A few weeks ago Amy’s working hours changed. She no longer works weekends, at least for the time being. So we decided to make Saturday nights our “date night.” The plan being to cruise down Ventura Boulevard until finding a cool looking restaurant. Now, there is free parking around the boulevard if you know where to find it, but the street parking is all metered. We started this weekly thing on the 22nd. We cruised for a few miles up the “strip” and saw a few interesting places, but no parking spots open. So, we stopped at the next open spot that I saw. When we got out we discovered that there was a strange looking restaurant called “Amazon” right there in front of us. We checked the meter and there was 19 minutes left. (In most of Los Angeles the meters are free after 6pm) I looked at my watch and it was 5:41pm. We took a look at the outside posted menu for Amazon and it looked good so we went in. The inside was crazy. They had an eight feet wide (my estimation) waterfall coming down from the ceiling right in the middle of the restaurant. The walls were covered with colorful rainforest paintings and the ceiling was covered with an intertwining mass of vines and forest (fake) animals. Above that the real ceiling was black with little points of light that changed position every so often. Things got even better when we looked at the menu again. Appetizers were buy one get one free until 7pm, and they had a wide wide selection of interesting entrees that even allergy prone people like us could enjoy. Before we ordered our food we were brought fresh bread with a special butter dipping sauce. The waiter even closed the front window/door for us when a lady started smoking outside. While we were waiting for our meals we had a brief scare when a motorcycle cop wrote someone a ticket in the spot right in front of my car. Eventually he left and I forgot about it. For $25 we got 2 (large) appetizers, an entree of orange chicken, and a (very large!) specialty iced tea. In the bathroom I discovered free postcards (which I’ve since discovered is a common trait in Los Angeles restaurants). As we walked out the door we found the mint tray, and it had the better chocolate mints instead of peppermint.

After getting back into the car we saw that the two spaces in front of us were a valet parking spot and a no parking zone. That is why the guy had been ticketed earlier. “what luck!” we thought of our perfect parking spot.

This past Saturday we weren’t so lucky. I chose an Italian restaurant called “Fabs Italian.” We walked in and were promptly asked where we would like to sit. The section the man brought us to had an annoying loud child running around and I eventually convinced him to seat us on the other side of the restaurant. Five minutes passed…ten..fifteen…nothing…finally a busboy came by and asked if we’d had bread and water yet. We said no and that we hadn’t seen a waiter yet either. he brought us bread and water and it was another five minutes until a waiter came around. We waited another fifteen minutes for our food. If it would have taken another minute we were prepared to leave. We were informed by the manager that he would take something off our bill because of the wait. The food itself was pretty horrible though. Amy got a minestrone soup that was bland and a salad that wasn’t too great either. I got the veal parmasan. There was very little sauce, and the veal was all rubbery and bad. We waited another eternity for the waitress to come back so we could ask for the check. It would take another fifteen minutes to get the check, and when we did the manager’s promise was not reflected on it. It was going to be more expensive than last week’s outing at Amazon. I balked and told the waitress to consult the manager because we were supposed to have a discount. After another five minutes we got the real check with a 50% discount, paid it, and got the hell out of there.

You win some and you lose some I suppose…

My computer is almost fully set up now. The new computer is up and running, as is the old one after I reinstalled windows from the setup discs that came with the new dell. Now we are running the old computer as an extra storage unit on the apartment’s network. My oldest monitor is going bad, it is vibrating and getting funky coloring. I had to buy a separate video card for this stupid new dell because the onboard one is only for one VGA. What that means now though is that I can have three monitors. So, I’m buying a new one for my primary, and I’ll use the older ones as #2 and #3.

I’ve had my car in the shop for rattling noises twice now and the noise is still there…wonder if this fits under the umbrella of the lemon law. I’m not looking forward to renting another freaking Kia Rio for two days…

I also still need to get my fender fixed…I just have to keep putting it off and putting it off…