I'm Not Really Looking for Anything Serious Right Now...Except Maybe the Check

Most restaurants are good to me. They usually don't give me chlorine gas poisoning, for starters.

However, I have a weird jinx with waiters. I always get the over-familiar, kind of creepy ones who practically invite themselves to pull up a chair and join in on the fun.

A week or two back, I was dining with my friend J. at what could be generously deemed the Highly Honored Window Seat, but was more likely to be the Put These Two Weirdos in the Farthest Corner Table Before They Infect Us with the Crazy Section.

The waiter was a piece of work. I wonder if he hadn't been hugged enough as a child, or if his inner rainbow needed a tuneup. Or perhaps his restaurant's training program had included extensive rebirthing and isolation therapy, and he was desperate for human contact.

Hey, the food was great, and I was happy. I'll take a side of creepy with a good meal anytime. (How else would I have survived multiple decades of dating?)

Eventually, it was time for dessert. J had let slip that he had never had a McFlurry, so we made plans to head over to McDonald's after dinner. When our waiter asked us if we wanted dessert, we demurred because, 1. we wanted McFlurries, and 2. We were worried "dessert" might be a thinly veiled reference to the waiter engaging in a sex act with today's gelato.

At that point, J made a fatal error. He told the waiter we wanted McFlurries.

I think we would have gotten out faster if J had said, "No thanks on dessert, we have a Sarah Palin/Dick Cheney striptease to attend. I've emptied my life savings to properly tip them."

The waiter took our McFlurry craving rather personally. He mock-harangued, then real-harangued me over not ordering the restaurant's dessert. Then, he informed me that McDonald's is a chain and if I had the proper community spirit I would at the very least pay an astronomical amount for a trendy gourmet cupcake.

Nothing would dissuade him. We skulked out of the restaurant, ashamed of our pedestrian taste in sweets.

Afterwards, I wondered about the motivations for his behavior.

Theory 1: The waiter had read about pickup artists and was "negging" his way to an upsell.

Theory 2: The waiter was prescient, and was warning me of an upcoming Sugar Apocalypse.

Theory 3: The waiter was kind of an over-familiar douche.

I'm gonna go with Door Number Three.

In the comments, tell me about a waiter who just wanted to be friends.

Don't Mess with a Bloody, Buddy!

You are now entering the Bloody Mary Zone, where fantasy meets reality, and the celery is only limited by your imagination. Here we have two weekends, two events, and one message.

Weekend One:

The scene: Capitol Lounge, brunch, a quiet time populated mostly by the deeply hungover, bickering couples escorting an overbearing matriarch on a tour of local haunts, and the occasional lone drinker, rocking gently back and forth on his stool.

I do what I do almost every weekend: order a Bloody Mary. I am handed a glass with ice and vodka, and told to fix my own drink from the Bloody Mary Bar up front. I scoff and snort - why would I come to a bar to prepare my own drink? Wouldn't I just do that at home?

All that derision makes me thirsty, so I reach for my glass of ice water and take a long pull. Which turns out to be from my Bloody Mary starter glass, meaning I just sucked down a mass quantity of rail vodka through a straw.

I spend the rest of the day mildly buzzy and smelling like the school nurse's bottle of iodine.

Weekend Two:

The scene: Ruby Tuesday's. The last stop before suburban oblivion, 2.4 kids and suing the neighbors over their ugly landscaping and cluttered driveway.

I order the house Bloody Mary, a portal to a damned dimension, known here as the Cajun Mary. I figure it's just a Bloody Mary with some extra cajun seasoning, a favorite add-on for me at home. I was wrong. I had taken a wrong turn into the Land of Everything That Could Possibly Go Horribly Wrong with a Relatively Simple Cocktail.

It was (and I shudder as I type...) sweet. Sickly sweet. With a funky aftertaste and the aroma of a grand experiment plunging toward bizarre and laughable failure. I was drinking the Chris Gaines of the cocktail world. I put the drink aside in pity and disgust.

The waitress noticed, and I sent the drink back for revision. The fix, the boozy lipstick on the drunken pig, so to speak? More Tabasco. Well, at least the sinuses got a hefty workout! So now it was sickly sweet and undrinkably spicy.

That's when I found out the secret ingredient in the Ruby Tuesday Cajun Mary. Hint: It's not love. Hint: It totally doesn't belong in any mixed drink, ever.

THE SECRET INGREDIENT IS BARBECUE SAUCE.

I haven't been so appalled since I found out that To Serve Man is a cookbook. The bartender came over and apologized, and brought me a new barbecue-free drink. By this time, I felt like a boozehound Goldilocks, but I was able to pronounce it "just right."

The Lesson?

Most people would assume the lesson is to stop drinking Bloody Marys. But that's not a lesson I'll ever listen to. After all, I had to be forcibly dissuaded from inventing Velcro Riding Breeches after I was (due to my own incompetence) thrown from a galloping horse at Camp Wingaroo.

Instead, the lesson is not for me. It's for all restaurants, everywhere:

Don't mess with a Bloody, Buddy!

(Hat tip for post title: Ric. Hat tip for writing style: Rod Serling)

Bathroom Chemical Warfare

Other titles considered: Gassed in the Restroom, or, The Closest I'll Ever Get to Toilet Humor.

Relax! Even though I've had plenty of male roommates, this post isn't about what you think it's about. This post is about one of those things that would only ever happen to me.

The day after Christmas, my friend Justin and I decided to go have brunch at...well, for legal reasons let's call it "Smarfish Lafe." On Smarracks Grow. In Schmapitol Mill.

