The Classic Restaurant Experience

Granville Entertainment District 

Dave, Little Miriam, Alice and I visited Vancouver a few months ago. On our Saturday evening, we were on the hunt for a good restaurant that suited everyone’s mood. We found this one place that we agreed on. It had an atmosphere similar to an Elephant Bar, but a little more upscale. The menu was classic meat and potatoes. The experience was, well, check this out.

So we put our name down at the front and let the hostess know that we will be in the bar. At the bar, I order a Long Island. The bartender asks if I’d like to make it a double for just on dollar more. I’m like, “sure!” Dave orders a Coke with no ice. They don’t have Coke, but have Pepsi. He’s fine with that. I was a little critical about having Pepsi at a bar.  So the bartender brings me my Long Island Ice Tea and Dave’s Pepsi, with ice. She immediate walks way to serve other customers. Dave gets her attention and gives the drink back to get a Pepsi without ice. As for my Long Island, it tasted like crappy lemon juice. That part about ordering a double? It was only one extra shoot in the drink. I’m not convinced there was more than just that one shoot in the drink. It was not good and didn’t have hardly any alcoholic content. When the girls joined us, they ordered some sweet and blue girly drink. It worked for them.

The hostess came to the bar to take us to our table. She started gathering our drinks from the bar. She had a tray in one hand, and was picking up the drinks with her other. She picked up the girly drinks and my “Long Island”. Then she went for Dave’s Pepsi. There were bar chairs blocking her from reaching his drink. Instead of moving the chairs or going between them, she walks into the chairs and bounces off of them, repeatedly. It reminded me of a robot that was out of control walking into a wall over and over. I’m not exaggerating. So after a few times of this, Dave and I move the chairs for her so she can reach the drink. Honestly, we would’ve been happy carrying the drinks ourselves. The one redeeming point is at least she was trying hard to assist us, even if her efforts where a bit inefficient. Her blonde roots apparently ran deep.

At the table, we wait for the waitress to come. OK. We continued to wait. Umm… still waiting. Finally, she comes and takes our drink order. She was Chinese, and I kinda felt like I was in Hong Kong because of the attitude she exuded. We waited long enough to know what we wanted for our meal, so we just ordered it all at once.

After some time, we got our drinks. I finished my Long Island and a Pepsi too in the time it took for the meal to come after.

Finally the dinner plates showed up. The food looks delicious. I cut into my pork shank and took a bite. It was tasty. I started looking at the presentation of the food on the plate. Noticing some unusual looking garnish on the meat, I took my fork and pulled at it. It turned out to be a long hair cooked in with the food. Dear lord! We spend about 5 minutes trying to get the waitress’ attention. She finally come over and we showed her the…before I finished talking, she noticed the hair herself and apologized. She took the plate back, and that was the last we saw of her for 15 minutes.

The manager comes over and squats down next to me. She apologized again and offered a few comps on our dinners, including a dessert and some quick appetizer. To replace my plate would’ve apparently taken an additional 20 minutes. (It appeared the waitress didn’t immediately put in the replacement order.) The manager also gave me a 50 dollar gift certificate. I’m like, “We don’t live here and aren’t likely to come back to Vancouver for some time.” She still forced it upon me. Anyways, I ordered the chicken strips, and some brownie fudge thing, with the ice cream on the side. Chicken strips did come pretty quickly and where pretty good. Then the dessert came. The ice cream was not only not on the side, it was under all the brownie stuff. Dave is sensitive to dairy. That is why we ordered the ice cream on the side. So, we flagged the waitress down again and asked for our correct order. We got it after a bit longer.

I determined that I should pay the bill. The small tip should come from me, since I was the one that had such a delightful evening. The bill only included Dave’s, Miriam’s and Allie’s actual dinners. Nothing else. Well, OK. I left a 3% tip on the bill, but thought about the hostess. Hostesses usually get their tips from the wait staff. Even if she was a ditz, she did make a sincere effort help us out. So Dave left her a 2 dollar coin on our way out.

I gave the gift certificate to Little Miriam since there was a slightly better chance for her and Dave to use it than I. She looked at the certificate and read the expiration date. “6/31/05”. Because Little Miriam is an accountant; she immediately picks up yet another error by the rest’rant. It’s a comical conclusion to the most annoying and least satisfactory dinner of my life.

