< > Alchemy for Dummies 2: May Waited Till The End to Get Me

Saturday, May 29, 2010

May Waited Till The End to Get Me

Those of you who have known me to rant on a bit in the past know that I have two least favorite months: November and May. November is generally a bad month for many reasons, not the least in that both my parents died in November. Now I did have a sister and two cats born in November, which redeems it a bit. Thanksgiving is mixed for me. May is a month of changes , transitions, bad decisions and odd happenings. May to me is like Chinatown to Jake. Now so far this May had not been too bad. A couple of good things seemed to be happening. I was told the least invasive angioplasty procedure for my right leg would be good, rather than a bypass graft. We had an old bank error in our favor. My census job has been puttering along, with my last AA being a snap compared to my first. But now to get to the unhappy stuff: 1)Lindy went out a week ago Sunday AM and has not returned. And, yes she has been out longer before (three months once) but not lately. 2) My angioplasty required me to go in the night before and a day without driving after so I was off three days last week. This is a mixed bad/good thing. 3) The angioplasty only took care of the blockage in my popliteal artery but not the blockage lower down, so they are talking bypass again 4) I finished up all but one of my last AA book, and that one may be a "problem" 5) I was assigned a new AA book, with a lot of apartments. The good thing is they have one office which I can get the info from re:vacancies - the bad thing is the manager was busy today but had time to tell me the census taker was here just two weeks ago to get info and she helped him then. One of the American Community Survey folks? One of ours with a different set of buildings ( I doubt this as I have both sets.)? If it is Comm Survey I am really pissed with their timing. We have had to deal with that back when I was starting the group quarters enumeration prep. I do have just 5 single households, of which I serve NVs to 4 and got one complete. 5) Doc Zorba is making very bad sounding noises at times. Not sure where they are coming from but they sound expensive. 6) This deserves a rant of it's own but I'll just toss it in here. Betsy and I decided to go see Todd play at The Bodega up on Coventry. He'd been scheduled the last two weekends or so but we felt it was a bit more than we wanted to spend as it is not really our type of place (read expensive) but we did get Betsy's CPAP ordered for less than what we had planned so with the help of a gift cert from Restaurant.com we figured we could do it. Betsy thought bit about it figured with me getting a new book and her working today, that maybe last night would be the best time to go. We arrived about 7:30 PM to find it not very busy. We had a wonderful dinner but they cancelled Todd at the last minute. We did get to meet him and some friends of his there. But it was not what Betsy was looking forward to. See a bit further down in this post to see my praise of this place. 7) When I got home from a less than pleasing start to my new AA we had a notice from the city re : yard work which had been a part of their previous notice of violations but that we had till October to fix. We now have several small but tedious tasks to get done in one week. Crap. What also ticks me off is that in late March or early April, I think, there was a Groupon offer or one of the other offers for a really nice yard service for only $75 as a season starter deal which I asked Betsy about and got a non committal reply until the deal was past.
On the bright side today I got home just as Fed Ex was dropping off the package with the CPAP.

The Bodega is a very nice tapas bar/restaurant but it is in the wrong neighborhood. It is far too upscale for Coventry. The food was great, as was the service, and they had the class not to make us feel unwelcome even though we were way out of our normal price range.I've been to places that look at you like dirt if you don't meet their idea of what they think a customer should be. These folks were very nice. Attentive without hovering about. Betsy had the Bay of Fundy Salmon, and I had the Grilled Tuna Nicoise . Both were excellent. I had a very good German beer, and we shared an eggplant appetizer. Then we had very good desserts. Betsy had the creme brulee, and I had the bread pudding. I found I liked hers better and I am not a creme brulee fan. It was just that good. The price was reasonable for that kind of food in that setting, and it was steeper than we usually spend.
The place was never busy however. By 9:30 when we left there were still many empty tables, and the whole lounge area seemed vacant. The bar was busy, but not crowded. This was a really nice Friday night and Coventry was full of people as we went out and back to our car. The Winking Lizard seemed busy. I think the Bodega would be better off in the Eaton Park area or in one of the new lifestyle malls, or in Westlake or even downtown. We had a nice time however and If I ever feel a need to spend a good deal more than usual for a nice meal we'll return.

So, now I sit with Betsy at work, my 4 PM appointment 2 and a half hours off, a bit bored, a bit ticked off and a bit depressed. Drat, now I could use a good German beer. I'll have a Paulaner Slvatore Double Bock, bitte.

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