Rhino's roaring again!

Why do we go out to eat in restaurants? I don’t know about you, but I want to sit in a comfortable chair, relax, have someone serve me well and hopefully have a meal which, since it’s being prepared by a professional, will be better or at least as good as what I can prepare myself. How come it so rarely happens, at least not for me? As far as I’m concerned good service will overcome a mediocre meal, but a good meal is rarely able to overcome bad service.

By no stretch of the imagination can I be considered a world traveler, but I have had the opportunity to visit several other countries and have usually been very impressed by the high quality service I’ve experienced in their restaurants. Perhaps European patrons just do not tolerate what we in the states seem to consider normal. Here in the US, we get excited when we’re lucky enough to have some top notch service.

Have you had any of these experiences? I certainly have.

The hostess sits you down at your table, hands you a menu and says, Cindy your waitress will be with you shortly. Not quite sure what her definition is of “shortly”, definitely not mine since Cindy has somehow disappeared off the face of the earth and when she does finally show off and goes to a table of patrons who just got seated.

Quite the opposite also occurs. Hostess completes your seating and hands you an elaborate nine page menu (especially if you’re in a diner type restaurant). You have just leafed through it and located the appropriate section and there’s Cindy pencil in hand, “can I take your order?” Sure Cindy after I finish reading this novel in front of me.

Then you ask a question, “What’s today’s soup?” Well now that’s a real tough one for our informed girl….lol... Wait, I’ll go check. My goodness what a tough job to find out the soup of the day before you start waiting on tables-duh!

And here’s one that seems to always happen to me. I love soup and frequently will order a cup with a sandwich to follow. I sit patiently for my soup, but as more and more time goes by I know I’ll be getting the soup with my sandwich. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like eating soup with my sandwich. If end up having to, you know the soup will be get cold before you finish. So what do you do, to get her attention and ask for your soup to be served before your sandwich?

Have you ever tried to get the eye of a waitress when you needed them for a situation like this or if you wanted a coffee refill or even to just ask a question? Well now for some reason or other this girl’s eyes are surrounded by some sort of invisible blinders. She will never, ever turn your way. You begin to wave your hands frantically to no avail. Then you start calling, oh miss, miss, loader and loader. Unbelievable, the whole restaurant hears you in your desperation except for Helen Keller who eventually just continues her stroll and disappears. Oh well, screw the coffee, I’ll just sip my water (if I ever even got one).

I could go on and on and I’m sure after you think about it you would be able to add many of your own.

And I don’t even want to start on food quality. That’s fodder for another blog.

Project completed, almost

Well, almost a month has gone by since the kitchen project was begun. I’m happy to report that it is now around 95% finished (as evidenced by the pictures). All that’s left is some painting and the replacement of the drawer fronts which were ordered incorrectly. When putting everything back together we managed to actually throw some things away although not as much as I had hoped for. Even though I am not one of those savers, even I was infected with that “You never know when you might need it” syndrome. I try not to dwell on that inevitable fact that we will at some time need to depart this world, but when I do, I think about how our kids will hate us when they have to get rid of all our accumulated crap. We have devised a plan. Marge and I must get rid of at least one of our possessions each week. We figure that if we live long enough we’ll be leaving the kids a house devoid of need I say the word again, crap. It really is remarkable how much we accumulate, although you have to realize we’ve been married for almost fifty seven years. While reorganizing the shelves I looked at some of the stuff and said “I don’t even remember where, when, or even why we have this thing”. Those were the easy things to throw away.

It will be nice to put this project to bed and get outside (if we ever have some warm weather) and do some different work. The cold has not been the only things holding me back, still fighting the shoulder problems and then stupid me I lifted a heavy box in the garage the wrong way and severely pulled a muscle in my lower back. This put another kibosh on plans. Having a real problem accepting the fact that I’m not that Polish “Bull” anymore and have to live with the fact I’m getting to be an old fart. Oh well, with golf on the back burner look at all the money I’m saving.

The aches and pains have created another problem. I’ve done little these past few months except sit around, read books on my Kindle, and unfortunately eat. A long put off visit to the doctors revealed the errors of my way when I stepped on his scale. I will not reveal the results, but just let me say it was not very good. Let me just say that a substantial amount of my hard fought 45 pound loss of last year has reappeared. I should have realized this quite some time ago since for some strange reason the pants in my closet have begun to shrink without the benefit of washing. Needless to say, with very little left to wear, a renewal of my diet is in order. Progress report to follow.

P.S. Have the seeds for this years little garden started. A little different stuff this year.