Wow for whatever reason, this weekend seemed like it had a ton of shit packed into it. There were a couple real good blog thoughts I had over the weekend that I can’t for the life of me remember right this second. Let’s starts with some pictures, everyone likes pictures.
This is a picture of the palm tree off the corner of our pool cage. We grew this from a coconut.
Here is a cute picture of Nicki and Buttons napping in close proximity.
I laid out the workload for the weekend to be split between both days. Normally I wouldn’t prefer this, I’d much rather knock it all out at once. However we made plans to go out to a place we had a coupon for out of the entertainment book and we invited my mom to come with. We were going to pick her up a little after 5 so it would have made it tough to get everything finished.
By the time Ali got out of bed and we started on the kitchen it was maybe 10 or so. The kitchen cleaning didn’t go too bad. After the initial cleaning last year, everything else should pale in comparison since only a year has passed instead of 5 years. We pulled stuff out of the cabinets, cleaned and sorted. We had a big pile of pots and pans that we threw in the trunk of the Camry so my mom could see if she needed any of it. The cleaning was pretty thorough. I even climbed a ladder and pulled down the cover off the big fluorescent light in the kitchen so we could clean the bugs and dust out of it, something that has never been done. We took a break for lunch and then finished up by around 2:30 or so.
We had a couple hours to kill. I jumped on WoW for a bit while Ali did whatever. Then somewhere around 3:30 Ali said to me “Oh I forgot to tell you, the dryer won’t turn on” I thought this was an odd thing to forget to tell me. When she said it, I thought back to Friday night when I smelled something hot in the utility room. So I hoped that it was as simple, of course it wasn’t. (oh I just remembered one of those forgotten blog topics) So I opened and closed the door a few times, pushed the timer on a few times hoping I could pull a Fonzie and have it magically start up. No dice.
Now if this was 15 years ago I would have found the manual like I did this time and would have thumbed through it looking for troubleshooting info, which there was minimal amounts of. For my symptoms the advice was “make sure the door is closed” and “check the circuit breaker box”. Beyond that the advice was to call for service. 15 years ago that is probably what I would have done. However with the internet, almost any individual can almost instantly find information to do almost anything themselves, from diagnosing a health problem , to making a bomb and even fixing your dryer. So after a bit of digging I had the basic direction I needed to pop the dryer apart and be able to diagnose the problem, all before I had to get ready to pick up my mom. It appears the thermal fuse blew. When that blows they recommend you also replace some sort hi-temp thermostat thing which I located as well. Besides dropping one of the screws into the dryer, the disassembly went fine. I figured after dinner we could stop at Home Depot, surely they would have these components. So anyway, my point is, the internet is cool and makes all of us seem much smarter than we really are.
So quickly I showered and got ready to go. The restaurant we were going to was called Noodles. Mom had heard some good things about it ahead of time from a co-worker. Our early arrival translated into lots of free seating which was nice. The restaurant was very hip and trendy with very modern decorations. It seemed very nice. After a short while our waiter David arrived. He did what a lot of places do , wrote his name on a napkin and sat it on the table. He was polite but extremely dry, as interesting as toilet paper. He gave us our menus and headed off.
The menu selection seemed good however Ali saw that they actually had bread dipping sauce as an item you paid for. That was sort of cheesy but oh well. After a rather long wait, David comes back and takes our orders. Being the man, I order last and ask for the Chicken Marsala. After an awkward pause and strange look, David asks me if he can make a recommendation. Puzzled, I say, “Ok…” He said that it is unusual to say this, but he did not recommend the chicken marsala. He said that he has had a number of people complain about it in the 4 months he has been there. The complaint was it was “bland”. I thought it was quite odd for the waiter to tell me this, however, I followed his recommendation and ordered Chicken & Broccoli instead. “Ah, a good choice..” he said with approval. After he walked away, the three of us all said that was very strange. However Mom and Ali said it was good that he told me that so I wouldn’t be disappointed. It was the last positive thing that would be said about David the rest of the night.
When Ali ordered her dish, she asked if they could put artichokes in it. David said he wasn’t sure but he would ask. Um, ok.. A few minutes later he came back and said they could put artichokes in it, he just wanted to let us know it would be an extra $1.50. Um, ok, fine. Again another cheesy move in my book. I don’t enjoy being nickled and dimed at a restaurant.
