Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Road trip day one


Briefly catching up before I get started.
Today is my 36 th birthday.
Lula is still alive and being evil.
Finally got a cortisone shot last Tuesday and my arm is almost normal again.
Paul and I are on vacation this week. Were taking a road trip to Las Vegas. I want to post everyday but as I'm planning on being too drunk or tired to post at night, I'll do the previous days recaps.

JULY 5:
Paul wanted to leave our house by 9 am.
As you may know, I am not a morning person. I woke up at 8 and tried to drink some coffee while waiting for Paul to get back with the freaking donuts.
By the time I was ready to leave and Paul had the car packed up it was 10. Oops. Technically it's not my fault. For my birthday Paul paid for me to get fake hair. Well,it's real hair but not grown by me. Just sewed on to my head. Super long and evil and I love it, but an assload of maintenance and drying time. Paul likes the look of it but he's to scared to touch it. For example, here's an excerpt of a convo we had yesterday
Him: if you move your hair out of the way, I'll rub your bad shoulder.
Me: I know you don't want to touch it
Him: that's not true!
Me: then why did you scream like a girl when I made you feel it the other night?
Him: because you told me it came from a dead person

I may have said that, I can't remember. It sounds like me.

Anyway, we hit the road at 10. Nothing too eventful happened until we stopped in salinas to get coffee and a memory stick for Pauls new camcorder.
When we walked into walmart it was total mayhem. The shelves were almost completely empty and what little crap there was left was being swooped upon my hoards of crazed walmart people. amidst all of this and screaming bruised babies, employees were furiously dismantling the fixtures. I thought I was going to have a panic attack. Paul ditched me in cosmetics while he tried to find a memory card. I kind of lurked around for awhile staring at the empty racks and clutching a bottle of sun screen. Finally I decided to go searching for him and found him with a gaggle of frenzied shoppers pawing through some sporting goods. He was super excited about buying a back pack with a two liter bottle and a straw attachment for drinking out of. I'm sure it's supposed to be for water, not booze, but what do I know?
Anyway, then we got to leave. Thinking that self checkout would be faster than waiting in line behind the old hoarder ladies with their basketfuls of plastic wreaths, I picked the wrong line as usual. The girl ahead of us had never used self check out before. The baby in her cart had a black eye and she kept threatening him with alternating punishments of either tying him up or smacking him.
20 minutes later we were able to get out of there and go to office depot for the memory card and el pollo loco for some lunch.
Back on the road. Not much to look at in central california. Well, nothing but agriculture (ps why does asparagus need it's own website?) prisons and mental hospitals. Our stop for the night was the Madonna inn in San Luis Obispo. If you've never heard of it, it's super kitschy with hundreds of tackily decorated theme rooms. I've wanted to stay there forever. The mens room in the lobby has a waterfall for a urinal and I made Paul go in and take pictures. I wad super jealous until I saw the ladies room had hot pink iridescent wall paper. Omg.
Our room had a balcony that they assured us we could smoke on. It was called "the Matterhorn" and came with it's own cowbell. And a shower built out of rocks. It was just as awesome as I imagined it would be. We had a late dinner reservation at the steakhouse there so we decided to take a nap in the meantime. As soon as I fell asleep, some dicks came into the room upstairs. It sounded like there was a thousand of them and that they weighed a ton. I wanted to call and ask for a different room, but Paul wouldn't let me.
Sleeping was out so we walked around and checked our the pool. I started to get hungry so we decided to go to dinner early.
The restaurant was decorated entirely in pink, fake flowers, and huge gilded cherubs. Pink leather round booths, pink water glasses, pink and red flocked wallpaper. It was unreal.
We were served a weird relish tray upon being seated. I wished I had my camera to take a picture. It wad stacked like Lincoln logs with celery, carrots, pickled stuff, salami, and logs of monterey Jack cheese.
We both ordered the filet mignon. Paul had bought me a bottle of Dom for our anniversary so we proceeded to start drinking the hell out of it. Paul wanted to point out that he drank more of it than I did. Which never happens, but I've turned into a light weight in my old age and didn't want to spend my birthday all hung over like last year.
So our food finally arrives. We trade steaks after I cut into mine and see that it's well done. I cut into the other steak that's supposed to be medium and it's well done too.
"send it back" Paul says
I try to eat it anyway. But it sucks. I've never sent food back before, but it s all crispy and terrible. Paul is loving his and points out how it's super expensive so I should be able to get what I want. The waiter was very nice and agreed it was too done. 5 minutes later he returns with a new plate with a huge hunk of meat on it. My baked potato was lost in the process evidently.
It didn't look like a filet which is a kind of tall fat chunk. It looked like a long flat steak. I thought maybe they had butterflied it to cook it faster.
I took a bite and it was cooked correctly, but was not a filet. It was a sirloin. And I hate to sound like a meat snob, but i didn't take animal science in high school for nothing.
I ranted drunkenly to Paul about texture and fibers and got him to taste test it comparing it to his. It took him 3 tries, but finally he agreed that the assholes were trying to eff us over steak wise.
A different waitress came over
"oh that does look weird! " she exclaimed and took it away. I could see into the kitchen from where I was sitting. She was pointing at the steak and the old dick cook was shaking his head and throwing up his hands.
10 minutes later she was back saying the chef had assured her it was a filet, but if I wanted another one it would be 20 minutes.
WTF! At this point we were one of 3 tables in the whole shitty establishment.
I told her I didn't want anything. Not even a free dessert. I was over it.
We got our bill and of course we were charged for 2 filets. I didn't even get to eat. We waited for another 20 minutes for the waiter to return to dispute the bill. He never came back, that ass. So we left a $6 tip on a $100 check and bolted out of there.
Paul was all tanked on dom and came up with a bunch of great revenge plans. My favorite of which was to change the tv remote settings to French. I was convinced that the cook and the waiter would be repelling down from the roof to our balcony to kill us while we slept.
I had a cup of tea and passes out at 11:30. Getting old I guess.
-- Post From My iPhone

5 comments:

  1. WHIRLWIND first day, Jesus Christ!

    I've seen pictures from that Madonna place before and it looks amazing, like I wouldn't happy in just one room knowing that I was surrounded by so many other awesome ones!

    Did you guys take a ton of pictures??

    And fuck that steak bullshit. I want to write a scathing letter on your behalf! So frustrating.

    The convo you and Paul had about your hair is pretty much the best thing ever.

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  2. Happy Birthday, Andrea. Join the rest of us who are vegetarian and you won't have to worry about any of that shit. This from the girl whose childhood was spent as the daughter of the president of the local meatpackers association. OTOH, if you order it (and get it) rare enough, you can collect the "fluid" from your plate and save it for later use. Yes?
    Put ten dollars on 17 red for me. Have fun!

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  3. Erin- it was effing amazing! The whole place looked like it was made of gingerbread. I bought one of their bathrobes because it was too awesome not to. Madonna Inn part 2 tomorrow.

    Susan- I love meat. I couldn't ever give it up. But meat juice...I'll have to think about it. I'll lay it down for you don't worry!

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  4. Happy Birthday! Sorry to hear you got screwed with the steaks. I've given up ordering steak out for that exact reason. Same goes for certain seafood dishes. Its always better cooked at home. Good luck on the rest of your road trip ;)

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  5. Thanks so much! Yeah, the whole steak thing was nightmarish! I just wanted to punch it like Gordon Ramsey does.

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