Girls' Night

Friday night I met up with two gal pals to catch a movie and have dinner.

The Movie: There Will Be Blood. We walked out and said, "Well then." Not my favorite. It could have easily been about forty five minutes shorter and it would have been better had they really committed to the funny bits. Daniel Day-Lewis was good, but the script/pacing/directing were kind of tedious. Ah well, can't win 'em all.

The Dinner: We opted to go to the Outback Steakhouse, thanks to its close proximity to the theater, and got there a bit before ten. The Friday night crowd had mostly cleared out. There were two tables near the booth we got sat in, and both were pretty loud. Obviously, they'd been around for a bit drinking those huge beers the Outback serves. At one point, I heard a man say something very loudly that started with "My wife" then trailed a bit so I didn't catch it all.

Our waitress headed over to bring our drinks (water, aren't we exciting?) and I immediately liked her. Some servers just have that competent aura to 'em, which is alwasy reassuring. She squatted down to table level to point out the specials, then gave us a minute to ponder our choices. Poor gal, I think she was also taking care of the two rowdy tables as well.

Dinner was good, the server was too, and she thanked us for being such a low maintenance table, which was cool. Meanwhile, two guys from the loudest table got up, conferred with her, and put down cash on their way out. Shortly thereafter, the remainder of the table quieted down (presumably, the departed guys were the hosts and therefore the table had just run out of someone to pay for booze).

The best part, though, was when I ordered a scoop of ice cream and she comped it 'cause we were so easy. It was very cool. I felt just a twinge guilty that the loud drunks on that Friday weren't the slightest bit my responsibility. The twinge quickly passed.