Tag Archives: Restaurants

Reading, Uncategorized

The Lobster and the looming shadow…

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Photo credit: @felipepelaquem. Unsplash license.

I should probably caution you that I’m about to talk about where I ate lunch. This troubles me, as I remember (vaguely) from my youth (long ago) that old people were always talking about where they ate lunch, and it was an incredible bore. I honestly make an effort not to be a bore, but genetics are against me.

I assure you, though, that the story does get bizarre. Not bizarre in a truly surprising way, but bizarre enough to write about on a day when I don’t have a book to review for you.

If you’re into middlebrow dining, you may be aware of the recent closures of many Red Lobster restaurants. It appears their attempt to drum up business by offering unlimited all-you-can-eat shrimp didn’t pay off in the long run. Shrimp does not, it would seem, provide an effective loss leader.

So they closed “my” Red Lobster in Golden Valley (yes, we have a suburb called Golden Valley near me). This has weighed heavily on my mind, because in my world Red Lobster constitutes pretty fine dining. I liked going there occasionally, when my wallet permitted. Me and my Amazon Fire, that’s a big date in my universe.

So today I drove to the RL closest to my location, way the heck up in Fridley (I think. Google Maps doesn’t actually tell you what town you’re in. Ever notice that?). It was almost identical to the Golden Valley place. Which is not, I suppose, surprising.

And I had the Wednesday special, and the waitress was polite, and I enjoyed it. Me and my Amazon Fire enjoying virtual face time.

As I left the restaurant, I dropped my Fire. I may have muttered some mild – but neither obscene nor blasphemous – expletive.

I picked it up and looked at it. One of the corners on the protective case I’d bought years ago had broken off. But that’s OK. It still has support on 3 corners and does not require replacement.

I came home, and went to work on my translating. A couple hours ago I took a short break and reclined on the couch. I opened my Android phone and happened to select the Amazon app.

The first thing I saw was an ad for protective covers for Kindle devices.

You know those horror movies, where people see obvious foreshadowings of impending, apocalyptic evil, and the characters ignore them, and you say, “Can’t you see it coming? Are you stupid?”

I think I understand those characters better now.

Uncategorized

Eating and plumbing

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Kenyon, Minnesota back in the 1930s or so. Before my time, but this is pretty much how I remember it.

Yesterday was a good day. There’s been a sudden hiatus – for some reason – in my translating. I got a sudden reminder on Facebook that some of my high school classmates were meeting down in Kenyon (our home town) for one of our occasional get-togethers. (When there are five Wednesdays in a month, we try to meet at some restaurant for lunch on the fifth one. The lockdowns, of course, played hob with this admirable plan, but we’re back at it again).

We met at a new restaurant in town. I might as well mention it, as I liked the food and the service. Kenyon has not been a lucky place for restaurants since I was a boy. This place, Lacey’s, occupies a space where two restaurants have died over the last few years. But one of my friends, who’s stayed in town and knows everybody, said they have a good business plan and are doing a brisk trade. God bless them.

I genuinely enjoy these little reunions. I don’t know any of these people well anymore, and we have vast differences in beliefs, education, and politics. But we have two inexhaustible topics for conversation – our shared school experiences, and the multiple indignities of growing old. There’s a bond there. I suppose military veterans feel much the same. And our casualty list is, I expect, comparable. Members of my class started dying off fast after graduation, and they kept it up at a rapid pace through the years that followed. Somebody noted that we haven’t actually lost any for a few years now. It would appear that we few, we happy few, we survivors are a hardy lot.

A wiser man might have stayed home due to the driving conditions (it’s a tip of over an hour). The temperature lingered just around freezing all day, and what the meteorologists call a “wintry mix” kept falling. But in practice I found the road surfaces fine, and made it there and back without any scares.

An update on my great plumbing crisis – the way things have shaken out, it all proves to be not only a case of God’s provision, but of my own obliviousness. The Bible says, “Before they ask, I will answer them,” or words to that effect. (Actually I’m not sure it does. I’ve heard it quoted many times, but Bible Hub doesn’t produce a reference.)

I have a Home Service Warranty, and have had it since I bought this place. It had honestly never occurred to me that it might cover plumbing. I had what I assumed to be an adequate understanding of what warranties cover – not structural stuff, but appliances. And in my mind, plumbing was a lot more like a roof than like a clothes dryer.

But lo, I was wrong. My old pipes are covered, thereby saving me piles of money. I am gratified by this, but embarrassed to have almost missed it.

Goofing, Reading

Winter’s tale

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Nansen’s ship “Fram,” frozen into the polar ice, 1893. Photo from the Fram Museum, Oslo.

It was a nice quiet weekend, just the way I like it. I continue reading Fridtjof Nansen’s interminable book on his Fram expedition. It’s not boring – I’d have dumped it if it was. But it’s suitable to its subject – grim and dark and uncomfortable. It correlates well to the weather we’re experiencing. I can’t resist tailoring tonight’s post to the pattern of his daily journal entries:

January 10, 2022: The day dawned bright and cold. I made my way to the gym again, after skipping most of last week due to my temporary attack of an unspecified ailment. I don’t believe it was Covid; the symptoms seemed wrong. But if it was, all the better; in that case I’m over it now. The temperature was -6 Fahrenheit as I drove; it reached a high of 3 above during the afternoon. Tomorrow looks to be warmer. When shall spring come? Will I live so long? Ah, for the warm zephyrs and green grass of June! It seems so far away in these dark days.

It appears most of the people at the gym are wearing masks again now. For some time they’d become rare. I’m still going barefaced. I believe the vaccine has some benefits, but I think I’ve become a mask skeptic.

At lunchtime I tried to get into Arby’s again, and again the dining room was closed, in spite of a big sign saying the room is open as a general principle. I hold no grudge; no doubt they’re doing their best to recruit workers. But once again, as has happened so often of late, I ended up at Perkins, which is nearby and where I can count on a table to sit at in comfort. The manager actually mentioned, as I paid my bill, that he’d been seeing me a lot lately. I had to confess I hadn’t set out with his restaurant in mind. Perhaps I should have let him believe he’d won a devoted fan, but that would just have left him with an illusion sure to be shattered. My meal was jumbo shrimp, which Perkins does pretty well, though I noticed the shrimp aren’t as jumbo as they used to be. Restaurant management is a tough business just now – I don’t begrudge them a few economies. The place is warm, the food is good, and the help is friendly.

This afternoon I girded up my loins and addressed a job I’d been putting off – filing and paying my Minnesota sales tax for books I unloaded during my summer adventures. I’ve never had any serious problem with the process, and yet I always approach it with fear and trembling. Great was my relief when I got the job done (online) and printed out my receipts (duplicates, because you can never be too careful). My only regret was that the money I transferred doubtless works out to sunk costs.

Yeah, that’s about the right town. Winter in Minnesota / dead reckoning trekking on an ice floe in the Arctic Ocean. Essentially the same thing.