Rough start to the weekend, great finish

After work on Thursday, Jen and I thought it might be nice to go grab a bite to eat somewhere with outside seating. Since we hadn't been there in a while, we chose the Chatterbox Pub. Thus began a 12-hour string of misadventures and blunders. These events probably don't quite rival Joy's recent awful day, but it was a bad way to start a holiday weekend.

A waitress came by and took our order. When Jen ordered a veggie burger, she informed us that the "fryer is down," so french fries were not an option. D'oh! I'm rarely in the mood for fries, but this was one of those times. I ordered a spinach-artichoke dip and a veggie wrap instead. Five minutes later, the waitress returned, and the exchange went like this:

Chatterbox Waitress: You can't get a veggie burger, because the fryer's not working.
Jon: You guys deep fry your veggie burgers?!?!?
CW: Yep.
Jon: Whoa. That's weird!
CW: Hm. [Waiting, with pen in hand, for Jen to order]
Jenny: I'm going to need a menu.
CW: They can do chicken, instead.
Jenny: That's not going to work. I'm a vegetarian.
CW: Oh.

Jen looks over the menu, and notices that the grilled cheese comes with a cilantro-pumpkin seed pesto. Yum! A little while later, we overhear another server explaining that one of the substitution choices for the fries is roasted red pepper mashed potatoes. That sounds good! Too late to change it, though...

After a fairly lengthy wait, we get our food. There's no pesto on the grilled cheese, and it looks like they simply toasted the bread, then put some shredded cheese in between slices. The stuff was hardly melted at all. At this point, we just wanted to finish dinner, and get home, so we could pack for our weekend in Ely. (On the bright side, my cole slaw was the best I've ever had- plenty of cumin.)

Immediatley after finishing our food, our slightly wobbly table jerks violently in one direction, causing Jenny's nearly full glass of beer to topple. Some of the beer spills onto her, and the rest pours off the side of the table, directly into her purse. About 16 ounces of beer splashes all over everything inside. The small pocket holding her cell phone is filled to the top. We move quickly, getting everything out of the purse, trying to dry everything off. The cell phone didn't work for about 10 hours, so we thought it was fried. After some scrubbing and Febreeze, there's no evidence of the mishap.

My day Friday morning began with plunging a toilet, packing for Ely, and then making coffee. One problem- I forgot to put the coffee grounds into the filter. After leaving for work, I was pretty certain that our weekend was doomed, but we had a good drive up to Ely, and a great couple days enjoying the trees and lakes of northern Minnesota. Jen wrote about it on her blog, complete with pictures.