger. He didn’t answer. So then my friend tries, and he picks up the phone. The only reason I mention these details is because still to this day, and most likely forever, I will always give him crap for not answering my phone call.
We found out he was currently at a bar local to us entertaining the patrons with his voice and guitar. Since my friend and I were currently just hanging out in my backyard, we decided we should go be one of those patrons. We ended up hanging out together for several hours.
The next day, Brian asked me if he could take me on a date. I told him we have nothing in common, when the reality was, I was an avid app dater (Tinder, Bumble, etc.), and there were way too many things about him that were on my list of dating criteria that would cause me to “swipe left”. (For those of you unfamiliar with the dating app world, swiping left means you reject the match.) However, we kept chatting and for some reason unbeknownst to me, I decided I actually didn’t know him very well (other than the fact he was a really nice (albeit weird) guy from work), so why not give him a chance?
The following weekend, the same friend and I (the one I had been hanging out in my backyard with before patronizing the bar Brian was entertaining at) planned to go kayaking. She suggested we invite Brian to join us. So I did. Since that day, Brian and I have been inseparable. This was the end of March of 2021.
In September of 2021, we got engaged. In February of 2022, we got married. Long story short (I know…too late), it turns out I’m weird also.
What is Shake and Date?
What is Shake and Date and why was it created? When Brian and I first got together, we had a date night once a week on Wednesdays. Somewhere between remodeling a bathroom, building a Murphy bed, adding an extension to our master bedroom, redoing all the flooring in our house, making Halloween and Christmas decorations, etc., etc., etc… date night fell out of the relationship. Now I must clarify at this point that date night was typically just going to one of a couple places we would always frequent. I suggested to Brian that we bring back date night and he agreed. However, we decided this time to do it a little differently. One of the reasons for this, is one of the two places we would most often visit (our actual favorite place), we had boycotted from going to anymore (I may divulge into this more at a later date. Right now I’m just trying to get a blog started).
We decided we’d put the names of different places into some sort of jar, and pull out one piece of paper a week to find out where our destination would be. So we needed new options of places to put in the jar.
In comes Facebook and a group we belong to called Folsom Chat. Using the search feature, I looked up “happy hour” to see what I could find. I got a couple search results, but nothing very recent, so after jotting down the places previously suggested I decided it had been a decent amount of time since the question was asked, so I could ask the question myself. We ended up with about 60 recommendations.
The creation of the bottle. I tend to be a bit crafty, so if something comes along that looks like it could one day become something else, I will keep the said something. One of the somethings I had kept was an empty tequila bottle from Sam’s Club. The opening of the tequila bottle would not permit our hand to reach in to stir things up and grab a piece of paper, so we were going to have to shake the bottle to mix the papers up and get one to spill out. We were going to have to shake the bottle to find out where we were going on our date night, and being a child from the 70’s, shake and date immediately popped into my head. Some of you may not get where I just went with that.
It was time to put my trusty Cricut to work. I now not only had a plan finally for the empty tequila bottle I had saved, I also had a name for our date night. So that required a sticker to be made. I made the sticker, added the papers to the bottle, and we were off on a start to our adventures. The following week I decided shirts needed to be made that say “Shake and Date” to wear on our date nights, and shake and date was officially established! I think next I’m going to make a hat for my husband to wear that says “Shake and Date” on it. Thank goodness he’s weird, so he’ll have no problem wearing it.
The evolution of this blog. Simply put, my husband’s pseudo sister suggested it. My response was, “I have no idea how to do a blog lol”. And honestly, at the moment I’m writing this, I still don’t. But I’m going to figure it out. After the suggestion was made, I rationalized in my head (and then again into my husband’s head) all the reasons I actually should start a blog for our shake and date nights. And now I’m going to put them into your head.
One, I can share our experiences in one single place rather than copy and pasting onto Facebook on my own profile, Folsom Chat and Folsom Chat “No Restricted Topics”. Two, with my posts having a centralized location, I can better respond to questions and comments being made. Three, I can tell the truth about our experiences without being censored by being denied my original post from getting approved. (I love my Folsom Chat group, but sometimes it’s a bit challenging to get my post approved since I tend to be brutally honest). Four, if you’re here, you already knew or now know what Shake and Date is all about and I won’t have to keep answering that question from people who missed my first post from when this started. And finally five, I love to write, and this gives me a place where I can write to my heart’s content, and people may actually read what I have to say without having to rely on those people to tap the screen on the “….” in order to invest in reading the rest of what I’m saying before scrolling on by. If you’re here, that means you actually want to read what I have to say.
Especially if you’re still here. And if you are, I very much appreciate you. This is my first blog which is actually being typed onto a Word Document right now until I finish figuring out how to do a blog. Subsequent blogs will be documenting where we go each week on our Shake and Date evenings. So if you are interested in our opinions on the different happy hour locations of Folsom and the surrounding areas, please join us here on our adventures.