Silver Bells
Hello World,
Well, this is normally where I'd be wishing everyone a "Happy March" and then let them get on with the rest of their lives. Not so fast! Of course, everyone knows how I hate to be an alarmist, but I feel compelled to point out that this Sunday is actually the start of Daylight Saving Time, as incomprehensible as that might seem. And I know what you're thinking, it seems like it just stopped being Daylight Saving Time only recently, and in fact, some of our clocks have never been changed back to the right time since then. Obviously, there's no sense changing them now, not to mention the fact that since the so-called "Standard Time" only comprises about four months out of the entire year, there's really no point in calling it Standard Time anymore. We may as well just have Daylight Saving Time and Temporary Time, because that's about what it amounts to. And you can believe that I'm going to be thinking long and hard about running all around changing all of our clocks over back to Temporary Time in November, just for the sake of switching them all back again at the beginning of March, no thank you very much not. I mean, I do have a life, unlike the bird brains who think up these bone-headed schemes, and better things to do than jumping through their cockamamie chronometrical hoops, that's for sure.
Speaking of better things, while it doesn't seem remotely possible, Bill and I actually celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last Monday, miraculously reaching this Silver Jubilee milestone along the passing years of wedded bliss. Although we had plenty of time to get ready for the big day, 25 years in fact, we hadn't really come up with a plan for what we wanted to do to commemorate this special occasion in our lives. In hindsight, we might have given more thought to the whole idea, and things could have worked out very different, although sometimes different is not necessarily better either, and I ought to know. Since we didn't have an alternate extravaganza planned, we decided after work to go out to eat, and rather than picking some place familiar and dependable, we opted instead to try Spadaro's Ristorante, which had just opened in a nearby storefront. We hurried over there, and although it looked just like a little pizza parlor from the sidewalk, it turned out to be a tiny restaurant with real linen tablecloths and napkins, plus Italian operas playing at full volume. There was no menu in the window to help us make up our minds if this was the kind of place for us, so we just plunged ahead and walked inside. There's an old apartment joke that says, "The place was so small that you had to go outside to change your mind," and that was about the size of it, because although they had set up about 10 tables, they were all right on top of each other with no room between them. There were already people eating, which surprised us at 5:45 on a Monday, especially since they had just opened very recently. Considering the place was so tiny, and there was nowhere to wait, it took the waitress a long time to notice us and offer us a table. That's probably what they called it anyway, although I've played checkers on larger surfaces than that.
We had plenty of time to study the decor, since apparently inattentiveness is the hallmark of their service, and it would have been a good opportunity to study the menu, except as the waitress explained when she finally appeared, they have no menus. She went into a spiel about how everything is made fresh and from the freshest ingredients, and everything is absolutely delicious because it is so fresh, although it takes time to prepare all of this wonderful fresh food from scratch. (In fact, as we arrived, there were a couple of customers leaving because they felt they had waited too long for their meal, and gave it up as a lost cause.) Since we had no idea what was available, we asked her what we could have for dinner. She rattled off a handful of choices that all seemed to include ham, fish, alcohol or mushrooms, and notably did not include anything that sounded like something I wanted to have, like ravioli or lasagna. But she had mentioned fettuccine with mushrooms, so I asked if it would be possible to just have regular Fettuccine Alfredo, famous for its delightful cream sauce the world over. Oh no, she averred, they don't use any cream or butter, only the freshest grated cheese and purest olive oil, so Alfredo sauce would be out of the question. I finally talked her into letting me have the fettuccine with mushrooms, only leaving out the mushrooms, and I would take my chances with whatever sauce it came with, which she assured me would be fresh and delicious. Bill made her day by ordering their signature dish, the fettuccine with mushrooms, which he was going to attempt as is, with no modifications. Since we knew we were in for a long wait, we also had garlic bread and a salad, although we had to balance one in our hands while we ate the other, since the table wasn't big enough to hold it all at the same time.
When our meal finally arrived, Bill pronounced his fettuccine with mushrooms all that they had promised, and he was very happy with it. I found my makeshift fettuccine so full of pepper as to be basically inedible, although anyone who knows me will tell you that pretty much nothing stops me from eating. By the time we finished our meal, every table was occupied, and it was a wonder that the waitresses could maneuver around, what with everyone holding their salad plates in their hands while they ate their appetizers. It was a good long while before we saw our waitress again, and since there were no menus, we asked for a rundown of their desserts, and decided on cheesecake and a cannoli. The desserts were nice enough, if ordinary, but at least they were as we expected them, and not some mystery concoction with too much pepper. It was another long wait for our bill so that we could leave, and since it was so crowded, you would think they would have been happy to get us out of there sooner. As it was, it took almost two hours for a simple meal, most of which time was spent just being neglected by the staff, or we could have been in and out of there much faster. We left shaking our heads and wondering how places like this ever catch on, and as much as we tried to put the best possible face on it, it could certainly not be considered the Silver Jubilee quality of dining pleasure.