The food was lovely. The service was competent. After the meal, I excused myself to go use the restroom. I noticed a slightly off odor, however, as the Queen of Sinus, my sense of smell isn't that great. I also realized that by the time I walked out, my eyes were burning. A lot. I also kind of felt like I might pass out. There were annoying little itchy tingly sensations up and down my arms. And the nausea. And the headache. Oh, heavens, it was a hell of a headache.

I went home to lie down for a bit. I called the restaurant, and was informed that the janitor may have overused the bleach. By just a bit. Not by much. The person I spoke to was apologetic, but a little less freaked than I'd be if a guest called me to say they'd be poisoned by my bathroom.

After an hour passed with no improvement, I called D.C.'s poison control center. (Incidentally, Mayor Fenty? The magnet you gave me with the Important District Phone Numbers? So totally had the wrong number for the poison control center. That strikes me as a detail we'll want to get right next time. OK?)

The charming poison lady and I discussed bleach inhalation poisoning, with the probability that some ammonia had been mixed in. (Incidentally, bleach + ammonia = chlorine gas, which is apparently a chemical weapon.) Since my exposure had been less than five minutes, I was told to open the windows and that I would improve within hours.

And I did improve. I was all better by evening. But I will say my days of brunching at Smarfish Lafe are good and over.

In the comments, tell me if this is the weirdest restaurant health complaint you've ever heard.

Amoeba Weenie: Or, Why I'll Never Scare Anyone

I’m not a Walk of Shame sort of woman. Oh sure, we’ve all had to get across town in borrowed shoes and yesterday’s makeup. But that’s just not who I am these days.

So I do more of a metaphorical Walk of Shame. I wake up on weekend mornings, steel myself with a strong cup of coffee, and review the previous evening’s outbound text messages.

They start out normal enough. “We’re at Bar X, come on down!”

Then they might turn a bit philosophical. “If I ran up and stole that guy’s dreadful hat, would I be performing a public service?”

A little later, I will start sending dirty, but sort of goofily prudish texts to my friends, generally the female ones, and most often the ones sitting at the same table. “I hope you’re wearing a thong! Rowr!”

And so begin the gibberish texts, for which I am quite famous.

However, if I pass through the gibberish phase, and am somehow still upright, things get truly weird.

Saturday, a boy my friend had been involved with behaved in such a colossally dinky way that it had to be intentional. I won't tell the story, but let's just say he deserved a wedgie. Or five. Or, possibly, ten.

I had to be somewhat forcibly restrained from going over and thumping the guy. (I don’t go psycho on my own behalf, but I’m for damn sure not going to let anyone be mean to my friends.) I also thought he ought to know he had stupid-looking hair and tragic taste in sweaters. I was given permission to send one, just one, disapproving text message.

I took a long pull of my beer, contemplated my options, and came up with something that seemed both hilarious and intimidating. We all cackled with glee.

The next morning, I slid open my phone with something that can only be called extreme dread. I expected some sort of fire-breathing mythical beast to leap out and attack me for my foolishness. I expected to be embarrassed, humiliated, run out of town on the psycho-bus, forever branded as a crazy lady.

What I did not expect was to hurt myself laughing. The text I sent was sort of like a Gypsy curse, except it involved amoebas and boy-parts and made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

"Your [unprintable] is crawling with angry slutty amoebas. Also, xxox."

So, the next time my friends decide to let me be a badass on their behalf, I will think back to the Amoeba Weenie incident, take a deep breath, and strongly consider equipping my phone with a Breathalyzer. And then I'll probably make an ass of myself all over again.

PS - When I'm not humiliating myself on behalf of my friends, I am off goading my friends into posting photos of themselves in a Snuggie. Think of it as spreading the wealth of jackassery.

Top 'o the Tequila To You

I have always had a tenuous relationship with St. Patrick's Day.


1. Whenever I wear green, people assume I am a leprechaun and begin demanding my pot of gold.

2. My name is Irish, which does not actually make me Irish. This means I spend St. Patrick's Day wincing every time someone says, "Shannon, eh? A fine-sounding Irish name, that is!"

I've developed a few dodges. I used to give out a fake name on St. Patrick's Day. "Valerie" has served me very well over the years. (A bully in sixth grade told me I look like a Valerie, and proceeded to call me that until I eventually changed schools. Where I got pooped on.)

In my mid-twenties, I became the sort of person who couldn't handle crowds. By which I mean, I get bizarre (and often funny) panic attacks in which I speculate how to evacuate the survivors in the event of a fire or explosion. Incidentally, if that were ever my job, you would all die due to my utter inability to manage spatial relations or sound even remotely authoritative.

Once the claustrophobia kicked in, I needed a new strategy. Here's what I came up with:

If you don't like a holiday, dodge the crowds and invent your own! My special holiday is Cinco de Patrick, a fantastic two-part imaginary mashup Holiday Experience. It celebrates the life and times of St. Cinco de Patrick, who rid Ireland of snakes by pouring tequila on them, thereby ensuring Mexican independence.

More practically, it means I go for Mexican food on St. Patrick's Day, and to an Irish bar on Cinco de Mayo. While the rest of you suckers pay outrageous amounts for watered-down green beer, I'll be enjoying a margarita, on the rocks, extra salt, no puking frat boys or young women working out their daddy issues Girls Gone Wild-style. I may even don a shamrock sombrero and perform a Lord of the Mexican Hat Dance.

I'm sure I'll think of you fondly. I'm also sure I'll drop-kick the next person who asks me to recite the Lucky Charms slogan.

