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8:39 p.m. - 2005-03-09 Slick Freezer's, Bad Fancy Restaurants and a great ChocolatD-land buddy Chaosdaily wrote an entry today about cleaning out the freezer at Cow Town General Store. It reminded me of my last job I had as a drunk 13 1/2 years ago at McDonalds. I had been a Credit Manager at a publishing company and in the end, only McDonalds would hire me. McDonalds was a very very clean place. They had one guy who just went around with a mop all day long. The floors got mopped repeatedly, including the freezer floor. This was a stupid thing as the mop boy would go in and mop the freezer and the thin layer of mop water would instantly freeze. Send a drunk in the freezer for some butter pattys and there is a tragedy just waiting to happen. I remember going into the freezer and the large steel door shutting behind me. I grabbed a handful of butter pattys and promptly slipped, falling on my keister. Everytime I tried to get up, I would slip and fall back down. When I tried to grab onto a shelf to pull myself up, the shelf would start to tip, with the potential of dumping many pounds of frozen food on my drunken little head. I sat on the frozen floor unable to get up so I did the next best thing. I started to yell. Well McDonalds has the best of everything in their kitchen and that includes the best, thickest, soundproof steel freezer door. I imagined my demise in the freezer, the manager finding me frozen and dead hours later. I kept on trying to get up without grabbing onto the tippy shelves and somehow I succeeded because I survived to recover from alcohol and write this diatribe 13 1/2 years later after spending the day at my respectable, high paying job where there are no freezers to fall in. _______________________________________ Chicagoland Restaurant ReviewFrancescas Tavola, Arlington Heights, IllinoisWe arrived at the restaurant promptly at 5PM. My dinner companion for the evening, the lovely Michelle. We had a 75.00 gift certificate to spend so we started in on the appetizers. They had weird appetizers. They counted soup as an appetizer. Most things had weird sounding fish I had never heard of before. We chose something that started with a C and it was a long Italian word. Michelle, who dines fancy more often than I do suggested it. It was very very thinly sliced raw steak...paper thin, with pickled capers and other stuff mixed in with it. It was swimming in olive oil. We also had Bruchetta with giant spinach leaves on top of it. It was good but also swimming in olive oil. Everything was ala carte so we ordered salads. I ordered a tomato salad with mozzerella chunks on it. Michelle ordered a vegetable salad. When they arrived, she eyed my salad and I hers. We decided to trade salads. Now I know why she wanted to trade. The salad greens were brown, old and bitter and you guess it....swimming in olive oil. By the time we were done with appetizers and salad, we could hardly stay in our chairs from the olive oil. My face and the paper covered tables (yes...butcher paper covered tables at a fancy restaurant...I was NOT impressed...guess they had to have something to absorb all that olive oil) were covered with olive oil. The napkin was no good anymore because it too had absorbed all the oil it could hold. The menu was a xeroxed copy of a menu with all the food hand written in. They hardly had any pasta (and they called this Italian) and the pasta they did have had weird things in it like fish and stuff. I hate fish. The only beef they had was veal and I won't eat veal because of they way those poor little baby cows are treated before they slaughter them...but I digress. All they had on the menu was chicken and fish. Over 50% of their menu was something in a cream sauce...I loathe cream sauce, I hate fish and chicken is so boring. This left two things on the sparse menu that I could even entertain eating. Michelle ordered a half roasted chicken with potatos and I ordered boneless brest of chicken with potatoes. Both were swimming in the same stinky...yes stinky, olive oil based sauce. It sucked....it sucked big time. The desert was excellent...a gooey brownie with Gelato and carmel sauce and chocolate sauce...Michelle had cinnamon Gelato. I am grateful that my boss gave me a nice gift certificate to a fancy restaurant and if he asks me if we had a nice time, I will say yes because I am not a complainer but if he ever gives me another gift certificate to the same place, I am inviting 4 or 5 people to go with me for expresso and dessert...they can keep their stinky chicken. We had a gift certificate for 75.00. The check came and the tab was $75.03.. this was for food alone as we didn't order any wine or even soda. Now how perfect is that? Francescas Tavola of Arlington Heights.......both thumbs down. If you are ever in Chicago...go somewhere else. I've done the R&D on this one. _______________________________________ Movie ReviewOK....I know it's a 5 year old movie...but I finally got around to watching "Chocolat"......AHHHHHHHHHH...Could Johnny Depp be any sexier. My heart is still racing. Oh..it's a cute little movie too. The only thing that sucked about it is that Johnny Depp was not in enough scenes and they could have been a little heavier on the love scenes. There was only one really steamy scene and it went by way too fast. Still...for any of you who, like me...wait until a movie is old to watch it....I highly recommend it. Well, that's all for tonight..ta ta. P. I. Yarnsmith
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