How about I talk about the weekend using bulletpoints:
**Arrived around 6pm on Friday night at the campgrounds and started off the evening with supper then retiring to our cabin to relax.
**Spent the next few hours drinking, organizing our things and painting our toenails metallic blue.
**Put on wigs and those fake bubba teeth and took pictures.
**Went down to the pavilion to play Bingo. Steven won twice. Found out he's quite competitive.
**Proceeded to drink a lot with everyone.
**Woke up Saturday morning and had breakfast before Hillbilly Aerobics. Most of our group stood on the sidelines and refused to participate, just because we could.
**Spent the afternoon getting ready for the Drink Tour.
**After having a great BBQ dinner, we performed and passed out drinks for the drink tour, then spent an hour trying to get our makeup off.
**Helped Mama and Twyla put on one of the funniest comedy drag shows I've seen them do.
**Started round two of drinking and ended the evening dancing our asses off for a couple hours.
**I passed out while everyone else stayed up and talked until 3am.
**After group pictures on Sunday morning, we packed and headed home.
Glad to be home. Unfortunately, there was no drama or crazy stories to tell. Now I get to prepare for next week's anniversary and working in Palm Springs.
For those who are bored to tears and have nothing else to do for the next 3 hours, here's almost 400 pictures from the weekend.
SRU 2007 photo album #1
SRU 2007 photo album #2
For those with only a few minutes to spare, here's a few photo's from the weekend:
Mama, Twyla (Robert and Ricky), Brian, Steven, Terry and myself are all off for a funfilled weekend at Lake Whitney for Spring Round Up. Our friend JD has a family reunion of sorts which includes close friends. It's a weekend filled with 9am Hillbilly aerobics, various tournaments of bingo, spades, texas hold'em, volleyball and horseshoes, a comedy drag show, progressive drink tour and even a dance. If we're not filling our bellies with great food, we're filling it with alcohol.
I promise to come back with tons of pictures and video's and maybe even a juicy story or two.
I hope everyone has a good weekend.
Sometimes you wake up in the moring and have to ask yourself immediately, "What the fuck?"
Then you run to the bathroom, dip a toothbrush in bleach, stick it up your nose and try to scrub your brain clean of any impurities.
I had a dream that I was trying to become sexually involved with Screech, aka Dustin Diamond from Saved by the Bell. Ok fine, I was trying everything in my power to get my hands down his pants, rip off his clothes and suck his penis. The really sad part about the whole thing is that he wasn't into me all that much and was playing really hard to get, which made me really frustrated. After a lot of persistent trying, he caved into my boyish charms and Colt model looks (shut up, it's my dream) and I finally got him naked. Much to my surprise, he had a body of a Greek god with a very hairy chest, not to mention that his dick was enormous. Funny how my conscious had to make up for the creepy face and annoying voice.
Normally at this point, I wake up from my dreams before anything purely sexual happens. Not this time. I got to experience the whole thing, including hardcore sex.
I'm just glad he didn't try to pull a Dirty Sanchez on me like he did with that one girl in his "leaked" porn video.
I would have had to stay home from work.
After spending a couple days in boarding and doggie daycare, our baby Max came home with a nasty cough. Kennel Cough to be exact. It's kind of like the common cold for dogs. Nothing can be done to prevent it other then Bordetella shots, but even those only help prevent it. They sound like they're gagging or choking all the time, eventually throwing up white foam. He started coughing two days after daycare.
He was so miserable. He would hack and cough for 5 minutes straight, then look over at me as if so say, "Please Daddy, make this stop!" Broke my heart to watch him wretch constantly, knowing there was nothing I could do until I got him into the Vet yesterday afternoon. They were nice enough to not charge me for the office visit since he obviously caught it there. Thirty three dollars later and a bottle of antibiotics and another of a cough suppressant and we were good to go. He was so upset that he couldn't run next door to play with his buddies in daycare. Whinned all the way home. One thing that was odd though and to never do around Max. Never put the stethoscope in your ears in front of him. Drives him crazy and makes him growl and bark at you.
The medications work quickly. He's barely coughing already and seems happier. He's also enjoying the mini-peanut butter sandwiches I hide the pills in.
After a few weeks of being too busy, I'm back to working out. I felt so guilty those two weeks, which I guess is good. It's the reason I was anxious to get back to my workout routine, although I think I overdid it last night and almost made myself passout. I was a little dizzy afterwards. Circuit training is a bitch.
