unconscionable defenestration

Had a lovely lunch at Porter's Tavern. Their consistency is really what keeps me coming back -- especially when I'm trying to make a good impression with lunch (client, date, etc.) I can count on a moderately full house with no wait, good food, and good service. And the sweet tea is refreshing rather than syrupy, which makes a suprising difference in how much one enjoys a meal.

The crab cake sandwich apparently was a pleaser. I had a grilled steak salad with roasted corn and tomatoes, which could have simply been a menu placeholder, but came across surprisingly well. For dessert we split the creme brulee, which I am convinced is the best in town -- and that's saying something for such a common/overplayed dessert.

If you go, I quite recommend the calamari. Having spent a few years in Monterey, where calamari is caught locally and never frozen before serving, it's a wierd thing to say -- but Porter's has excellent calamari. I've been with one couple who insists on having their own calamari appetizer to start, because they know they'll be too rude to share with their friends. :) For lunch, the trick is to order the caesar salad with calamari, and then ask for a side of the dipping sauce they serve with the appetizer. It's only a dollar or two more, and you get essentially an entire appetizer's worth of calamari and a nice salad to boot.

Just when we thought the rain was over, we got a late shower on Wednesday -- my poor grass had been growing happily for three weeks before I finally caught up with it yesterday. New neighbors moved in across the street, and I'm sure they wondered if I had abandoned the house...

And finally, let me just point out that "maybe" is a bad, bad word. I believe I'm going to have "maybe" replace both "phlegmatic" and the Dutch phrase "Krijg de pest" (go and get the plague) as tops on my list of things to stop saying. You can find some much more beautiful words to say here.