Christine the Lioness said this

ROFL… yes you are, babe.

February 14th, 2008

Christine the Lioness mentioned

Going out to dinner on V-day is a bit more complicated in the L.A. area… Here’s what you can expect on Valentine’s Day here…

1. The only reservation you’ll be able to get is 9pm because every restaurant (decent or not) has been overbooked since New Years.

2. Reservations only mean something if you DON’T have one. No reservation means no chance in hell of getting in. Those WITH a reservation have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in and sitting down at their actual reservation time. Last year, we went to Il Fornaio in Manhattan Beach and people WITH reservations had to wait over an hour for a table. They were not happy. We had to wait a half hour which was okay because my sister and her husband (who live about 10 miles away) were stuck in “Valentine Day Dinner Traffic” which took them over an hour to get to the restaurant.

3. The price you would have paid for a three course dinner last night, just tripled because now it’s printed on special paper decorated with hearts and labeled “Prix Fixe.”

4. You can be guaranteed you will get the worst service you’ve ever had– not only because the kitchen staff is completely overwhelmed, but because the wait staff has no idea how to compensate for the problems in the kitchen. After all, Valentine’s Day is the biggest restaurant day of the year– and unlike every other day, couples tend to linger at their table feeling like they’ve earned every moment to sit there after paying the “Prix Fixe” prices and therefore, the tables don’t turn as quickly as they would on a normal night, making the whole concept of reservations nearly impossible anyway.

So, with that said, we are not going out to dinner tonight. Christopher offered to take me to a really nice restaurant this weekend, but then he ended up taking me to a really nice restaurant rather spontaneously last weekend, so I told him that we didn’t really need to do that again.

We don’t actually have any set plans, but if he has time to see me tonight, I was thinking I might pick up his fave pizza from Bucca di Beppo’s and we could do “pizza by candlelight” or something. And since we don’t have any cub scout meetings scheduled for another two weeks… we have all night to “hang out.”

February 14th, 2008

Christine the Lioness hunt n' pecked this

I’m guessing the restaurants on Ventura are probably the same story as the West Side or Southbay.

February 14th, 2008

Christine the Lioness chimed in with

Despite it’s name “San Diego Freeway,” the 405 actually doesn’t even go all the way to San Diego. It is the one and only freeway that connects Orange County (south of L.A. county) to the San Fernando Valley (north of L.A. in Ventura County). It is the most unbelievably crowded freeway EVER and most people avoid it all costs because there it’s so impacted at any given hour of the day.

February 14th, 2008