To top the last few days off, I have a zit on my nose. I never get zits. I haven't had a honker like this since I was in highschool. It must be all the stress. Although I love my life and everything about it, the amount of stuff we have going on sometimes gets to me and causes me to want to shut down completely. I'm not complaining. I just start thinking of all that's going on and my natural instinct is to curl in the fetal position, avoid people and work, stop bathing and watch soap operas all day.
Just a lot of stuff going on in this tiny little head of mine. Brian's looking at moving within the company to become a corporate trainer, which would mean more time at home hopefully. I miss him terribly. More now since it's been two weeks since we've seen each other. When he gets back we'll have Spring Round Up this coming weekend, then Palm Springs for work and our anniversary, followed by Bear Round Up at Rainbow Ranch, then a weeks break before New York City and the infamous GB:NYC4. All of this combined with added strain and stress at work and additional work travel. Throw in all the shit floating around in my head, Max getting sick, upcoming jury duty and there you have it.
A zit. My face is an oil slick.
Do they even make Clearasil anymore?
I arrived Thursday night around 3am. My Mother still waits up for me until I arrive, no matter what time it is. I was in no mood to sit and chat and she knew it. She was tired herself. I crashed and slept until 10:30am the next morning. I haven't had a chance to sleep in that late in years.
Although the weather forecast was for a 60% chance of thunderstorms and tornado's all weekend, the weatherman probably needs to get a new job. It was 70 and partly cloudy every day. The only drawback was the 60 mph winds that almost blew you off the road or knock you off your feet. My chesthair had that windblown look all weekend.
Mom and Orval even got one of the grandkids that lives up at the main farmhouse a pony. Some man they know has about 400 of them and gave it to them for free. That's a lot of horses. I'm sure he's breeding them for glue or dogfood. The pony is a mean little fucker. They were trying to feed it Friday and it kicked the little girl in the head. It didn't hurt her much other then a slight scrape. She was lucky. I just wish I would have had my camera with me when they tried again the next day. Her and her mother went in with the pony to feed it wearing football helmets. That had to be a sight to see. I was able to get close to it, but when I tried to pet it, he violently bucked away from me.
I ran screaming like a little girl.
He's vicious I tell you.
Most of the weekend was normal, filled with visiting family and eating. Pretty much what most of my trips consist of. I learned after a few conversations at dinner that the majority of my family are die hard Republicans still despite the current administration and the war in Iraq. I tried not to hiss every time they mentioned it or talked bad about the Democrats. My Mother and I are the only two. They all even agreed with me how fucked up our President is, yet they'll still vote in another Republican before a Democrat any day. I think they're all a lost cause.
Saturday night, while driving home late that night I blew a tire on my Mustang. The road to the farm is an old gravel road. I'm not sure what I hit, but I'm just lucky the car didn't go off into a ditch. Traveling at any decent speed on these roads is difficult let alone having a tire blow out. By the time I made it to the farmhouse, my tire was shredded. I got to spend Sunday morning in a Walmart having two new tires put on and throwing a couple hundred dollars out the window.
The only fun part was getting to be driven around in this old truck all day. This is Mom's husbands little baby.
I was still a little miffed about the whole ordeal and decided to go to the local coffee shop to get online and relax with a cup of Joe. While sitting there, in walked a man and sat in front of me. I didn't see his face. Within a few minutes, he had Manhunt up on his computer. I was intrigued and yes a little nosey. When he turned around, I noticed that he was the only gay guy I knew in my hometown. We used to work out together during the late 80's. On a trip back home about 8 years ago, we both realized that the other was gay and decided to have a romp in the hay. He's one of those hunky, redneck, midwestern type of fella's that lives on a farm and collects antiques. I remember him having the biggest dick I had ever seen up until that point.
While he's sitting cruising the chatrooms, two more guys walked up and joined him. More homo's! Then a lesbian couple. Then another gay couple, one whom I recognized from my old college. Before you know it, there was a whole gaggle of gays sitting right there in my tiny little hometown coffee shop. I was totally blown away. My little town is growing up. Before you know it, they're going to have their own Gay Pride Parade. It might have only one float, but it will be a start.
