Lopsided gifting, Season Fifty Blew, Royalty visit

Even though I thought we had a mutual agreement that us going out to dinner last night would be our mutual anniversary “gift” to each other Cindy bought me some gifts as well, including a new back washer tool for the shower, a cool head massager device, and the Proto X mini-drone you see in the video above.  I had this drone on my Amazon wish list for Xmas.  Ironically the other week I looked at my list and saw it indicated somebody bought this for me.  I wondered if it was an Xmas gift that never showed up.  It turned out Cindy was the culprit.  The quadcopter is pretty amazing tech for something about the size of a quarter.  Although it is a bit twitchy, I didn’t have a lot of trouble controlling the mini-drone.  It was like Christmas in March.

In addition to the gifts she gave me, Cindy also gave the house a gift, installing a curved shower rod in the master bathroom as well as a tall shower curtain.  It made the space in the shower feel significantly less restrictive and visually was a nice improvement.  Cindy loves home improvements.

So since our dinner reservation was not until 8:15 we had some time to chill.  We spent a good chunk of it finishing up this season of House of Cards on Netflix.  We plowed through all 13 episodes in less than two weeks, it’s a damn good show that you really should be watching if you are a Netflix customer.

So as I described the scenario yesterday, we once again wound up taking the Prius instead of the SSR last night due to the potential for bad weather.  We got to the restaurant maybe 10 minutes early and there was absolutely nobody waiting.  Since the first reservation time they had available five days ago when I made it was 8:15, I figured the place would be quite busy.  Nope, we sat down immediately.  This made it pretty clear that the Season 52 reservation system is a crock of shit.  They either don’t allow you to reserve a table between 6 and 8PM or they only have a handful of tables allocated to be reserved, keeping the overwhelming majority of them for walk in customers.  I guess I can understand the logic but it still annoyed me that we could have probably walked in an hour earlier and been seated with little delay.

So the reason I opted to go through the hassle of reserving a seat at Seasons 52 was because I have had nice dining experiences in the handful of times I have been there.  The last time we were there was for Cindy’s birthday a couple years ago.  Shortly after we sat down we were greeted by our waitress who seemed very nice and friendly.  That was the first and last positive thing I could say about our server.

She took our drink order which was rather simple, water for Cindy and a Miller Lite for me.  For some reason it took around 10 minutes until we actually got them.  By that time we had determined and redetermined our meal choices a half dozen times over.  Her tardiness and lack of attention throughout the meal was a common theme.  Anything we asked for seemed to take forever and she just seemed to not have a handle on things.

Then there was the food.  We ordered a flat bread appetizer that we both enjoyed but the entrees were a different story. Cindy ordered a vegetarian sampler plate and I had a scallop dish over lemon risotto.  Now I am not a lemon fan but I figured it would only be a spritz of lemon that I would hardly notice.  Well I was wrong.

Cindy who actually likes lemon, came up with the best description of my dish after I asked her to taste it.  She said it tasted like she was eating a plate of lemon Pledge.  The flavor was overwhelming.  I concentrated on eating the scallops and asparagus that was part of my meal and left a lot of the risotto untouched. Cindy’s meal wasn’t great either.  Especially the cold quinoa salad that tasted like you were eating perfume.  The bad taste in our mouth lingered, we were eager to get the mini-deserts to clear our palette.  At least the deserts were good. As we left Cindy and I said that if this was the first time we ever ate there we might not come back, it was that disappointing.  Luckily we have those previous positive experiences to counterbalance this bad visit.

This weekend Sir Randall is coming over to visit.  The highlight of the visit is our taking in Batman vs Superman.  I already bought/reserved top middle seats at Silverspot for us on Saturday night to check it out.  In addition he is bringing his bike so we can do a group ride on Sunday if things work out.  If he wants we may even revisit the fair, an event Randall has never patronized.  I am picking up Sadie tonight on my way home so she can see her favorite uncle as well.

It has been awhile since the last Randall visit.  I am not 100% sure but it may actually have been over a year, meaning he wouldn’t have seen the new flooring or new chickens in person yet.  Randall is just coming out of his “no social media for lent” hibernation so I haven’t been very current with his latest adventures.