best weekend in a looooooong time

So this weekend was super awesome fantastic good times.

1) The Scoop on Dish: Friday night, Scott, Jason, Jamie and I went to a restaurant that I saw advertised in Lynchburg Living Magazine, called Dish. I was very excited because I was under the impression that Lynchburg just did not have trendy, locally-owned downtown restaurants, a la Nama and the places on Market Square in Knoxville. Let's just say we were not impressed.

First we didn't know that we needed reservations, so they gave us that "what are you doing here?" attitude at the door. They seated us at the bar, which was awkward with 4 people. So 10 minutes after we've been looking at the menu, she tells us that their style of food is tapas. Then spells tapas (because we are mentally challenged?). Then asks us if we'd ever heard of that before. hello! 2 Spanish teachers who don't live under rocks. Thanks. And who hasn't heard of tapas?

For a mixed group of people that includes a guy who loves chicken tenders, a girl who is allergic to fish, and a girl who doesn't eat meat, and all of us on a budget, it was a difficult menu. Since I'm still eating fish and I wanted to try something different, I ordered the Shrimp Stuffed Calamari. For $9, I got two undercooked tentacle tubes the size of my thumb stuffed with what didn't look like shrimp. And it was covered in spicy rooster sauce which was not at all implied on the menu which said "served with ginger and green onions". The stuffing part was actually good, but the rest was iffy. Fortunately it didn't make me sick.

Everyone else ordered the meatballs, which were just that. 2 enormous balls o' beef, which were still quite pink inside covered in tomato sauce. Nothing particularly special about them.

Right after our food was served, a different server came over and asked us (mid-chew) if we could scoot down the bar because they had some other customers coming in who "didn't want to be crowded." Incredibly rude. We scooted down anyway, and then when the people came to be seated, they wanted to sit on the end we had scooted toward!
The kicker of the night was when she brought our checks. We open the black credit card holder book and are greeted with our bills: on bright green Post-its. How very, very unprofessional. And, my glass of wine that I thought was $3.50 was apparently $7! Pretentious waitress: "oh it's only $3.50 if you get the half glass." Who gets a half glass of wine??? whatever. I could have bought the whole bottle at Food Lion for $10. A place that charges that much for tiny plates of food and glasses of wine should be able to afford a cash register.

Although the restaurant itself was in poor form, we still had a good time.


I've since met other people who rave about Dish, and I'm willing to give it a second try. We'll see.
2) Wii: We then went to Scott and Jason's apartment and played on the Wii while we waited for the bowling alley to open. We made Mii characters of me and Jamie and then practiced our bowling skills.

3) Real bowling: I bowled a lot better than I ever have before. I think the Wii practice got me ready. The bowling alley food was better than Dish. It was very fun, but a little more expensive than I would have expected. Fortunately I just got paid, and they gave us coupons for next time. We played Mario Party 8 on the wiii afterward.






4) Corn Maze: Saturday morning we drove up to Rockbridge County about an hour north of here. None of them had ever been through a corn maze before so that was fun. It wasn't as fancy as the ones in TN, but it was still a good time. Scary masks on stuffed bodies and fake spiderwebs throughout. They're doing night walks starting next week so we might go back. They also had a pumpkin patch. I bought some gourds for my aunt because they were really interesting shapes and colors. Scottie B got some pumpkins.






5) Virginia Safari Park: This was the most awesome thing I have been to in a loooooong time. At the safari park, you get buckets of food and drive around this gravel road through woods and fields. Animals approach the car and feed from the buckets and you can pet them and talk to them. There's also a walking tour part. We met lots of llamas, zebras, watusi cattle, bison, many kinds of deer, elk, pot belly pigs, kangaroos, monkeys, and goats. The elk were doing their mating calls which sounds like screeching brakes. There were also ostriches, emus, and rheas but they were scary so we rolled up the windows so they wouldn't peck our eyes out. It was super fun.