A player's trouble

So, I was at this party one time at a friend’s house in Monterey many years ago. There was a few guys that lived in the same place, and they always had some friends over. It was a den of players. At this party, a female friend of theirs had brought over some fresh meat, a cute 18-year old blonde girl. I had started talking to her and even got her number, but couldn’t hang out too long. Anyways, the king player had his eyes set on her, and hung out with her for awhile too.

The next day, I get a call from him. He went into this short story how he liked her and that she said she liked him too and he was hoping he could get her number from me. I was thinking that’s a pretty slimy move, but hey, it didn’t really matter to me. So I gave him the number, or at least I thought I did. It turns out that I misread the number when I gave it to him. By some massively strange coincidence, I gave him the new number to his ex-girlfriend’s new place. When he called, he got cussed out by his ex over the phone.

I get a call back from him like 20 minutes later. He was kinda pissed, but he was a trooper. He still wanted the blonde’s number from me, even though he thought I intentionally gave him his ex’s number to fuck with him. His friends thought I was a genius for that maneuver, even though it was completely accidental. I never met his ex, nor did I know her number. However, I think the accident ended up working in his favor anyway cuz he was able to use the incident to suck his ex back into his game for a little while longer.

Sponge know not

Recent myspace.com exchange about labelling sponges (almost realtime to the actual events):

Ok, just to finish this story (see below), Mia literally labelled her new cleaning sponges with the words "Kitchen" and "Bathroom" with a felt tip pen. Ok, so this is like psycho for two reasons. First, SHE LABELLED HER SPONGES WITH A FELT TIP PEN! Second, the germs are killed off by whatever chemicals being used. Trust me, she's having the cleaning people use some pretty toxic products! ::cough:: As long as these sponges aren't being used more than once, there's not going to be any germ or grime issues between the bathroom and kitchen.
And this "special attention" list she left for the cleaners had more hmphadumpfs than actual words, so she had to rewrite it, but she still mentioned mcp's a couple of times! Don't know what I'm talking about? Then it's a pretty good bet the cleaners won't know either. hehe

Sweet dreams my very clean mia

Ya'no the funny thang? I know someone else is going to read this exchange and think to themself that labelling sponges is a great idea and start doing it too! LOL

Here's Miriam's myspace.com original post:

"Ok so the cleaning people are coming tomorrow..They are really good at cleaning...the best help I think... but seriously anyone that knows me knows that cleaning my house was my hobby...im portugues...thats what us portugue women do...but I digress.... So I am making my "SPECIAL ATTENTION" list for the week.... even though they are good cleaning people they still require some guidance...AGain cleaning my house was my hobby so yeah I am anal...

Anywho so I am making my list and then I remembered... I have new sponges... So since they all look alike I labeled them.. One baths and the other kitchen... Matt is watching this and then gets this worried horrified sorta dismayed look on his face and says" You are phsyco...who ever heard of labeling a sponge.".. Mind you his idea of cleaning a cup is rinsing it and his old bathub is more gray than white....but again I digress...So I ask...if you have good cleaning people with an english issues should you not label your sponges??? I mean who wants the same sponge that cleaned the muck off your toilette to clean the sink on your kitchen??? Gross... I think so

Anywho, just a random thought for the nite..."

