Walking out

No, it's not another "I'm quitting WoW" post :P

Today the Bunny had a playdate at a friend's house so Liz gave JE a choice of tagging along to a playdate with three 5-year olds, or coming in to work with me for the day. He chose work and so he was up bright & early, catching the bus and riding into downtown to spend a day at the office with me.

I set him up in the empty cubicle next to mine where he started on his homework. Around 8:30 we took a break and walked over to the Subway where he got a 'free' Oatmeal & Raisin cookie. (Free because I'd eaten lunch there earlier this week, and if you take a brief online survey about the experience then write down the code proving you took the survey you can get a free cookie on your next visit.)

I let him play his DS for a little while as he ate his cookie but after half-an-hour or so it was back to homework. When he'd finished his run-on sentence exercises we took a second break before returning to his homework. He wasn't too happy because he now had to rewrite a 5-paragraph essay, but double-spaced with 1" margins on each side so his teacher had room to correct any mistakes.

"It's so much!" he protested.

So I asked him, how do you eat an elephant?

With that he started writing, one sentence at a time, one word at a time, and I returned to my desk. When I checked on him a little while later he was talking on the phone to Liz, who wanted to join us for lunch around 12:30. When she hung up I showed the boy that I had another coupon for another free cookie, and said if he had 3 paragraphs of his essay done before Mom got in he could get another cookie.

When Liz called to say she was almost here he was starting on the fourth paragraph, so we quickly packed up and made our way to the Subway for another cookie. It took a couple of minutes so Liz was waiting for us by the time we got out.

We decided to eat lunch at Panini Cafe, on 9th & Hope, found parking one block away, and despite it being 12:30pm were seated right away. Unfortunately the table at which we were seated was immediately beneath a slowly rotating fan beneath a rather bright track light, which resulted in a very unpleasant strobe effect bouncing off our table.

At our request a Waiter stood on Liz's chair and turned up the fan. This sped up the strobe effect so it wasn't as obvious but after a minute or so of being subject to a now high-speed strobe we decided it was still unbearable. Fortunately a table in the corner was not beneath a fan (there were numerous fans throughout the restaurant) and the four gentleman seated there had just paid their bill, so we grabbed our Waiter and told her we'd like to switch to their table when they were done; she said that would be fine.

Then I heard a Waiter behind me telling another customer they would be seated there when the foursome left. I turned and told this Waiter we'd already asked to be moved to that table.

"I'm sorry," she replied, "but they've been waiting longer than you."

"That's fine," I said, putting my menu down, "we'll leave then." I'm fairly easy going and laid back and so have never done anything like this before, but Liz was right there with me as I stood up and to his credit the boy didn't protest or complain; he immediately stood up and followed us out.

"Let's just go across the road to the Ralph's," I said, "they have a pretty decent Deli section there." And so we did.

Later I said to Liz, almost in disbelief, "I can't believe we just walked out of the restaurant!"

She said she'd been about to suggest doing that herself.

Had we stayed Liz would probably have suffered a severe vertigo attack, and I do mean severe; if she watches me play Super Mario Galaxy even for just a few seconds she'll start to get motion sickness. I'm the gamer so I'm more tolerant to these things but as we'd walked out of Panini the relief I'd felt made me realize the strobe had been affecting me too, and I'm sure it had made the boy uncomfortable as well.

The food at Panini cafe is quite good. It's a little pricey but it's still good food. That said, if one has advance knowledge that their meal is not going to be enjoyable, for whatever reason that may be, and attempts have been made to correct the situation but to no avail, one should never be too embarrassed to just walk away.

Very few meals on this planet are worth suffering for.