Re: Rob's HH #12: Sisterhood of the Pattinson
Posted: Sun Nov 03, 2013 9:27 am
Oh, lazy days, how I love and need you! Hubs and I are doing NOTHING today...and I'm hoping I'm not forgetting something. It feels so weird not to have to go anywhere or get the kids dressed for any reason. We've fed them and they are happily watching tv in the "home theater" (an inflated air mattress with their bedding and pillows in front of the tv and they got to eat their lunch there) while we relax.
Friday was really fun. Hubs' work organizes a company outing every year...well, most companies do that here. Sometimes partners are invited and sometimes they are not. So this year they organized it in our home town...my in-laws are on vacation, so we couldn't leave the kids with them, so we asked my BIL. So as soon as we picked the kids up from school, we had to pack the car really fast, take them to my BIL's house, then pick up some of hubs' coworkers, and get back to our town. THAT was a speedy trip, and we just made it. Then we had the outing and had to go stay at my in-laws' house so we'd be there (they live a block from my BIL) to pick up the kids early in the morning because my nephew had a soccer game to get to, and I had choir rehearsal starting at 9. The outing was pretty cool...we did a GPS scavenger hunt. They broke us into teams and gave us each a GPS device and each team had someone with a smartphone and they downloaded the app we needed. So we had a page with pictures of different things in our town....it might be a design in the sidewalk, or a particular door handle, or a sign...little things that you aren't likely to really notice and are hard to find. Then each one of those pictures has a code number, and the GPS device shows you flags where you will find one of those things, and each flag is associated with a letter. You follow the GPS to one of the flags and look for an item that matches a picture and text the letter and the code number to the guy running it. If they match, he sends you a word or a phrase. At the end, you have to put all the words and phrases you got into a story and you get points for each one you incorporate. There were also bonus assignments along the way...like we had to take a picture that demonstrated our team name. (Everyone got a cinch sack with snacks and water in them and a colored piece of paper and that color was the group you were in and then we had to come up with a team name. My team was Ivo's Harem because Ivo happened to be the only guy on our team) So we took a picture of all of us girls pretending to kiss him on the cheek and he's smiling and giving a huge thumbs up. We had a problem accessing the app though, so we were about 20 minutes late getting started. None of the other teams had any problems so we came in dead last, but we had fun and even without hurrying, we managed to get 18 of 24 flags....it only took a few minutes per flag, so if we hadn't had problems with the connection we would have gotten all of them I think. Hubs' team got all of the flags but lost to the 2nd team because the guy liked their story better. We had so much fun...the biggest let down was the food. For some reason, the restaurant that they ordered pastry from for the beginning while we were getting instructions forgot to order the pastries from their supplier, so they had 6 pieces of pie and then cut up a bunch of pound cake...so 6 people got delicious pastries and the rest got a slice of cake...and they wanted to charge 5 Euros a piece for that cake. (Imagine paying 7 US dollars for a cookie) Then we had dinner at a different restaurant and the woman who was in charge there was horrible! We sat there for 20 minutes before she came over and asked us if everyone had gotten their drinks...she hadn't even taken our order! I ordered Coke Zero and she didn't tell me they didn't have that and then the OTHER server comes and asks who the diet coke is for and I didn't think it was for me because that's not what I had ordered. She just decided that Diet Coke was a good substitute, which is fine, but at least TELL me so I know that that's for me when the server asks! She hands out the menus and doesn't tell us anything...there's always some arrangement where we get a choice of 3 or three things for each course. So they have to call her over to explain what we're allowed to choose from. She comes back to take our order...we have 2 long tables with like...12 people each or so. She explains that we're ordering everything at once and then she will bring each table's orders at the same time so we all eat together. So one lady asks what the soup of the day is...the menu says tomato soup OR soup of the day. The server says she doesn't know...they only have tomato. So the