Have fun tonight, be safe, and if you can't be safe, be careful!

The Sunny Side of the Skeeve

I’m back. And, by back, I don’t really mean I’m back to daily blogging. I've chosen to stop pushing myself and admit that those days are o-v-e-r.

I mean that I’m back to being my regular, snarky, obnoxiously cheerful self. I feel better than I have in months. After all, even the worst situations can be great opportunities for absurdity and humor. Life gets pretty skeevy sometimes, but I choose to live on the sunny side of the skeeve.

Here are a few examples from last week:

Sunday, Noonish, Frager’s Hardware:

I step up to the register, plunk a new rim cylinder (it sounds dirty, it's actually a deadbolt thingy of some sort) in front of the cashier. She looks me up and down: scraggy hair, sliding makeup, tipsy, wobbly, anxious. She takes a look at the clock. She takes careful note of the earliness of the hour. She says,

Cashier: Breakup?
Me: How did you know?
Cashier: We get a lot of young women in here changing their locks.
Me: *blush* She thinks I’m young!

Sunday afternoon, Mimosa ‘o Clock, Starfish Café:

The Refugee and I celebrate Breakup Sunday in high style: brunch, mimosas, Carolina vs. Duke. We order drinks for our mascot, Mr. Rim Cylinder. The bartender makes Psycho-shower-scene noises every time he overhears our conversation, and we race to the bottom of the bottomless mimosa special. (Confidential to Refugee: You must write that Breakup Sunday post!)

Monday evening, Cleveland Park, holding up my end of the bar:

I observe the bartender fishing out an olive from the jar with his bare hands. I become grateful that I’ve never really cared for martinis. Then I ask a friend to (very briefly and from a distance of several feet) skim over all of the potentially compromising cameraphone pictures of me to verify that, should they ever come to light, at least I look pretty damn good.

Thursday, 6:30 pm, corner of M and 19th Streets NW:

Homeless guy: Hey, baby, I’d do you for free!
Me: Oh, you’re very kind to offer, but I have plans this evening. Thanks, though!

Saturday, 8:00 pm, a house party in Adelphi:

Chatting with a dad, and playing with his kid. This baby just loves me. He's laughing, cooing and gurgling out a stream of extremely shiny drool. We're getting along famously. That is, until he punches me in the head. Yes, to make my week complete, I took a beatdown from an infant.

Lessons Learned:
Beer good, photos bad, friends good, new locks good, life good. Also, babies have a mean right hook, anyone I ever date will look like a prince by comparison, oh, and don’t ever order a martini at Atomic.

I Worry About the Kids. Because I Care! And Because I Hate iPods.

I worry about America’s children. Not because I think they’re headed for moral decay, morbid obesity, or toward developing allergies to every known food group. I worry because I don’t think they know how to be bored. Follow along, please:

Last night, I went out for tasty food in glamorous Loudoun, at a restaurant I now consider the Eavesdropping Center of the Universe. First, there was the woman who ranted about her money problems for twenty minutes (I do not know if she was on the phone, or dining with an especially patient, or perhaps bound and gagged, partner). Oh, honey, if you’re responsible for paying your own bills (like, uh, most people), including the rent, cellphone, and Comcast, and it’s breaking you, then ditch the cable. Do you really, really need Flavor of Love? I know cable really helps pass the time when you’re unemployed, but really.

Anyhow.

She left, and I was left with a few options. I could focus on my food, or my companion, or the music. Instead, the family next to us came in with the save.

Figuring out how they were all related kept me busy for fifteen minutes. My best guess was that it was Grandpa, Mom, Single/Possibly Gay Uncle, and Kid One (late teens) and Kid Two (eightish/nineish). It was also possible, due to group dynamics, that Kid One was actually much older, just a sloppy dresser, and the mother or aunt of Kid Two. Anyhow, they were all out for a nice dinner together, to celebrate the visit of Single/Possibly Gay Uncle. And maybe Grandpa. I don’t know if he was local or not.

Anyone who has ever been a kid knows one thing: family dinners are tedious, creepingly slow death. You have to sit still. You must use utensils. You will not be allowed to punctuate every sentence with armpit farts. Worst of all, you must listen to grownups talk about the sort of things even grownups find skull-crushingly dull.

But the Kids had a solution: technology! Kid One was listening to music on her iPod (yes, at the dinner table). Kid Two was watching a movie on his iPod (yes, again, at the dinner table). Kid One eventually unplugged, however, Kid Two kept his earbuds in while ordering, eating, conversing with the waitress, and mostly…while he sat there, sulked and watched a movie.

Mom, Grandpa, even Kid One tried to get him to actually participate in the dinner. Or, at least, to stop watching his movie and take his sulking acoustic. No dice.

This brings me back to why I'm so worried: if we do not teach the children of America how to sit around a table, in polite silence, but so bored they want to scream or bang their heads into a wall, how are they ever going to get by in the business world? They’ll combust at their very first department meeting, the economy will collapse, and we’ll all be reduced to selling fruit at the intersections of the world.

So, parents, please, teach your children well. Make them unplug, then bore the crap out of them. America is counting on you!

PS – No, I don’t have kids. But I will point out that, long ago, I was a kid, and no, we did NOT wear headphones at the dinner table. Ever. I mean, really.

TMI Thursday: Non-Instant Karma

Fine, LiLu. You got me. For you, a TMI tale of embarrassment.

Long ago, in early 2002, I was dating (my now-good-friend) Simple Math. One Saturday, we decided to drop by the now-defunct Cozy Corner Cafe for a diner breakfast. And, boy, I needed it. I'd spent the previous evening double-fisting single-malt scotch and cheap beer.

