DeToqueville Returns

I just returned from a weekend in the City of Light with Finbar. It was nice to get out of Dodge for a while (even if it was only to the entirely inappropriately nicknamed City of Light) and very good to see Finbar again. I hate this long distance crap.

He's staying with his family for this short stint. The whole family is insane. Sometimes it's good crazy, sometimes it isn't-- but it's always interesting. Luckily SFB wasn't home for the weekend. That alone made things about 1000% BETTER than I expected it to me.

But I digress. I drove up on Thursday afternoon, about a four hour drive if you stay anywhere in the vicinity of the speed limit. If you're Finbar (otherwise known as "Ol' Leadfoot"), you can make the drive in about 3 hours and 15 minutes. I hate to drive more than anything. I hate hate hate it. I don't even like to drive around the city and long-distance driving lost its charm about 2 weeks after I got my driver's license. If I could get away with it, I would not own a car and would never drive. This drive wasn't too bad as those things go, but it was very depressing-- grey skies the whole way and drizzle most of the way. The further north I drove, the fewer leaves remained on the trees until by the time I exited the highway in the City of Light it looked like I'd been travelling in a time machine and ended up three weeks in the future.

The last hour or so of the drive I'd entertained myself by imagining the moment that I would arrive at Casa Finbar and fly into his arms for a humongous hug and kiss. I rounded the corner at the top of the street and... the only person at home was his younger sister, Sam. Not that I wasn't happy to see her. I like her a lot, but she isn't the person I wanted to kiss. It turned out that Finbar had gone to work out so that he would be free on Friday (his normal workout day). Well... OK.

I hadn't been sleeping well all week because I stayed up super late last weekend and messed up my sleep cycle. By the time Finbar made it home, I was too tired to go anywhere for dinner and couldn't even stay awake until he'd finished unpacking his gym bag and starting a load of laundry.

Friday, Finbar went to work and I ran some errands. Thanks to his father's intervention, the optometrist thinks that Finbar and I are married. But I got my glasses for about 1/3 off, so that's OK, I guess (plus it will be true eventually), but now I feel like I can never ever go back there again because I'm such a bad liar (which, more than any moral squickiness, is why I don't lie on principle) and they surely saw right through me and now they think I'm crazy. But then, maybe I'm exaggerating. *wink*

We made plans to go out with Sam and her SO for dinner that night. I chose the restaurant based solely on the nuclear-grade chocolate brownie and the kick-ass chocolate martini from the dessert menu and the fact that there was a 90+ minute wait was no deterrent whatsoever. Finbar and I left before Sam was even finished getting ready so that we could get on the waitlist. By the time Sam and her SO showed up, there were only 40 minutes or so left to wait. Sam's SO (I'll have to think of a nickname for him) started hemming and hawing about the wait. Apparently he had a friend in from out of state who was heading back the next day.Now, they knew where we were going. This place ALWAYS has a 90+ minute wait at the dinner hour, regardless of the day of the week. So it's not like they didn't know that this would happen. But more importantly, if he wanted to go out with his friend, he should have just gone out with his friend. We didn't invite them, they invited us. If he would have been upfront and just told us that he had other plans for the evening, there would have been no hard feelings. As it was, I was a little insulted that he was basically saying "well, there's some place I'd rather be, sooooo, could we hurry this up?" Ah well, he's normally a nice kid, so I'm sure he didn't intend it to come across that way.

Sam and Co. took off to meet the out of state friend, so it was just me, Finbar, and chocolate martinis at dinner. That was more than sufficient. In fact, I wish I would have skipped straight to dessert.

Saturday we went out to the small farm that we visit every fall to buy apples, cider, and pumpkins. I love this trip. It's a little more than a half hour along country roads lined with trees that are just explosively brilliant. No matter what the leaves look like in other parts of town, these trees are more colorful and hang onto their leaves longer. The farm runs a small shop starting in September and continuing until around Thanksgiving. The same woman is always behind the counter. It never changes-- a small oasis of timelessness.

Except that now it is changing. Not the farm-- it looks exactly the same as it always did. But the area around the farm is more and more developed. Over the past few years, you would turn down the road and see one or two new houses being built up near the tree line. But this year there were two separate housing developments with identical houses clustered in newly cleared areas. The little path that we used to pull off at for a short walk is gone. The farm no longer looks out across a wild meadow-- one of the two new developments is there. But the apples still taste the same and the cider is still tart and so apple-y that you half expect the drink to crunch in your mouth.

Saturday night we went to our very favorite Indian restaurant where we ordered items that aren't on the actual menu (mmmmmm, pakora khadi...) and witnessed a display of jackassery that made me want to strangle the table next to us.

This restaurant is owned and run by an Indian family and they usually have one or two people waiting tables who are freshly arrived in the States and struggling with the americanized English a bit. This is not a huge deal-- the other, more experienced waiters or the manager are usually hovering in the background and will step in if the new guy gets in over his head or gets too confused. If the customers are just a little bit patient, then everything usually works out just fine.

