Seventeen years I've been married to my wife. Not all of them were good, but I have to take the blame for those that weren't. She's been nothing but good to me all this time, whether I've wanted to admit it or not. I'm admitting it now. I am sure I had no idea what "love" actually is until I spent a few years with her. It's certainly not like what I thought it was.
We went to Tulsa to celebrate last night so I thought I would write down a travelogue of sorts. This time next year (or several years down the road) I can come back to this and be reminded of the weekend, right down to the trivial details.
We left town just after two o'clock, having run some errands just before. The decision had been made to have dinner at Uno, which is a Chicago style pizza place that I had eaten at a long time ago. I remembered it being very good but that's all. We'd booked a room at the Marriot and planned on checking in immediately after eating.
Unfortunately things began to go awry before we even got to Tulsa. I normally don't use our GPS because we never figured out how to turn off the warning chime that goes off even if you're only going a couple of miles over the speed limit (I found out later that one of my wife's relatives had fixed it). But I decided to go ahead and use it since I wasn't completely sure of how to get to Uno. I didn't bother writing down driving directions, as I had no reason to believe that the GPS would steer me wrong.
But it did.
Oh, I'm sure the issues had more to do with faulty programming...and the fact that we hadn't updated it in a long time and there's a lot of construction on 44. I should have known that the first turn it directed us to make was not the one we should have made. It looked like a residential area. I don't know, it might have gone on through to where we wanted to go, but I wasn't going to risk driving on the slush and ice that was left over from the storm a few days ago (and which, by the way, was beginning to harden again as the temperatures descended). So we backed up and out, listened to the TomTom and turned right again 10 blocks down. At least this street didn't have the ice and appeared to be a through street.
It took us to I-44 and I finally knew where I was. I really thought I had it licked until the construction zone came into view. A massive undertaking, obviously. This is the point, I'm sure, when the GPS' insufficient data programming threw us completely off the path.
It wasn't TOO long a delay (meaning that it didn't take all that long, but ANY delay was TOO long at this point). I did find the street address. Or at least, I found the general vicinity. I've driven by Uno several times and I know what their sign looks like. I wasn't seeing it. We turned the GPS back on and it took us to the exact address. But there was no Uno. Apparently Uno had gone out of business. It would have been nice if their website hadn't said that they still had a location in Tulsa. Instead there was a T.G.I. Fridays...I think that's what it's called. I've seen their commercials on TV. Never struck me as a place I would want to eat at. The wife didn't express any desire to eat there, so we motivated in search of an alternate.
Eventually we decided on the Olive Garden. We both had steak. The wife had some kind of parmesan glazed sirloin (I think) and I had a slightly larger center cut steak, the style of which I could not tell you. Both ordered well done, no pink, as per our usual preference. Unfortunately, as is all too often the occasion, they were not delivered to us in quite the fashion in which we asked for them. Hers was noticeably pink in the middle. I don't think it was quite in the medium rare category, but pretty close. Mine wasn't quite as undercooked. It was only a tad beneath well done. Still, much pinker than I've ever eaten. But what are you gonna do? As for me, I figured I might as well see if I liked it that way (and to be honest, it was actually quite good). For whatever reason the wife decided not to send hers back. Instead she just used more steak sauce than she normally does. Apparently that helps. I personally would not have eaten it. I don't use nearly as much A-1 sauce as I used to. I used to prefer Heinz 57, but I'm just not as fond of it as I once was. A little too sweet. Now it's A-1, and sometimes I'll eat a few bites without any sauce at all (which is something I never would have done a couple of years ago). Most likely by this time next year I won't be using sauce at all. I probably shouldn't eat steak too often, but now that I've developed a taste for it, after so long being ambivalent about it, I will probably just have to cheat.
We checked in at the Marriot after our meal. It wasn't nearly as hard to find as our first would have been and it was still there.
