Slightly awkward customer service moment

There is a restaurant by my office called Costa Vida.  They do burritos, enchiladas, salads, etc.

I found an old frequent diner card in my desk for the place recently, and stuck it in my wallet.  We went over there today, when I went to pay, I gave them the card.  The girl at the register looked at it and said "We haven't used those in a long time.  Are you from out of town?"  Then she took my card, charged me for the meal, and that was the end of it.

I laughed about it after I walked off, but it was a little weird.  They have a new frequent diner card, it's a plastic card, like a Subway card.  She didn't offer to start me in a new card, no follow up comment about my seemingly foreign nature, just took my money and moved on. You'd think that something would have happened at that point...  What might I have done?  Pulled out a new frequent diner card, and gotten the equivalent points on it for the stamps I had on the old card.  Maybe a "see you again soon" or a "thanks for coming in."  Certainly not a "are you from out of town?"  (Would it have made a difference if I was from out of town?)

Now I don't know about you, but I am on the fence about Costa Vida.  It's easy to get to from my office, but they are not in a great location if you are just tooling around, mostly because they don't have good parking at all.  Tara's been disappointed with the food the last couple of times she has been there.  It's not like there aren't 30 other choices close by.

I got a steak salad today.  No dressing, extra pico de gallo.  It was ok, I am glad I didn't get any dressings on it.  Just ok, not anything really special.  Maybe I would have liked it more if I had been in from out of town.  :)

Trying for better tomato plants

I've been sick for a while.  More on that later, but being sick, I'm a bit behind getting the garden ready for the year.  Last year we didn't do much with the garden, mostly because of all the trips across country.  

I got a bunch of tomatoes started a couple of weeks ago, and have had a light on them to get them growing properly.  Unfortunately, the light was coming from the side, and the plants on the left side were not doing well.  Each set of columns are a different type of tomato, so I want to get those ones on the left going...

Tonight I built an adjustable light harness for the plants.  I might have over engineered it a bit, in a few ways.  (That shouldn't be a surprise too anyone...)  Now the light hits all the plants mostly evenly, I expect the plants in the middle to still grow faster, but hopefully the ones on the left do a bit better.

Wings

I like wings.  We only have one really decent wing place here in town, but it's about 15 miles away, which is well outside my standard 2-3 mile travel radius from my house.  (Further out takes more effort to go...)

Anyway, they guy who owns this place tried to open a place near my office last year.  I went a lot.  (Maybe too much)  He closed down the place at Christmas time, leaving the other store opened.  Now I'm stuck dreaming about wings that I'm too lazy to drive up and get. 

This would be a totally different story if someone would just invent a transporter technology.  (Duff's...)

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

Last weekend, the city and the univserity co-sponsered a public Easter Egg hunt.  Normally, we have our own egg hunt here at the house, but we decided to try it.

We got there, and there were tons of people there.  They had three egg hunt areas for under 3, 4-7, and 7-10 year old kids.  I took Noel over to the under 3 crowd, we sat and watched for about 20 minutes, about every minute or so, some little kid made a break for the field of eggs, their parent chasing after them.  (No pictures, I didn't want my iPad in that giant crowd of people.)

Noel and I were at the front, about 10 feet from the eggs.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but when they let everyone in, we suddenly had dozens and dozens of parents swarming us.  Some grandma was yelling at everyone to let her through, because she was in front.  I ended up picked Noel up and pulling her out of there, so she didn't get trampled.  Things would have been fine, if it were not for all the aggressive parents.  I had figured we would have been fine with just two Easter Eggs for Noel.  One kid gave her one, then another lady put two eggs on the ground for her, by the time she bent down to get them, some other kid ran up and swiped one of them.

It was chaos, but nothing compared to the older kids.  They were on the intercom over and over telling people things would start at 10:30.  Older kids were supposed to be limited to 5 eggs each.  At about 10:15, there was a dam break in the older kids ranks, kids started swarming the field in one section, then they all went.  They got on the intercom to tell everyone that it wasn't time, and they should put the stuff back, but it was too late.  The 4-7 year old kids, on seeing the older kids make a break for it, also went.  30 seconds and thousands of eggs and prizes were gone.

We had gotten passes for the baseball game that day, and had about 2 hours before it started, so I took the kids to the cafeteria at the dorms.  Emma and Ruth at giant waffles.  I think they were all impressed at the food.

By the time we got to the baseball game, some of the kids were tired, we only made it half way through the game, but stayed long enough for them to all get to eat a giant freezer pop.

Next year, we're going back to a private Easter egg hunt...

Look Dad! StormTroopers!

Adam and I went to something called "Big Guy / Little Guy"  at the library a couple of Saturdays ago.  Adam had no idea what is was about, we got there a few minutes early, and waited in line to go in.  While we were standing there, Adam looked over and saw these Star Wars guys going in the other door.  Adam said "look Dad!  Storm Troopers!  What are Storm Troopers doing at the library?"  (I would have gotten worried if he said "I must tell the others...")

They had face painting, Adam was only brave enough for a hand painting.

There were two long tables covered in Legos.  Adam could have stayed there all day long.  I made some sort of flyer.

No fear of Sith Masters...

It being a library activity, books were involved.  They gave away a free book for each kid.  Adam got a Spiderman book that he seems to enjoy.  Burger King had burgers for everyone, but they tasted like they were made about a week ahead of time, so:

 We went to Cubby's for fries!  They gave Adam a hat.  He puts it on every time he sees it in the house.

Bye Bye Birdie

Kate was in a musical at school this month, her part was a member of screaming/swooning girls's group B.  She did a good job.  

For about two weeks after, all the little girls sang the "We love you Conrad" song over and over, at least when I was in earshot.  I think they were trying to make me crazy or something...

Hope

Every year we visit Hope's grave.  This is what we looked like this year.  Adam's hiding his face from the sun, not crying...

We also have a tradition to go out to eat together.  We went to Denny's this year.  I ordered all you can eat pancakes, and biscuits and gravy with hash browns, and biscuits and gravy with eggs.  The kids seemed impressed when it came out, the hash browns weren't that good...

Posts on the way

I've got some posts on the way, to get caught up on the past few weeks.  Stay tuned...