Date night fail

Today, the kids are out at the trailer with Gramma and Grampa for a sleepover. Cindy is off this week and this is allowing Chad and I to work a few days in order to save some vacation time for later in the year.

Since we were on our own tonight, we decided to go out for dinner - 'Date Night', if you will - using a gift certificate that I won a few months ago. (Actually, it was a door prize from an information session I attended back in June for the Bulldog race.) The gift certificate was for the Lighthouse Inn which bills itself as a pretty little spot to sit and eat seafood while watching the boats go by. Chad actually took me there for Valentine's Day once, nearly fifteen years ago. We don't remember much about it except that it wasn't THAT bad. (After all, I didn't dump Chad the next day.)

We did discuss just picking up a sub or something and then parking it in front of the TV to watch the US Open, something we don't really have the luxury of doing while the kids are running around, but CHAD insisted we go out and use up the damn certificate. So we went. It turned into the worst restaurant experience we have ever had, bar none. It was the worst food I have ever had plus the worst service we have ever had, all rolled into a single meal. My fish was cold and tasteless. Chad ordered the shrimp special on the same night that the low-priced shrimp appetizer special was offered, and as a result, it took more than an hour for our food to come out of the kitchen - they were that backed up. (We actually noticed about 20-30 motorcycles in the parking lot when we arrived; I think the pack of bikers were stuffing themselves with shrimp out on the patio while the dining room patrons were being made to wait.) Chad didn't get part of his meal, the billing was off, you name it - it went wrong.

It also took us half an hour to get there, since it's an out-of-town restaurant.

So in order to use up our gift certificate, we wasted three hours of our lives plus a quarter tank of gas, ate bad food, paid too much for it, and missed the US Open.

Is it any wonder that we don't do date nights all that often?