Birthday Weekend

First off, a quick happy birthday to both my father-in-law and mother. We celebrated my father-in-law's birthday with a trip to Indy's finest provider of Greek cuisine -- Santorini. (Their homepage is rather bizarre, if you ask me, but alas...) I love the food at Santorini dearly, but the restaurant is not without its quirks. For one, it has two restrooms (I can see people's eyes rolling, given my issues with bathrooms), both of which are unisex. This is not where the problem lies. The issue is that the door to each bathroom faces out into the restaurant, so you get none of that "check your fly and adjust your shorts on the run" time that you normally get. It's sink, paper towel, family of four. It's very disconcerting.

My second issue with Santorini is that it sometimes features belly dancers. As a red blooded male, this would seem like a good thing. But in many cases, my blood would need to be slightly older and pudgier to find some of the dancers appealing. I'm not trying to be rude (at least not entirely), but surely there are some girls under 40 willing to don a little belly dancer costume and tuck singles into their waistbands from fathers trying to pretend they've never "tucked a buck" before in front of their kids. I've seen belly dancers at Santorini where you couldn't "tuck a buck" if you tried because of the expedition required to FIND said waistband. Never a good thing.

Following Santorini, we made our yearly run to America's favorite concrete putting grounds, Rustic Gardens. This provided its usual plethora of delights, although the loose chickens were conspicuously missing this year. I did manage to nearly hit a hole in one, no easy feet from 80 yards with a putter onto a concrete "green," but in the end, I was soundly defeated by my father-in-law. His ability to putt on a normal green is assuredly wrecked for at least the next two weeks, so perhaps my father will be able to beat him in their weekly competition.

On Sunday we had a birthday cookout for my mom and father-in-law. Just as I was getting ready to start the burgers and Sinai Koshers, the grill ran out of gas. This invariably happens when you have the largest of groups awaiting dinner, so I made a bee line to the nearest gas station for a replacement tank. When I arrived, I ran into the quickie mart and told the pleasantly smokey young lady behind the counter that I needed a replacement propane tank. She told me to go out front and wait and that she would be out in a moment. As she said this, I noted an elderly gentleman helping her behind the counter. He was fetching a pack of Pall Malls for another patron and doing so with the approximate speed of an engineer on a first date. I could have grown my own tobacco and rolled a smoke faster.

In any case, I headed outside. I looked back in to the store and noted that my attendant was not helping anyone, so I assumed she would head my direction momentarily. After about 30 seconds, out came the elderly gentleman. He walked with a noticeable problem with his hip, which led me to believe that he had probably had a hip replacement, although I'm not sure with what it was replaced. He was very kind and gave me the needed gas tank, but I wanted to say to him, "Gee, sir. You should have your little 3-packs-a-day friend in there do the outdoor errands." He didn't seemed bothered by the trip outside; although, he did comment that it was "danged hot." ("Danged" is usually the adjective of choice in these parts.)

Following the grill debacle, we had a lovely cookout, and everyone got to watch Grant eat, poop, drool and attempt to roll over. Now that I've written that, his day is not dissimilar to my own.