A Misspent Saturday Night

I knew I should've blogged this afternoon. I put it off until this evening, thinking that I'd be back home at a reasonable time, and now my back is against the wall trying to write something quick to get a Saturday entry. My wife and I were supposed to have passes to a show in the suburbs, but things didn't work out as smoothly as they were supposed to. We'd made arrangements through a third party, and somehow the message didn't get all the way through. There had been some confusion as to whether we were going last night or tonight, first show or second, but when we arrived at the venue, there were no passes. The show was sold out, so we couldn't even have gotten in if we'd bought tickets at that point. We made a call to our contact, but given that it was Saturday night, we were just able to leave a message. We'd intended to see the first show, but we hung around in the suburbs in the hopes of getting a call back and being able to work something out for the second. That call never came, so we had dinner and then went home, arriving much later than I'd expected.

While we were waiting on our table, I had a martini, and then we shared a bottle of wine at dinner. We stopped back by the venue to see if maybe the box office had heard anything for the second show, but the line to get in was down the block, so we decided not to wait. I didn't feel quite up to driving back to Chicago yet, so we stopped for a cup of coffee first. You can get coffee in any number of places these days, of course, but we figured we'd stop at Denny's. My father has long claimed that no restaurant in the country will make a soft-boiled egg any more, but we saw just that dish on a Denny's menu within the last few years (which means it's literally been years since we were last in a Denny's). Since we were getting coffee and killing time, I thought I'd order one and see what happens. Soft-boiled eggs as such are no longer on the menu, but they do say they'll make eggs to order. I ordered one soft-boiled, and the waitress didn't even flinch. When she finally brought it to the table, though, she admitted that they'd never made a soft-boiled egg before and so weren't sure about how long to boil it. They over-cooked it a bit, but it was still soft when it got to the table and couldn't quite be categorized as hard boiled. They didn't have egg cups, so they served it in the dish usually used for sides of vegetables or fruit. I called my father from the table to let him now that not only had I ordered the soft-boiled egg, but it had been served to me.

So we didn't get to see the show we'd driven out to the suburbs for, and given that a visit to Denny's was the highlight, it sounds like a pretty dull and boring evening. We had a good time, though, improbably enough. So how's your long weekend going?