I've been going to this location for 24 years. I love sitting in the solarium while it's raining, honestly. Really relaxing. And it's well-maintained, I've never seen leaks.
I did go there last month, but didn't do any people-watching [and so no post]. A friend and her parents from the US were visiting my neck of the woods in Canada and we all went to the buffet for lunch together!
Today was payday and a full day of errands running around town. I feel great getting all of that done but was ravenous and excited for the buffet by the time dinner came around.
I had one of my favorite seats again, they have a line of mini booths right up beside the buffet and it's prime people-watching territory. As usual, staff recognized me and had my regular drinks on my table before I got back with my first plate without me even asking. Root beer and an ice water.
+They had a new dish, prawn crackers. I was unreasonably excited for such a simple thing, I haven't seen them in almost 30 years since I was a kid on the mainland! Every Chinese place back then would include a bag of them with takeout orders and we ate a lot of Chinese food growing up. I ate a ridiculous amount of them tonight.
+In a back corner of the restaurant were two giant, gold balloons, a 6 and a 0. Clearly for someone's birthday, but I'm unsure if they were leftover from earlier in the day or were preparation for later tonight.
+I heard someone invoke the 5 Second Rule. Not sure I'd chance that at a buffet, myself...
+At the server's station near the buffet line, they have some condiments: Packets of soy and plum sauces, sesame seeds [raw or toasted], vinegars, chili oil. Almost never see anyone avail themselves of those, but tonight a guy was drowning his plates in red vinegar. That inspired me to try it as a dip for my prawn crackers, it was very good.
+I heard a guy saying he hadn't been to a Chinese buffet in 10 years but had gone twice in the last week.
+One of my favorite dishes on the line is green beans and shrimp in black bean sauce. The shrimp had their tails on this time, that's a first. I don't eat the tails, but they're not hard to get the meat out of.
+A guy went to the dessert line and took a whole piece of cake in his bare hand and carried it back to his table.
+It was a pretty quiet night for disability/welfare/pension check day. The servers spent a lot of time rolling cutlery sets into napkins.
My fortune cookie says: You do not have to worry about your future.
I was at the foodbank yesterday, it was almost an hour before they opened and myself and a couple of dozen others were waiting in line outside. Some guy walked up from down the street and had a gigantic bag of take-out from the nearby McDonald's and started handing it out to people--Big Macs, cheeseburgers, McNuggets, fries, McChickens, etc. I accepted a double cheeseburger; it was the first thing I'd eaten yesterday at around 6PM.
Incredibly grateful and I couldn't thank him enough, honestly.
I was at the foodbank yesterday, it was almost an hour before they opened and myself and a couple of dozen others were waiting in line outside. Some guy walked up from down the street and had a gigantic bag of take-out from the nearby McDonald's and started handing it out to people--Big Macs, cheeseburgers, McNuggets, fries, McChickens, etc. I accepted a double cheeseburger; it was the first thing I'd eaten yesterday at around 6PM.
Incredibly grateful and I couldn't thank him enough, honestly.
There's always some level of random kindness when I go to the foodbank--strangers have volunteered their time to collect, move, and distribute food so that people in need can access it. But today my visit to the foodbank had a bonus dose of RaoK.
It was almost an hour before the foodbank opened and myself and a couple of dozen others were waiting in line outside. Some guy walked up from down the street and had a gigantic bag of take-out from the nearby McDonald's and started handing it out to people--Big Macs, cheeseburgers, McNuggets, fries, McChickens, etc. I accepted a double cheeseburger; it was the first thing I'd eaten today at around 6PM.
I’m going to keep this short so you can get to the video but let’s just say the Peanut-Butter Sandwich from 1915’s 100 Picnic Suggestions takes a hard turn immediately. And one that I, despite my experience doing Sandwiches of History for years now, would never have guessed was coming in a million years.
Today was suddenly 80F/27C and Sunny after a week of clouds and rain with temps around 65F/18C.
A book I ordered online arrived four [!!] days early and I decided to get out of the house, find a bench downtown, and read my new book. It was great in the shade, enjoying the last burst of warmth we'll probably get this year.
I'm what's known as a WikiGnome. I just happen to read a ton of articles for fun and my editing is exclusively fixing small mistakes that I find while reading--grammar, typos, broken coding, the like.
This is a random sampling of my recent edits, in no particular order.
+Apollodorus (painter).
+Pulsus paradoxus.
+Orbona.
+Déjà vu.
+Ranunculus asiaticus.
+Jean Marc Gaspard Itard.
+Amêijoas à Bulhão Pato.
+Fève.
+Conditum.
+TeleZapper.
+Mr Creosote.
+Maids of honour tart.
+Brushturkey.
+Teeth blackening.
+Raviole du Dauphiné.
A decades-long Internet friend from another country and her parents were visiting my province last week and happened to be stopping in my city a couple of times as part of that.
We got to meet up and they let me choose where we'd get lunch for two days and also offered to send me home with an extra take-out meal from each place, all on their dime. They know I'm on disability and it was the week before payday, so I was pretty broke and getting by on ramen.
They fed me well for a week ♥ I'm grateful I got to finally meet a good friend in person and made new friends with her parents. I'm grateful that I let myself accept the help, too. It's hard sometimes, even when someone insists.