The Odyssey: Part One - St Louis
Visited Gene on the weekend before XMas. Got there earlier than anticipated. This may be due to mistankingly taking the "wrong" way and bumbling into a path that was shorter and quicker. Doing 75-80 makes going thru Oklahoma rather short.
The weather was a bit cold - in the 30's, but when you consider that I left in the 70's/60's, it was cold.
The trip ended with me mistakenly following the "Magnolia will be the third stop after 44, turn left", and taking a left at the light. This took me into a parking lot, which was definitely NOT a street to Gene's place. After some searching it was straightened out. :)
Saturday night, we joined Brian and Karen at Chez Leon. It was a rather nice French place, where we were greeted by someone taking our coats. My first thought was: would this be one of those places where you tip everybody? And if so, how is that done? My cultured background only covered giving a 15% tip to the wait-person (which I modified to 20%, 15%-below depending on the inattentiveness, above 20% for going above).
I had to show my ignorance by asking the question regarding coat guy at the table.
Dinner was good - don't like Foi Gras, but I do like truffles. During bread time, I used my knife to spread butter, and was taken from me during cleaning. When the main course came out, the busboy gave me a knife - which turned out to be a butter knife. This was enough for me as the chicken wasn't rough; but when the waiter came out and saw what I was using, he proceeded to grab the knife out of my hand saying "you can not use this". So, Im there thinking "What the fuck are you doing? Of course I can use a knife, and I don't need your French ass cutting my meat for me." But after a few tugs, he tells me that I'm using a butter knife and not one for cutting, and I let go.
For whatever reason, the Onion Soup filled me up, and I wasn't able to finish all the food, nevermind think about a desert.
Sunday brought sleeping in, a lunch which consisted of hot chocolate thanks to the devout of Missouri (almost everything is closed on Sunday), The Two Towers, and dinner at Yia Yia's (which was quite good). The chocolate souffle I had tasted exactly like the cake brownies I make.
Much thanks to Gene for his hospitality and a fun weekend.
Oh, I also got some Warcraft III time in. That being I saw the intro and got as far as typing my name in the new player screen.
Well, as much as I wanted to hang around, it was 8pm, and I still needed to get to Chicago.
Posted by haglund at December 30, 2002 3:41 PM