The Marriot. A reputation for upscale accommodations there. I have to admit I felt like a fish out of water when we walked in. Lots of suits and hoity toity dispositions. All men who dressed as if they took fashion cues from Esquire or GQMarriot. I was very disappointed with it. Not to say that it detracted from the over all anniversary celebration. It did not. But when you pay over a hundred dollars a night for a room you don't expect to find a huge cockroach on the bathroom counter, hiding beneath a washcloth. You'd expect the television reception to look as if it wasn't piped in from an antenna. You might expect a microwave oven...nope, not at the Marriot. It shouldn't even be a consideration that the heating would be set to a comfortable temperature. Nope, not at the Marriot. We had it turned up to 85 and still chilly through the whole evening. Of course it must be conceded that the temperature outside was bitterly cold and the glass wall would be of no help. Then again, this is something I would expect from a flea bag cheap one night stand dump. Not a "quality" hotel like the Marriot. To top it off, I found three or four small pieces of what appeared to be Sun Chips when I moved a night stand. No wonder the roaches like that room so much. Is it possible for mice and rats to dwell in a location so far above the ground (8th floor)? If so I think they might find a little something to nibble on in our room.
The next stop was just down the road at the River Spirit casino. Whoa! Now this is one monster of a casino, at least by Oklahoma standards. Like an expensive carnival with countless flashing lights and cacophony that resembled nothing less that a thousand arcane video games gone haywire. We stayed for four hours, until we were both tired, and we still hadn't spent more than half of what we had planned to give to the Native Americans. I had some pretty good luck on the Wheel of Fortune Hawaii game. Won and lost. Won and lost. That's the theme. Didn't expect to walk out of there with any cash (not that I didn't hope), and I was not disappointed.
Next morning we checked out and drove across the street to the IHOP. New York cheesecake pancakes, hash browns (covered with ketchup and tabasco sauce) and a double helping of bacon (one of which was a substitute for eggs, which I won't eat). Coffee and large orange juice, the kind of breakfast that will keep you running till dinner. Never was big on eating at IHOP, but this time it was quite excellent.
As we had money in pocket that we didn't spend at the casino, we went to Barnes and Noble, where I spent at least a couple of hours browsing before the wife insisted that we leave, claiming that I was wearing holes in the carpet from walking back and forth to the different sections. I wound up buying two books on bipolar disorder and a Rolling Stone special edition about the stories behind the Beatles' songs. I may not have bought that Beatles thing but I figured my son would really like to read it. I doubt there's a lot information about them that I don't already know, but I'm sure I'll enjoy reading it anyway.
The trip home was (thankfully) uneventful, seeing as how I knew the route and didn't have to depend on the GPS' outdated information. Well, I SAY it was uneventful. I did miss the Sapulpa exit. I swear I didn't even see it, and neither did the wife. It was no big deal, as the highway we were on would eventually take us to our destination. We'd just have to deal with 7 or 8 extra miles. Actually I'm glad it worked out that way because I'd forgotten how much easier that road is than route 66 (the road I've been using for several years). I'm sure I'll use it from now on, since I have grown to hate 66 with it's treacherous curves and the little towns you have to slow down to get through.
It was a good trip, but it was just as good to get home. We decided to cap the weekend off with dinner at a restaurant in town that has great brisket. They only serve it as a Saturday special and I hadn't eaten it in several months. Wouldn't you know, they were out of brisket. Ribs are also on special Saturday nights. I'm not much of a rib eater at all, but I figured I'd try them and see. It was an hour before we got our order. Not paar for the course at this place, but I WAS hungry and we'd never had any problems before so we cut them a lot of slack. Now, this place has for a theme retro cars and stuff like that. It actually used to be a gas station in the 50s. They've got a line of antique soda bottles lined up in the window, most of which are still full of pop. It's pretty cool, but I found out last night that the placement next to a booth was unwise to say the least. I reached out to take off my coat and wouldn't you know it, knocked one of the bottles over. I tried to keep it from falling but in the process another fell, and in an astounding display of how the domino theory works, a couple more fell down. I managed to get things under control, but not before every single person in the restaurant was looking my way, each one laughing. They even started applauding, a gesture that I'm still unsure of how it applied. Ah, all in good fun, eh? I didn't take it too hard. It's a wonder it hadn't happened before, and that's probably what they were thinking as well.
I didn't like the ribs.
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