Lock it up

"Sup?" might be one of my favorite abbreviations. I use it all the time but don't often notice (I think it's due to the lack of apostrophe, "s'up?" just isn't as cool).

"Sup?" takes less time, but conveys exactly the same message, as "Hey, what's happening in your world these days?" and, if you were to ask me "what's up?" then I would respond with the following:

I was on vacation last week. It was glorious.

Sunday
Samantha flew in on Sunday after completing the MCAT, I picked her up at the airport, and we went immediately to dinner with John, Lindsay, and Felecia. We ate a delightfully delicious meal at Legal Seafoods with the most atrocious service I have ever had.

Our waiter's name was Slave. He was slow, forgetful, probably high, and quite possibly also drunk. He brought the menus and dissapeared. Half and hour later he took our drink order, and dissapeared. Half an hour after that we got our drinks, and, before he could dissapear, aske for some bread to gnaw on whilst we made our dinner selections. He returned half an hour later with no bread, no drinks, no food, and did not ask for our order. He just stood next to the table for a few moments and then left.

John bought us a bottle of wine to celebrate his immenent departure for Guatemala. Eventually we got our food, well, some of us got our food, others of us go some other people's food, and others only got half of their food. That may, perhaps, be the runners fault and not Slave's but, at this point, we were quite willing to paint them all with the same brush.

Throughout the meal we enjoyed not only our food, but also the mean-spirited comments directed at Slave coming from the other tables in his section. John was so pleased he almost bought each of them a bottle of wine.

At the end of the meal I put the bill on my credit card. While waiting, again, for Slave to come by the table and pick it up, John decided this was the last straw, so he got up to inform the hostess of our situation. Perhaps overhearing the complaints of the other servers ran the receipt for me. The total on the credit card slip (including one bottle of wine, five dinners, two cups of soup, and an appetizer we never ordered) was $14.16.

Now, for me, this was the last straw. I took the bill with me and joined John at the hostess stand to let them know that, while I would certainly not be averse to a small discount, or knocking an appetizer off of the bill for our trouble, as is standard policy, I doubted they wanted to give us the meal for less than it would cost to take a cab across the street to Finale.

At this point the resturant manager stepped in, knocked the appetizers off the bill, presented it to me with an apology, and then gave Slave a good talking to over at the bar.

Then we walked across the street to Finale for dessert. And it was amazing. (Samantha and I shared a sampler and had coffee, John had a dessert wine trio that was quite intoxicating, Lindsay had the unimaginative creme brule, and Felecia had the cheesecake.)

We said some hearfelt and very emotional goodbyes then, snapped a few pictures, and wished John a safe trip into the southern hemisphere (note: Guatemala isn't actually in the southern hemisphere).

Then we all went to bed.

Monday
Monday, Samantha and I went on a whale watch. It was great. We sped out on one of the Boston Harbor Cruises catamarans and looked at whales feeding and breaching and waving and sleeping and doing all sorts of fun stuff. We also made fun of the naturalist running the show-and-tell because she couldn't tell time. She would say "At one o'clock you can see two whales sleeping, this is a mother and her calf." However, if you looked at one o'clock all you would see is ocean. The whales were actually at three o'clock. Meanwhile she totally missed the two whales that seemed to be having a diving contest directly off the stern of the boat (six o'clock), but even if she had seen them she probably would have told us to look at ten o'clock for them.

After the boat trip we grabbed some Dunkin' Donuts coffee and walked down towards Fenway to get something to eat and watch the Red Sox lose (again...stupid bullpen). Then we went up to the Coolidge theater to see Little Miss Sunshine (which was very good).

Then we slept.

Tuesday
Tuesday we travelled up to Maine to see the Portland Sea Dogs play the Binghamton Mets in the Double-A Eastern league. Samantha kept score, and I kept an alert eye out for dangerous foul balls.

The seats were amazing, we were fourteen rows from the field, right behind the visiting dugout, and surrounded by nice people from Maine who didn't get drunk or disorderly, and who knew the ushers by name.

It was a great game (even though the Sea Dogs lost).

Wednesday
Wednesday was my brother's twelfth birthday, so we played miniature golf! Samantha, Billy, Danny, Timmy, my mom, my grandmother, and myself, all went up to Richardsons (one of my favorite miniature golf courses (they have tons of home-made ice cream)) and played two rounds. Billy won, I came in a close second, and Samantha finished third. (The scores are not official though, because Samantha was keeping score and being nice about it. For example, on the tenth Danny miss putted seven times and then started kicking the ball toward the hole, even counting each kick as one stroke, and without applying a penalty he shot a fifteen, but Samantha scored it an eight.)

After golf we had ice cream, then we went home and had jell-o cake.

Thursday
Thursday we moved Timmy into his college dorm room. The move went very quickly, aside from the tediousness of the futon assembly, and we were home by early afternoon. Then we ordered pizza and watched movies. It was great.

Friday
Friday was supposed to be a beach day. I'd left it open on the schedule so we could spend it lounging in the sun (or, in my case, heavily shaded areas), but it rained. Rain, rain, rain. So we stayed at home and played board games! And watched movies. And played some video games.

Saturday
Saturday we went to the Patriots game at Gillette Stadium. It was awesome. My dad had gotten tickets through work, and gave them to us. Samantha, Danny, Billy, and I were on the twenty yard line, forty-five rows from the field. I could see Bellicheck's facial expressions, I could see Tom Brady watching the defense, we were right there, practically on the field. Field goal, touchdown, touchdown, field goal, touchdown. It was awesome. The Pats rolled right over the Kansas City Chiefs, and looked good on both sides of the ball. They looked ready for the season.

Sunday
Samantha left Sunday. I'm not going to talk about it. Then I visited Joey and Timmy up at school. They're both all settled in and getting ready for classes to start.

Monday
I'm back at work and thinking seriously about quitting. Because not working beats the hell out of working, any day.

-t

recommended download:
Social Distortion, Don't Drag Me Down