Saturday party

Saturday’s party was a lot of fun. We reserved the VIP upstairs area for Miriam’s birthday party at The Buddha Lounge. Over twenty people showed up. Miriam’s goal was to get totally smashed, and she soundly succeeded. Being supplied alcohol by the bottle helped a lot in that regards.
This one big guy tried to crash the party by sneaking into the VIP area. The first time I noticed him, I simply got in his space and sent out unwelcoming vibes. He cleared off, but came back a bit later. As he leaned against the railing that overlooked the dance floor, I came up beside him and asked if he was with the party. He was all, “The owner over there told me to come up,” while gesturing his hand to a random area near the bar. I was like, “Really. Which guy is the owner?” He pointed to the same general area, “That guy over there.” Dumbass didn’t know the owner was a woman. I never told him his mistake. After realizing he wasn’t fooling me, he figured out it was a private party. So he turns to me, using his height and mass to tower over me. He looked me straight in the eyes. I stared right back at him with intensity that threw him off so much he was forced to make verbal threats. “You know I could beat you up and there’s nothing the bouncers could do about it.” I responded with an ever so slight, arrogant “Whatever” facial gesture. “Just leave. It’s no hard feelings.” He was all, “There never is.” I patted him on the arm, gesturing him to go. I backed off a bit, giving him a chance to leave on his own. I could see he was thinking about it before slowly turning and heading out. I could tell he was unfamiliar with the club, such as the number of bouncers at the club, the number of cops within 150 yards of the club (quite a lot actually), and he seemed blind to the fact that there was immediately three guys and my g/f just waiting to pounce on him if he even flinched at me. Not to mention the other 5 or so guys in our party that woulda been up there in a instant.
So, did I mention that Miriam got totally drunk? LOL Over all, we had a lot of fun. Always feels good to have a private area to drink and relax in between dancing and roaming around. On, and the bartender was awesome, keeping mixers and ice available the whole night, so thanks Heather! :) I'm definately considering reserving the VIP again.

251 guys kissing

Its been awhile since Miriam and I have instigated strangers in to scandalous behavior. After we had dinner and drinks at Zuccas in downtown Mountain View, we walked down to 251. The place has changed a lot since the last time we've been there. It was all decked out in a new, mysterious yet swanky layout. Kinda cool, especially from its old image as a pool hall that was trying to be hip.

We found an old aquaintance, Darr, there with is friends at the bar. After some more drinking, I noticed two of Darr's guy buddies being a bit too close for a bit too long. Nothing sexual, just strange for two guys. So I'm all, "I get each of you guys two drinks each if you two kiss, like full on." I punctuated "two drinks" with the peace hand gesture and stressed tone for dramatic effect.

I have this strange ability to read situations without thinking about them that lead to pretty entertaining results. Last night was no exception.

Ok, so everyone starts up with the peer pressure. Miriam was like the ring leader and became the unofficial judge of what constituted a qualifying kiss.

Finally, Darr's two friends embrace each other, then break away. More peer pressure. The one guy grabs his buddy and moves in, then they crack up and break away again. So, again more "encouragement". Finally he grabs his buddy, moves in and pulls him into his arms and dips and moves him around, simulating a kiss. Miriam was not fooled.

After calling them on their fake kiss and some more encouragement, they move in on each other, pressing lip to lip in an impressive display of homosexuality that got as far as supple lip biting. I'm afraid the image of those two guys kissing and lip biting will forever be burned into my memory as pushishment for bringing up the idea. Oh the horror of it allll. LOL Anyways, the bartender was so impressed, she covered their drinks instead.

"Darr, you can never let these two live this down," I demand. He's all, "Don't worry, I'm not going to let them forget."

Ahh, fun times.

P.S., on a side note, Darr's date (the only female in his group) was giving date-like attention to another guy in the group. The odd thang was that she was kinda cute and the other guy was a bit of a hobbit. Very strange, especially since she didn't seem very interested in any of them. (As in, she was shooting looks to other guys.)

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Tool concert; girls girls girls

[I've thought about adding this story to my blog a few times, but it's pretty raunchy. Well, here's my attempt to clean it up a bit, just so it's out there. Also, it should be noted that this story doesn't represent the norm for my life...it just a brief series of events.]

Ok, so these two cute girls from around the way couldn't go to the Tool concert, so they sold me their tickets. Actually, I had to perform a "favor" for one of the girls before she gave me her ticket (oh, the horror of it all! lol). I guess with that kind of start to this episode, I should've expected things to get as crazy as they did. Anyways, the concert was a general admission event at a college stadium back in 1998. I took my roommate. He was a playa who moved here from Hawaii with his girlfriend. He had just broke up with his girlfriend.

We got to the stadium and took some seats near the far end in a nearly vacant section. I noticed that the stadium had something like three guys to every girl. I thought, "Shit, this sucks!" My mind was changed when these three hot chicks sat right behind us.

The tallest hottie started playing with my roommate's cap. Then the little cutie behind me started messing up my hair. We all started hittin' it off. I asked for and got the little cutie's number. It was amazing that we were the ones being hit on because there were hardly any chicks at the venue. We hung out together throughout the opening band's set.