In between the time where our order was taken and the food arrived, David wasn’t very attentive. I ordered a refill on my diet pepsi (which I am sure I paid for) which took a very long time to come out. David also didn’t care to ask my Mom or Ali if they wanted refills on their empty wine glasses. The situation was made worse by the sounds of David socializing with some of the people in another booth. For some reason he was guy friendly with them and Mr Snooze with us. Whatever.
Mom had ordered mussels as an appetizer, again based on a recommendation. She wasn’t impressed, she didn’t like them very much, especially the sauce they were swimming in. I tried one and had no desire to grab another. The meals arrived and although all of us had pretty different entree’s, none of us particularly liked any of them. Again mom didn’t like the sauce and Ali and my meal were both very bland, just like the chicken marsala I was advised to not get. Ali’s food was so bland that she actually salted it, something she rarely does.
After not seeing him for a good 15-20 minutes (other guys served the food), David came back to ask how things were. Instead of making a scene and telling him the food wasn’t good, we all just said it was fine. At that time he was fishing for a bigger bill and asked us about deserts and made some more “recommendations”. We told him we would think about while he boxed up our leftovers.
Well it was already a bad experience, none of us really liked the restaurant but now it was about to become worse. Ali said something about how we could walk to Baskin Robbins and get ice cream which drew eye rolls from me immediately, it’s a reflex reaction. Well for whatever reason, Ali decided this was the proper time and place to take me to task for my viewpoints about eating. She started making smart ass comments about how she wasn’t going to get desert because she knew I didn’t want her to. My anger started at a simmer and by the end it was boiling. She was making it sound like I lock her in a cell and shove bread and water under the door once a day. It was ridiculous. The fact that she was doing it in front of my mom, in a restaurant, made it worse. It was extremely awkward.
Then, my mom piles on. She started in about how strict I was about eating. It was now a tag team against me. I tried to remain as calm as I could. Ali was firing off sarcastic barbs while my lifetime smoker mom was telling me how it was somehow bad to eat healthy. Just as the last exchange was fired, David returned. I flipped the switch and said very calmly “Um no, we decided to not have desert…” It was crazy.
Before David brought the check he told us about the comment card he was going to bring and how he would like us to fill out, yea sure David, glad to. The rest of the time at the restaurant was very uncomfortable. Mom and Ali had conversations that I didn’t even listen to. I was too busy trying to bring down my blood pressure. Mom felt bad as she knew I was pissed off by my short answers peppered into generous amounts of silence.
David brings the bill and comment card. It was like 75 bucks for the three of us before the 10 dollar discount. It certainly wasn’t worth it. I could have a much better time and much better food at Carraba’s for the three of us for 25 dollars less. The comment card was open ended, not one of those things where they give you categories and you rate them 1 to 5 or whatever. All it had was a space for your name, email address and comments. I left the top portion blank and entered a short comment. “The entire experience was exceptionally average…” I thought it made the point. I don’t anticipate frequenting Noodles again.
So before the meal I told mom we wanted to stop at Bed Bath & Beyond and Home Depot afterwards. I was obviously still angry but did my best to not focus on it. Mom had never been to Bed Bath & Beyond before so we took the time to walk the store so she could look around. She insisted on buying us some super duper rug cleaning stuff to help in my battle against pet excrement. I also bought some sort of fancy comb thing that is supposed to really help with animal shedding.
I was disappointed to find that Home Depot didn’t have any appliance repair parts. I asked the guy in the appliance section if they had any. He flat out said no and gave me a card with a number I could call to order parts. I didn’t believe him and spent 15 minutes combing through the electrical aisle anyway, sure that they had to have these things. Nope.
I asked mom if she minded if we stopped at Lowe’s quickly as well. Again I struck out, no parts. We did however pick up a couple “Knockout Roses”, a variety that is supposedly extremely hardy and disease resistant that we saw on a gardening show we watch. We dropped off mom a little before 9. Again she said she was sorry for the argument but I dismissed it as just one of those nights.
