Tues, June 23, 2010: And the heat wave continues....

WOW......will this hot and steamy weather ever end????? Yep....I KNOW that I complain about this daily.....if you were here, you would here me bitch about it hourly......but, this is just unreal for this time of the summer for it to be sooooo miserable, soooo unbearably hot and humid!!!! And, the forecast is for no relief in sight for at least another week......and, damn it, but that is no guarantee that it will be over then.

After writing yesterday morning.......our day slipped by without any change in our lives.....didn't expect any, who the hell ever knows for sure......eh??? We are now keeping our draperies closed on the sides of the house where the sun is shining as we have soooo many large windows, NO trees for shade thanks to last year's horrendous storm......and this is keeping the heat down inside a bit more. Of course, the a/c is so far doing a great job during this heat wave, but I have had it freeze up in other years when this type of heat wave has happened.....not good, not good.

Yesterday evening......we picked up Michael and Melissa Goldsmith and took them to dinner. There is nothing here in F'town that is anything more than just a "cafe".......so we went up to Farmington. Melissa is on a special diet and so her choices are a bit more limited now......and so we went to a well known restaurant in the city center of Farmington......"12 West".

OK.....we have eaten there a few times over the years.....and it has always been really quite good. However, tonight my choice for dinner was.....well, just not very good. They have changed their menu since we have been there last......and while it seems to be a bit enlarged, I actually had difficulty selecting something that read like it would be what I was looking for last night. AND......what I did select turned out to be the wrong choice, too..........Seafood Ravioli. First of all when Michael ordered the soup to go with his meal, they were already "out" of the nightly special soup....and he had to go with a "mushy" potato soup. Then the Caesar Salad that I ordered was a disappointment to me.....why??? The dressing tasted, quite frankly, like it had been watered down.......just...runny and blah. I had to keep putting sald and pepper on it to enhance the flavor.....and that really did not make much of a difference. Then my entree.....well, my large 4 or 5 ravioli were not just swimming in this tomato-based sauce, but they had drowned and were laying flat and dead on the bottom of the flat, shallow bowl they were served in. And.....they were sooooo drowned in this sauce that I could never taste any "seafood" flavors, never mind discovering any different textures with what was supposed to be shrimp, lobster, and scallops. It was just terrible, to be quite honest!!!!!

No bread was served or even offered by the server. AND....that was another thing........he was not a great server.....in fact, a bit below average. I was still working on the last bit of my salad, still trying to find a bite that had some flavor to it....and he started to take my plate away....which I promptly stopped him from doing. NOT the way to please a customer, to say the least. It was like during the entire evening....."hurry up" and get out of here.....that was the attitude that came across. It was not late....we arrived there at 8pm....NOT a late time to be arriving for dinner.....and yet, they didn't have any tables ready. When we arrived we had to wait to be seated, although the room we were taken to had many empty tables. Just very poor service overall. Last item??? I ordered coffee....and it was just "luke-warm" at best......so when the server brought the bill, I told him to remove the coffee from it, because it was undrinkable at the temperature.

The prices are ok there.....for the four of us, the bill was only $98 and change.....a wee bit less than $25 per person......but, even at that.....I will certainly think twice, or perhaps three times, before I will return there again.

NOW on the positive side......we had great fun visiting with the Goldsmiths.......!!!!!! Always such great friends, such warm and wonderful young people whom have been in our lives since they were in sutdents of mine in middle school in Eldon!!!! They have a permanent key to our home and without them being the caretakers while we are traveling around the country and the world, we could never be gone like that!!!!! We just love being with them.....as they are sooooo warm and such incredible friends....just part of our family as they always have been for sooooo long. Love them sooo much!!!!

And sooooo, that was our day and evening yesterday..........and even though this heat wave continues....

LIFE IS JUST REALLY, REALLY GREAT!!!!!.....And, I hope it is for all of of you, also!!!!!