When I walked past them to go to the restroom, he looked up and smiled again. I just non-chalantly walked over, leaned down and kissed him on the cheek and said, "Hi there, honey. Good to see you again." He recognized me finally. He's aged some and now has a shaved head and grey goatee rather then the blonde head of hair and huge handlebar mustache. The rest of the crowd didn't really know what to make of me.
I decided to head to the mall and purchase a new manpurse after that. While standing there making my purchase, not one but TWO gay couples I had never seen before walked past me and smiled.
But I thought that I was the only gay in the village!! For those who watch Little Britain, you'll know what that means.
The other highlight of my trip happened on the way back to Dallas. While driving through the wonderful state of Kansas, I passed a state trooper who was going almost 10 miles under the speed limit. Two minutes after I passed him he turns his lights on. The bastard! Don't get me wrong. I don't talk bad about the Police. My Father was a Ccaptain on the local police department. Two Uncles were detectives and 3 Cousins were patrolmen on the same force. I never got a speeding ticket growing up. I have nothing but respect for them and hate to hear people bag on them. I know not all of them are perfect and some are crooked as hell, but not all of them are bad.
Luckily, he was hot as hell. Porn hot. I thought that he was going to ticket me for speeding past him or something even though I was only going 5 miles over the speed limit. Oh no. He told me that I didn't use my turn signal when moving in front of him from the other lane.
You've GOT to be shitting me.
After batting my eyelashes at him he gave me only a warning.
I still didn't get to fullfill my cop fantasy though.
I'm back from a grueling trip to the Northwest. Flying almost 4 hours with a 2 hour time change, wears me the fuck out. With this trip comes a lot of work for me in the future and possibly more travel, which I'm totally thrilled and stoked about. *insert sarcasm*
After working my ass off today trying to get caught up, I get to hop in my car around 4pm and drive 9 hours back home to Nebraska! Yippee! *insert more sarcasm*
I'm actually excited about the thoughts of going home to see family. I haven't been home since last Christmas. I'm just tired and wanting to sleep constantly so the thoughts of getting on the road doesn't sound like much fun. I'm ready for some tender loving care from my Mommy.
Once I get back next Monday, I have a few days before Brian arrives and we all head out for Spring Round Up weekend. We help put on the Mama and Twyla show and we camp with the rest of our friends at Lake Whitney. Lots of drinking, volleyball, bingo, cards and hopefully more sleeping.
We get back that Sunday afternoon and I'll have five days before I fly out to Palm Springs for work. I'm heading into town a few days early so Brian and I can celebrate our 3 year anniversary on May 5th! Can you all believe that it's been 3 years already?
Time flies when you're in love.
I'll be heading out here in a couple hours for Seattle. Work is sending me up there for a 6 hour meeting on Tuesday. I would love to meet some area bloggers for drinks or dinner, but I'm not sure what my schedule is going to be like. Often we spend our evenings having dinners and drinks with the client. I'm usually the last person they tell any of this privledged information. I find out an hour before we're to meet. Hopefully I'll have my late afternoons and evenings to myself.
Oh, well. I get to be out of town for a couple days and spend it in one of my favorite cities. I'm hoping to be able to check out some of the local glass galleries if I have the chance. Unfortunately, the weather is cold and rainy.
I know. The forecast shocked the hell out of me too.
Here are some of the more finalized details for GB:NYC4. The main venue is new this year. We thought we'd try something a little different and with more space. We also added a few other things as alternative activites for anyone who wants to join such as an afternoon in Central Park or a night out at the theater. Brunches, Lunches and Dinners are not planned and left open for everyone to do their own thing. Please start spreading the word:
Friday, May 25th
What: Bloggers, Fans and Stalkers Meet and Greet
Where: Therapy on the 2nd floor.
348 West 52nd Street, New York, New York 10019. Phone: 212.397.1700
Time: 9:00pm until whenever we decide to stop
Saturday, May 26th:
Where: Sheep Meadow (aka Bear Hill) at Central Park
West side, mid-Park from 66th to 69th Streets
Time: 1:00pm
Why: Watch the Roller Disco Skaters, eat lunch, drink and enjoy the sun, weather permitting. (No alcohol, but I hear you may smuggle it in through cleverly designed sprite bottles)
Where: The Eagle on the Rooftop
554 West 28th Street (between 10th & 11th Ave)
http://eaglenyc.com/
Time: 10pm
**For those interested, Crash is thinking of having a Night Out at the Theater for those looking for a possible alternative to The Eagle. Contact info is on his blog.