Originally I had planned to just freak out once we dropped mom off but enough time had passed that my anger was down to a dull ache and instead of dredging it up again and starting the cycle over I just shut up about it. What was the point? It would accomplish nothing.
Saturday night had another fight on the schedule anyway, the UFC was doing a free pay per view from England, three hour party of violence. I started watching it but was too tired to get very far. The headliner fight was Mirka Cro Cop against some guy I never heard of before. I planned to watch the rest of it on Sunday.
I finally got the old Tivo out of our bedroom. I was waiting for Ali to give me the all clear, meaning she watched anything she wanted on it. Her only complaint was there was an episode of Will and Grace on there she wished she could keep. Being the people pleasing person that I am, I tried to satisfy the request. Tivo 2’s can easily transfer between them. The original Tivo’s do not support it. So what I wound up doing was configure the new Tivo to think it had a satellite box on one of the inputs and then connected the old Tivo to that input. Then I told the new tivo to tape a program off the “satellite” and played Will and Grace instead. It was a rig job but it worked. The only downside is the Will and Grace episode now lives on our Tivo 2 under some spanish title, the name of the show the tivo thought it was taping off satellite, oh well you can’t have everything.
Sunday morning was outside work day. Again we started around 10. I cut down the rest of the tree/shrubs growing out in the pit, Ali planted the two roses, I went around with dirt and filled in around any sprinkler heads that were protruding so they would be flush, I sprayed the orchard and garden with an oil to fight insects and then took the weed whacker around while Ali mowed on the tractor. Thanks to the sprinklers, our landscape is looking better than it ever has in April. Normally it is a brown, dead wasteland this time of year. (the end of dry season)
I was really hoping to score the dryer parts on Saturday night so I could fix it on Sunday. Instead I went online and ordered the parts. They should be here Tuesday or Wednesday. The parts were only 25 bucks but I paid an additional 20 bucks for expedited shipping, oh well. It still is way less than I would have paid a repairman to do it.
The rest of Sunday was pretty laid back. It was beautiful so we had the slider to the pool way open. I played some WoW, Ali read. Instead of having Ali cook we ordered pizza. While we ate it we watched another movie I have had on my pc for awhile, Firewall. It is a movie where Harrison Ford is a high ranking IT executive for a bank. It was good, better than I anticipated. Even though Harrison is light years removed from his days as Han Solo or Indiana Jones, he still holds up well in action flicks. The movie was very entertaining. It would give it a B+. I wondered why I waited so long to see it.
Later that night I finished up my UFC viewing. The headliner match was shocking. Cro Cop is known as being one of the world’s best strikers. He has legs the size of tree trunks and punishes the hell out of people with kicks. The guy he was fighting I never heard of before or seen fight. Supposedly he had a 3-0 record in the UFC. He was primarily a grappler guy. Well the fight started and Cro Cop got one hard kick in before he was taken to the ground. Once he was there he could not do a whole lot and was being pretty much controlled by this guy, eating enough elbows and punches that you knew this guy was for real.
The only reason Cro Cop got back on his feet was because Herb Dean stood them up. There was a little bit of time left in the round. To this point the new guy definitely had won the round. Then all of a sudden the guy throws up a right kick that hits Cro Cop on the side of the head. He drops like a sack of lead, his entire body went limp. The way he landed, his right leg and ankle was pinned grotesquely under him, it looked hideous. It was a scary scene, you literally had to worry for his life. Cro Cop was a huge favorite going in, for him to be knocked out like that was shocking. He was on the ground for a long time but eventually came to and actually walked out of the ring on his own legs, which is amazing. The way his leg was bent, I was sure he had to tear up stuff in multiple joints. I felt bad for the guy.
This morning I got up and after doing my normal routine, pulled back the blinds on the slider to take Nicki out. I was startled to see the image of our little, cherub faced, vomiting, ass dragging across the carpet little feline, Buttons, meowing frantically from the other side. Evidently she ventured outside on Sunday and got locked out without our knowledge. When we are getting ready for bed, Buttons location is not on our mind. It was chilly outside, 60 according to the thermometer, but she seemed to be no worse for wear. She scampered in and headed right for the utility room where the food and litter box is located. It was funny. I wonder what she did all night?
