A post in which we have brunch out

The plans had been made last night to meet the guys for brunch at noon, which was about as early as we could reasonably expect such a lot of slugabeds to meet in public.  That was fine.  I was up at about 7:30am of course.  I tried to go back to sleep, but in the end just got up to do quiet stuff and let Gary sleep in.  I know he didn't sleep well last week, and I wasn't about to wake him up.  There was plenty of time.

I finished up the potato salad (I had put the cubes in the fridge to cool so they didn't fall apart when I stirred it) and turned on the computer.  When I moved the iTunes into the laptop I lost all my playlists, so I'm working on putting them back in and making some new ones.  When Gary woke up we made coffee and I prepared to go to the flea market while he got cleaned up for brunch.  I bought fruit and picked him up some tomatoes from the woman there I know grows them herself, and then headed back and got cleaned up.

Brunch today was planned for Neue Southern.  We had been told to be there when they opened because apparently things get crowded up pretty fast.  Now Neue Southern is a food truck.  I know they are all the rage now, and the guys had gotten food there several times and raved about it, but I was less than leaping with excitement over eating on the street out of a truck rather than in a restaurant with air conditioning and a place to sit down.  Nonetheless, I was curious about the food, and I wanted to try it. 

It didn't rain today. That's notable since it has rained every day for what seems like months.  It's also notable because we stood in line.  And stood.  And stood.  The food was being made to order, which is good, but apparently quite limiting in the understandably small size of the kitchen.  As the sun became brighter, it got hotter.  And hotter.  I took some breaks.  There were little stores around there open, and I went in and looked around, but poor Gary waited in line all that time. 

Eventually, we all got our food.  RBL had brought a table and chairs and set them up in the parking lot (which I thought was a nice touch) but by the time we got our food we were all quite done with the blazing sun.  There was no shade to be had.  So we packed up the stuff and adjourned to Russ's shop, which was thankfully conveniently close.  Now after all this waiting, I was prepared to be dazzled, but the food, though quite acceptable, was not anything to write home about.  The topper for me was that while we had been standing in line, a man had brought his sandwich back because it had aioli on it, and he had ordered it without.  When Brian opened his sandwich, they had given him the returned one.  We knew because THERE WAS A BITE MISSING.  That just pretty much topped it for me.  I ate my food, but I was pretty much squicked from going back, especially after waiting in line in the hot sun all that time. 

I had an order of french toast, which was tasty, and made of fancy thick-cut bread with a nicely flavored cinamon butter, but which had not been soaked long enough and was pretty dry in the middle.  Had the cook been on Chopped, he would have been chopped over that.  I also had what was listed as a grit 'cake'.  It was really more like a grit pudding.  It had a nice flavor, and was topped with a pleasant pepper and corn pickled relish, but the texture just wasn't what I was expecting - I was more thinking about something like a crab cake or fritter.  The best thing I tasted was a fried green tomato sandwich that Logan ordered, but it was topped with a 'pimento' cheese that had suffered from being put next to the hot tomatoes, and had been 'revved up' with hot peppers of some kind.  I am not a huge fan of pimento cheese with hot peppers in it.  So while the flavor was good, it was greasy and just not quite what I thought it should be.  Plus, the price-tag for this was pretty hefty.  RBL paid $60(!!) to eat out of a truck; and that was without drinks.

After brunch, the group just unanimously pulled out their phones to play on them.  I have no idea why this passes for social interaction at this point, but since I have a smart phone now I just followed suit for a while.  When in Rome...  Eventually I picked up a magazine.  It was hot in the shop, and since we weren't going to do anything, Gary and I left for the house.  Russ had mentioned something about going to see The Conjuring, but there was no way I was going to sit through that.

I had thought that Gary would leave when we got home - he had dinner at his aunt's house tonight - but he instead wanted to hang out for a while.  I wanted a nap.  I turned on the TV, but we ended up having a 'relationship discussion'.  Sigh.  I know it needed to happen, but I really wasn't up for it today, and thought it was a bad time because his last week had been so stressful.  As I thought, he's much further along than I am emotionally about this relationship.  I'm not sure what I should do.  He's a great guy, and I really like him, but I feel kind of like I'm wasting his time.  My strategy has been to just date him, enjoy his company (which I do), and not worry about where it's going, but he obviously is thinking about where this is going.  That kind of makes me feel like I'm not being fair to him. 

I gave him some potato salad and cookies to take home, and burned him a CD because there was a song I had that he wanted.  I sent him on his way.  But my contributions to his happiness feel woefully inadequate. 

I got pretty down about that.  Gary is almost exactly the guy I say that I've been wanting.  He's the guy I've been bitching about not being able to meet.  And now that I meet him - crickets.  I know that he feels this.  Eric and Tyler were both at brunch today, and the sexual tension was just crackling all around me in regards to Tyler in particular, but nothing for poor Gary, who is just good to me and likes me.  Dammit.  So I just felt bad over the whole thing.

I stayed in and took a nap.  I ate left-over pizza and cookies, watched TV, and messed around on the computer way too much and way too late before I finally went on to bed.  I feel pretty much like a dirtydawgslug.