February 16th, 2014 – Some things just scream out summer, warmth, fair weather. Sometimes you need to cast your eyes on those things to stop thinking about what it is really like outside 😉
I have nothing to complain about, not compared to others in many other parts of Canada, and certainly not compared to places like Britain. We’ve had fabulous weather for months, punctuated by sporadic bouts of cold and rain, but again, not compared to others. And when we have had foul weather, it has been very short lived.
Last night a weather system moved in just before we headed out for the evening. We had tickets to see the Art’s Club Theatre production of Driving Miss Daisy. We usually make it a night and have a nice dinner out, and since we were heading up to South Granville, we opted for Luke’s Corner Bar & Kitchen. We’ve eaten here many times, and the food is always very good.
But after slogging several blocks throughout he downpour we were disappointed with their current menu and struggled to find something. It also took the waitress forever to visit our table, and then another age to bring our bottle of wine.
Eventually, a server came and served the people next to us; they had arrived 30 minutes after we’d been seated. I thought the server was giving them our food and started to wave at her, but the couple accepted to food as theirs so I assumed I was mistaken. Kirk went to the bar to ask where our food was. It had been well over an hour since we’d ordered.
So much for a leisurely dinner. Starving and now left knowing we’d have to eat quickly, and not have time to pop into Meinhardt’s.
We asked for the manager.
Turns out that they had given our dinner to the next table. The manager came over and assured us that the order was now in rush in the kitchen, we were less than amused.
After a few minutes, we couldn’t help it, Kirk leaned over to the couple at the next table and asked what they’d ordered. She had ordered fish and chips, as had I, but he’d ordered a beef short rib sandwich. We asked whet he was eating, and he said he didn’t know. We told them they had received our dinner, fish & chips and a chicken pesto club.
Seriously? If you order beef, and you get chicken…why would you accept it and eat it? Why wouldn’t you question it?
And then, to top it off, when the manager brought us our meal, he brought fish & chips and…wait for it…a beef short rib sandwich.
We were furious. He said he’d get it to us in less than a couple of minutes and started to leave with both plates. We begged him to leave mine sot hat we could share SOMETHING. We’d been there for and hour and a half at this point!
He came back in a flash with a chicken club, which we interpreted as someone else not getting their meal.
On the upside, he comped our entire meal, including the bottle of wine we’d been drinking, and gave us his card asking that we come back, call him personally, and he’d comp us a second meal to show that they could actually serve properly.
Good save, and as I said, the food is good, the service just really, really sucks.
So we packed up and started to slog back down the several blocks in the pouring rain to reach the theatre….and Kirk looked up and said “Why does it say The Odd Couple?”
Oh shit!!!
We’d see this show a couple of weeks ago. We are season’s ticket holders which means we have seats for each production across two theatres, and added a couple of other shows that were being produced at a third that the Art’s Club Theatre performs at.
Kirk had looked at the tickets and seen Granville – and just inserted Granville Street instead of Granville Island. And it was now ten minutes to eight. Showtime was at eight.
We ran to the truck, and Kirk drove like a madman to Granville Island. We parked, and ran across the parking lot to just make our seats as the “please turn off your cell phones and pre-unwrap your crinkly candies” speech was about to start. We barely got our coats off, but we did get seated.
And the show was simply fabulous!
Poor Kirk, his head is fuzzy from round two with his cold, but so lucky that the two theatres are so close.
After the show it was home and early to bed. Except that we both came awake at 12:21am, abruptly shaken out of our sleep by a bang. The cats were both sitting straight up and staring out the bedroom door. The wind was howling and the bamboos were flinging themselves back and forth on the deck.
It was also abnormally dark. The streetlight was out. The power had gone out. We tossed our housecoats on and had a look around, as much as we could. Everything seemed fine, and the power came back on, leaving several clocks flashing. But the trees were certainly thrashing about.
We got back to sleep for a couple of hours, until the alarm clock went off at 2:45am so that Kirk could get up and catch a cab to the airport.
This morning I looked out in the backyard when the light finally allowed me to see, and a huge tree branch was laying in the yard. Probably 8-10 feet long. But it wasn’t close to the house. Perhaps it bounced off the roof, I don’t know. Or perhaps it just made a big bang when it broke off. A climb up to the roof presented no answer to the mystery.
Today wasn’t too bad, but now that the sun has gone to bed, the pounding rain and winds gusting to 80-90km/hr have returned. There is currently a waterfall pouring off the one corner of the upper roof. The rain is good, we need it, and there is much more in the forecast for the coming week. Hopefully it means snow for the mountains, that’s badly needed too. But power outages are being reported around the Lower Mainland.
And I can’t help but think of Mom. Where we used to live, at the condo, we gauged the wind by the trees we could see way over on the Reserve. Now, we just walk to a window and look…up! When I was a kid, Mom shuffled us into the car on more than one occasion when a storm washed through Canoe and we were at Grandma’s place. There was a massive fir (?) tree behind the house and Mom was always terrified that ti was going to come down on the house one day. She’d hate the trees in our yard.
Tonight, I have my flashlight handy……
Maybe I’ll have a glass of lemon water and think about summer. 🙂
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Ugh. In the end the power did go out, and it wasn’t on by the time I was ready for bed, so I crawled under the stairs and dug out the travel bird cage so I could bring Gizmo upstairs where it was warmer (his cage is next to a window downstairs and with the power off, so was his small heater).
The power came back on at 1:30am and although I thought I’d switched off all the lights that had been on at the time the power died, I hadn’t. The stupid alarm panel started beeping away and the landing/stairwell/breezeway lights were on, as were the kitchen undercounted lights. When I got up and went to set the clock on the alarm light, Gizmo had a panic attack – here he was in a strange cage and not used to movement at that hour – set him totally off.
Another crappy night’s sleep, won’t I be productive today.
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