SUNDAY:
Where: The Dugout for the Bear Beer Bust and hopefully followed by Joe.My.God’s infamous Blarp (Blogger Bar Hop). I'm still needing to work with Joe to see if this is something that we can do after hanging out at The Dugout.
185 Christopher St New York, NY 10014-2815 (212) 242-9113
Time: Meet between 5-6pm at The Dugout. Blarp to follow *crossing fingers*.
Brian did something interesting last night. For the first time since we met almost 3 years ago, he went back and read my blog prior to May 5th, 2004. It seems that he's only read everything since the day we started dating and didn't have any sort of interest in what was going on before.
I have trouble re-reading anything that I've written. Even some of my favorite post that I've written, I will sit there cringing at my writing or how I worded something or how stupid I sounded. I'm my own biggest critic.
Brian was treated to the early days of the blog. The days when I hadn't found my "voice" yet. I felt as if I didn't know how to write or what to say. I filled many days with silly meme's, jokes or stupid shit I found on the internet. He said he noticed a drastic change in writing style in January of '04. Maybe it was a New Years resolution to write better and not sound like a complete dork. I'm still not the best writer in the world, but the difference between then and now is drastically different.
Please, do NOT be tempted to go read the early days. It's painful.
Brian also got to read about the guys I was interested in, Mall Guy and Norman Guy. He read about how much of my life was pretty boring and revolved around sitting with friends at Happy Hour. He also found pictures of me when I was a whopping 135 pounds and looked sickly.
I had very little true happiness and any sort of motivation back then. I seem to have grown up a lot since the day we met. I'm truly happy, life is drastically different, I'm healthier, no longer partying and I'm weighing in at 175. Love does make you gain weight.
Some day, when I'm not feeling vulnerable, I might open up those old post and re-read them. I'm sure I'll come across some stories that will bring me to tears or cause me to laugh my ass off. Some will bring back good and bad memories. Maybe that's why I don't go back and read them.
Do you ever hit the rewind button on your life and see what you wrote during that time?
Ok, it's confirmed. We are having a GB:NYC4 on Memorial Day weekend.
I'm sorry if this conflicts with some peoples holiday plans, but it's absolutely impossible to try and pick a date that 100 people can agree to. We're so busy this year with The Ranch, trips home to see our Mama's and other vacations that it doesn't leave us very many options.
We're still working out details of when we'll be flying to NYC, so I'm not going to set the date yet for the initial meeting. If we can get the flights we want on Friday, it will be Friday the 25th. If we have to fly out on Saturday morning due to limitations, it will be Saturday night the 26th. There will be other times that we will be meeting such as The Dugout on Sunday afternoon for the beer bust and possibly a night at The Eagle.
We'll be finalizing dates and times hopefully today. I'll provide more information once I know more. Using miles prohibits you from flying certain days and weekends so we're having some difficulty in geting what we want. Currently the flights are scheduled for Saturday morning. We're seeing about purchasing flights instead so we can fly any time we want.
START SPREADING THE WORD!!
We will also be canceling our trip to San Francisco during Pride. After finding out that it would take double the amount of frequent flyer miles to go, ONLY because it's a popular weekend, we've decided that we would rather go to San Francisco and enjoy the city on a low key weekend instead. This will happen either the weekend before pride or the first week or two in July. We feel bad that we're going to miss seeing some bloggers during Pride, but we've worked hard to save all these points from Brian's travel (there has to be SOME perks from him being away 4 days a week) and would hate to use a huge portion of them up just on one trip, rather then being able to take 3 trips instead. Part of me hates AA and their precious frequent flyer miles. They give you all these miles, make you Platinum members, then make it nearly impossible to use them.
Come back for finalized dates and times.
You will see a change while commenting. After 3 1/2 years, I've finally had to turn on comment monitoring and approve all comments before posting. It's taken this long for someone to leave ignorant, mispelled, hate filled comments with bad grammar. Some people didn't think that my piece about dinner at Tradicion was appropriate.
I'll say this. This is my blog and I'll write what I want. Because of the fact that this is my blog, I don't allow anyone to say what they want. If the comments are constructive, thought provoking or funny, I welcome them all. I'm open for debating an issue, telling you that I think you're wrong, learn something from what you have to say or laugh at your sense of humor. I will not use this blog as a place for people to leave hateful remarks, especially if they can't spell the word Taco. I kid you not, they spelled it Toco. Not once, but twice. First time I thought it was a typo.
