personality
 

extrovert vs introvert?

There are so many silly jokes about violists. Are you sure you want to keep your name?:D

Loved the thread! Hope to see more posts like this one!:)

There may be some of that, but you've seen me: I'm sort of a mixture.

Why? I drool equally out of both sides of my mouth!

Thanks for listening. I tend to do food-oriented reports, which are not the
norm here, though not uncommon; but once in a while it's "and now for
something completely different." No more music, though, on this trip: just
a couple restaurants and then the trip out.

and back to our regularly scheduled minutiae
 

EL decided to take me to Catfish John's for supper; not
quite my type of place - most of the diners get catfish
and freedom fries, with a tiny aberrant minority ordering
a burger or a chicken dinner or, worst of all, a baked
potato to substitute for the fries. She got the special,
a 6-piece dinner (substituting baked potato, I was proud
of her) for $8 something; I had the chicken dinner for $6
something. Lemonade for her, root beer for me (a mistake -
it turned out to be caffeinated). The catfish were about
1-oz strips with another about 1/2 oz of breading each, with
cole slaw (fresh and pretty good), foil-baked potato, a
little tub of green tomato relish (sweet and sour), a slice
of onion, and 4 hushpuppies. What made it special was that
for an extra buck or so over the regular price, you got a
big bowl of beans and bacon (quite good for that). The
catfish was fresh but farm-raised. My chicken dinner was
similar to hers, chicken strips from Tyson down the street
for the fish, one fewer hushpuppy (yay, though they were
fluffy, oniony, and not bad), and no beans. Cheap, filling,
decent. EL had enticed me there with the promise that the
food wasn't greasy, which, miraculously, was true.

Sadly, we got 2 1-oz tubs of sour cream and 6 little things
of Shedd's Country Crock, and EL appropriated both of the
sour creams and 4 of the Crocks. I was not proud of her. She
left part of a tub of sour cream. I was proud of her again.

Country Crock, for those who don't know, is a margarine-like
substance that is mostly water flavored with rancid fat. It
is unspeakably nasty: I used one in my potato and had to
drown the taste with raw onion and lots of pepper.

-

Next day, instead of our concert (which had been cancelled),
we took Puppa out for lunch. An initial suggestion of the
Outback (EL just loves chain restaurants, and this love is
of all loves easiest to satisfy here) was vetoed, and we
ended up at Oscar's, an upscale steakhouse approximately 1
block north of Walnut St. by the freeway (the Outback is
approximately 1 block south of Walnut St. by the freeway).
An enthusiastically chatty hostess seated us at a table for
six right by the door, which turned out well as Puppa and
Fay between them know everyone in town, so there was a fair
amount of socializing and chatter during the meal.

I started off with a Shiner, which was flat, so I sent it
back and had a slightly less flat Bass instead. Everyone
else had soft drinks or coffee.

Kenneth's pork chop lunch was a 6-ozer, grilled, with rice
and zucchini on the side. For a few bucks more he could have
had the early bird dinner, which added a salad and another
chop, but he's eating modestly these days. Fay had grilled
chicken over salad greens and ate only half of it, taking
the rest home frugally. Both of these got good reports.

I had a 12-oz top sirloin off the early bird. A pretty good
green salad (unfortunately topped with shredded cheese a la
Outback) and a good though partially prebaked loaf of crusty
bread started me off. The meat was cut pretty exactly, it
looks like, and had been marinated in what tasted like A-1
sauce mixed with artificial sweetener. This was acceptable,
but I wouldn't order it again. I had garlic smash with this,
quite garlicky, fairly chunky (i.e., real), and shot full of
sour cream: I couldn't eat much of it.

EL ordered the 10-oz early bird prime rib, medium rare; it
came as ordered only at least 14 oz. I had a taste - quite
good. Her rice pilaf was nasty salty, though.

We let it slip that it had been Kenneth's birthday the day
before, so he was brought a slice of strawberry cheesecake
on the house: first rate for a dense cheesecake. We all had
tastes.

Of course, that meant that EL felt obligated to join him:
she had skillet apple cobbler, which was pretty good
although dead sweet.

A Cognac for me, which came as an impossibly large pour
in a big snifter: it was identified as Courvoisier VS on
the bill but tasted more like XO. I left a fairly big tip.

UA6851 XNA ORD 1015 1156 CRJ 2A

Darn flight was delayed an hour and half - wind in Chicago
or something. Made up half an hour or so en route, though,
so I had time for an e-mail and an unhealthy snack (Walker's
chocolate chip shortbread, Piroulines, Ruffles) before the
next leg. It was a survey flight, so of course above average
service (actually, I suspect the FA would have been fine in
any case, and it was Skywest rather than the hated Mesa).
I gave fairly high marks.

UA1236 ORD BWI 1412 1705 733 2D

I got to the gate as the agent was closing off the red
carpet line. I looked questioningly at the agent, who said
that this was the new word from above, and she thought it
was stupid. So much for the super-premium passengers being
able to board at their leisure. F was 6/8, my seatmate a
ringer for EL back when she was a glamorous young thing.

Pretty good crew. We took off a little late but landed a
little early. There was no meal on this flight, and in fact
they had not recatered beverages since the origin of the
flight in Los Angeles, so the cart was full of flat half
cans of soda! Luckily, there were two Courvoisiers left,
which I had. Also a little snack basket a la US Air was
passed around: Biscoffs and Gourmet Supreme mix.