Monday, November 12, 2007

Happy Monday!

I hope everyone out there in blogland had a great weekend. I had a pretty decent one.

Friday started out well. We had dinner and went to Williams-Sonoma with our good friend Jennifer and her two kids to get some things for the house/Thanksgiving. We were hoping to run into a another friend of Jennifer's there, but she wasn't working. Since Jen rarely gets down there, we checked out Gap and Pottery Barn kids. The prices in there were a really good form of birth control, let me tell you.

Saturday was a lot of shopping. We spent 5.5 hours at the mall, mostly shopping for Keds. Since she has lost over 45 pounds and has dropped two sizes, she needs some new clothes. Plus, since we are going to my little cousin's Bar Mitzvah in early December, she needs a pretty new dress in her new size! She's meeting my Dad's entire side of the family, since none of them made it out for the wedding, so she understandably wants to look awesome, which I know she will.

Saturday night, we gambled a little waiting for a table at Cabo, one of our favorite restaurants. The food was awesome as usual, but the service was LOUSY. Our drinks sat empty for a good 20 minutes. He never checked on us, and it's like he disappeared for another 20 minutes when we were ready to go. It was so bad, I was able to convince Keds to ding his tip. She normally starts at 20% and goes up from there. I believe a tip is for good service. You meet my expectations, you get 15%. If you exceed, it goes up with 20%, depending on how impressed I am. But that's me. I'm interested in hearing other thoughts on tipping, to know if I'm just plain cheap or not. After dinner, as we were in line for our 7x points multiplier, we saw Loraloo and her husband, which was awesome, if not unexpected. We visited for like 20 minutes, until the smoke in the casino was really starting to get to me. Normally, I can stomach smoke for a while and only detest it after I leave, but since I'm still getting over this upper respiratory thing, it wasn't good.

Sunday was pretty mellow. Watch my Bills play an ugly game, but come out on top 13-10 over the still winless Miami Dolphins. That made me happy. In the past, they would have rolled over and lost, but the team continued to battle. My only complaint was that DirecTV changed the HD feed to Baltimore-Cincy game, as Dad and I watch the Bills win in *gasp* regular resolution. Oh well. We still won. In the afternoon, Keds and I worked in the kitchen getting things organized in the pantry and moved all of the bar items out of the kitchen cabinets and, well, into a bar. Keds was thrilled to have the cabinet space back, and the casita is becoming more and more complete!

We ran out to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get some shelf thingys for the pantry, and our our way back, we say Cubby and Amanda on their way back from church. Since we hadn't seen them in over a year, we decided to tail them. Well, we were a little slow, and when we got to their house, we assumed they were already inside. We knocked on the door and rang the bell, to no avail. However, on our way back home, we saw them stopped a cookie and lemonade stand, so we stopped and chatted for like a half an hour. They also told us we need more pictures on our blogs, so we'll take that under advisement.

After that, I was off to 4 p.m. Mass. I prefer going either Saturday night or Sunday morning, but this worked out OK. I missed half of the gospel reading because our priest is from Sri Lanka and his MTI is pretty strong, but his homily filled in the gaps. Dinner was soup and grilled cheese, which was perfect, and then we settled in to watch some TV with the fireplace going.

All in all, a pretty busy weekend, but enough fun built in so that it wasn't uber-crazy. This week promises to be busy with dinner guests Tuesday and Wednesday, a thing with our NLV Councilwoman on Thursday (thinking up what questions I can ask), Caucus training Saturday Morning and then having friends over for UFC on Saturday night. Oh, and most of our remaining new furniture should be in this week too!

I'm sure I'll post more later in the week. Sorry for the long one today!

3 comments:

Cupcake Blonde said...

Wow! You guys certainly had a chock-ful weekend. Sounds like when Charming and I get all our things done on our days off.

I used to tip like you. 15% was for average service, only tipping 20% if they were phenominal. But now having a husband who lives off of tips I see things differently. I always tip 20% unless they were not attentive or rude, then I knock it down. But I never do less than 10% and that is very rare. Back in the old days I had left a few meals with no tip due to lousy service but I haven't done that in a very long time. Guess things change when you rely on tips as your main source of income.

Your listing of this week's activities leads me to believe we will not be able to get together once again. Darn it all! Our dumb night schedules! We will see each other soon!

LoraLoo said...

It was so cool to see you guys Saturday night!

I tip much like yourself. I'll do the obligatory 15% regardless, only because I feel guilty like I'm stealing food from a child's mouth if I don't. BUT, depending on the level of exceptional, I've been known to hit 30%.

Martin said...

As a person in the tipping service industry, I entirely understand knocking down the tip. If you go to its root (to insure prompt service), 20 minute disappearances aren't good.

There is something to be said for hitting certain levels in weightloss. I can actually say that I haven't seen your wife as happy or fit as she is now. This is a great time for her to go reward herself with some clothes. B)

I have to express my apologies as we won't be able to make it for UFC due to recent circumstances.