Back home, we settled down to the serious business of opening presents, and in keeping with the Silver Jubilee theme, we each got some beautiful new jewelry in wonderful silvery white gold settings. Bill also got clothes and gifts of entertainment, while I got many handy items (like a new fire bucket for camping, which I desperately needed) and a new Palm Tungsten E2, which hopefully will be a little easier to see than my Zire, so my typing doesn't come out so much like Mad Libs. The presents did a lot to redeem the anniversary from the dinner fiasco, and while it's always nice to be adventurous and try some place new and different, probably in retrospect, the tried-and-true mainstay would have been the more sensible choice. True, it would not have given us a tale of woe with which to regale our acquaintances, but on the other hand, I would not have still been tasting that horrible pepper sauce all the way until Wednesday either, no thank you very much not.
In other local news, Bill discovered that his new Garmin GPS device has a "pedestrian" setting, so that you can carry it with you while you're walking, and it will give you directions and let you know how far you've walked. That's the plan anyway, but like many things, it seems like there's always room for improvement in the actual results, as Bill relates them:
================================
The idea of trying the Nuvi was so intriguing that I had to walk around again at lunch, even though I didn't originally plan to. I set it to Pedestrian and I was surprised NOT to hear Ms. Nuvi AT ALL the whole time. But she DID keep track of my "progress" and reported that the trip took 18 minutes and my "moving time" was 12:31, my overall average speed was 2.3 mph, my moving average was 3.5 mph and my maximum speed was 84.3 mph. Well, it turns out I should have hit the button that says "Reset Max", so maybe I never got walking quite THAT fast. Anyway, it was interesting and another fun thing to do with Nuvi!
================================
Well, I always say that Bill's reputation as a super-hero has been woefully under-recognized by humanity, and more's the pity, I'm sure. Personally, I think he should donate the Nuvi to Spadaro's, because if they could get their waitresses to move at a speed of 84.3, it would certainly be a big improvement in their service, which currently can only be measured in geologic time, if not slower. Come to think of it, that might explain those two hold-overs from the Mesolithic Era, who I thought I saw standing by the door and still waiting for a table, but I'm sure I must have been mistaken.
Well, this is normally where I'd be wishing everyone a "Happy March" and then let them get on with the rest of their lives. Not so fast! Of course, everyone knows how I hate to be an alarmist, but I feel compelled to point out that this Sunday is actually the start of Daylight Saving Time, as incomprehensible as that might seem. And I know what you're thinking, it seems like it just stopped being Daylight Saving Time only recently, and in fact, some of our clocks have never been changed back to the right time since then. Obviously, there's no sense changing them now, not to mention the fact that since the so-called "Standard Time" only comprises about four months out of the entire year, there's really no point in calling it Standard Time anymore. We may as well just have Daylight Saving Time and Temporary Time, because that's about what it amounts to. And you can believe that I'm going to be thinking long and hard about running all around changing all of our clocks over back to Temporary Time in November, just for the sake of switching them all back again at the beginning of March, no thank you very much not. I mean, I do have a life, unlike the bird brains who think up these bone-headed schemes, and better things to do than jumping through their cockamamie chronometrical hoops, that's for sure.
Speaking of better things, while it doesn't seem remotely possible, Bill and I actually celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last Monday, miraculously reaching this Silver Jubilee milestone along the passing years of wedded bliss. Although we had plenty of time to get ready for the big day, 25 years in fact, we hadn't really come up with a plan for what we wanted to do to commemorate this special occasion in our lives. In hindsight, we might have given more thought to the whole idea, and things could have worked out very different, although sometimes different is not necessarily better either, and I ought to know. Since we didn't have an alternate extravaganza planned, we decided after work to go out to eat, and rather than picking some place familiar and dependable, we opted instead to try Spadaro's Ristorante, which had just opened in a nearby storefront. We hurried over there, and although it looked just like a little pizza parlor from the sidewalk, it turned out to be a tiny restaurant with real linen tablecloths and napkins, plus Italian operas playing at full volume. There was no menu in the window to help us make up our minds if this was the kind of place for us, so we just plunged ahead and walked inside. There's an old apartment joke that says, "The place was so small that you had to go outside to change your mind," and that was about the size of it, because although they had set up about 10 tables, they were all right on top of each other with no room between them. There were already people eating, which surprised us at 5:45 on a Monday, especially since they had just opened very recently. Considering the place was so tiny, and there was nowhere to wait, it took the waitress a long time to notice us and offer us a table. That's probably what they called it anyway, although I've played checkers on larger surfaces than that.