Our food came, and I broke the Cardinal Law of the Hangover: don't ever reach for the eggs first. Start with toast. I turned shades of green unknown to Crayola or Pantone. My face was a rainbow of sickly fruit flavors. I lurched out of my seat and dashed for the upstairs restrooms.

I imagine my fellow diners heard something like this: tap tap tap tap tap tap...(pause for turning at the landing)...tap tap tap tap (I clearly remember exactly four stairs)...STOMP STOMP STOMP (running down the hall)....SLAM! (restroom door closing)....Bleeeeeeeeaaaaaarggggggh! (no explanation necessary).

I expelled the contents of my digestive system (in what turned out to be the men's room...to complete the humiliation). I staggered downstairs, and returned to the table to find that Simple had settled the check. Before I had a chance to warn him, Simple headed up to the men's room. After he left, two waitresses sidled over.

"So, how far along are you?"

Forgive me, oh, forgive me for this....

"About two months."

They looked to my ringless hands, and clucked sympathetically. Word of my ignominous illegitimate imaginary pregnancy flew about the restaurant. Simple returned to find a collective Waitress Death Stare. It's a good thing we'd already eaten, or he might have gotten some DNA with his omelet. At any rate, he never got good service there again.

But that's not the punchline. More than four years later, I was road-tripping around the South. I realized I was close to Simple's hometown, so I rang him up and badgered him until he told me some fun places to go.

"Oh, go get a burger and a soda at this one diner. You'll love it."

I went to Simple's "diner," sat down at the counter, and wondered why I was the only woman there. I also wondered why all the locals were staring at me as if I was wearing a fedora made of human entrails.

That's because it wasn't a diner. It was an illegal off-track betting parlor.

You win, Simple. You win.

Knocking the Air Out of an Ether Boy

There are many advantages to being a D.C. townie. Lifelong friends. Familiar bartenders. Free shots. Running into people I went to high school with, and finding out how many of them peaked in 1993.

But there’s one drawback: Washington is lousy with romantic failure. My failed romances, to be exact. I work five blocks away from my first boyfriend. I pass my ex-husband’s apartment (and my ex-car) on my way to a friend’s house. I routinely run into guys I’ve gone out with, everywhere from the sidewalk to the bar to the police station.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds. I’m friends, or on friendly terms, with almost everyone I’ve ever dated. My Facebook friends list is a veritable Ouija board, conjuring the Ghosts of Beaux Past. It’s no big deal, and I can make small talk with virtually anyone.

But one category of run-in can knock me speechless: smacking into an Ether Boy.

We all know an Ether Boy. He's that man who took you out two, three, or four times, never to be heard from again. A tsunami of enthusiasm, a barrage of the you’re-so-pretties, followed by dead air and queasy inadequacy. I can handle rejection with fantastic grace, but an information vacuum turns me into a bunny-boiling insecure wacknutter. When a run-in happens, I can’t decide whether to dive behind a tree or shove the guy into traffic.

So, what do you do if you both like the same bars? And you run into one another? And what if the Ether Boy is on a date? Lucky for me, I have a cadre of loyal (and mentally twisted) girlfriends who enjoy a good Dater Demolition Derby.

Last week, we downed sausages and beer and waited to see if the latest Ether Boy had the gall to show up at my favorite happy hour spot. The girls cheerfully offered to go up and say something awful:

LiLu: (rubs stomach) You may not care about our baby, but I do!
Lemmonex: The rash cleared.

But that might not be enough. It might be necessary to get weird. Pick your favorite:

1. Hi! I’m Ether’s parole officer.

2. He’s allergic, you know. To the female orgasm. He gets hives.

3. Ether really likes it when you lick his left elbow.

You know, I’m almost disappointed that the Ether Boy didn’t show. Because this would have been gold.

Happy Friday, gang.

Chicking Up the Hooters

Saturday evening, HP and I did a terrible thing: we chicked up the Hooters. We joined FoggyDew at this pre-verbal penile paradise for an early dinner. Why Hooters? Because a former Marine and two feminists hanging out there would make for a fantastic sitcom. Also, the Carolina-Notre Dame game was on. And, most importantly, why the hell not?


In the hour we were there, HP and I managed to critique the uniform for being less than figure-flattering, get in a long discussion about favorite shades of lip gloss, and debate whether the lack of utensils meant we were supposed to use our um, chestardly bits as “really sensitive chopsticks.” (That awesome mental image you just had? You’re welcome!)

After about ten minutes, Foggy pretended he had accidentally sat down at the wrong table, and had never met these two women before in his life. Or maybe he was just watching the game.

My sojourn at the Hooters did make me contemplate some serious questions:

The Chinatown Hooters opens at 10:00 am. Who can take the sight of Day-Glo orange short-shorts before noon? And do they have a breakfast menu, or do people really eat hot wings with coffee?

Is there any footwear less flattering than bright white sneakers with poofy 80’s style white socks?

Is wearing a low-cut top to Hooters like taking coals to Newcastle? Or is it just one more lovely addition to the scenery?

Why is it so much fun to say the name, "Hooters"? Hooters hooters hooters!

And, lastly, is going to Hooters for the wings anything like reading Playboy for the articles?

Our waitress Cha-Cha rocked, and my cheese sticks were very delicious. So, squicky objectification issues aside, hooray for Hooters! Who's going with me for breakfast this weekend?

