Downtime

argh, blogger was down for the last few days and now i have all this pent up information just waiting to be spilled out on these pages.

first off, i'd like to announce the probability of my withdrawal from the 2006 l.a. marathon. unfortunately, despite my best attempts at rehabilitation and care, my knee doesn't seem to want to cooperate. after a week off of running, along with plenty of icing and stretching of my it band, i went to the track for a test run. at about 2 miles into the run the burning started up, so i've decided to give it one more try to make it to at least 3 miles, but the situation looks pretty grim.

and now to recap the events of saturday evening. my roommates and i had traveled to westwood to dine at chili's bar and grill. nothing fancy, just a relaxed dinner with friends. the waitress brought the check. at that moment, the trouble began. my two roommates decided to pile their share of the expense on a single credit card, a total of $26. now the check total was $35.09. i decided to throw down an andrew jackson for my share of the check, which was about $13 at the most. now, to slightly, and i emphasize slightly, complicate matters, one of my roommates threw in another $20 bill to get change for the valet. so we had put in a total of $66, $20 of which was to be returned in the form of lesser denominations. now when the waitress returned with the completed bill, this is what it contained: the credit card with receipt to be signed...and, drumroll please, 4 $5 bills. this accomplished the aforementioned goal of getting change for the valet. however, the remainder of the $20 bill i threw in, along with instructions to return the change to the table, was not present. this was quite the awkward situation. i was not willing to leave, having paid $20 dollars for a $13 meal and given the waitress a fat $11 tip on a mere $35 meal. however, it was going to be tricky to maneuver my change out of the pocket of the waitress without accusing her of trying to rip me off. i flagged down the waitress and she returned my change without any bad noise, whereupon i left a sufficient $5 tip. sorry lady, we aren't the usual crowd of high rollers you normally see in chili's on a saturday night.