Restaurant Regret

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”~ William Shakespeare

 

I think a better quotation for this blog post would be “What the hell were you thinking?”, but I have no idea who to give the credit to.

 

This afternoon I was conversing with neighbors. I was slightly hinting that we all should go as a small group out to eat this evening.

 

Come to find out that they were celebrating the sale of a vehicle. They had sold it for $800, but really wanted $2,500.

 

But they were not opposed to the idea of going out to eat as they did have that money now. I was happy for them. The vehicle was sold and now out of their hands.

 

So we went back and forth with each other in trying to choose where to go. The idea had come to go to a restaurant that we have been to before, but they wanted to go to a different location. Claiming it takes just as long to go south as it does north.

 

Same restaurant, different direction. Instead of traveling 16 miles north, they wanted to go 38 miles south.

 

I was unsure about making such a trip just to eat. So I came up with the following four questions about this OTHER location:

 

#1- Food quality?

#2- Service quality?

#3- Friendliness of staff?

#4- Eye candy factor [I am still single!]

 

I was met up with such a glowing rant about the first three questions, but the fourth question really didn’t get much of a response. Nothing but a grin. And that didn’t tell me anything.

 

So when it came close to the time when we had planned to leave, I called my neighbors. I wanted to make sure that this was THEIR celebration, a.k.a.- I wanted to make sure that they were paying for it, since they suddenly had the money and certainly could afford to do so.

 

I should have known better, but it was every man for himself. Something that I should have seen coming, with them in particular.

 

So we went, departing in the middle of the rush hour traffic. We weren’t even 10 miles away from home when the driver began to bitch and moan about how it was going to take forever to get there, and that we shouldn’t have made the decision to go so late and should have went for lunch and wondered if we should just turn around. Just full out ridiculous road rage. Except she wasn’t yelling at other drivers on the road, she was yelling at the passengers in the vehicle.

 

The driver was also annoyed that I was receiving text messages on my cell phone periodically. For some reason, that bothered her.

 

But a full hour, we arrived. We walked in, and all I could think about was how small it was in comparison to what we were used to. I had to remember that we were in a smaller town than the other as well.

 

So we sat down and ate. I noticed the subtle differences on the buffet. But for the most part, it was the same foods. It just took me a very long time to get over the fact that the building was smaller. I even had to laugh when I saw a sign on the wall in the back that said “SMOKING AREA”. Which, there is none of that here any more.

 

I laughed so much that I attempted to take a picture of it with my cell phone, but just as I was taking the picture, I got busted doing it. They asked what I was doing and I dodged them by saying, “I’m looking to see if I got a signal in here to make a call.” They didn’t say anything else.

 

But all in all, this dining experience failed so badly. And if you take into consideration the company that I was keeping, whom half of them had really poor behaviors and attitudes… it only made things more miserable.

 

By the end of the evening, I had only made myself full on mashed potatoes and gravy. Everything else just tasted so awful!!

 

And then when we were getting ready to leave, everyone pulled out their wallets to leave some kind of cash gratuity for our server. Our server was in fact nice. But she had no name tag. No label in which to call her by name. I didn’t understand what kind of a food business they were trying to run. How does anyone get any specific customer service when they don’t know who to call upon?

 

Then I grabbed the pile of dollar bills and said, “I’m going to personally hand it to her.”

 

The next thing that I heard was a remark that came from the company that I was with, that was so immature and so uncalled for.

 

“Just so you can make her think that it came all from you, huh?”.

 

Umm really? Was that necessary?? I mean, “thank you” for driving me an hour down there and 45 minutes back home and what not, but REALLY???

 

I did so, end up giving the server the gratuity. Her hands were full and she told me to slip the money in her apron. I felt like I was giving cash to a stripper. Minus the nudity. Those who were there as servers were probably all high school kids working their evenings away.

 

As we were driving home, the seat belt fit so snug on across my stomach and chest area that I wasn’t feeling that I had enough room for my body to begin the process of digestion. I was hurting so bad. And the radio station that we listened to while in the vehicle kept having this commercial about “food poisoning”. That wasn’t helping much either. And then the songs that were being played on the radio were only making me feel worse!

 

So with all of that, and including the piss poor attitudes of others in the vehicle with me: This truly was a pathetic and horrible experience. The four factors in which I had asked about? Fail, fail, fail, and fail.

 

This will change something. Either I will not go back to that particular restaurant, or I will not be keeping company with the same people when I have dining experiences away from home.

 

 

 

 

Fireworks: Bad July Juju

Within the next few hours, I will be locking my door and keeping things on the DL. Once the sun begins to set, the hey day of celebrations of Independence Day will commence.

No, I will not be going out to enjoy any fireworks show this year. Unfortunately for this area of the country we are in a serious drought and are ten inches behind on the average annual rainfall for this time of the year. So a majority of the fireworks displays in this area have been cancelled. Which is sad.

The temperatures are too high to be sitting out in the sun today in the first place, just waiting for the sun to disappear. And even then, its still bad enough.

