An early V-Day gone awry

As mentioned earlier, we got a sitter last night and went out.

Morton’s was a bit of a disappointment. We both agreed that we would have been pissed if we had spent $150 of our own money on that meal. I had a $44 porterhouse, and Michelle had a $36 ribeye. Neither was noticeably better than what I produce on the grill. I also got a laugh at the waiter hyping their USDA grain fed beef. If it was grass fed beef I’d be impressed. Grain fed? Not so much.

The $8 order of “hash browns for 2″ was nothing special, and in fact was not as good as the hash browns at Waffle House. Hash browns should be a little crispy on top, these weren’t. Our appetizer was scallops wrapped in bacon. They were tasty, but as I kid I used to procure my own scallops in the bay in FL, so I know that scallops really aren’t that big of a deal.

The dessert, the “legendary hot chocolate cake” was damn good, and probably the only thing worth the price all evening. Add in Michelle’s $3.25 iced tea, and my $7.25 Sam Adams, and the bill came to $129.00 before tip.

Another thing, when spending that kind of cash for American food, the waiter should speak English well enough that I don’t have to guess at what she is saying. We also should not have to wonder where she is several times during the evening. Somebody else brought out the food to us, and there were dedicated people refilling water and tea. She ought to have her eye on her tables pretty much 100% of the time.

We got to The Kennedys show at 7:15. The opening act should have been on. The Kennedys were already on the stage, and their was not a seat in the place. So we shifted to plan B, a movie. The Kennedys will be in Richmond next month, so we plan on catching them there. We got to the theater and had several options for movies starting in the next 30 minutes or so. The new Bond had just started, so it was still showing previews, and given that it has been out for a while, I figured it would be uncrowded and arriving at the last minute would not be an issue.

I figured wrong. It was packed and the only 2 seats available together were in the front row. We tried that for about 2 minutes and decided that we would rather forfeit the $20 than spend 2 hours like that. While Michelle was in the ladies room, I wandered into a couple of other just started movies to check out the seating. No dice, everything was packed. Then I wandered back into the Bond movie for one last scan, and bumped into the manager. He confirmed that there we not two seats available together and that if we didn’t want to sit in the front row we could get a refund. That was cool, I had no idea movie theaters would do that. So we got our money back and ended up browsing in Barnes & Noble and sitting in a Starbucks there in Tyson Corner Center for a while before heading home.

Not that I’m complaining. A night out with Mrs. O’DonnellWeb is always nice, even if the plans don’t work out like we expected. With Breck reaching legal babysitting age in two weeks, we plan to get out a bit more this year. I don’t think we’d leave them alone if we are venturing into DC an hour away, but dinner and a movie close to home shouldn’t be a problem.