Meal Enjoyment

I think my stomach is going to rupture. Seriously. Dad took me out to dinner tonight at a cute little restaurant called the Brasserie d'Eden, and it was marvelous. We chose the complete meal, and for the first course I had a salad with some kind of toasted fish on top, and Dad's had duck, and both were excellent. Then we ate our rolls. The main course for me was this kind of log thing that didn't look all too appetizing but tasted spectacular - it was pork rolled with mushrooms in sort of a cabbagey lining. There was also this softish quiche thing that was very good, au gratin potatoes, and broccoli. I didn't eat the carrots. Dad had the same thing except for his main plate was a practically-rare steak of sorts. Then, after this gustatory explosion, and about a half hour of waiting, we were brought a cheese plate with a soft cheese that was tasty, a hard cheese that was equally tasty, a blue cheese that I didn't like, along with a mini salad to eat it with. After that (!) Dad was too full to have a dessert and I should have behaved likewise but I ordered the creme brulee since I've never had it before, and I wish I hadn't been so full because it was excellent.

Of course, the weekend that Dad comes up it rains like a fool. We were pretty lucky during the day; it spat here and there but never actually heavy, but when we left the restaurant it was definitely there. Dad insisted that I take a cab home, and it was not some ordinary checkered taxi that picked me up but a bona fide Mercedes. My, what class! The driver was so nice, he talked to me the entire way there and actually stopped the meter at one point because the fare was getting to be so expensive. I tipped him three dollars for that but upon reflecting I may have accidentally tipped him thirteen. Oops.

The library internship went really well; she had me and this other assistant named Anna run to the Librarie Sauramps to pick up these books by James Sallis because he's coming sometime in October and it doesn't look good if we don't stock his books beforehand. Afterwards, she asked me if I knew Excel, in which I responded affirmatively. She then whipped out a barrage of French telling me how they have to adjust the size of this card to fit in people's wallets and could I create a row of 6x6 boxes and just print it out and measure it so that it fits?

Well, I was kind of lying about the Excel, since I had used it once in like eighth grade but then promptly forgot everything I'd learned. Plus, all of the commands and menu bars were in French, so that didn't really give me much help. I just dumbly looked at the monitor for awhile, and made x's in 1-6 and A-F and then tried to size it so it would fit in a wallet. I finally got the size right, and the director was like, "Alaina, well can you get boxes on there? We need boxes!" So I had no idea how to make borders around the boxes so that they'd show up when I printed it, and made a halfhearted attempt to just draw boxes which I quickly abandoned once I saw how lame they looked. It was at this point around 4:57 and I needed to get it done. I started choosing random menu icons and hoping they'd give me borders, but no; but for the grace of god I would have failed miserably if I hadn't found the 'border' tab at the last moment. The director seemed happy enough with it and I was just relieved not to have looked like a total moron.