John ate his liver

Yesterday, we had some Chicken Express for dinner.  Every time I see their logo it makes me think of Nunnrey.  The chicken tenders are great, but I would still prefer some Raising Cane's sauce over the white gravy.

Anyway, Shey for some reason has a liking for fried chicken livers.  I learned this on a trip to Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles.  I'm not a huge fan of the livers as I think they are a little gritty, but since I saw them on the menu at Chicken Express I decided to pick some up (specifically for Shey) to go with our chicken and catfish dinner.

John claims he's never had liver so I told him he should try one.  He refused, but Shey called him a sissy so he gave it a whirl.  There were no fava beans or Chianti for John's Hannibal meal, but he did have some sweet tea with vodka (not to be confused with The Sweet Tea Vodka).  Once John got through the fried goodness and his teeth sunk into that liver he started whining like a little girl about how gross it was.  

I'm not sure if he actually swallowed it or not, but this one goes up there with his fear of roaches for how much of a little punk he is.  I assume this means you'll never see John on any survival shows in the future.

The roach that brought down a restaurant.

Disclosure: I hate roaches. They're my Kryptonite.

The wife and I decided to check out a certain unnamed fine dining establishment in downtown Austin a few months ago. We rolled up on a Saturday night and the hostess informed us that there'd be about 15-20 minute wait. No problem, we grabbed a couple drinks at the bar and within about 10 minutes we were seated at a table for two along the wall.

Now, this restaurant is in what appears to be an old house. My spidey sense had me checking out the wall vent 12 inches from me and scoping out the bookcase that was along the wall behind my wife. I also made a mental note about a small ceiling tile that was ajar. Our server dropped off some bread, and we proceeded to look over the menu. The next time I look up from the menu I notice a large roach has crawled out from the hole in the ceiling. I flagged down a waiter (not ours) and let him know what was up. He goes into the kitchen area to get his gear or whatever while I wonder how he's going to get this thing without making a huge scene.

For reasons unknown I took my eye off the ball for a second. When I checked the ceiling again it was gone. I'm on DEFCON 1 at this point assuming it's jumped to the floor and is going to crawl up my leg*. The server I alerted had also re-emerged and was puzzled by the lack of roach. I had had enough fun at this point, but my wife wanted to finish her glass of wine. As she takes her last couple sips I notice her eyes get really big and she's looking at the wall next to me. The darn thing (or a friend/family member) had crawled up the wall, and was sitting 10" from me!

I hop out of my chair, and do a quick inventory of items at my disposal for roach killin'. My cloth napkin is pretty much my only choice. I smash it and ball it up in the napkin (I hope they use bleach when they wash those things). The waiter I had tipped off earlier comes by and collects the carcass, and then comes back with a couple new (unnecessary) napkins... We leave at this point.

So what do I see a couple days ago in the local newspaper? That restaurant is closing at the end of the month. The owner's claim is that cost increases are hurting business and they're going to reopen in a month or so as a Mexican restaurant. Personally, I think the story spread about my encounter and now they need to de-roach and re-brand to ramp up on diners.

* In 7th grade I was sitting in a computer class and a roach crawled up the teacher's leg. So my paranoia is not without precedent.