inquiry

My partner and I had such a great afternoon and early evening, yesterday.

First we utilized some “free play” at a casino, and wound up $20 up on that.

Then we met with friends at our favorite winery, which was super – and literally – cool for just the four of us being outdoors at a table between their gas fireplace, and one of those tallish, standalone gas heaters.

Then we (“ju-hust the two of us..”) headed to where we thought we'd have dinner. But the parking lot was so full that we decided to try a dive bar we'd heard had the best burgers in town.

And, oh, what a fantastic bar!

I wouldn't say it was the best burger I've ever had (ditto on the Reuben sandwich we also ordered), but it certainly ranked.

On the liquids side, we started with some rather good Malbec the bartender recommended, which partner continued on with – myselves morphing to bottled Pabst's “for old time's sake”.

But, well, I say “dive” not because there was something “lesser” about the people, but simply because it had that classic look: pool table (free!), popcorn wagon (free!), jukebox (okay, it wasn't a classic jukebox, but it did the job..), and even a friggin' pinball machine.

And you can smoke indoors!

But there were some rather classic characters in there that were a joy to converse (i.e. bullshit (haha!) with). One guy considered himself – as his attire confirmed – “bohemian”. The bartender was wonderful, and just two days older than I. I played pool against another patron, oh, maybe seven games (won all but one.. I was halfway decent “back in the day”), and he turned out to be someone that lives less than half a mile from us, in a sort of adjacent subdivision (which is probably why we've never encountered him before). So the words “small world” lived and reigned....

I was just plain ecstatic, especially given how much it reminded me of my favorite bar worlds/eons away (1990s)... to the point that my partner looked that one up to see if it still exists, and it does, so I pounded some reminiscical verbiage into their Facebook page on my partner's phone (as I gave up Farcebook looooooong ago)... (Too bad I couldn't remember some of the names of the characters from that place until this morning.. so maybe I'll have to update that post...?)

And then we were home before 10:00pm, hit the sack about 10:30pm... and I slept straight through until 6:30am – at which point I bathroom'd, started a (Keurig) cup of coffee, and microwaved the rest of the burger....

We're really hoping we can stick to more that kind of plan than the insane hours our weekend evenings far too often encompass, which these old bodies of ours really can't – or shouldn't, at least – endure.