As I write this, the temperature has actually dropped by 10 degrees, and it is raining outside. This is a nice surprise from what the forecasters were calling for over the weekend!
However, I ran this morning before the rain break, and I could hardly believe how hot it was already at 6:15 in the morning! Our temperatures are supposed to be in the mid- to upper-90’s with heat indexes of 99 to 103…wow!
But, for now, I am grateful for the rain.
Jeff got home from Japan on Saturday afternoon, and I decided to do my long weekend run that evening to try to beat the heat wave. It was still 84 degrees when I started around 6:30, but the humidity was relatively low. I averaged a 10-minute mile on a pretty hilly course that allowed me to run by our house every three to four miles for water. Twelve miles are in the books!
On Sunday, we caught the early service at church and then motored south to Mt. Vernon, Illinois, where we met Jeff’s parents for a kid handoff. Charlotte and Elijah will be be spending the next week trying to beat the heat in Tennessee, while Jeremy and I hang out up here and wait for Jeff to get home from work. I’m hoping to blog a little, scrapbook a little, learn the motions to the VBS songs…we’ll see if I actually do anything productive.
A little side story…we ate out twice yesterday, as we were on the road for eight hours. By the end of our second meal, we decided that Sunday is definitely not the time to eat out.
Our first meal was with Jeff’s parents at the Mt. Vernon Cracker Barrel. Usually, the food and service are pretty reliably good at this place, but, yesterday, not so much. Our waitress was friendly and enthusiastic, but the only way we ever got anything from her was to flag her down. I don’t think she stopped a single time at our table after she delivered our food and the check, almost simultaneously. We had empty water glasses, dishes piled up, leftovers to box…and no waitress in sight for most of it.
Our second meal was at a Steak’n’Shake in the Bloomington/Normal area. It was just Jeff, Jeremy, and I at this point, and the restaurant wasn’t crowded. We ordered food and shakes. Our waiter took our order and delivered our food (without the ice cream) and dropped our check (kind of like the earlier waitress) and then never came back to our table ever again. I could see our shakes in the ice cream window, and I could see our waiter folding cutlery into napkins not three feet from that window, but he never brought the shakes to our table. Periodically, he would disappear into the kitchen whenever we tried to catch his eye.
Finally, we finished our food and went up to pay. The cashier asked how things had been. Jeff answered, “OK, but our shakes were never brought out to us, so I need you to take those off our ticket.” I chimed in, “We can see the shakes in the window, but they’ve been up there for at least 10 minutes. And he never came to our table so we could ask about them.”
The cashier sort of closed her eyes and sighed. “He’s having a really off night,” she told us. “I’m sorry about that.”
WHAT?! If we weren’t the first people to whom he had done this, why was he still working his shift?! Jeff, for perhaps the first time ever, didn’t leave a tip. I mentioned that maybe we should have asked to talk to the manager, but Jeff made a good point. This is not a place we regularly frequent, so what would it accomplish to “tell” on this guy? I don’t know; maybe he was TRYING to get sent home.
Wow.
I like to think we’re not terribly picky people, but, when we sit down at a place that has servers, we expect to get our water glasses refilled with minimal effort on our parts and to have all of our food brought out to the table. It’s not like we can refill our own drinks at these places.
Again, wow. Just wow.
Next time…an evening in Des Moines.
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