This past weekend I took my mother and father in-law back to their home in New Jersey. This involved a drive of six and half hours in a Chevy Trailblazer. The good news was that the weather was great. The bad news was that our bladders were all on different schedules. This means we needed to stop at every McDonald's on the route. The good news is that I know where every McDonald's on the route is located. Most are programed into my GPS.
Right now McDonald's is having a movie tie in promotion. They are giving away a miniature talking Chipmunks. They have six different characters. We have now collected all six. In our case we had to pay for them because we didn't buy the Happy Meal. We also made McDonald's crew members search for the characters we hadn't yet collected. It is a little disturbing, I suppose, for a middle aged, fat, bald, white guy to be asking for the "Britney chipmunk", but it was a long trip and I had set some specific goals.
In North Bergen, New Jersey, that evening, I was invited out to dinner with my wife's family. We went to the "Coach House Diner". Frankly, it was a slightly disturbing experience. First, upon arrival, we were greeted at the door by the staff. This was no ordinary greeting. This was a very personal greeting. It appears the in-laws are frequent guests. The servers each stopped by the table to say hello. I didn't know my in-laws were such good tippers.
Pumpkin and I have a couple of diners we frequent upstate, but as of yet we are not that famous with the staff. We tried to go to one of the diners for dinner last night but were disappointed to discover that it closed at 9:00 pm. Are you kidding me? Last week I tried ordering a pizza at 10:30 pm. Again, no luck. I called five pizza shops and none were open. How can this be? It is at times like this I miss living full-time in Manhattan.
In the future however I have discovered a safety fall back. The clerk at the local Byrne Dairy store (convenience store) tells me they will make me a pizza up until 11:30 pm. It is always good to have a fall back plan.