Instead this year, I went out to breakfast and ate ALL YOU CAN eat Fourth of July breakfast buffet. Not to mention I ate what seemed like a ton of bacon for Lisa & Lori this morning. My cholesterol levels and clogged arteries will thank them later.

And then in the afternoon, I went to a neighbor’s and stayed cool and watched movies on demand. That dear readers, is my Independence Day celebration. Include a marathon of watching the HBO series “Band of Brothers” one episode after another in a few here. Already this weekend, I’ve watched a few and so I’m just shy of half way there.

But the sporadic explosions of fireworks will begin. That and gun fire. Fireworks to my north and guns to my south. I prefer to stay uninjured during this Independence Day weekend.

For me though, I have a love/hate relationship with fireworks. For as long as I can remember my fascination as well as my protest for these things that go BANG and BOOM in the air and then produce the pretty spectacle of colors has always been there.

When I was a child, fireworks were in fact legal. I just hated the fact that they always made loud explosions in the air. Some of the more common firecrackers I hated too. Growing up, I had a difficult time with unusually loud noises. They hurt my ears.

By the time I was a teenager, it was not so bad on my ears. And by then, my family had moved to a place where fireworks were NOT legal. So there was nothing to be bought or had. Fines and tickets were hefty if you were caught in possession of them.

Not being able to buy them or use them didn’t bother me too much, up until about fifteen years ago when I was living in a place where the county allowed them. I could not believe my eyes when I saw a woman selling fireworks from inside of her own garage.

Without parental supervision, and being in a place in life where nobody could tell me what to do, I went NUTS!

In the three years that I lived in Lane County, in the state of Kansas, whenever July rolled around I practically spent every last penny I owned on fireworks. My first time buying them, I was so ridiculous, foolish, and irresponsible that I had spent so much that I could not pay my bills for the month. Needless to say that I didn’t have a lot to eat or drink in the entire month of July.

I remember that year well. I was hanging out with a guy during the summer and every day from the 29th of June until the 5th of July, I would go to that woman’s garage and look for something to buy. Wanting the biggest, the baddest, the most awesome fireworks that I could find.

I bought so much that the woman selling them to me, gave me about $50 worth in assorted fireworks for free. And on top of that she had a drawing for the mighty mystery bag of assorted fireworks that was supposed to be valued at over $200. The buddy that I was hanging out with would end up winning it. But he and I stuck together that evening of Independence Day.

Inside that mystery bag was something called “Thunder King”. It was the most single awesome, bad ass firework with report that I have ever laid my eyes upon. Nothing has ever compared to it since. 40 shots that go flying into the air, high above the telephone wires and explode in a colorful fury that lit up a radius of about three blocks. And the report rattled the windows of everything. Even setting off car alarms.

When I went back on the morning of the 5th, I was told that it valued at $75!! And she had one more left on the shelf. She was going to sell it to me for less than 50% off, but I could not handle it because of all the other stuff that I had bought that was pathetic by comparison.

Boxed sets, assorted sets, Roman candle sets, Black Cats, fountains, missles. I could go on and on. But I could not get my hands on another “Thunder King”.

Each end of June, that woman could probably smell me coming from a mile away even though I probably did not live that far from her. She KNEW I was going to be there. From that point on, there was no more “Thunder King”. Only something that was similar that truly and honestly sucked.

Obviously it didn’t matter to her that much. She was going to get my money! So she definitely set up things to where I could reach, remembering what I liked from the year before.

But then a few years later, I would move again to another part of Kansas where the county did not allow them. So I was back to what I really knew best: celebrating without them.

Hundreds and hundreds of dollars gone up in a matter of minutes, leaving nothing but a giant low lying cloud of smoke from all of the TNT and gun powder to permeate the night air. And then its all over.

I learned my lesson: Fireworks are BAD JUJU for the Dambreaker.

Now I have bought fireworks since that time, but nothing like that before. Maybe $25 here or $50 there. Each and every time I smell that unsettled powder, I cringe and my wallet begins to shake in my pocket wondering if I am going to strip it clean of its contents.

And I understand that there are people out there that spend thousands of dollars on fireworks. I’m just not one of those kinds of people that can handle that kind of spending, financially speaking.

It sucked having to live on 89¢ fountain drinks, Macaroni & Cheese and endless packages of Ramen noodles for three weeks. All in the name of wanting a “respectable collection” of fireworks.

 It might be really cool to watch all of those awesome, vibrant colors. And yeah, it is kinda neat for you to be able to knock the socks off of people who are nearby when you are putting on your own fireworks display. Just because you didn’t want the night to end when the local fireworks display was over. I simply had lost my mind in those years after spending so much money on it all.

And to think that I hated them for making such loud noises growing up!

But for those of you who do have them and are allowed by your county and state to use them: Be safe! Keep the children away from all of it. Leave the pets inside because they are gonna hate the noises anyways. Use some common sense because they are in a wild and weird sense, a fire hazard.

Enjoy your Independence Day celebrations. And Happy 235th birthday, America!!!!!!