Why Couldn't It Have Been Pound Cake?

Last night I deserted M and went out with the girls. It was fantastic on so many levels. I mean, first of all, there is the undeniable fact that our minivan is not as much fun to drive as the car M drives to work. He usually drives our turbo charged, chipped (modded to go faster), VW Passat with a leather interior and CD changer. All this our minivan is not. And what better time to enjoy a little unnecessary acceleration than late at night when very few people are on the suburban thoroughfares of my neighborhood? So even if all I'm doing is picking up milk, going out in the evenings and getting to drive the "grown-up car" is always a treat. And on top of that, I got to go out with Ralphie, Janssen, and Kristi. I LOVE these people! It was like our own little BlogHer, but without anyone getting drunk (none of us drink). But wait, there's more! [cue bad announcer voice]

That's right, not only did I get a night out with the girls, freedom from my kids for a few hours, and some reckless driving time, but we went out to The Melting Pot. This is a perfect place for me to go with girls because M is not very excited by the idea of fondue restaurants. I suppose I can see it from his perspective. Anything you eat comes in little bite size pieces, so you won't exactly be cutting into a porterhouse. I'm pretty sure the main reason to go is for the sake of eating everything but the kitchen sink dipped in molten chocolate for dessert, and M doesn't eat sugary things because he's hypoglycemic. And taking long thin colored sticks and poking at your food from afar is somehow very effeminate. It's probably second only to sticking your pinky up while drinking from a teacup. So it was good to go there with girlfriends. It was SO delicious. But how could melted cheese and melted chocolate not be good? (As long as they're not actually mixed together of course...) I'm pretty sure that's basically the definition of yummy. I mean, are not fancy cheeses and chocolates the symbols of prosperity, gourmet dining, and decadence?

But the crowning glory of the whole evening was our poor waiter. He was a really nice guy. He was probably being overly chatty and friendly because it was "ladies night" and maybe lots of other groups of married women dig flirty waiters. Whatever. He was polite, attentive, and even a little indulgent, so what more could we ask for? A waiter that wasn't apparently hard of hearing. I usually consider myself a little hard of hearing, but I have the sense to ask someone to repeat themself when I know there's a chance I didn't hear something correctly. I guess not this guy. Janssen was making conversation about what it must be like to be a waiter there and he misheard/misunderstood her and thought she was saying that it would be unfortunate if your waiter was a jerk. After a long discourse from this guy on The Melting Pot's hiring practices, we redirected him to understand that we actually thought it must be unfortunate for the waiters when guests are jerks since you spend so much time with a single table there. Fine fine. Forgivable. People make mistakes. Moving on. Then he asked if any one wanted fresh pepper when our salads came. Apparently he understood Ralphie's "I'm good," to mean, "Pile it on!" The result was the fastest response of "WHEN!" I've ever heard. And last but not least, Janssen's question of, "How late are you open?" was met with the full history of how long that particular location had been in operation and a full floor plan of their new restaurant in downtown. He was really nice, but most of the time I just wanted him to go away so we could get back to chatting about the fallout of other people googling themselves and finding your blog. (Fortunately, I think the chances of this waiter ever googling "Melting Pot" and "hard of hearing" and then realizing this must be him I'm talking about are next to nothing.) Then we had dessert. He humored us by doing two different chocolate concoctions and then heard us rave about the brownies. (Seriously, these things deserve a little dedicated blog time. They were so good that I couldn't believe they were created with the sole intention of then dipping them into MORE chocolate. I love chocolate, and dipping those suckers into more chocolate was actually over the top for me. I still did it, but that's just because I couldn't resist the pull of the molten goodness in front of me. I think I would have dipped in the celery from our cheese course if we'd had any leftover. Any excuse to scrape every last bit of that chocolate out of the pot...) So he brought us a few extra brownie chunks. It was very nice of him, but we were almost disappointed. Some how it would have been a better end to the evening if he had misheard us and shown up with extra bits of the unremarkable pound cake. Oh well, I guess I can't expect everything to be perfect!

We even took a couple photos, but my camera of course decided that then was the best time to be on the fritz, so none are in my possession. Stupid camera - why can't it just die all the way instead of clinging to life in an annoying way that usually involves working fine until I actually need it?