Once Tool came on, we all went our separate ways into the mass of fans on the main floor. The little cutie wanted to meet up after the concert, but I was like, "It's going to be impossible to find each other afterwards, I'll call you later in the week." (This is back before everyone had a cellphone.) She looked frustrated, but hey, whattaya going to do?

The crowd was dense throughout the main floor. For awhile, I was in the middle of the floor. This one girl recruited a few guys to put up a perimeter to help her avoid the unavoidable (a lot of the guys walking through the crowd head for the chicks to check-out, bump and sometimes grope them). I helped defend her for awhile.

I noticed this one fine-ass chick in the crowd nearby. She was a hot little firecracker with a tight and thin hard body and this awesome set of...ok, I've already said she was fine-ass. :) She was wearing tight and revealing jeans and top; and had long punkish braided hair. I noticed her move around the crowd, from guy to guy, dancing with them while trying to watch the stage. A couple of the guys put her on their shoulders for while so she could see over the mass. All of a sudden, she was in front of me, facing away towards the stage. While she was dancing feverishly, she backed her ass up into me and just started grinding my crouch. I was wearing jeans, with nufin underneath. As soon as she realized that I was enjoying her maneuver, she started dry humping me as she danced. I didn't move, other than to return the favor. She let me grope her and pull her into me harder. She never looked back at me; never made an attempt at any contact other than the activity at hand. We kept it up when my roommate found me. He was like, "DAMN!" When Tool started playing one of their harder songs, my roommate and I head up to the mosh pit! Bye bye forever, my little firecracker.

Thangs were crazy in the pit. If you have ever gone into a mosh pit, you know; if you haven't, hey try it! ;) I made it all the way up to the center front railing, right in front of the stage, before I was forced back into the moshing mass. Tons of chicks were crowd surfing. Some of them liked all of the hands groping them, and some didn't. Most didn't complain, and a few tried to make several rounds.

After the concert, my roommate and I headed out. It ended up being a very long night of drinking and bragging at one of the local places.

A couple days later, I tried to call that little cutie. Turns out she gave me an old number. I figured that's why she looked frustrated when I told her we couldn't meet up after the concert. She gave me a bogus number early, before she realized she actually wanted to do sumfin with me. Oh well, whattaya going to do? Her ex-roommate at the old number turned out to be another hottie, but that's actually another story. ;)

Barry Bonds flashes a smile

My dad and I had great seats only 4 rows up from the dugout.  He's the big Giants fan, so I treated him to Sat's game.  From our seats (before the game) I walked down to just get a shot of the players in the dugout, but the usher held me back. I was like, "ookay".  He finally let me go down, but told me,

"Be ready. Have your camera on; have your finger on the button to take the shot. Walk down, take the shot and come right back up." 

Again, I'm wondering what's the big deal, but I comply.  I walk down to find Barry Bonds chatting. OK, so that's the big deal!  Barry is right here!  Without hesitation, I snap this shot.  Just as I'm snapping the shot, I notice Barry glance very quickly at my camera, then look back at the person he was talking to.  Besides looking at my camera for that split second, he ignored me, but I thanked him anyhow.  I then got a picture of the dugout that I originally wanted.

I didn't know Barry Bonds actually smiled at the camera during his glance until I zoomed-in on the photo on my photo-printer's preview screen!  How the hell did he time the glance and smile so well?!  I didn't even know when I was going to snap the shot myself!  Wow.  So, now I have a picture of Barry Bonds smiling at me, and all I wanted was a picture of the dugout.  lol  Hey, Mr. Bonds, thanks again; my dad loves the photo! 

Trouble tonight

Well, tonight's gathering turned out to be both a bit low key and fun. Mostly just drank at the nice rest'rant after Miriam's office Xmas happy hour party. Thangs started off pretty well, til everyone moved outside. The fun started with one of the heater gas lamps caught fire. It was like the fire was on fire, smokin up the place and looking pretty dangerous. We finally got smart enough to turn it off and try to use the other one, cep the other one wasn't working all that well.

Then, some of the girls started talking about starting up a phone sex hot line. I volunteered my sexy voice to the line too. Things proceeded quite rapidly and down hill after that. The tone went from PG13 to Mature in a matter of minutes. One of the women there had been drinking for 7 hours straight. She was not only drunk but highly horny and willing. Wearing a tiny red tank top that already showed her ample D cup cleavage and 2 sizes too small jeans she was the center of attention and she made it a point to keep it that way. She quickly got EVERYONE'S attention when she decided to flash her tits and her ass to the many senior citizens that were coming out of the NUTCRACKER play.

