Ellen Jinxes Steakhouses

Q: What is the difference between a steakhouse and a BBQ place?

A: A steakhouse serves broccoli, or asparagus, or mixed steamed zucchini and carrots as a vegatable side dish. A BBQ place serves corn on the cob.

A few anniversary notes.

Backing up to yesterday: I was driving on North Aurora road near the train station and noticed something new. Jimmy's Charhouse was no longer "Jimmy's Charhouse". I was now "Andrew's Open Pit BBQ". I called Ellen to tell her she'd done it again. The restaurant she'd decided was her favorite steak house had closed. (see also: Timber Lodge, a bit more than a year ago).

I hadn't driven that way in a little while, but still the changeover had to be pretty quick because we'd just had a meal a Jimmy's maybe a month ago. Or so. I guessed that this wasn't a major change, but that the owners had done a bit of re-positioning of the restaurant.

So, we decided to go there tonight for our anniversary dinner. (Happy anniversary, Ellen!)

I was right. They'd changed the name, the shirts on the waitstaff, and tweaked the menu to emphasize the BBQ a bit more and the steaks a bit less, but nothing else had really changed. Oh, and they served corn-on-the-cob with the entree.

So, Ellen didn't really jinx the place. It just changed focus slightly.

In other news, the new furnace and AC are in. I'm glad Ellen wanted the outside AC unit moved to the south side of the house rather than where it was, on the west side near the patio. The new unit is quite a bit larger than the old one, and the new one either wouldn't have fit as well or it would have been that much closer to the dryer vent (which was already a problem with the old one). It's cool enough today that we haven't exercised the new AC much, though we had it on right after installation to try to have it run. So, we'll see how things are when things heat up again.

That's it for now. I have a monitoring session tonight (9pm - 1am) that I need to log in for.