Even when I'm dating someone I feel I could have known forever, I still find myself wanting to celebrate all of our first events as a couple. For instance, Cade and I dated a few months before we ever saw a movie together. It was the screening of an independent film in Brooklyn. I will always celebrate it as our first time sitting in the dark for an hour and a half watching the flickering silver screen together. Or how about the first time we ever ordered a pizza or took a picture together? Each time, I marvel at the event. The mundane becomes magical with him.

This summer has been one where unexpected things keep happening. I got a new job, about which I'm delighted, but which required me to start taking graduate classes. Cade found out he's getting a promotion to a managerial position - a very big deal for him that will look great on his resume - but that now requires him to work twelve-hour days. We'd made plans in May to visit Texas, Florida, and Canada this summer, but it doesn't appear any of this will happen. Still, Cade had a vacation day on Monday and we had to use it. We'd talked of going to New Jersey for beaching or rollercoasting, but decided to head to Brighton Beach instead. It's the last stop on the B. Could it B any easier? (Gag).

We left around 10 a.m., not expecting anything pristine, but also surprised to see an area that looked like 125th Street gone Russian. The train was elevated above dirty sidewalks and old brown storefronts squeezed together. I love how diverse NYC is, and I reached for my camera at the first sighting of Cyrillic lettering on signs. Alas, I had mistakenly left my camera battery in its charger at home. Cade and I were hungry and feeling adventurous, so we decided to eat Russian food. We looked across the street and saw it: Primorski Restaurant.

The blue awning outside looked cheerful, but the inside of the restaurant was dark. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling of what appeared to be an old disco or roller rink. Each table had plates and glasses set out on a fine tablecloth. A Russian woman wailed loudly from speakers around the room. The same wall decoration with the word "Primorski" etched on it was hung every few feet. It was lunch time and the lunch special was $4.99 per person and no one was there.

We knew the food must be terrible. Why else would the waiter seem so startled to have customers? Why else would no one in Brighton Beach, an area full of Russians, want cheap Russian food for lunch? In the time it took to eat our meal, at least five people affiliated with the running of Primorski entered the restaurant, each appearing surprised that Cade and I were dining there.

Our waiter brought over two copies of the English menu and explained we'd get a choice of salad, soup, and a main course. Cade and I both ordered the kharcho, lamb and rice soup. I chose the fried Cornish hen for my main course, while Cade selected the disturbingly vague roasted meat with potatoes. Meat? What kind of meat? Is any of the waitstaff missing?

The water came first. It was tap water, but it had been served from one of those guns that restaurants use for sodas, so it was cough syrup-flavored water. The more I sipped it (believe me, I had to wash down the food somehow), the more paranoid I became that it contained a dreadful poison. Cade ate all of the mediocre soup, but the lamb tasted...off. It smelled weird and the broth had many tiny bones floating in it. Were these fetal lambs? The music that sounded like a woman issuing blood-curdling screams after years of being locked up in the basement of a spooky restaurant in Brooklyn didn't do much for my appetite, either.

I really wanted Primorski to redeem itself with the main course, but the fried Cornish hen was not the kind of fried chicken I was hoping for. I knew it wouldn't exactly be flavorful, but I thought maybe it would be the kind of good eats that supposedly fueled Russians during the Cold War. Guess what? No threat whatsoever on the homefront or the home cookin' front. The chicken was gray and stringy and maybe not chicken? Cade's potatoes were okay, but the meat was cringingly questionable. I'm assuming it was a variety of leftover body parts from different animals lying around in traps on the basement floor. After I gave up on trying to find nourishment in my meal, and Cade worked hard to be tenacious and gross me out, a random man walked into the resturant, gave a lot of cash to a worker, looked around suspiciously, and walked off.

"We're going to die here!" I thought.

We jetted off to the beach before the poison kicked in. Seeing the sand and the elderly, pudgy Russians in their Speedos and bikinis gave me the will to live. If only I had my camera! Cade and I ran into the water, paddling to get the plastic Twinkie wrappers and other debris out of our paths. I sat on the shore and dug in the sand, looking for clams. Instead, I discovered very unusual crustaceans I haven't seen before. They're crabs, but look more like beetles. Later, Cade and I were walking along the beach and saw a huge, beautiful fiddler crab (the kind ready for the fish market) come out of the sand and hastily start to dig back in, but not fast enough. I pointed and squealed with glee as Cade picked it up and tried not to get pinched. I really love marine animals, and have never seen much wildlife on Texas beaches.

Even better, Cade and I were farther out in the ocean when he asked, "What's that?" He gestured at a brown, plastic-looking oval floating a few feet away. I guessed an abandoned trashcan lid, but Cade swam over to see. It was a live horseshoe crab that was floating shell down on the surface. We'd talked to a very precocious little girl on the beach earlier, and I asked Cade to take the horseshoe crab back to show her. She was impressed. I've never seen one at all, and she'd never seen a live one. Numerous people at the beach gathered to look at the crab, including some teenagers who screamed and followed it back into the ocean.

The experience was far from picturesque, but a lot of fun. I treasure it as Cade's and my first successful trip to a beach, our first near death by Russian food, and of course, the first time we got crabs.