It’s the thing I look forward to every week. It’s the evening that I spend free time planning. It’s an opportunity to try out new restaurants and check out what’s happening around Eugene. It’s the time I spend deciding if restaurants and customers will be annoyed by my camera.

It’s date night!

Boyfriend and I try to go on a date night once a week, although I will admit it doesn’t always happen. Eugene makes it so easy to find interesting and new things to do each time. And cheap, too!

We often hit up Gateway Mall for $2 movies. Yep. $2 movie tickets any day of the week to see movies that are on the way out of the “regular” theater. Oh, except Wednesdays. When they’re $1.50. Thank you, thank you, thank you for allowing me to keep up with pop culture, Movies 12.

Although I live and breathe football, the games can be really overwhelming- they certainly aren’t a “date night” activity. They’re “a save all your money and spend weeks looking forward to it” activity. Unless you’re still an Oregon student, in which case, I’m super jealous of you and your free tickets. This past season was my first without them and it was rough. If you’ve ever been to Autzen (the Oregon Ducks football stadium), you know that watching a game there means being on your feet for three hours and screaming until you can no longer breathe, often times in the pouring rain. Er, I mean, it never rains in Autzen Stadium! It’s what makes you a true Oregon Duck fan.

Anywho, during the summer, our favorite thing to do hands down is going to Eugene Emeralds baseball games! They’re relatively inexpensive ($6-$12 depending on seating), although Boyfriend and I have a knack for scoring free ones through Twitter contests and such. And they are so much fun! Good beer, good company, good weather, and good baseball. I highly recommend checking them out.

Since the Emeralds don’t start playing until June (could summer come any more slowly?!), we go to Duck baseball games during the spring. Boyfriend is really into baseball and needed a sports fix bad, so we decided to go to the home opener for last week’s date night.

We started the night off by going out to McMenamin’s North Bank. Shockingly enough, this was our first time there. It was a relatively sunny, although cold, day, and it was great to be able to sit indoors by the river.

I can’t wait to come back during summer when all of the trees are green and lovely. We went for happy hour, so we started with some beers. I got McMenamin’s Hef.

We each got a burger. Mine had grilled onions and other veggies, Boyfriend’s had bacon, of course.

And we split a basket of cajun tots. Have you had McMenamin’s cajun tots? They are truly, mouth-wateringly exquisite. I just make up words left and right. Thank you for accepting me and my strange vocabulary.

Then we went to PK Park, which sits right next to Autzen Stadium and just a few minutes from McMenamin’s. It’s really a gorgeous park, and I somehow only managed to take one picture of it. I apologize.

I love this park. The Ems play here, too, so I end up spending a lot of my summer here. Since this game was played in March, you can still see snow on the hills in the distance. Baseball and snow are not meant to go together.

Oh yeah, something I just can’t leave out, the team we were playing that night is called the Long Beach Dirtbags. I am 100% serious. It’s not a joke or anything. Seriously, they are the Long Beach Dirtbags. I giggled every time the announcer said that. At first I just thought he was being a jerk.

After the Ducks beat the Dirtbags (I laugh every time I say that) in the bottom of the ninth, we hit up the $2 theater for a late night movie. All in all, it was a great date night! If you’re looking for something fun to do in Eugene, you should check out a baseball game! The relaxed atmosphere and entertainment are a fantastic way to spend an evening.