DAngie: March 2009

Dan and I went to Made in Brazil, one of those they-bring-you-lots-of-different-meats/buffet type restaurants. We were having a lovely time. The food was quite delicious, and we'd both nearly stuffed ourselves, so we wandered over to this little table next to the long buffet table with a selection of desserts on it, figuring we'd enjoy dessert and be on our way. I picked a blintz kinda thing and Dan picked flan. We took our desserts back to our table and sat down to dig in, or at least to try to dig in. I found myself needing a steak knife to cut my blintz and thought, "This doesn't seem right." I asked Dan, "How's your flan?" He responded that his flan was chewier than his past experience with flan would have led him to expect. At this point, I realized we had foolishly erred in thinking that this place included dessert for the 18 smackers and that we had taken floor model desserts. We sheepishly called our waitress over to apologize for being imbeciles and ruining the models. She said, "It's okay, but they're a lot better when they're fresh. They are an extra charge, but would you like fresh ones?" At this point, we'd have felt even more idiotic refusing, so we said yes, we'd like new ones and sorry again about destroying the models. But here's the upshot of this somewhat embarrassing narrative: when our waitress brought us the new desserts, she informed us that they were on the house because she felt bad that we'd been confused. So, here's just another bit of evidence that being a moron pays off. Dan and I got four desserts for the price of none (though the second set was much better). My advice to you when dining at Made in Brazil: try to eat the floor model desserts.

Pictures of kids:

Above is the illustration to Bennett's leprechaun story, which follows:

"'Twas the night before St. Patrick's Day, and not a creature was stirring, except for me and Laraine setting booby traps for leprechauns so that we could get their gold. When we woke up we had a big surprise. We found a leprechaun trapped, so we shook him like crazy saying, 'Where's your gold? Tell us no lies.' He said, 'It's at the end of the rainbow outside.' So we went out and got his gold." After I transcribed the story, Bennett wrote a 15 on the bottom of my transcription. I asked him why and was informed that it's rated PG-15, which seems somewhat excessive to me, but I guess there's that violent leprechaun shaking in there. I should also mention that the morning this story was composed I did indeed wake up to find that Bennett and Laraine had set up booby traps all over the house in hopes of catching leprechauns. The traps consisted mainly of boxes propped up by blocks. Clearly, had any leprechauns had the misfortune to enter our home that day, it would have been to their peril.