Some people say to leave up their comments for others to ridicule. My blog is a happy place for the most part and I plan on keeping it that way. It just sucks that it's taken this long for me to have to moderate comments. The only time I received a hate filled comment that I kept was when I wrote about David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam killer. He has a Christian website that he has someone run for him. It seems that this person let David know what I wrote and posted a response from him on my blog. After checking my stats and doing some research, yes it was legitimate.
Who knows, maybe he'll comment again. At least HE knows how to spell.
For the past three years, I sort of hosted a blogger meeting in NYC. GB:NYC we called it. It started off as nothing more then me flying up to New York to meet a couple of bloggers. Before you know it, word had spread that "bloggers were meeting" and we ended up having around 60 people show up. Some from as far as Arizona and California. It was a great chance to meet the people you've become friends with after reading them for so long.
The next year I was dating Brian and we decided to do it again due to a huge response from people. I think the 2nd year was the largest with almost 80 or more people. Even Fans and friends of bloggers showed up to party like rockstars. The third year was slightly less people, but not only did we have a Friday event, but we put together an impromptu event Saturday Night and a mini one on Sunday afternoon.
I seem to have lost contact with a few bloggers. Maybe we don't read each other as much or as often anymore. I'm still friends with most, but we don't have the contact that we used to. Some have just completely disappeared. I know things change.
After writing numerous times about an upcoming GB:NYC this year, which would be number 4, I didn't get any response or emails except from one person. We figured that most people weren't interested in it. Normally we're planning things in January or February.
So instead of having a GB:NYC, Brian and I decided to not put one together. We're heading to San Francisco for Pride. There's going to be a blogger meeting of sorts on that initial Friday night at 8 o'clock.
Now it seems that people are showing interest all the sudden. Unfortunately, they're contacting a fellow blogger buddy of mine and not me directly for details. I just wish we had known a few months ago. Traveling all over is difficult due to Brian being gone every single week in San Diego. Wherever we travel to, he must fly from there. With the amount of days off I have left, I'm limited on the number of trips we can take this year. They're pretty much planned out through November.
Now I'm really torn. Could we throw something together? We could fly up Friday afternoon and fly back Sunday night and wouldn't have to take any time off from work. We have tons of frequent flyer miles and even more points for Marriott so the trip would be cheap. I'll have to talk it over with the hubby and see if it's something we can do.
If we do, it's a matter of when? End of May? June is totally out. July?
If we can't I'm sure there would be someone there that could take it over.
Shall I talk about the weather first? What the fuck? Last week we were walking around in short sleeves and shorts and even that was too much clothing. Something happened in the middle of this week. The temperature started to drop, clouds rolled in and by Saturday when we were all walking around The Deep Ellum Arts Festival bundled up like it was winter. Then, it started to snow! In April! In Texas!!
The world is definately coming to an end.
I should back track and mention that Friday night after seeing the movie The Reaping (it's a renter), a group of us went to Catalina Room for dinner. I was too pooped to do anything else, so I crashed really early while Brian and Steven stayed up and watched a movie together. Saturday morning, we called Steven and Mama to see if they would like to go to the Deep Ellum Arts Festival. After having a horrible breakfast in the heart of Deep Ellum, Mama, Steven, Brian and I all tried to enjoy the festival, but it was just too damn cold. Plus the artwork was really bad and those poor bands playing in 40 degree weather had no one sitting there listening to them. I was suffering from some kind of exhaustion I think, so later that afternoon, I took a long nap while Mama and Brian had a playdate.
That night, Steven, Stacie, Mama, Mark, Brian and I all had tickets to see insult comic Lisa Lampanelli. She's called the Queen of Mean. If you're easily offended, this is not a woman you want to go see or watch. We of course, loved it and laughed our asses off so much my tummy still hurts today. After an evening like that we decided to go out for a few beers since it had been ages that we stepped foot in a bar.
We had brunch Sunday and then headed to Easter in the Park. Since the weather was still kind of cool, the symphony didn't perform and the crowd was a quarter of what it normally is. We watched the Pooch parade and then headed home for a nap before our guests arrived.