The FAIL-tastic Krispy Kreme

Saturday, Commenter Justin and I road-tripped to Alexandria for cevapcici and donuts.

The Bosnian portion of the evening went remarkably smoothly. The Krispy Kreme segment, however, was like one of those fourth-grade Farmer Brown word problem tests. I always fell apart as soon as Farmer Brown had more than five melons to sell, or had irrigated more than two acres of wheat. Let’s see if I’ve gotten any smarter in the last 24 years.

Question One:
You are in line at the donut shop. The couple in front of you are dressed in RenFest gear and keep ignoring the employee who is asking them for their order. However, once the employee gives up and takes your order instead, the Renfairians become snarky and bitter. Estimate their cumulative IQ (don’t forget to show your work!):

a. 12 (the equivalent of two parakeets)
b. 306 (they’re so smart, they’re stupid!)
c. 200 (average, and average people are dumb)
d. UNICORNS AND TEDDY BEARS AND RAISIN COOKIES!

Question Two:
You and Justin are making a purchase which, between the two of you, includes: a bag of ground coffee, a small cup of coffee to drink inside the donut establishment, and one original glazed donut. How many total items are you purchasing?

a. One
b. Two
c. Three
d. Wait, I’m a gully dwarf, I use my thumbs to count and can’t go higher than two!

Question Three:
You have reached the cash register. Does this establishment accept credit cards?

a. 63!
b. Yes
c. No
d. If the cashier stares at me blankly for long enough, the cash for my purchases will magically drop from the sky. Or Justin will give me money. Or I will get a colossal migraine and begin to cry.

Question Four:
You are attempting to make your purchases. You would like to buy a cup of coffee to drink, and a bag of coffee to take home. Your friend is buying one original glazed donut. Who is spending more money?

a. Me, as I am purchasing the two more expensive items.
b. Justin, because he’s a guy and I earn 77 cents to his dollar, anyhow.
c. Me, SINCE I AM BUYING A SEVEN-DOLLAR BAG OF COFFEE, PLUS A $1.49 CUP OF COFFEE, AND JUSTIN IS BUYING ONE 59-CENT DONUT.
d. Justin, because the cashier is randomly combining and separating purchases until he is the proud owner of 100 acres of Florida swampland.

Question Five:
You have made your purchases, in which somehow Justin has purchased your bag of coffee, you are the legal owner of his donut, and a wormhole has sucked you into Bizarro Land. Nearly thirty minutes have elapsed since your arrival.

What do you do, punk? What do you do?
a. Laugh
b. Cry
c. Laugh, then cry
d. Cry, then laugh

I don't know what happened on Saturday. Normally, that means I woke up in a gutter (again). This time, I was addled by complex sugars and intractable stupidity. All I know is that I wound up with half a donut, some coffee, and a colossal headache. And I paid about $2.79 for it. I think. Maybe. Huh.

PS - Credit to Justin for the post title.

Outrageous Fortune

It’s a topsy-turvy, mad, mad, confusing, and ever-changing world. Internet porn is no longer king. And we now have flying cars, moving sidewalks, and personal jet-packs.

We don’t? Really? Why not?

One thing I can always count on is the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet near my office. This legendary experience is eight bucks, which includes a soda, tasty heat-lamp cuisine (the buffet table operates as an enormous Easy-Bake Oven), soup and fruit.

Yesterday, LivitLuvit and I decided to meet up for lunch and buffet conquest. All was well (and delicious!) until the fortune cookies arrived.

Liv’s fortune had been personally written for her by Barack Obama, “We must become the change that we want to see.” Inspiration, and a tasty snack!

What sort of fortune would be in store for me? Fame? Wealth? Love? Unicorns and ponies? I got excited. I tore open my cookie. However, instead of Barack Obama, my fortune was written by dyslexic monkeys. Dyslexic monkeys on crack.

“Today’s profits are yesterday’s good well-ripened.”

Now, it could just be that I’m a stickler for grammar. Or, more likely, it’s that D-minus I got in Economics 10. But I have no clue what that even means. If I’m good today, I’ll have money tomorrow? Old people are well-ripened and profitable?

I should cook and sell old people?

Then I remembered, these things are a crock. Now, Tarot, that's the real deal. So I did what anyone would do in that situation:

I stole Liv’s fortune. Sucker!

So Long, Cupcake

Last night, I had a girl date on my roster.

Lemmonex and I made plans to check out the new cupcake joint in Dupont, so I could get my sugar on and she could post a review. And maybe afterwards we'd drink International Coffee while musing about that cute waiter, Jean-Luc. Or just have a pillow fight and giggle. What? We're all feminine and crap.

Or maybe we could have gone for cupcakes, followed by fancy burgers, Belgian food, upscale pizza, then small plates. It would have been like the last five years of the DC dining scene, Memento-style. But even that happy scenario was not to be.

I arrived at 6:30 to see a line spilling out of the store and down Connecticut Avenue. I joined the horde and waited for Lemmonex. The line inched forward. I was ever closer to trendy sweets and the anticipation was killing me.

At 6:45, Lemmonex arrived. Not two seconds later, they sold their last cupcake. The woman right in front of me snagged the very last one. Denied! Then the staff kicked everyone out of the store.

First off, let’s all stand in awe of the gross incompetence of Hello, Cupcake. Their first week in business, and they sold out of cupcakes fifteen minutes before closing. Get it together, people!

Second, let’s reflect upon the absurdity of it all. How do you run out of the very product you named your store after?

“Welcome to Staples, we’re fresh out of staples today.”

“Hi! Thanks for shopping at Toys R Us, unfortunately, we have no toys.”