Just after we were seated and received glasses of water, the new guy brought a drink to the table next to us-- four middle aged people dressed from head to toe in black. Not goth black, more like pretentious artist black. The drink was in a martini glass, but was obviously not a martini. He placed the glass in front of one of the women. She looked at it like a cockroach was floating in it and in a voice that one might normally use to yell at a disobedient dog said "No. Whis.key. Sou.r." The new guy stammered something about yes, it is a whiskey sour. And it did look like the right color. I'm guessing that he got confused and poured it in the wrong glass. Call me crazy, but I don't think the Whiskey Sour is a traditional Indian drink. Anyway, she was having nothing of any whiskey sour in a martini glass and ordered him to (and I swear I am not making this up) "Take it away."

Some people don't understand the concept of the difference between being a
server and being a servant.

If it had ended at that, we likely would have forgotten the whole thing shortly afterward. Unfortunately for the poor waiter, things continued in the same vein for the rest of the evening. Unfortunately for the rest of the people trying to dine in the restaurant, it continued at a rather loud volume. They wanted to order something without any spice in it. Not something mild. Like any Indian restaurant, this place has a sliding scale of spiciness-- in this case, from 1 to 5, 1 being mild (and it's verrrry mild, practically no spice at all), 5 being hot. How hot seems to depend on how much they think you mean it. We usually order everything at a 3, but we joke that there's "Indian 3" and "Caucasian 3". If we order anything that's not actually on the menu, we usually get a much hotter 3 than if we order something "mainstream" like Rogan Josh. Anyway, the waiter (and by this point, they'd very astutely switched to one of the more experienced waiter and sent new guy to another section) started to explain the sliding spiciness scale to them. They cut him off (rude) and using the "bad dog" voice told him that they didn't want any spice at all. Why on Earth did they come to an Indian restaurant?? Then they didn't like the small copper warmers on the table. It was one thing after another until the poor waiter hardly knew whether he was coming or going any more.

In between abusing the server and staff, they talked at the top of their lungs about work. How they're sick of this policy and angry that they're only getting 2 weeks paid vacation this year instead of 30 days. You could totally have played Buzzword Bingo by listening to this conversation. By the end of dinner, I wanted to walk over and pour that freaking whiskey sour (which, by the way, the manager re-made and poured into the proper glass-- and she never touched it) right down each one of their black turtlenecks. Of course, I would have needed more than one whiskey sour to accomplish this, so it's just as well.

Following a minor skirmish over Sweetest Day presents, we went to the only good coffeeshop in the whole city, which was recently re-opened. Seems like the previous owner didn't like to pay his taxes... Anyhoo, it turns out that one of the baristas (is this word applicable to men as well as women?) was a guy that Finbar went to engineering school with. Seems he's unemployed (or, I suppose, underemployed), too. While they were shooting the breeze about their mutual job searches, I made eyes at a rather scrumptious-looking pumpkin pie in the window. Along about the time that Finbar launched into the story of the armadillo on the front stoop, I gave into the temptation and while I was waiting for them to plate it and douse it with whipped cream, this blond chick squeezed inbetween me and Finbar and goosed him.

Turns out that Sam and the SO (he STILL needs a nickname!) had come to the same coffeeshop. They joined us for an evening of howling laughter over the insanity of the family. I was really glad because it helped me to kind of get over my pique at the (possibly unintentional) slight from the night before and leave The City of Light with a better impression of Sam's SO.

I capped off the weekend with Sunday breakfast at my favorite greasy spoon and a shopping trip to Wegmans (oh, lord, how I miss Wegmans. How I hate Giant Eagle!) for some staples. Not to let the weekend go unspoiled, Finbar and I then proceeded to pick a fight with each other in the driveway.

I intended to make a dramatic exit, all tires squealing and "Thelma and Louise"-style UP YOURS, but let's face it, I'm not any good at that playing games stuff. With me, you get what you see and you see what you get. I'm generally very direct in my personal relationships. I ended up turning around and coming back to make amends and ended up watching the end of the football game (I. Hate. Football. The things we do for love...) as a sort of unspoken truce. I don't like to have unfinished business hanging over us-- we have a general rule that we don't go to bed angry with each other (not that it never gets broken) or that, barring that, we at least try to call a truce before we go our separate ways. It mostly works... mostly. Sometimes it means putting things on the back burner that are going to end up boiling over eventually anyway, and then it backfires. I didn't want to drive the four hours back and then spend the week agonizing over it. I guess I'll give up a little bit of my dignity for the sake of keeping the peace over the distance.

It was good to get away, even if it was only for a few days. It was better to see Finbar, even if it was only for a few days. Hopefully, the big biodiesel job will open up and he can come back to me for awhile.