Second entry of the day: Should have put in that I had dinner with WS friend Vivian on Wednesday night. What a remarkable person--all the more remarkable because she doesn't know she's remarkable.
We ate at IHOP where the food was worse than mediocre, the service was really lousy, the bill was inaccurate (in their favor, of course), and management--I guess it was--was annoyed and defensive that we dare to mention the preceding. She kept saying it was only the server's third day on the job. So what!?! Does that mean we're supposed to accept any inept and uninterested service? Geez, there was hardly another soul in there.
Nevertheless, it was a delightful evening because Viv is such a delight--she's one of those people you instantly connect with--rather, which whom you instantly connect (well, I can't help it, I was an English major). She has a damned difficult life, but she's beautiful inside and out.
The food? We both had truly horrible "fried flounder." It was certainly frozen in 1966, flat, dry, tasteless crap, the edges of which were so hard you couldn't eat them. Maybe that was because the goofy waiter brought the entree before the soup, then had to take it away and, presumably put it under the heat lamp, which dried and hardened it beautifully. The "oriental vegetables" were--was--actually succotash, and I had to ask for both lemon for the fish (or "fish") and sour cream for the baked potato.
We also had to call the kid over to get the dessert (dull rice pudding) and coffee we had ordered earlier. The idiot then comes over and asks, "Do you guys want the check?" He called us "you guys" throughout the evening. Even when I was younger than my present age of 104, I didn't want to be called "you guys."
If there were any justice in the world, there wouldn't have been a check, but of course, after waiting 20 minutes to have the erroneous charges taken off, we paid it.
By the way, that's the IHOP in Manahawkin, New Jersey, on Route 72, in front of Home Depot.