a night on the town.....

To say that driving in the big city can be difficult, is only a fraction of what it's like first hand, and tonight was no different. I always dread the parties that want food delivered somewhere around 5:00 PM... especially if it is going straight to the heart of Atlanta. Just the very thought of it makes me weary and worn out. Then there is the actual trip, which one can only call manic to say the least. My first thought is to update my will, because I will be surely tested while on the road.

For a normal trip of 30 minutes from where I live, it took almost 90 tonight to get the food delivered downtown. No matter how well I plan, Murphy's Laws have much more in store for me than I thought possible. Since it was strictly a "drop-off" catering for me, I knew the return trip home would take me even longer, as that's the way everyone would be heading. I decided to call my husband (who works downtown) and invite him out to dinner. We would find some cool little out of the way place, relax after a 15 hour workday, and eat a decent dinner together.

Funny how my being a caterer, he an ex-chef, we go out to dinner a lot. Who wants to come home and cook after you've been doing it all day long as well as getting in the data on the computer. Enough of stoves and serving.... let's let someone else wait on us! We are a funny pair when we go out. Besides the critiquing, which we are so prone to do, I am one of the best people to be eating in a new servers station. You see, I started out as a waitress in my early days here... and have an affinity to the job. Oh yes, I am ever so thankful to not be lifting trays anymore, or smoothing over problems between customers and their ever-pressing demands, but I do thank my "on hands knowledge" that led me to where I am today. Coming from the deep dark trenches of the bottom was the best place to start... even if it felt I would never "arrive".

We looked around for some place, any place, that would allow us in, as we were very casually dressed (jeans and sweatshirts). Finally we decided on a place that both of us like well enough, and was destined to be part of our critics choice for dining.... and yes, we did get a waitress in training. She was a sweet as can be, even if the food took a little longer to come out than we would have liked. But who cared? We didn't have to cook it, or serve it... and had plenty of time to finally let out that TGIF sigh we'd been waiting to do all day. After multiple refills of fresh brewed ice tea, some New England clam chowder (which should have been called southern vegetable chowder with clams), good conversation, topped off by a hot piece of pecan pie with whipped cream, we decided it was time to call it a night.

To miss the bulk of the friday night traffic was worth the opportunity to just sit down for a few minutes and plan out our saturday of selecting a Christmas tree and readying the house for bright lights. What a wonderful way to end a long week... no clean up was involved, and I still arrived home at a decent hour. Just how nice is that? Sometimes life is good, if I can stop long enough to realize the silver linings it holds.