“Due to rising gas prices, CarMax has decided to exclusively sell scooters and riding lawnmowers.”

It’s just too weird. At least the evening wasn’t a total loss: we consoled ourselves with pizza and beer. Just like the classy, upscale ladies we truly are. Then I broke a beer bottle and waved it at some guy's face, while Lemmonex hit another dude over the head with a chair. Really, that totally happened. It was awesome.

Self-Fulfilling Lousy Tip Prophecies

Today I offer a cautionary tale for restaurant staff.

A few Saturdays back, Tim and I were pretty well wiped out, he from sailing, and me from babysitting. (On a related note: somebody please tell me why sitting around looking at a sleeping newborn all day is so darn exhausting.) We were too tired to cook, so we decided to walk to a fairly nice, but not super fancy restaurant near my apartment.

The hostess seated us next to two older, well-to-do couples on a double date. While neatly and appropriately dressed, we didn't ooze money like our neighbors. These were some seriously fancy people. They were so fancy, the man next to me didn't even bother to budge his suit jacket, obliging me to clamber over it to get in and out of my seat. Their (boozy and loud) conversation centered around European vacations, and the recent college graduation of a nattily-named daughter. Oh, and that the mom had "done some salary research" for the daughter prior to her job interviews. We were dining next to a case study of suburban affluence and helicopter parenting.

But this isn't a blog about envy or greed, so let's get to the heart of the story: our waiter.

Our server greeted us, took our order, then dropped us like a cheating boyfriend. Meanwhile, he absolutely fawned over the Hoities next to us. It was ridiculous and extremely obvious, as he would check in on them frequently and then walk right past us, avoiding eye contact or outreached hands, as we sat there with empty glasses and no food.

As it turns out, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. As we felt ignored and insulted, we left the bare minimum tip (18% in the city), down to the penny. We normally leave more than 20 percent. So, the waiter lost out on what would have been a fairly nice tip. He also dissuaded us from wanting to return to what had previously been a favorite restaurant.

I thought about bringing the issue to a manager's attention (which I usually do), but by then we were tired, cranky and just wanted to go home. So instead I decided to passive-aggressively blog about it.

Servers, I know you're busy and you live on tips. And it seems like a better bet to focus your energies on customers who look like they tip well.

But if you make snap judgments and outright ignore paying customers in favor of fancier-looking paying customers, your tips will suffer. And the reputation of your restaurant will suffer, leading to fewer of those paying customers coming by...and again, your tips will suffer. And times are tough, and people aren't eating out as often. So don't be so shallow, and if you're going to be shallow, at least don't be so obvious.

Has anyone else experienced this sort of thing, and, if so, how did it make you feel and what did you do about it? And if you're restaurant-affiliated, kindly wrangle up some excuses for such an obvious lack of professionalism.

Restaurant Review: Sonoma

Now that I’m gainfully employed, I’m getting to experience all the restaurants I’d been dying to try during my year of temping (when the typical meal out involved a Dollar Menu).

The DC dining scene has four distinct categories: Comfort Food, Dinner with Girlfriends, Date Night, and Wow the Yokels. Sometimes, like last night, I goof and miscategorize.

Tim and I chose Sonoma for a special occasion, with the idea it was a Date Night sort of place. It’s really more Wow the Yokels. As in, the sort of restaurant you take out-of-town visitors to show off how hip DC can be (either to blow away your country cousin, or take New Yorkers if you’re insecure about DC’s legendary/overblown lack of cool). Wow the Yokels restaurants are cool, trendy, specialize in obscure cheeses, and are usually very loud.

Sonoma is loud enough to Wow the Yokels. Like, deafeningly so. Clatter, clamor, rattles and chatter. It’s like dining inside a cement mixer. A cement mixer inside a nightclub. And that nightclub is inside a Victorian-era insane asylum with lots of screaming people. Tim and I could not converse for most of our meal, as I lost my voice a few weeks ago and have yet to recover. (Most days, I sound like either a phone-sex worker or a middle-aged chain smoker.) So we were reduced to eavesdropping on the two rowdy women next to us. Aside: Sweetie, he’s not going to propose until you move out. Cow/milk/free, sometimes Mom is right.

No surprise that the wine list is the big draw – two pages of wines available by the 3 oz pour, the glass, or the bottle. I love the idea of a 3 oz pour - it's like a tapa for boozehounds. The categories are very helpful to those of us who generally just order the second-cheapest red and call it a day: medium finish reds, light and crisp whites, etc. I ordered a 3 oz pour for the cheese course, and a full glass for following courses (the wine tab was about $15 each).

We started with a two-cheese course ($10) – I chose a blue cheese, Tim chose a sheep’s milk cheese. I liked mine better, as I love the sort of cheeses that curl your nose hairs, smack your mama, and teach you what’s what. The red wine jelly was a clever touch. I also loved the little bowl of olives, as I pretty much got them to myself (there are definite perks to dating a non-olive person).

Next up was a starter of chilled scallops over greens ($12ish?). Fabulous. Incredible. Well-balanced, not overpowering, and just about perfect. I could eat that every day for the rest of my natural existence, then be Sonoma’s scallop-loving poltergeist ho in the afterlife.

For our main courses, Tim had the pollock over asparagus ($23), with a side of roast potatoes ($5ish) and I had the hanger steak with twice-baked cheddar potato and seasonal greens ($26). The steak was the first disappointment of the evening: a bit tough even by hanger steak standards. I wish I’d disobeyed the chef’s recommendation and ordered it medium-rare, instead of medium. There was a lovely grilled crispiness to the outside, but, overall, it was a miss. Tim’s pollock was well-prepared and tasty, but nothing spectacular.

