The Restaurant Experience

It had been a looooooong time since we'd taken the girls out to eat -- I think our last family trip out might have been last fall to Sea Salt -- but tonight we went out as a family to Manny's Tortas.

Kiera does much better now. She did ask to be excused when she was done eating, but was cooperative when we told her she needed to stay at the table. Molly ate her whole sandwich, both halves. (Tortas are Mexican sandwiches -- toasted baguette-type pieces of bread with meat, refried beans, cheese, avocado, jalapeno peppers, tomatoes and lettuce, and chipotle mayo. They're really, really good -- crunchy, sweet, and salty all together. The one we go to is on Lake Street in the Coliseum building (right near the Rainbow at the Lake & Minnehaha corner). It's right next door to a Denny's, and why anyone would eat at Denny's when they could go next door and eat a torta instead, well, I'll never understand.

Manny's has a menu board, and Molly could see it from where she was sitting. All items are listed in Spanish, then in English. As she polished off her sandwich and chips, she looked up at the board again, mulled it over, and said, "For dessert...I think I'd like the strawberries and cream."

You know, this is one of the ramifications of having a child who can read that I hadn't really thought about. They can read menus. We always edited menus for Molly -- we just didn't tell her about things we didn't want her asking for (because they were expensive, or because they'd be a lot of trouble for us) and we told her the dessert options only if we'd decided we were getting dessert.

Molly then changed her mind and said she'd prefer the tiramisu, which was just as well; they were out of strawberries. After initially disappointing her by telling her she'd have to get dessert at home, we relented and got a piece of tiramisu (which Molly and I shared) and carrot cake (which Ed and Kiera shared).

When I was a kid, I remember one time when I was seven or eight that my grandfather took us all out to Red Lobster. This was a fabulous treat, as I loved seafood (still do). Instead of ordering off the children's menu, I wanted one of the combination platters that included shrimp, crab, lobster tail...the works. I remember the waitress looking at my parents and saying, "she'll never be able to eat all that," and my father snickering and saying something like, "oh, you just wait and see."

I may have been unable to finish the potato. I think I ate everything else.

International Embarrass Yourself As An Artist Day

Thank you so much, matociquala; I clearly needed this humiliating trip down memory lane.

She has challenged (no, wait -- double-dog dared, I could have ignored a mere challenge) to post the "awfullest, grottiest, ancientest peice of juvenilia you still have a word processor that will open."

Oy.

Fortunately, she didn't say "or that you have in printed form," since I have notebooks from eighth grade in a box under the desk that holds my printer. I'm not sure anything in them is still legible; it's been several years since I opened the box.

I actually think the most cringe-worthy item I found in several minutes of electronic excavation may be not quite the oldest. The oldest is "clever" and rather less cringe-worthy; the most cringe-worthy item is "moving" (note the scare quotes; they're there for a reason) and may be marginally more recent. Both were written when I was in college. I went to college from 1991 through 1995; I think both of these were probably written in 1992 or possibly 1993. I restricted myself to things that I (a) completed and (b) submitted for publication or at least intended to submit even if I never got around to doing it. They're both competently written in a "well, at least I knew how to string words together" sense, but ... but ... gahhhhhhhh.

Clearly, the idea here is to maximize the humiliation, so I will post the most cringe-worthy piece, rather than the one I think may technically be older. (The dates are all screwed up due to a technology transfer, so I can't be sure.) If there is popular demand for the "clever" piece I can come back and post that, too. The underlying idea of that one is actually marginally clever, it's just presented in a depressingly dull and un-funny way while I poke you in the ribs repeatedly to point out how clever it all is. Still, it's less humiliating than this.

(LJ-cut for obvious reasons. The story is 1,541 words, if you're trying to decide if you actually have time to read it. You know what, if you're trying to decide if you have time to read it, you don't. It's five minutes of your life that you will never get back.)

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Note the complete lack of logic or coherence here, please, and the Kitchen Sink approach to the cliches that appealed to me ("and they're twins! IDENTICAL twins who were separated at birth!") See? "Moving." Bleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

In the unlikely event that I ever write another assassin story, I'm going to sit down and actually think through how a corporation of contract killers might actually function, rather than going with assassins as presented by that set of hardcover handbooks published by a certain company then located in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. If you follow my drift. ::Drops heavy book on floor to cover up noise made by dice rolling.::