If a waiter ever comes up to us again and says he is in training we will immediately leave the restaurant. In fact that is exactly what we should have done last night at my daughters birthday dinner. We took her to Macaroni Grill (her choice). It took some time for the waiter to come to our table and when he finally did he explained that he was in training. He had a senior waiter trailing him, supposedly training him. If you ask me she was using us as an example of what not to do. First he takes our drink order. That was the only part about the evening that he did right. He brings the drinks and says he will be right back. He comes back a few minutes later with pad in hand. “Can I take your drink order?” Uh, no, you already brought our drinks, but we are ready to order dinner since we have been here 20 minutes already. So we order. A few minutes later he comes back with his pad in his hand. “Are you ready to order now?” We looked at him with a look of shock on our face. He sees our odd look and says “Do you need a little more time?” G-man firmly says, you just took our order a few minutes ago, do you need it again? Dumbo realizes he has screwed up yet again so he says “She (pointing across the room to the gal training him) told me to come over and take your order, I don’t know why.” So off he goes again. We wait another 15 minutes (which is about 30 minutes after we ordered by this time) and I flag Dumbo down to ask when he is bringing our salads. “Oh, did you want those now?” Uh…yes, that’s why we ordered them Dumbo! He brings our salads and some bread. When he tries to put the bread down somehow it flew off of the plate and hit Sonny Boy I the chest. Dumbo was so appalled that he didn’t even bother to apologize, he just beat feet. Finally we got our entrees and wouldn’t you know, all of our entrees were ice cold. I don’t mean slightly warm, I mean cold as in they had been sitting on an unheated counter for 45 minutes. Do you know how nasty cold pasta looks? What gets me is he used a pot holder to put our plates on the table and told us to be careful as they were hot. So when he comes back I explain to him (and the gal training him) that our meals are cold. He says sorry and starts walking off as if that is the end of it. The gal training him pulls him back and says they will take my meal off of the tab and give us complimentary desserts. Well we had an ice cream birthday cake waiting at home so we weren’t interested in a complimentary dessert, but we did allow her to take my meal off of the tab. The last parting shot by Dumbo? Since the food was cold none of us took anymore than a couple of bites so we had them box everything to take home. My daughter and youngest son had ordered the same dish so he just combines those into one. We explain to the gal training him that it was for 2 separate people and they were going to 2 separate locations. She offered to have new ones made for them but since we had been there 2 hours by that time we told them to just forget it. It had gotten quite funny by that point. A comedy of errors if you will. What wasn’t funny was that G-man tipped Dumbo 15%. I kept telling him to only tip him 10% but he insisted. He is far nicer than I would have been.
There was a funny moment at dinner that actually didn’t involve the waiter. I whipped out my camera and started taking pictures. My daughter took a nice romantic picture of G-man and myself. Immediately afterwards I picked up the camera and told my daughter and Sonny Boy to get close to each other so I could tale a picture of them together. Sonny Boy put his arm around his sister and pretended to pull off a romantic picture like G-man and I had. So my daughter gets creeped out and squeals “get him away from me!” You can see the horror on her face by the picture above. I guess Sonny Boy thought we were a hillbilly family there for a minute.
We arrive home and I put the tea kettle on. Then we sing my daughter Happy Birthday and all eat ice cream cake. Lil Miss had picked out the ice cream cake earlier in the day when I picked her up from school. I told her it was her Aunts birthday so she insisted that we had to get her an ice cream birthday cake. To her it’s not a birthday unless you have an ice cream cake. Why try to fight the logic of a five year old. What I didn’t tell you is that when we went to pick up the birthday cake Lil Miss had to have an ice cream cone (and so did Gwanma). So now I understand her logic. She’s a smart one.
Later on in the afternoon Lil Miss made her Auntie a birthday card. She decided to do that all on her own. I was in the kitchen cleaning up and she was down in the TV room, which is also where I had my scrapbook supplies. I thought she was watching cartons. I should have known she was being too quiet. She comes in the kitchen with the homemade card behind her back and says “Look what I made for Auntie’s birthday!” Her Auntie was in the other room so I called her in. Lil Miss was shy though and ran and hid. So my daughter says “I love the card, thank you so much.” A little voice cries out from under the table “I made it all by myself for you!” It was a cute moment. You had to be there.
When G-man came home from work yesterday we sat in the front room discussing what time we should leave for dinner when all of a sudden the front door opened and in walked my brother (who lives 700 miles away). We were all a bit shocked. Seems that he had flown into town earlier that day so he could purchase a bucket truck from somewhere in Indiana and drive it back to Maryland the next day. So it was nice that he could see his niece on her birthday and before she flies to Germany. Talk about perfect timing.
And on the subject of my daughter, she is currently searching for a plane ticket to Germany. She is trying to get one for Friday or Saturday since this weekend is a four day weekend for Solider Boy. It is so weird to think that after this weekend I may not see her for 3 years. Well unless I get a plane ticket to Germany that is.
Disclaimer: If anything in this post sounds boring, long-winded, unusual, creepy, stupid or weird I hereby attribute it to the cold medicine that I am still on. It is hard to have a clear and concise thought while on Nyquil. But you do end up feeling kind of mellow so it’s all good.