Jason and Matt arrived promptly at 4:30 just like they said they would. Jason is moving up to Ohio to be with Matt. Dallas was on their way through so they spent the night with us. First off, let me just say that these two guys are the sweetest. I have yet to meet a blogger I didn't like. I just wish we had more time to spend with them then just one evening.
We headed over to The Door for a few drinks with The Bears, then out to dinner for some good Mexican food. Someone had mentioned an Easter Bonnet/Basket contest and auction at The Round Up and before you know it we found ourselves there as well, slamming a few more beers before crashing around 11pm. Hopefully we'll get the chance to see them again in the future.
A chicken and an egg are lying in bed. The chicken is leaning against the headboard smoking a cigarette, with a satisfied smile on its face. The egg, looking a bit pissed off, grabs the sheet, rolls over, and says, "Well, I guess we finally answered THAT question.
I made a boo boo. A bad boo boo. Not the kind of "I made a boo boo in my pants" sort of boo boo, but the "Oh Shit! I forgot Jury Duty yesterday!" sort of boo boo.
Here I am, Mr. Anal McStickupmybutt with a Crack Palm Pilot that has everything in it but the times I need to take a shit or the reminders to call my Mommy and I can't even remember to be at the court house on a specific date at 8:30am in the morning. Where in the hell was my head at?
Obviously up my ass.
Luckily, the government in their infinite wisdom has better things to do then to send the Po Po after me and force me to be Bubba's bitch at a "Fuck Me Up The Ass" Prison. All I had to do was to send a letter of apology and explanation to the court, asking for them to re-schedule.
Do you think it was a bad idea to provide them the dates I'm going to be out on vacation or the days I'm out of town for work this month?
Maybe I should just send them all the dates in my Palm Pilot.
In other bad boo boo news, it seems that there will be NO Easter this year. (Do not open around children, pets, expectant mothers or people with heart problems)
Tell the kiddies.
I love this time of year. Not because of the wonderful weather to be able to sit on a patio eating dinner with friends, taking weekend trips or up and coming pool parties. This is the season of the local Art Festivals. I've already sat down on the computer googled all the local Street and Art Festivals in the area and added them to my Palm. There's a few that I'm not going to be able to attend, due to scheduling conflicts. April, May and June are busy months for us. The majority of these Festivals are April through June. We've got Spring Round Up, Rainbow Ranch Bear Weekend, Pride in San Francisco, Homer's Visit, trip home to Nebraksa, plus weekends going to see Lisa Lampinelli and Spamalot during those months.
I'm not sure what it is that attracts me to these things. Most of the artwork is either overpriced or just out of my league. I can't afford $2000 paintings or pieces of glass. Often at these things the artwork is hit or miss. Some of it's complete crap. I tend to be an art snob, so I need to be careful. The weather is usually either too hot or it's raining. It's rare during this time of year when the weather is perfect. The food isn't all that good and it's expensive as hell. The crowds can be unbearable. I hate people with strollers.
I think what attracts me to them is because for almost 8 years, I did the Craft Fair Circuit as a glass artist. From April through August, we practically stopped blowing glass and spent many weekends in a new city, setting up our booth to sell our wares. You would meet the most interesting Artist and spend your days doing nothing but talking to customers about your work, explaining how it's done and watching them oooh and ahhh. Eventually, hoping that they would fork out a few hundred dollars for a piece of your work. You always knew that your work went to a good home, someone who appreciated it.
Although the days were long and tiring, there was such a sense of vibrancy and excitement at these Fairs. It also helped that over the course of 5 months, we would make enough money to basically pay for our studio supplies and various other expenses. The rest of the off season, money came in from gallery or personal sales.
It wasn't about the money, although the money was good. Very good in fact. You could make enough money in one weekend to pay for your living expenses for a couple months. I just miss showing my work and talking about it. Once you get me going, I could barely stop.
The Art Fairs give me a my chance to reminisce again.
Plus, I get to add more glass to my collection and possibly pick up a drawing, painting or photography print. Not that we have any space left on our walls or shelves.
Friday night, Brian headed out to The Ranch to meet his parents who decided they needed to get out of town for a few days. Normally, both of us were going to drive up early Saturday morning, but he decided to go up Friday night so he could have some extra time with them. I decided to stay behind one more night to relax after being gone for work for four days. The thoughts of being gone an entire weekend only a two days after getting back wasn't a pleasant one.
