So, we're going out to the Olive Garden for dinner

My Dad's got a $50 gift certificate.

Now, none of us have ever been to an Olive Garden. (Well, Lis says she MIGHT have in Florida once, but she can't remember) See, there are like three in Massachusetts -- Framingham, Stoughton, and Tingsboro, I think. Now, if I were to draw a dividing line, I'd probably say that "Framingham" is just outside what I'd call Greater Boston -- I count Rte 128 as sort of the dividing line, and Framingham is right on the other side of it.

Chain Italian restaurants don't do so well in Boston. 'Cause we got the North End. And when we're not in the North End, we're at things like Polcari's, which has three locations in the suburbs, but was founded and is run by a North End family.

Of course, we don't have ANY "Red Lobster"s in Massachusetts, for similar reasons. I mean, it's tough to do a national chain seafood/lobster restaurant, or a national Italian restaurant here. I mean, how well would you expect Domino's to do in Chicago?

Laundry.

"Wow. These pants are really wrinkly," he said, as he did that shaking thing that you do to damp clothes in a futile attempt to shake out wrinkles, because you have no clue where the iron is or whether you own an ironing board, and you know you suck at ironing, anyway.

"They're my bottoms," she said. "Nobody looks at them anyway. It doesn't really matter."

He laid the pants out on the bed, to try to lay them flat and brush the wrinkles out with his hands. "Did you forget that you have gorgeous legs?" He picked up the black pants again, which had now picked up a nice layer of gray cat fur.

"I sit behind a big desk in my cube. It's really okay." She watched him hang the furry, vaguely-but-not really-less-wrinkly pants from a hanger.

"Dear," he said. He picked up the hanger, and adjusted the pants on it. "Anyone who doesn't look at your legs. . . " The pants slithered off the hanger and fell in a pile on the floor, which he hadn't vacuumed in months. "Is a MORON," he concluded, brushing vaguely at the damp, wrinkly, furry dusty pants.

The Olive Garden, a review

So, Lis and Dad and I got there and put our names in to wait. About a half-hour wait for a table for three. You ever notice that, the more mediocre the food, the longer the wait? I mean, BAD food, you can get seated right away. GOOD food, you've either made reservations, or the line moves pretty fast. Okay, fine, during a summer weekend, you can spend fifteen minutes in line at Kelly's Roast Beef, so it's not ALWAYS true. But still, I only ever see the big areas where you wait for half an hour for your number to be called at mediocre places. I doubt it's a direct cause-effect relationship, but I wonder if they're not both effects of some third cause.

So we sat down to wait, and handed Dad a copy of The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish, by Neil Gaiman and Dave MccKean, because Lis had gotten it out of the library knowing that Dad would enjoy it. Which he did. Instead of simply reading it to himself, though, he read it out loud to us, and showed us the pictures. Which meant that ALL of us enjoyed it. That was fun.

After he finished, we talked for several more minutes, and then a table opened up in the bar area, so we sat there. We looked at the menu, and I mentioned how happy I was that Dad now kept kosher, because of the time when I was about fourteen or so, and he totally traumatized me by ordering the calamari at an Italian restaurant. He took the little squids and lined them up and did a Rockettes' kick line with the tentacles.
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