what gives?

OK, so why would it be that, right when Portland becomes a focal point for food enthusiasts across the nation, the food here starts to suck? The number of mediocre-to-revolting restaurant experiences I've had over the last two weeks or so exceeds the total number for the previous year. What gives?

Granted, half of those problems stemmed from eating at a mall food court, and therefore hardly count, but the other half occurred at establishments that I have come to count on for decent grub. The first (and only one I'll mention by name) occurred a couple weekends ago at Laurelwood. The wife and I found ourselves with a free evening, so we thought it would be good to drive over to Laurelwood's new location on Sandy.

We stepped inside to be greeted by a hostess holding one of those obnoxious flashing pagers. I was a little skeptical that such measures were really necessary for a party of two, but I took it like a good complacent customer and we went to sit at the bar. I was pleased to see that they had a Fresh Hop IPA on the specials board, and I was very excited to give it a try. If only that wonderful sense of anticipation could have lasted a few moments longer, but alas, the beer was served, and it had pretty much zilch in the way of hop aroma or flavor. It had plenty of bitterness, of course, but I could have ordered literally 75% of their brew menu if that's all I was after.

The new bar looked great, but they have added TVs everywhere you look, so the Beavers game was playing in one focal point, and the Ducks game in another, so of course, rather than looking at the digs, everybody was glued to the tubes. The brewery was visible through the back of the bar, but you could really only see one of the tanks, not even close to as cool as the surgical-gallery-like view of the operation in the old place. Sigh. Another brewpub decides to go for quantity over quality. Sure enough, I looked over the bar, and they had bottles of Laurelwood beer lined up, ready to go.

Eventually, our pager buzzed and flashed, indicating that our seats were ready. I looked around the dining room adjoining the bar, expecting, as a party of 2, to be seated at a 2-seater booth or small table. Nope. Once we were able to stand in line (what was the pager for, again?) long enough to get the hostess's attention, we were led back to a larger room with a row of tables along the wall and a bunch of roughly-shaven yuppity young parents standing around a kids' area. The waiter led us to a table where a man was standing over his kid, who was sitting in a chair wiping boogers on every available surface. The waiter actually had to go up to this guy and say, "excuse me" before the guy scooped up his brat, and moved, shooting us and the waiter a dirty look. There was, I shit you not, an actual booger sitting on the table. The waiter thoughtfully placed my menu down beside it, rather than on it, then wandered off, leving me to deal with the icky booger-removal chore. Whatever, I have kids, I can handle it. Never mind that I came here without my kids, like on purpose, just to escape for a few precious hours from having to wipe anybody's anything.

I ordered the flatiron steak with parsnip mashed potatoes. The potatoes were exactly what I was hoping they would be, creamy and parsnippy. The steak came sliced, as I would have expected. The problem was that the person doing the slicing had obviously never seen a flatiron steak before, and had sliced it the wrong way, resulting, as anyone with any meatlore would expect, in very tasty, but completely tough and chewy slices of steak. A bit of chefly incompetence would not have bothered me much, had I not been seated where I was, or had I not ordered a completely different style of beer (Hooligan)that inexplicably ended up tasting precisely like the Fresh Hop Ale I had just finished. This was not a mixup, just the way it was. By design, I have to assume. I could even have tolerated that, had we not been seated right next to a couple with two kids, both of whom did all the screaming and gobbing that my kids would have done had I chosen to bring them. EVEN THIS I could have tolerated, had I not had to use the restroom, which was a serious trade down from what they had in their old place. The bathrooms in the old restaurant did not smell like pee, even on busy evenings with lots of kids. They had more than one unisex bathroom in play, as well. You could expect to just waltz in and pee with no wait, then wash up and return to your table to finish your sentence. Bah! The new place was the opposite of that, pee-stinking, single, and tucked back inconveniently from both bar and restaurant.

The service didn't measure up, either, but once I managed to chase down the waitress, tackle her to the floor, and wrest the check from her clenched fist, ignoring her screams of protest, we were able to leave.

So, I'm sad to say that I won't be going back to Laurelwood anytime soon. I anticipated great things from their new location, but all I got was this lousy nostalgia.

at long last

The longest two weeks in my recent memory will come to an end this evening: my wife will be coming home tonight.

It was not a horrendous trial parenting solo for two weeks. It was certainly a pain in the butt, it was tiring, to be sure, aggravating at times, but I've definitely been through worse.

I've compared the experience to single parenting, but I think that most single parents have it easier than I have this week and last. Usually, the kids are off to visit the other parent for part of the week. For me, no break, no scheduled time when the responsibility wasn't there. That's really what wore me down, it wasn't one day or another by itself, but the repetition of the same thing over and over with no moral support from another adult. Three days parenting on my own is a novelty. Two weeks was a pain in the ass.

