Yesterday it was a similar story, except that Daughter #1 was out at 3:30, I picked her up, dragged her home for about a half hour, then we grabbed the bus up to pick up #2. I had a Web Site Committee meeting over at #1's school that started at 6pm, and The Wife got in from her appointment about 5:50. Since we only live a block away from the school, this would not have been a major problem (heck, #1 made it in this morning with only about 3 minutes to work with!), but The Wife also showed up with the info that these Lettuce Entertain You "bonus certificates" that we had (kick-backs from ordering gift certificates to give at the holidays) were expiring that night. We had three $25 certificates, so we really didn't want to see that disappear, so I made some suggestions, she made some counter suggestions, and I took off for the meeting. While I was there she'd check on the leye.com site and figured out where we could or could not use these (they, being freebies, had a number of restrictions), and it came down to going for "Bistro French" at Brassarie Jo, steaks/ribs/etc. at Wildfire, or burgers and salad bar at R.J. Grunts. Daughter #2 had greatly enjoyed picking at my salad the last time we were at Chuck E.Cheese, and was absolutely fixated on getting croutons, and so was strongly pushing for the latter.
Grunts opened back in 1971 (it was the first of the Lettuce Entertain You restauarnts), and has changed little since then ... which, given that it was one of the place that we ate out a lot in my teen years, means it's quite a trip down memory lane for me! Grunts claims to have "invented the salad bar", and it's certainly the last vestige of the "70's Salad Bar Place" that was a dominant theme in inexpensive sit-down restaurants back in my youth (it seems to me that all my high school dates were at some permutation of this genre). Anyway ... I got out of the meeting by 7:30, collected the family, and hopped a cab up to Grunts ... much food was consumed, topped off by the mind-blowingly good "Cookie in a Bowl: the Sequel", which has a big soft cinnamon-sugar cookie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream, drizzled caramel sauce, and some extra cinnamon ... yum! We managed to blow through all but about four bucks of the certificates.
Today is the start of The Girls' "spring activities", with Daughter #2 starting Soccer this afternoon, and Daughter #1 starting either Softball or Fencing (I'm not quite 100% "in the loop" on these details) tomorrow afternoon, so look forward to more "angsty" schedule updates!