At this point, we’d downed enough food to sate a Uruguayan soccer team, so we skipped dessert.

As for the service, it’s definitely attentive. At one point, we had three waiters. There were no order mixups, and servers seemed very tuned in to timing issues – courses arrived at reasonable intervals, and our glasses didn’t go empty. However, I think the tone was a bit casual. Lots of "you guys" and popping of heads into our conversation. If you’re dropping over $100 for dinner for two, then I expect Sir and Madam and not a Jalapeno Poppers/Pieces of Flair service vibe.

I think Sonoma is definitely worth the trip, and it’s a good value for the quality of the food. But I’d go with a group of girlfriends, perhaps for a milestone birthday, rather than as a romantic dinner for two. It’s just too loud for mushiness. Or I'd take some out-of-towners who love wine. And I’d stick to cheese and charcuterie plates, starters, and small courses, and share them amongst the group.

Scorecard:
Food: 8
Ambience: 6 (a lovely room, but 3 points off for excessive noise)
Service: 7
Wine List: 10
Categories: Wow the Yokels, Dinner with Girlfriends

PS - I added some e-friends and members of the commentariat to my blogroll. One day, my blogroll will be bigger than Arjewtino's formidable list. One day.

Crazy Sex-Starved Women!!!!

If that headline doesn't goose my site stats, nothing will.

A lot of people waste a lot of time complaining about dating in DC. The bar scene is lame, everyone's snotty or dorky or a headcase, or just plain not good enough. Well, all of you, shut up. Your bluff has been called.

Because the most bizarre, awful, soul-killing date I have ever heard of happened nowhere near here. Tale courtesy of a newly single friend who joined Match.com:

So, we met at this [redacted] for appetizers and drinks.

She started telling me about how she separated 6 months ago and wasn't being satisfied enough but joined some adult website and had met and slept with about 10 guys in the past 3 months. (Editor's note: SCORE! Also, I'll take Craigslist Casual Encounters for $400, Alex.)

Then she started talking about a foot fetish. I felt pain when she stuck her high heel in my crotch in under the table. I told her that I had to go home and she started asking me if the seats folded down in the back of the van? Another plus for the company minivan- Crazy sex starved women!!!!

I mean I am adventurous and have done some messed up things but not with a total stranger I just met. Luckily I got a phone call from my mom and was able to get away. So I have decided to cancel my match.com account. Everyone has gotten a big kick out of the story though.

Add me to that list - this story is a whole soccer team of a big kick. It's a dozen angry fetuses of kick. It's a Rockettes line of crazy kick. Really, this friend of mine has achieved everything he needs to do in life, merely by going on this fantastic date so I can blog about it.

So, thank you, Newly Single Friend! And to all you whiny Washingtonians who claim there are no good men/women/blowup dolls left:




Until you take a stiletto to the junk, what you say ain't nothing but bunk.

Why I Shouldn't Be Allowed in Nice Restaurants: The Season Finale

I exploited my status as a weekend Baltimorean to squeeze in one last Restaurant Week dinner, at Brass Elephant.

Brass Elephant is the most awesomely awesome TGIFriday’s in the whole entire universe.

The food is mediocrity reimagined as fine art. The chain restaurant standards were there: salad with fried cheese on it (it ain’t a salad until it’s been dunked in hot oil!), meat on top of gooey cheesy rice, and a McDonald’s apple pie tarted up with fancy ice cream. (That last line wasn’t an insult, I’d shank my own mother for a McDonald’s apple pie.) It was all really, really tasty, but in a sort of endearing way. Essentially, this place would have been a smash hit back in Woodbridge.

Our server, Patrick, treated us as if we were long-lost cousins/people who have never been to a restaurant before. His entire vibe was sort of Todd-from-Office Space, minus the pieces of flair or the Jalapeno Poppers. He even called me "dude" once, which is a new frontier in fine dining.

The eavesdropping was fairly impressive. To our right, we had a table of two couples, having dinner before heading to a fraternity semiformal. One of the most pervasive gender clichés is that women have to go to the bathroom in pairs. Now, of course, guys, this is so we can talk about you behind your backs. What had never occurred to me was what y’all are up to while we’re away:

Guy 1: I think it’s going very well.
Guy 2: I think your girl is hotter.

(Silence)

A few moments later….

Guy 1: I don’t think we should have let the girls pick the wine.
Guy 2: Yeah, that did kind of make us look like pussies.

(Silence)

A few moments after that…

Guy 1: I think my girl is hotter.

Best of all, it was half-price wine night and Tim was driving. Woo! Also, they’ll cork up your leftover wine for you and let you take it home. Oh, and the other best-of-all: no bouncy purple eggs.

Never Eat a Meal Larger Than Your Head

Large portions fill me with dread. At restaurants, I usually try to split a meal with a friend or take home leftovers. I am physically repulsed by the sight of a heaping portion of food. Dinner parties and holidays, however, are a special kind of hell.

Here's why. I was raised proper. I think it's sinful to waste food when so many people have so little. I eat what's put in front of me, I don't season my food until after I've tasted it, I clean my plate to the best of my ability, and I compliment the chef.

So why do I find dinners in other people's homes so stressful? Simply because I don't eat very much. I don't need to. I'm small, I don't run marathons, and I just don't need very much fuel. I tend to eat small meals and snacks at regular intervals, because a large meal all in one sitting makes me grumpy and ill.