After relaxing a little bit, Steven called me and we decided to grab a bite of dinner then maybe watch a movie or just hang out before I headed to bed early. After a couple failed attempts to find a Mexican restaurant that wasn't packed or not being able to find any parking, we decided to check out a new place right by our Condo, called Tradicion, located in Dallas on Lemmon Avenue. Just in case someone searches for this restaurant, I want them to find this review. The restaurant is so new, their website is nothing but a name, no content. From what we experienced, they probably shouldn't waste a dime on the website.
Once seated by an overly cheerful hostess, a young man walked up and sat down some chips and said, "Chips!", then sat down some salsa and said, "Mild Salsa!", sat down some more salsa and proclaimed, "Hot Salsa!". Ok, this was all cute and all, but then he proceeds to sit down a salt shaker and said, "Salt!" and did the same with the pepper. Why no salt and pepper or sugar caddies were on the table, I have no idea. Thank God he told us what the salt and pepper were, because I would have been confused if he hadn't.
We ordered Margarita's. They informed us that they only have Tea and Soda's. No liquor license yet. Oh, joy. Once we received our Tea, the waitress asked if we were ready to order. The menu was not what we expected. First off, none of the food titles were in English. Not knowing much Spanish, it made it quite difficult to know what exactly the food was. I decided on the Halibut with a Veracruz sauce. The girl had no clue as to what I ordered. I had to point to it on the the menu. The same thing happened when Steven ordered the Sea Bass. The girl obviously hadn't read the establishments own menu. No side dishes came with our $18 fish. You had to order them separately at $4-5 a piece.
By this point, we're already a little irritated at no alcohol and an incompetent wait staff. While we sat there, we watched other patrons make funny faces at their food. The guys behind us were priceless. We ordered some queso which was topped with Chorizo. We couldn't eat it due to the amount of red grease that was swimming on top of the cheese. When the guy asked us how it was, we shrugged our shoulders and didn't say much.
We sat there for 30 minutes after that, while every single worker in the restaurant came over and asked us if we wanted more chips. We had already had 4 baskets. We wanted our food. By this time, we're extremely irritated. Normally, I would have walked out at this point but I decided to give them a chance. While I was in the bathroom emptying out my 5th glass of tea due to waiting on our food, I found out that they took our food to the table next to us. Technically, once food has been placed on a table, it's against health code violations to set that same food on another table.
They did it anyway.
They placed a big plate with a slice of halibut on it. On the side was some lettuce with a small orange puffy tortilla with some sort of sauce in it. Steven's looked exactly like mine despite ordering completely different dishes. There was no sauce. Nothing, but about a quarter inch of brown grease on the plate. We both took one bite of our lukewarm fish and shoved our plates back. I've never tasted anything so vile. To top it all off, we sat there another 10 minutes and our side dishes never even showed up!
I motioned for someone to come over and told him the story of the evening from the beginning. He wanted us to talk to the owner. Once the owner came out (he took his sweet time), I gave him a recap of the evening once more. He at one point apologized for this "picture that I had painted". Excuse me, but I didn't paint a picture. What had happened was the truth. We told him it was the worst service and the most horrible food we've ever had tasted. We also let him know that we would never come back to his restaurant and I said I would make sure none of our friends did the same.
He kept apologizing, saying that it was only their 2nd night open. Well, then they shouldn't have opened. On the way out the door, his wife or whatever made the grave mistake of asking us how our meal was. I gave her a quick 30 second recap. She was almost in tears, following us outside, begging us to come back in so they could make it right or to give us a free lunch. Why in the fuck would I want to go through all of that again?
I give it two weeks.
I shouldn't have ever been a waiter and worked at some incredible restaurants in my time. I expect good service and good food. If I get something better then that, it's a bonus.
Honestly, I wish I would have recorded us secretly as we gave the manager what for. We had lost our appetite after that, plus we were full on chips, salsa and tea. We went home and watched a movie instead.
Saturday morning I headed to The Ranch. It was a nice getaway, although we ended up working our asses off again. I have a feeling we'll be doing that a lot until we get our spot just like we want it.
Now I'm back at work and I was informed that they need my office for someone more important. I'm going back into a cube.
I might just have to cropdust the place just out of spite.
Brian headed out this morning to catch his flight. We've already talked to each other twice on the phone.
