Romance, Tip

I have been trying very hard to complete this week's task in Diva's writing competition. I'm not sure when she will post the entries, but voting is supposed to start Friday. This edition is called 'Cazzmania', in honor of the word-chooser, last week's winner, Cazzie. The biggest problem I had was that I drew the genre of Historical Romance. Actually, I didn't draw it myself. As Diva explained in her very own words, to make absolutely sure we were clear on how things were picked: Fine print: This official drawing was conducted by the independent accounting firm of Paul, from the official site of Paul's recliner, under the supervision of Paul.

After googling 'historical romance', I discovered that I would need to pick a time period before the 1920s. Which made it a bit difficult to throw in my three pop culture references: KISS-the rock band, The Beatles, and M. Night Shyamalan. Because...umm...they didn't freakin' EXIST before the 1920s. So I did the best I could. In fact, I got so carried away with my Historical Romance that I didn't want to stop, so I tacked on a little ending from a more recent time, kind of like an M. Night Shyamalan thriller ending, only not really, because it was not very thrilling. So that's what I've been up to this week.

Last night, my grandma took us out to supper. She paid, but we actually took ourselves and her to the restaurant. It was a BBQ restaurant, and we think it has changed ownership. The old lady waitresses were gone, and in their places were young men and a young woman. I'm so sorry. I don't give young people as good a tip. I know that's not fair, but when it pops into my head that I might be giving this tip to a kid to buy two gallons of gas to cruise around town, or I might be giving it to a little old lady so she can buy the premium cat food to eat this week...I give the old lady a better tip. And she's friendlier, too.

Another reason we thought the restaurant had a new leader was that the food and service was just a little bit different. For example, they have 3 large rooms, but tried to fit everybody into one. In fact, one room was blocked off. And to make a table for 5, they put a chair at the end of a table for 4. Which means HH stuck out in the aisle. They used to put us in the other room, at a big round table for 8, even though we only had 4 people. That way, we didn't have to wait. Oh, and the waiter guy only brought 3 sets of silverware, in their paper wrappings. And mine only had a knife in it, and the paper wrapping had mustard on the outside of it. Uh uh. I'm sure somebody used that packet. I don't want no knife that's been fingered by a wild mustard-user! HH tried to make excuses..."Well, it was in his apron. That's why it's crinkled. And maybe the fork fell out." Yeah, right. Are you getting a cut of his tips? What did HH know? He didn't have any silverware.

The servings were also different. My Terrible Tater was not terrible at all. At best, it was merely mischievous. I mean, that tater used to be about 8 inches long, with a pile of meat on it. This one was perhaps 5 inches long, with a sprinkling of meat. And the side orders that HH and Grandma got were in bowls. They used to come on a serving plate, so you could even share side orders, they were so big. Not this time. A serving plate came with two bowls of sides on it. Oh, and I haven't even mentioned #2 son's 1/4 lb. corn dog. It was still pretty big, but he said, "Eww. There is something on the stick." The stick he takes out of it anyway. I grabbed a napkin to pull that thing out, and it came away covered with ketchup. Ketchup! Nobody at our table had even touched the ketchup yet. How was it on the stick of his corn dog? And not on the dog? This made me think that they took that corn dog off someone else's plate because it was uneaten. Not that it mattered to #2. He's the boy who eats broken granola bars off the garage floor. Cries for them, in fact. And when we asked for a couple of boxes to take home the leftovers, one of them had the little latch thingy broken. Don't worry. Waiter Guy still got a tip. It's not like he messed up the drinks or put corn in BBQ sauce or spilled stuff. Though he did put his thumb on a pork steak. Oh, well. It wasn't MY pork steak.

I'm going to end this abruptly, because my computer has crashed 3 times while trying to write it. I have a name for my computer, too.

Crashy.