If the host fixes my plate, it's usually about twice as much food as I can reasonably handle. So I enjoy the first half of the meal, and spend the second choking down one bite after another, hoping it will all be over soon. Then I have to sit very still for an hour and hope I don't die. Or, if I can't finish my plate, the host takes offense, or asks what's wrong with me because I don't have much of an appetite.

Last Christmas, I went home with a friend. His family are all hearty eaters, so my plates were fixed to match theirs. I had to take a nap after every meal, until I finally squawked and begged for pity. From then on, I received a "Shannon Portion": one forkful, delivered with a snarky grin. I just wish it hadn't taken me four days to speak up.

Maybe my plate-fixing dread is why I'm such a casual hostess. Guests help themselves in the kitchen, then sprawl around the apartment, gobbling the pulled pork or jambalaya I've cooked up that week.

And that's also why I will never, ever again eat at Logan Tavern. Don't get me wrong, it's a great restaurant. Tasty food and good service. But, the very sight of their portions turns my stomach. I split an entree with a fellow mini-chick, and we were both horribly sick and bloated for the rest of the night. Logan Tavern, if TWO people working together cannot clean one of your plates without becoming sick, it's just way too much food, and it's far too rich and heavy. I spent most of our after-dinner drinks curled up on a sofa, desperate to go home but too stuffed to move.

So, for restaurants, hosts, and any others who serve food: ask people how much they want. Offer half-portions. Don't make people feel guilty if they can't stomach a meal larger than their heads.

In other heaping portions and illness news, my last Restaurant Week review will go up this week.

Restaurant Week and The Girl You Marry

Butterfield 9 graciously extended its Restaurant Week through the 27th, so Tim and I had a chance to eat there on Friday.

Wow. Both of us opened with the scallops, which, oddly, was a little short on scallops. Instead it was a sort of mixed seafood dish. But it was very good. For our second course, I had a ridiculously tender braised beef (no fork required!) and Tim had the Hawaiian escolar. And the desserts were superb: sorbet for me, and something intensely chocolatey for Tim.

Best of all, the Restaurant Week menu included optional wine pairings for $19.08. As I am completely hopeless at figuring out what wine goes with what food, I welcomed the help.

Butterfield 9's most adorable quirk is that the hostess will lead you to your table via the most circuitous route possible. I swear we reached our table via a wardrobe, a sled, and in and around every single table in the restaurant.

The eavesdropping, which is what y'all are waiting for, was spectacular. About halfway through our meal, four mid/late-twenties men sat down at the table next to us. I had male roommates in college, and, in general, I usually get along better with men than I do with women. So locker room talk doesn't faze me. But free-form idiocy does.

One conversational snippet:
Guy #1: She does this really hot thing where she grabs onto my head.
Guy #2: Yeah, that's not the girl you marry.

Then Guy #1 went on to describe his new girl, "K." (Yes, I caught her name, no, I'm not publishing it.) K is funny "for a girl," smart, attractive and "refreshing." But she's "not the girl you marry."

Since when? Let me get this straight: she's smart, funny (I'll ignore the depressing "for a girl" part), attractive, and does hot things in bed. Isn't that the exact girl you marry? Unless you're looking for a lifetime of bland conversations and tepid sex, or you have a Madonna/whore complex to rival Roissy's.

So, let's make it our mission to find K. And let's find her a better boyfriend. I bet any of my single male readers would love to meet a girl like her, and she really can't do much worse than the joker she's with now. So, if you think you're K, or you think you know her, drop me a line!

Why I Shouldn't Be Allowed in Nice Restaurants, Vol. 2

Restaurant Week Excursion #2 was to Firefly in Dupont Circle.

This is really one of the prettiest restaurants in Washington, and very romantic without a whole lot of pretense. Plus, their Restaurant Week menu was far more generous and varied than that of Poste, and the food was only about half as weird. No purple eggs! And they didn't even sneer at my outfit, which I had thought was urban and hip, but on second glance made me look like an Edwardian schoolboy.

For appetizers, Tim had the chicken liver pate (...great, but he's gotta motor if he's gonna make that funeral) and I had the Bibb salad. Both were good, but nothing spectacular. I had briefly considered ordering the deviled eggs, until Tim gave me such a look of disbelief that I ordered the salad. After we finished our appetizers, there was a significant lag in bringing out our entrees. I'm not usually fussy about timing, but people who were seated well after us were getting their food. Our waiter dodged our plaintive expressions for some time, until a manager came out, apologized, and comped a half-bottle of wine. I'm easily bribed, so the rest of the evening passed with a pleasant glow (which may have been the wine).

For entrees, I had the arctic char (which is salmony, but is somehow not technically salmon) and Tim had the sturgeon. Sturgeon tastes like chicken! Who knew? And for dessert, I had the Firefly Sundae with chocolate brownie, peanut butter ice cream, and whipped cream. It was rich, and the peanut butter ice cream wasn't as overwhelming as I thought it might be. Tim had the apple crisp, which was a tad too sweet but very good.

As for the eavesdropping, it wasn't quite as good as Poste. But it was still entertaining. Much like an army can only march as fast as its slowest soldier, a group of women out for dinner can only converse at the IQ level of its dumbest member. So I caught a few snatches of, really, one of the dopiest group conversations ever (the merits of popped collars, and the preponderance of said collars by neighborhood). Plus there was a woman in an absurdly tight, short red dress who had to reshuffle herself every time she even breathed.

Overall, Firefly is a winner. Just leave your Edwardian schoolboy and skankwear outfits at home.