woman says she doesn't like tomato soup and the server rolls her eyes, sighs, and I kid you not...she turns and walks the TWO steps...literally, she just had to turn around...we were right next to the kitchen, to ask what the soup of the day is. Like it was this HUGE effort to have to walk a couple of feet and ask a question. Then she was exasperated that the woman decided she didn't want soup, she'd take carpaccio instead. Yes, because having expended so much energy asking about the soup meant the lady was then OBLIGATED to order it. Geez. I ordered bread with olives and a garlic butter. Everyone at our table was served....except me. She moves on to the next table and I still have nothing. So everyone at our table has to wait...someone asks about my bread. We're assured it's coming. 10 minutes later it's still not there. We ask again...it's coming. Finally they bring me a cutting board with a chunk of bread and a knife to cut it, but nothing to spread the butter with. Good thing I don't like butter anyway and wasn't going to eat it...but they didn't give me a plate or anything to put the sliced bread on. They come and clear the table...except for my stuff. People ordered drinks that never came. Then they start bringing out the main courses...I had ordered steak, which she did not ask how I would like it cooked. She had served most of our table and then switched to the other table again, and again I have nothing. She's at the other table, behind me where I can not see her or hear her and gets angry that I didn't react when she asked who the steak belonged to. It was supposed to be a tender sirloin...it was NOT tender. After three bites I could hardly chew because of gristle, I started looking more closely and had to cut away a third of it because of all that gristle and fat. The server brings out a plate with Steak and fish..."who ordered this?" No one...she gets angry. "SOMEONE ordered this!" She gives up and sets it aside, but she's PISSED. Then she hands out the rest, and EVERYONE has their order and guess what's still sitting there? The plate she INSISTED someone had ordered. So SHE must have made a mistake, or the kitchen did, and she blamed it on our group. No apology or anything. A couple of the girls had ordered sauces, which you had to pay extra for, to go with their meat dishes...they never came. So they asked, were assured it was coming. Everyone has been served...still no sauces, so they are waiting. They finally dig in with no sauces, but they keep asking and keep getting told it's coming. They gave the 1 girl one tiny little dish of sauce and then the other girl asked where hers was and the server says she didn't know she ordered it, thought she was asking about it for the other girl...so they had to share. But I bet they charged for both since it was ordered. It was getting REALLY smokey because it was an open style kitchen, so the smoke wafted out into the dining room from the grill, and since we were just feet from the service window, we were sitting in smoke...and then the smoke detectors went off.
I will not be going back to that place...rude service, not great food, cramped and smoky atmosphere...no thanks. I went to leave a review on one of those pages on the internet and I looked and almost everyone has given them a 1 or a 2 rating out of 10 for the service, so it must not have just been the size of our group. OH!! And they gave one person wine in a cola glass because the one waitress had broken too many wine glasses or something. And someone else ordered an Amaretto instead of a dessert and they gave him a totally different liqueur...kind of like my Coke Zero. They just decide someone else is close enough and hope you don't notice it's not what you ordered. Wonder how long they will stay in business! At least the rest of the day was fun and the company was good. If it wasn't a fun group, it would have been miserable!
Lynne, good luck with Nano! I have several friends who do that. They all say it's fun, but pretty crazy.
Your "no comment" to Sarah has now got me worried about what you did with the end of The Reign. At LEAST tell me that no one is lost in some TRIVIAL way like...getting hit by a bus...that there is a good solid reason for the way things happen!! I can even handle a character death if it happens for a good reason. Not that I would expect you to play with our emotions by a senseless death (Sarah is crossing the street and no one in her guard sees that she is about to fall into an open drainage pipe...bye bye overlord...What's his bucket...starts with an A...Ardon? gets to be overlord) in the end but "no comment" sounds so suspiciously like an "I don't want to give it away and lose readers". Just tell me nothing is done without reason.