We had plenty of time to study the decor, since apparently inattentiveness is the hallmark of their service, and it would have been a good opportunity to study the menu, except as the waitress explained when she finally appeared, they have no menus. She went into a spiel about how everything is made fresh and from the freshest ingredients, and everything is absolutely delicious because it is so fresh, although it takes time to prepare all of this wonderful fresh food from scratch. (In fact, as we arrived, there were a couple of customers leaving because they felt they had waited too long for their meal, and gave it up as a lost cause.) Since we had no idea what was available, we asked her what we could have for dinner. She rattled off a handful of choices that all seemed to include ham, fish, alcohol or mushrooms, and notably did not include anything that sounded like something I wanted to have, like ravioli or lasagna. But she had mentioned fettuccine with mushrooms, so I asked if it would be possible to just have regular Fettuccine Alfredo, famous for its delightful cream sauce the world over. Oh no, she averred, they don't use any cream or butter, only the freshest grated cheese and purest olive oil, so Alfredo sauce would be out of the question. I finally talked her into letting me have the fettuccine with mushrooms, only leaving out the mushrooms, and I would take my chances with whatever sauce it came with, which she assured me would be fresh and delicious. Bill made her day by ordering their signature dish, the fettuccine with mushrooms, which he was going to attempt as is, with no modifications. Since we knew we were in for a long wait, we also had garlic bread and a salad, although we had to balance one in our hands while we ate the other, since the table wasn't big enough to hold it all at the same time.
When our meal finally arrived, Bill pronounced his fettuccine with mushrooms all that they had promised, and he was very happy with it. I found my makeshift fettuccine so full of pepper as to be basically inedible, although anyone who knows me will tell you that pretty much nothing stops me from eating. By the time we finished our meal, every table was occupied, and it was a wonder that the waitresses could maneuver around, what with everyone holding their salad plates in their hands while they ate their appetizers. It was a good long while before we saw our waitress again, and since there were no menus, we asked for a rundown of their desserts, and decided on cheesecake and a cannoli. The desserts were nice enough, if ordinary, but at least they were as we expected them, and not some mystery concoction with too much pepper. It was another long wait for our bill so that we could leave, and since it was so crowded, you would think they would have been happy to get us out of there sooner. As it was, it took almost two hours for a simple meal, most of which time was spent just being neglected by the staff, or we could have been in and out of there much faster. We left shaking our heads and wondering how places like this ever catch on, and as much as we tried to put the best possible face on it, it could certainly not be considered the Silver Jubilee quality of dining pleasure.
Back home, we settled down to the serious business of opening presents, and in keeping with the Silver Jubilee theme, we each got some beautiful new jewelry in wonderful silvery white gold settings. Bill also got clothes and gifts of entertainment, while I got many handy items (like a new fire bucket for camping, which I desperately needed) and a new Palm Tungsten E2, which hopefully will be a little easier to see than my Zire, so my typing doesn't come out so much like Mad Libs. The presents did a lot to redeem the anniversary from the dinner fiasco, and while it's always nice to be adventurous and try some place new and different, probably in retrospect, the tried-and-true mainstay would have been the more sensible choice. True, it would not have given us a tale of woe with which to regale our acquaintances, but on the other hand, I would not have still been tasting that horrible pepper sauce all the way until Wednesday either, no thank you very much not.
In other local news, Bill discovered that his new Garmin GPS device has a "pedestrian" setting, so that you can carry it with you while you're walking, and it will give you directions and let you know how far you've walked. That's the plan anyway, but like many things, it seems like there's always room for improvement in the actual results, as Bill relates them:
================================
The idea of trying the Nuvi was so intriguing that I had to walk around again at lunch, even though I didn't originally plan to. I set it to Pedestrian and I was surprised NOT to hear Ms. Nuvi AT ALL the whole time. But she DID keep track of my "progress" and reported that the trip took 18 minutes and my "moving time" was 12:31, my overall average speed was 2.3 mph, my moving average was 3.5 mph and my maximum speed was 84.3 mph. Well, it turns out I should have hit the button that says "Reset Max", so maybe I never got walking quite THAT fast. Anyway, it was interesting and another fun thing to do with Nuvi!
================================
Well, I always say that Bill's reputation as a super-hero has been woefully under-recognized by humanity, and more's the pity, I'm sure. Personally, I think he should donate the Nuvi to Spadaro's, because if they could get their waitresses to move at a speed of 84.3, it would certainly be a big improvement in their service, which currently can only be measured in geologic time, if not slower. Come to think of it, that might explain those two hold-overs from the Mesolithic Era, who I thought I saw standing by the door and still waiting for a table, but I'm sure I must have been mistaken.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:02 PM
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