Out of Touch....

I'm not going to speak for Melissa in this post, but I have to say that I'm feeling decidedly sheepish and more than a little bit out of touch after our Saturday evening outing to Nashville.

I must preface my story by saying that in my case being out of touch has never been difficult to achieve. Melissa reminds me of this each time she gets to tune the radio to her preferred stations when we're travelling in the car. To say I am clueless about modern artists and recent, trendy music doesn't even hint at it really. More often than not, I've never heard of the artist in question and have never heard the song that's playing either. I'm an embarrassment and I'm proud of it. So pull my finger and sue me.

Back to Saturday night. Melissa and I thought it'd be nice to have a night out; not something we do very often, so we planned to use a gift certificate we've been saving to go to The Cheesecake Factory which is at the trendiest mall in the trendiest neighbourhood in Nashville. I'll say right here that in spite of the location, I *LOVE* The Cheesecake Factory. The portion sizes are gargantuan and they have a fourteen page menu with hundreds of items and everything is tasty and is served in such a way that it's rendered as unhealthy as possible. I think the whole concept is absolutely fantastic and I won't have a word said against it ! Obviously, others feel the same way we do because it's always busy. On previous trips we've waited as long as an hour and a half for a table and despite the lateness of the evening, I was prepared to do so again.

So imagine my surprise when we arrived at the mall which hosts the Cheesecake Factory only to find that the entire city of Nashville was trying to park, all at the same time, in the tiny parking lot that surrounds the restaurant and mall. I had an inkling that things might not bode well for us at this point and this was borne out pretty quickly when Melissa returned from the restaurant and informed me that the wait for a table was three hours long and it was 8 pm at that time. Our collective disappointment was huge but waiting wasn't an option. Noon seemed like it had happened half a lifetime ago and I needed to eat sooner than 11 pm.

Enroute to our next restaurant choice, we pondered...well, Melissa pondered and I griped...why it was so incredibly busy in Nashville on this particular Saturday night. Between the two of us all we managed to come up with was that it had snowed a bit earlier in the week and people were exuberant that the weather had improved and needed something to do. I confess I couldn't get past my main thought, which was, "Who on earth makes a habit out of going out to eat after 8 pm on ANY night ?? " (In addition to being an embarrassment, a bad case of old fogey-ism set in some time ago too !)

Despite the time (now approaching 9pm), our next restaurant choice offered a shorter but still significant wait. In spite of my ongoing griping and increasing crabbiness at the world in general we chose to wait and we finally left the restaurant sated shortly after ten in the evening.

After I'd calmed down, it finally dawned on me *this morning* that maybe the snow melting didn't have as much as we thought to do with the crowded restaurant venues in Nashville this past Saturday night. Instead, maybe people were celebrating *VALENTINES DAY* a few days early by taking their significant other out for supper. Imagine that !?! Oh well, there's always next year ! :)

Happy Valentines Day to all of you !