It's My Birthday

It's my birthday! I just came back from lunch at Cootie Browns - cheeseburger with everything and home made chips. My bosses took me to celebrate.

My husband's birthday is tomorrow so Saturday night we celebrated both our birthdays by going out to dinner at the Peerless and then to the Johnson City Symphony.

I had a gift card to the Peerless that my girl friend gave me so it was going to be free and wonderful. Wonderful because this is supposed to be one of Johnson City's better places to eat and I expected a lot. We get there, get seated and then wait. No "can I take your drink order", no "hi, I'll be with you in a minute", just wait staff running past us to other tables.

After 25 minutes, a waiter stepped into our booth area and took the order of a couple who had been seated after us. I look at my husband, he looks at me, we drop our crumpled napkins on the table, put on our coats and head out the door. We ended up at Zaxbys down the street where we got chicken fingers and chicken Caesar salad ordered, ready and half-eaten in the time we waited at the Peerless. Lots more fun, lots less stress.

We then went on to the symphony (tickets were a freebie perc from my company) and had a wonderful evening. They played Beethoven's Symphony No.1. This is such a favorite of mine, I wore out 2 cassette tapes of it, so there was a lot of toe tapping on my part.

We have since learned that although the food at the Peerless is still good, the service is not. No matter who you are or when you dine, service sucks. Since we will be eating free, we have decided to treat it as an event. We will go with intention of staying for two hours, armed with lots of gossip for each other and just not care about the time - I am not giving up on free.

Anyway, Happy Birthday to me. I am having a fine day. Couldn't ask for better.