Wherein I Cannot Eat My Lunch

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We decided to go for Chinese/Thai/Sushi food for lunch at a local place near our house. I won't mention the name because (1). I don't remember it and (2). I hated the food.  It's usually a bad sign when a restaurant has six pages of entree choices, because it means they don't make anything all that good. I think this place specializes in sushi, so we should have taken them up on that offering, but I wasn't in the mood. Instead, I ordered a Thai chicken lo mien, even though I'm trying to cut back on my overall noodle consumption. The food came out in fourteen seconds; another alarming sign, because it's likely that all they had time to do was reheat the noodles. In any case, that's what it tasted like---noodles that had been sitting in a bowl since yesterday night and popped in the microwave. The other factor that contributed to the ick of the place was that I was seated directly across from a giant aquarium full of giant goldfish. I like goldfish as much as anyone, but I don't like having a front row seat to their activities, specifically, it's difficult to eat a lo mien noodle while also staring at long strings of fish poop dangling at the top of the water. Thirdly, the soundtrack for the restaurant was all maudlin songs from the 70s. Like, every sad love song you can think of--Anne Murray signing "You needed me," and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," and "Seasons in the Sun," etc. By the time I got the fortune cookie, I was ready to lie down on the floor, mostly from fatigue and hunger. My fortune was something like, "Your life will be a series of unending tragedies that end in a lonely death." I asked for the food to go, because I didn't want to disappoint the man who waited on us, this same man who lingered by our table for most of the meal, which is reason four I didn't enjoy it and wished I could put most of my uneaten meal in my sock, as I used to do with my veggies as a child.


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