Hello everyone!
I know you're all wondering how National Novel Writing Month is going for me. Well, it's going. I'm behind the standard goal for the month, but I am gradually working myself into a regular, consistent schedule for writing. So that's a win. Plus, My newest work in progress, "Suburban Princess" (a psychological thriller) is starting to take shape. Check out a rough draft of the cover! Isn't it sort of cool?
So this past weekend was my birthday. I don't need to share how old I am. I'll just say I'm old enough to know better, young enough to still think I should try anyway, but now I'm old enough to be too tired to bother.
Hubby REALLY outdid himself this year. First of all, he took me to Detroit to see my beloved Redwings play in their new (AND AWESOME) arena. We got to catch up with old friends, the Redwings won (which was nice...they aren't great this year) and we drove back in a blizzard which wasn't nice, but we got home safely.
That was great.
Then, hubby and I sort of did a fun impromptu little thing with friends Jake and Sydney. They got tickets to see Manheim Steamroller's 35th anniversary tour for themselves for Christmas and asked us to join them. (So nice! We felt pretty honored, especially when we saw the seats, which were perfection! On the aisle, close to the door, the walkway in front of us so no one sitting right in front of us...awesome.)
I'll bet you think someone dumped a rum and coke on me. (Especially since this is the same place where we saw Mellencamp.) Nope. No one dumped anything on me. We enjoyed the balanced mix of orchestral instruments and electronic keyboards. We hummed along with familiar Christmas tunes and tapped our feet to the ones that were less than familiar. We talked about how Manheim Steamroller Christmas was an important album when we were in college. Oh, there was one interaction with the woman behind us. She tapped Hubby on the shoulder and told him his bow tie was the best one she'd ever seen.
I think I need to attend more concerts with Jake and Sydney. Seriously, I've never been to a concert where nothing was dumped, poured, sneezed, barfed, thrown, or coughed on me. Not even church concerts. This was a magical experience.
When the concert let out we walked back to our parking ramp where we waited in line zero minutes to get out and back on the street. We then drove to a popular Italian place for dinner. A place called Maggiano's. If you have one near you, check it out.
Now, when I say this place is popular, I mean...it's a massive two story eatery with a huge bar area. Having no idea how long the concert would be or how long it would take us to get out of the parking ramp, we didn't make a reservation.
Wait time: 1 hour.
Did I mention that, thanks to Nano, I got up right away in the morning, didn't eat breakfast, didn't eat lunch, the went to the concert...not eating?
I FORGOT TO EAT?
Ohhhhhhh, You say....here we go!
Did someone bump into me? Did I obaserve someone arguing with wait staff over their bill? Did we have to wait longer than one hour for dinner?
You know what? No. None of that happened!
The four of us waited a bit, and a table in the bar opened up. Hubby asked the head seating guy if we could take the table. Head seating guy said sure. So, we did.
Total wait time: 25 minutes.
We got a waiter I affectionately called "man bun." (see, because he had a man bun...)
Man Bun (or MB as we'll call him here) was very harried. Poor guy. He apologized every time he came to the table for the long wait.
Here's the thing: We didn't wait any sort of length of time for anything. If we asked for drinks, we got drinks. When Hubby asked for a clean water glass because his had some weird brown, brackish liquid in it, he got it, along with a series of apologies from MB.
Sydney has some dietary requirements that make eating out a little bit of a challenge. She's really cool about it, though, so it's no biggie when she asked MB about gluten free/dairy free options. MB...he was great. Instead of sighing and secretly rolling his eyes (I've seen that before) he apologized that he didn't know everything about the options. So what did he do? He got the CHEF to come out and talk to us.
Did I mention that this place was beyond packed on a Saturday night?
Now of course our food took eons and was clearly dried out because we had a special order, right?
Nope. Everything was amazing and perfect and lovely and if it had been polite to do so I would have licked my bowl clean because, remember, I'd forgotten to eat.
Now it was time for dessert. Hubby informed MB that it was my birthday. Like here we are, actually out on the day of my birth. MB said they had a lemon cookie dessert they could bring.
No thanks. I'm not eating lemon cookies when TIRAMISU is on the menu!
So we put in a dessert order and we waited.
We waited the exact amount of time it would take to get a dessert order if there was literally no one else in the restaurant. The food runner brought out our desserts and we began enjoying them.
That's when MB came out and said, "Wait...there's no candle in your dessert? I'm so sorry! I told them to put candles in your dessert!"
Poor guy. I don't know what they do in the back rooms of that restaurant, but I was starting to feel sorry for MB. He was really great at his job and we were having literally the best time ever.
MB vanished for a moment, and I thought the candle issue was over. Nope. He returned a couple minutes later.
"I'm so sorry," says he. "I couldn't find candles so here," he held his lighter just over the last bits of my tiramisu (I'm sort of a pig when it comes to a good tiramisu...and this was magical) and he lit it.
Hubby and friends and MB wished me a happy birthday and I blew out the lighter.
So, here's the point of all this: I went out, on my birthday to a concert, to dinner at a busy place, and everything went very, very smoothly.
On this blog I generally talk about how I fall down a lot or get frustrated with people or get stuff dumped on me. I figured, in this holiday season, especially since we are so close to American Thanksgiving (and those of you outside the US, when you celebrate your own holiday of thanks, ponder this) I had to share the one and only time I went to a concert and dinner and nothing bad happened.
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