At that moment we all thought there would've been an indecent exposure complaint. But that wasn't the last time her bosom and her bum were exposed in the space of an hour. We saw it at least 6 times in a row, EACH! All in all it was an interesting night...mmmm D Cups!

Reggie Jackson Tried to Steal my Cab!

So, did I ever tell you about the time I met Reggie Jackson? This was back in the mid-1990's. He tried to steal my cab late one night at the Monterey Peninsula Airport. I had gotten in on a red-eye flight. I'm tired as hell. After getting my luggage, I walked outside to wait for a cab. Others from our flight did the same. After waiting about 15 minutes, I figured sumfin was up, so I went to call one of the cab companies to come on down. Within 30 seconds, three cabs show up. Apparently, the airport had a rule against cabs waiting for passengers, so they waited to be dispatched from a just a block away. Anyways, I let some elderly couples take the cabs. This left me stranded. I had to wait for the cabs to return, so I sat and waited. While I'm waiting, another flight gets in. Reggie Jackson comes out of the airport building and sits down a ways over from me. Finally a cab returns, and what does that Reggie try to do? He tries to steal it from me. He saw me waiting with my luggage, but he still walks right up to the cab and prepares to load up. I walked right up to him and looked him square in the eye with a rather unpleasant look on my face and just said with attitude, "Is that your cab?!" Well, he matches my look for half a second, then tries to play it off with something like, "Oh, this one's yours?" I'm like, "Yeah." LOL So, the cabbie recognizes him too and gets all excited. I load up my luggage and get in. The cabbie tries to get Reggie's attention to ride with us to, and I'm like, "Alright, fine, ask if he wants to share." Reggie goes to sit back down. At this point, I know he's not coming in this cab, so I tell the cab to just go. I didn't have all that far to travel, so riding with him woulda been pointless, even on better terms. Who knows, maybe the cabbie got back in time to give him a ride before another cab showed up. Whatever. I wasn't going to let anyone steal my cab that night.

"Continue on 29"

::Driving on the highway up to Napa Valley from the Bay Area::
Miriam is driving her hot red Mustang, and I'm navigating. After we get past the bridge over the delta waterway on highway 80, our Mapquest instructions tell us to take the highway 37 exit, but we know we need to be on highway 29. She's not trusting my navigating skills (based on experience and the Mapquest map) so decides to hit the earlier 29 exit. She cuts across the whole freeway and just manages to get on the exit by the graces of a fellow traveller who waved us in. Now, 29 goes thru a city called Vallejo. It's been said that Vallejo is the armpit of California. On the plus side, we are on highway 29, so the route is easy to follow. Umm, well, not quite. As anyone who knows 29 in Vallejo, there is one confusing 5-way intersection. She hits that intersection and instinctively goes the wrong way. I forgot about the intersection, so wasn't able to direct her in the correct direction in time. We are forced to make a mid-street u-turn. We get back to that intersection, only to find it does not allow us to turn in the direction we need to go. So, we go straight thru again, and make another u-turn. Finally, we can turn the right way. After all of this, she asks, "Which way now?" I innocently look at my map for reference (though we are not following the route laid out). I reply, "Just continue on 29".

Some time passes, and we finally get thru the city streets. The intersection with highway 37 is ahead. Hmmm, we really shoulda gone that way. Oh well. She asks, "Is this the right way?" Again, I innocently look at my map. We are now following the path on the map again. The directions read, Continue on 29 so, I say, "Continue on 29".

Some more time passes. We are driving down 29. Now she asks again, "Is this the right way?" At this point, it is starting to be a running gag to me. I slyly look at the map, smiling, and just read what it says, "Continue on 29".

No more than 15 minutes later, "Matt, what's the next road we take?" she asks. "Let me look at the map. Oh right, it says 'Continue on 29'!" LOL She finally gets it. So finally, we get to the hotel. It was just off of highway 29.

The next day, we head up 29 to hit up some of the wineries. "Continue on 29" as again uttered several times, but mostly in jest. All of the wineries we were interested in are on highway 29, of course.