The upside of all this is, now that it's almost over, my mood has improved greatly, making it that much easier to finish this last day.

Yay!

a long week or two

So my wife left yesterday on a two-week business trip out of town. Today will be my first full single-parenting day of 11.75. It has been OK so far, but I wonder how things are going to seem a week from today, after I've done the same routine for 7 days with work my only source of interaction with other adults (to the extent they can be called that).

I'm viewing it as a long slog and hoping that it might be a good thing for me and the kids to get more time together. If only I didn't have all the pesky other stuff taking up that time, like chores, cooking, cleaning, driving, shopping, etc, it would be a lot more tenable.

Either way, it is what it is. We'll get through it and move on to the next major inconvenience.

Marathon Day

Yesterday was the day from hell. I woke up before 6, got myself to work (which, in retrospect, was the most peaceful part of my day), worked my way through my glorious career, took the train back to my car, drove through the daily grind of rush hour a-holes, picked up my daughter (I just had time to change into shorts), and drove to my son's school, where the preeschool/daycare play was to be staged.

Now, I'm not the sort of parent who finds every school function just so precious I can hardly contain myself. In fact, unless my kids are on stage, I find the whole thing pretty horrifying. Maybe that makes me a bad person or a bad parent, but I think it just means that I'm saying what most of the rational people in the audience are thinking. Whatever. The whole thing would be about twice as tolerable if the following things could be eliminated:

1. Ass-murdering chairs: If I have to sit for two hours watching kids performing at their best and teachers mumblin through introductions, please consider my butt when planning the event. I don't like being in pain. When I am in pain, it makes sitting through a performance by children (which I do find valuable for them), well, painful. I don't think that's what you're going for.


2. Scheduling: I know it's hard to find a time that works for most people, but maybe school events could be kept to 30 minutes and scheduled later in the evening? Please? I need to eat. My kids need to eat. Being somewhere for 2 hours starting at 5:30 is a monumental burden on my already hectic schedule.


3. Planning: for the love of creamed corn, please tell me what you want me to do. I don't have time to guess. I can find the time to do really whatever you need me to do, whether it be making costumes or sets or just showing up at a particular time. What I can't do is guess about where I'm supposed to be or what I am suypposed to be doing. Put it in writing. I spend my days filtering out tons of extremely irrelevant data to get at the important bits. I sometimes can't shut that off once I leave work. If there's something posted on a wall somewhere, don't pretend it's of vital importance. If it's that important, write it down on a piece of paper and make sure that the piece of paper gets directly between the grasp of two or more of my fingers.

So, aside from these expected annoyances, the play went pretty well. There was supposed to be a BBQ afterward, but I hadn't planned to go to it. I had a soccer game to play right after. I was planning on being late to the game, but hoping to get there as soon as possible. I figured the kids would be able to get something to eat at the soccer place.

As the play progressed, with the little kids doing their thing before the older kids, I noticed that a bunch of people were walking around with food. That didn't seem to fit the schedule they'd posted, but whatever. As the thing came to a close, I noticed that the crowd was getting thinner and thinner. Turns out that people whose kids had already performed were heading right over and eating, then staying over where the food was. This meant that, becuase my boy's class was very last, I got to sit through everyone else's kids' performances, while they cooled their heels elsewhere, eating literally all the food.

Now again, I wasn't planning on eating there, but I found the whole thing incredible rude and inconsiderate. What was wrong with these people?

Having lived through my son's performance as a dragon who lived in a cave, I sped north to the indoor soccer facility, stopping along the way for money for the kids to get food. I got there in time to play in the second half. One half of a game is pretty unsatisfying, I have to say, especially when you lose really badly.

Once home (about 8:45 pm), I scarfed an avocado and some other food, then watered plants, cleaned up after the dog, who had found a whole package of fig newtons and eaten it, got the kids ready for bed, watered the backyard plants (have to get that drip system set up and the faucet replaced), made the boy's lunch for today, poured myself a finger of Old Forester, and flopped long enough to watch 15 minutes of Studio 60.

Then the boy was up. Then the dog needed out. Then I had to get coffee going for today.

I finally made it to bed, not too long after I should have. Then those Fig Newtons (whole grain with extra fiber, of course) started brewing in the dog's gut. She needed out. She wanted in. She needed out NOW!! She wanted in. This went on for 45 minutes or so. I finally got to shut my eyes at midnight:30, none too soon if you ask me.

Maybe if I can get in a solid 8 of sleep tonight, the whole day will seem funny to me tomorrow.