after a long dry spell, a pretty decently entertaining LJ entry, if I must say so myself
Today Gerald and I took a short but long deserved, if not guilt ridden, trip to Houma without the kids. It was eventful.
We hit the road about noon without eating lunch because this time, no matter what, we were eating at Outback. Over the past several months, we have had several chances to eat at Outback spoiled by something or other. For example, in Lufkin, TX when everyone else in our evacuation caravan went to celebrate Brooks's birthday, we were stuck in the hotel room with sick kids that didn't feel up to eating out and didn't want anyone else except Mom and Dad to stay with them. Then when we went to see a movie a month ago, we hadn't expected to have to wait almost an hour for a table and didn't want to miss our movie, so we ate at Wendy's. So today, we were eating at Outback. More on this later...
We traveled our normal route to Houma. Everyone has their favorite route to Houma and I would explain ours to you but I'm as bad with giving directions as I am with remembering album names and song titles. I can sing you my favorite song, tell you some band members names, and tell you about when I saw them in concert, but I cannot tell you the name of my favorite song or the name of the album it comes from. Likewise, I can drive you all around a city, and follow a map like nobody's business, but I can't remember street names or landmark names to save my life.
Anyway, me knowing the route we take and being able to explain it to you might help to paint a clearer picture of what I am about to describe. We passed through a fairly desolate part of town, and were about to turn onto a bridge which is near a bus stop which is in front of a house set far back from the road. There is a cop car parked on the side of the road, and between the cop car and the bus stop bench is a chair. In the chair is a teenager, who is duct-taped to the chair. Around the chair are other teenagers, who are removing the duct tape from around the kid in the chair. The cop leaning on his trunk and looking at the scene is shaking his head in disgust. The kid in the chair had a mohawk. Whether or not this was given by the other teens after being duct-taped to the chair and set out by the side of the road at the bus stop, I do not know.
So, we get to Outback at 1:00, only to find out that they don't open until 3. We decided to try to hold out and run our errands at the mall to waste time. Although I had fun dropping hints to Gerald for my Christmas gift ("Gee, my favorite perfume that I am almost out of is cheaper than I remember" and "Wow, doesn't the packaging on the collector's box set of the Chronicle's of Narnia look beautiful?"), and coining my new favorite holiday phase ("I love hot nuts!"), around 2:00 Gerald started desperately needing food. So once again, we didn't eat at Outback.
Lonestar was nice, though, if you can handle the extremely loud country music and the incredibly slippery floors. We sat next to the kitchen, so I had fun hearing our waitress, Daneika, come to our table, hear her name being called from the kitchen, and repeatedly say the phase, "Now, I know they ain't be calling my name again?!?!" under her breath. Other observations: the salad wedge is a strange invention; I always order a filet because it's the leanest cut of meat and they always wrap a piece of fatty bacon around it; and for some reason even though there is a large influx of people now living in Houma, no one seems to want to work because Lonestar was very understaffed and everywhere we went businesses were offering jobs. Go figure. I would say a whole lot more about my feelings on this phenomenon, but this entry is already getting wordy.
I had other ramblings, but I'm saving them for my next entry.
We hit the road about noon without eating lunch because this time, no matter what, we were eating at Outback. Over the past several months, we have had several chances to eat at Outback spoiled by something or other. For example, in Lufkin, TX when everyone else in our evacuation caravan went to celebrate Brooks's birthday, we were stuck in the hotel room with sick kids that didn't feel up to eating out and didn't want anyone else except Mom and Dad to stay with them. Then when we went to see a movie a month ago, we hadn't expected to have to wait almost an hour for a table and didn't want to miss our movie, so we ate at Wendy's. So today, we were eating at Outback. More on this later...
We traveled our normal route to Houma. Everyone has their favorite route to Houma and I would explain ours to you but I'm as bad with giving directions as I am with remembering album names and song titles. I can sing you my favorite song, tell you some band members names, and tell you about when I saw them in concert, but I cannot tell you the name of my favorite song or the name of the album it comes from. Likewise, I can drive you all around a city, and follow a map like nobody's business, but I can't remember street names or landmark names to save my life.
Anyway, me knowing the route we take and being able to explain it to you might help to paint a clearer picture of what I am about to describe. We passed through a fairly desolate part of town, and were about to turn onto a bridge which is near a bus stop which is in front of a house set far back from the road. There is a cop car parked on the side of the road, and between the cop car and the bus stop bench is a chair. In the chair is a teenager, who is duct-taped to the chair. Around the chair are other teenagers, who are removing the duct tape from around the kid in the chair. The cop leaning on his trunk and looking at the scene is shaking his head in disgust. The kid in the chair had a mohawk. Whether or not this was given by the other teens after being duct-taped to the chair and set out by the side of the road at the bus stop, I do not know.
So, we get to Outback at 1:00, only to find out that they don't open until 3. We decided to try to hold out and run our errands at the mall to waste time. Although I had fun dropping hints to Gerald for my Christmas gift ("Gee, my favorite perfume that I am almost out of is cheaper than I remember" and "Wow, doesn't the packaging on the collector's box set of the Chronicle's of Narnia look beautiful?"), and coining my new favorite holiday phase ("I love hot nuts!"), around 2:00 Gerald started desperately needing food. So once again, we didn't eat at Outback.
Lonestar was nice, though, if you can handle the extremely loud country music and the incredibly slippery floors. We sat next to the kitchen, so I had fun hearing our waitress, Daneika, come to our table, hear her name being called from the kitchen, and repeatedly say the phase, "Now, I know they ain't be calling my name again?!?!" under her breath. Other observations: the salad wedge is a strange invention; I always order a filet because it's the leanest cut of meat and they always wrap a piece of fatty bacon around it; and for some reason even though there is a large influx of people now living in Houma, no one seems to want to work because Lonestar was very understaffed and everywhere we went businesses were offering jobs. Go figure. I would say a whole lot more about my feelings on this phenomenon, but this entry is already getting wordy.
I had other ramblings, but I'm saving them for my next entry.