A post in which I go out to lunch

I spent some time this morning doing a three-page letter to DirecTV. No, I don't think it will do any good, but it made me feel better. So I raged against the machine for a while. For good measure, I went to their website, found and email address, and emailed it to them as well. I was limited to 2,000 characters per email, so it took 7 parts to get it all through. If nothing else, maybe it will clog up their inbox.

I have a busy week of days planned this week. Today my rep from Atlanta came in to town and took me to lunch. His name is Steve, and he tries really hard, but he's just not terribly charismatic. He talks too much, and when you can talk, he's hard of hearing, so you kind of have to yell at him. We went to Stax Peppermill today, one of my favorite restaurants, but a fairly quiet place. I felt a bit self-conscious yelling at him in the reserved atmosphere. He's also on a heart diet, which is fine, but he can't ever seem to find anything on the menu that he wants, so his ordering food is always very complicated. Today there was a 20-minute debate about the salad with the waiter. He didn't want a fancy salad, he wanted a lettuce wedge with tomatoes and bacon only, but wanted a small wedge. Of course since they can't custom order the size of the lettuce heads, a wedge is pretty much a wedge. So he had them cut the wedge in half so he could send half of it home with me, only it had bacon all over it. Now I am the first one to applaud someone for not wanting to waste food, but he just went on an on, and asked me didn't I want to take it home and wash it off? Yeesh. Then he ordered a chicken sandwich. He had to customize the ingredients, of course, and then when they brought it out it was too big. He then started pressing the other half of his sandwich off on me. I explained for the umpteenth time that I don't eat meat. Then he wanted me to take half sandwich back to the office to give it away to someone there. He was so insistent about it that I finally agreed to do it. One of the guys actually ate the damn thing, thank God, but what a rigmarole! After scaring me pretty badly on the way back (he's a pretty bad driver, and for me to say that is saying something), I was glad just to be back in the office, leftovers in hand or no.

My lunch was good though. I had Seafood Newberg, one of my faves, and something I don't eat that often. The sauce was a bit thin, but very tasty. It came with a creamy orzo pasta they do that is lovely, although it was a bit salty today. I also had broccoli and hollandaise - I can eat old shoes if they have hollandaise on them. I got a fancy salad too. They do great salads there. This one came with Gorgonzola, mandarin oranges, and craisins with mixed greens and nuts in a vinaigrette. It was a bit sweet (it could have used some more Gorgonzola) and all the fruit kind of ended up at the bottom, but it was still very good.

It was a quiet day at the office today, and I was leaving early to go to the dentist anyway.

I love my dental hygienist - she is an absolute sweetheart. She always talks to me when I come in, but today she got around to asking me about my old dentist. Now when I first started coming to my new dentist, a couple of years ago, they asked me why I was changing. I explained, and really kind of got the feeling they were both being studiously silent. I know that professionals, doctors in particular, don't usually discuss their colleagues with patients.

Today I got the rest of the story, or at least some dirt. My hygienist nonchalantly brought it up today. "Why did you leave Dr (X)?" she asked. "Seeing him on your chart made me wonder again." I told her the same thing I had said before. He had never made me feel welcome (I also thought he was ordering expensive work that I didn't need because he was preparing to retire). "Basically," I said. "I just think he didn't like me. I think I made him uncomfortable." She replied "Well screw him!" (She knows I'm gay, because a gay friend of mine referred me to them.) She seemed genuinely angry on my behalf. She then gave me the dirt about him. Apparently he imported a young trophy wife, joined a band, and got a swelled head. She went on to share the opinion that said trophy wife was only interested in his money, and told me that he has recently gone through a difficult divorce. Then she gave me a free fluoride treatment and sent me on home. She's a sweetheart. I've told her before that if I ever hit the lottery I'm going to hire her to come live with me and clean my teeth every day. Then we can have coffee and she can fuss at me about how much sugar I use in it. She told me she doesn't think that sugar in my coffee will hurt me, because I keep my mouth "spotless".

After that I went on home and put some laundry in. I made a green salad for dinner and had some hash brown casserole. I ate the last of my lovely Fresh Market grapefruit candy and a peanut Goo Goo Cluster for dessert.

I just hung out, chatting online, and getting the hang of the new cable. I watched most of Sunshine Cleaning, which I had been wanting to see, because I have free fancy channels as part of the introductory offer. It was pretty good, if self-consciously "indie". Also, why are all the grandparents in these indie films wild, crazy eccentrics? In my experience most grandparents aren't. I'm just sayin.

Then I got an email from a guy on Manhunt. When I read his profile, it sounded a lot like the one I wrote when I first started dating again - back before my list of criteria got edited down to "breathing, not a child, not a senior citizen, not annoying, reasonably attractive". He's smart, and sexy, and he's a vegetarian too. We had a good time chatting online for a while, but he's home with back problems. His name is Billy. After hearing his symptoms though, I think he probably has a kidney stone. Eventually, he had to get offline so he could go to the ER. That made me think he had been pretty dedicated to the conversation. I'd like to meet him. He loves Thai food as well. He lives in Walhalla, but he's thinking about moving in to Greenville. We'll see where this goes when he's feeling better.