Sarah, that's so sad that the series has kind of been ruined for you. On the one hand I'm really intrigued now as to the ending that was written and why people are having such powerful reactions to it. On the other, I don't want to spend money on books that I most likely will not like in the end, just to answer my curiosity, nor do I want to reward the author with my business for upsetting thousands of fans. I might see if I can find them cheap somewhere...it sounds like a lot of people might be selling their copies.
Friday was really fun. Hubs' work organizes a company outing every year...well, most companies do that here. Sometimes partners are invited and sometimes they are not. So this year they organized it in our home town...my in-laws are on vacation, so we couldn't leave the kids with them, so we asked my BIL. So as soon as we picked the kids up from school, we had to pack the car really fast, take them to my BIL's house, then pick up some of hubs' coworkers, and get back to our town. THAT was a speedy trip, and we just made it. Then we had the outing and had to go stay at my in-laws' house so we'd be there (they live a block from my BIL) to pick up the kids early in the morning because my nephew had a soccer game to get to, and I had choir rehearsal starting at 9. The outing was pretty cool...we did a GPS scavenger hunt. They broke us into teams and gave us each a GPS device and each team had someone with a smartphone and they downloaded the app we needed. So we had a page with pictures of different things in our town....it might be a design in the sidewalk, or a particular door handle, or a sign...little things that you aren't likely to really notice and are hard to find. Then each one of those pictures has a code number, and the GPS device shows you flags where you will find one of those things, and each flag is associated with a letter. You follow the GPS to one of the flags and look for an item that matches a picture and text the letter and the code number to the guy running it. If they match, he sends you a word or a phrase. At the end, you have to put all the words and phrases you got into a story and you get points for each one you incorporate. There were also bonus assignments along the way...like we had to take a picture that demonstrated our team name. (Everyone got a cinch sack with snacks and water in them and a colored piece of paper and that color was the group you were in and then we had to come up with a team name. My team was Ivo's Harem because Ivo happened to be the only guy on our team) So we took a picture of all of us girls pretending to kiss him on the cheek and he's smiling and giving a huge thumbs up. We had a problem accessing the app though, so we were about 20 minutes late getting started. None of the other teams had any problems so we came in dead last, but we had fun and even without hurrying, we managed to get 18 of 24 flags....it only took a few minutes per flag, so if we hadn't had problems with the connection we would have gotten all of them I think. Hubs' team got all of the flags but lost to the 2nd team because the guy liked their story better. We had so much fun...the biggest let down was the food. For some reason, the restaurant that they ordered pastry from for the beginning while we were getting instructions forgot to order the pastries from their supplier, so they had 6 pieces of pie and then cut up a bunch of pound cake...so 6 people got delicious pastries and the rest got a slice of cake...and they wanted to charge 5 Euros a piece for that cake. (Imagine paying 7 US dollars for a cookie) Then we had dinner at a different restaurant and the woman who was in charge there was horrible! We sat there for 20 minutes before she came over and asked us if everyone had gotten their drinks...she hadn't even taken our order! I ordered Coke Zero and she didn't tell me they didn't have that and then the OTHER server comes and asks who the diet coke is for and I didn't think it was for me because that's not what I had ordered. She just decided that Diet Coke was a good substitute, which is fine, but at least TELL me so I know that that's for me when the server asks! She hands out the menus and doesn't tell us anything...there's always some arrangement where we get a choice of 3 or three things for each course. So they have to call her over to explain what we're allowed to choose from. She comes back to take our order...we have 2 long tables with like...12 people each or so. She explains that we're ordering everything at once and then she will bring each table's orders at the same time so we all eat together. So one lady asks what the soup of the day is...the menu says tomato soup OR soup of the day. The server says she doesn't know...they only have tomato. So the woman says she doesn't like tomato soup and the server rolls her eyes, sighs, and I kid you not...she turns and walks the TWO steps...literally, she just had to turn around...we were right next to the kitchen, to ask what the soup of the day is. Like it was this HUGE effort to have to walk a couple of feet and ask a question. Then she was exasperated that the woman decided she didn't want soup, she'd take carpaccio instead. Yes, because having expended so much energy asking about the soup meant the lady was then OBLIGATED to order it. Geez. I ordered bread with olives and a garlic butter. Everyone at our table was served....except me. She moves on to the next table and I still have nothing. So everyone at our table has to wait...someone asks about my bread. We're assured it's coming. 10 minutes later it's still not there. We ask again...it's coming. Finally they bring me a cutting board with a chunk of bread and a knife to cut it, but nothing to spread the butter with. Good thing I don't like butter anyway and wasn't going to eat it...but they didn't give me a plate or anything to put the sliced bread on. They come and clear the table...except for my stuff. People ordered drinks that never came. Then they start bringing out the main courses...I had ordered steak, which she did not ask how I would like it cooked. She had served most of our table and then switched to the other table again, and again I have nothing. She's at the other table, behind me where I can not see her or hear her and gets angry that I didn't react when she asked who the steak belonged to. It was supposed to be a tender sirloin...it was NOT tender. After three bites I could hardly chew because of gristle, I started looking more closely and had to cut away a third of it because of all that gristle and fat. The server brings out a plate with Steak and fish..."who ordered this?" No one...she gets angry. "SOMEONE ordered this!" She gives up and sets it aside, but she's PISSED. Then she hands out the rest, and EVERYONE has their order and guess what's still sitting there? The plate she INSISTED someone had ordered. So SHE must have made a mistake, or the kitchen did, and she blamed it on our group. No apology or anything. A couple of the girls had ordered sauces, which you had to pay extra for, to go with their meat dishes...they never came. So they asked, were assured it was coming. Everyone has been served...still no sauces, so they are waiting. They finally dig in with no sauces, but they keep asking and keep getting told it's coming. They gave the 1 girl one tiny little dish of sauce and then the other girl asked where hers was and the server says she didn't know she ordered it, thought she was asking about it for the other girl...so they had to share. But I bet they charged for both since it was ordered. It was getting REALLY smokey because it was an open style kitchen, so the smoke wafted out into the dining room from the grill, and since we were just feet from the service window, we were sitting in smoke...and then the smoke detectors went off.
I will not be going back to that place...rude service, not great food, cramped and smoky atmosphere...no thanks. I went to leave a review on one of those pages on the internet and I looked and almost everyone has given them a 1 or a 2 rating out of 10 for the service, so it must not have just been the size of our group. OH!! And they gave one person wine in a cola glass because the one waitress had broken too many wine glasses or something. And someone else ordered an Amaretto instead of a dessert and they gave him a totally different liqueur...kind of like my Coke Zero. They just decide someone else is close enough and hope you don't notice it's not what you ordered. Wonder how long they will stay in business! At least the rest of the day was fun and the company was good. If it wasn't a fun group, it would have been miserable!
Lynne, good luck with Nano! I have several friends who do that. They all say it's fun, but pretty crazy.
Your "no comment" to Sarah has now got me worried about what you did with the end of The Reign. At LEAST tell me that no one is lost in some TRIVIAL way like...getting hit by a bus...that there is a good solid reason for the way things happen!! I can even handle a character death if it happens for a good reason. Not that I would expect you to play with our emotions by a senseless death (Sarah is crossing the street and no one in her guard sees that she is about to fall into an open drainage pipe...bye bye overlord...What's his bucket...starts with an A...Ardon? gets to be overlord) in the end but "no comment" sounds so suspiciously like an "I don't want to give it away and lose readers". Just tell me nothing is done without reason.
Sarah, that's so sad that the series has kind of been ruined for you. On the one hand I'm really intrigued now as to the ending that was written and why people are having such powerful reactions to it. On the other, I don't want to spend money on books that I most likely will not like in the end, just to answer my curiosity, nor do I want to reward the author with my business for upsetting thousands of fans. I might see if I can find them cheap somewhere...it sounds like a lot of people might be selling their copies.