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So last night I meet up with cousin Jeff for dinner. He's staying, coincidentally, right next to Melissa's work, and she has to work at 9, so she comes to dinner too, which is at 7.

Jeff meets me with a plastic bag, a gift of... onion bagels. 4 of em. Oh man. See now the bagels in Vegas are pretty poor, and for some reason, they have 27 kinds of bagels at the two super markets near my house, but they don't have onion. They have "jalepeno blueberry" but they don't have onion. Or garlic for that matter. Yet they have everything bagels that have both garlic AND onion. Morons. So this is the best gift a Jew can get. I get them into the car and... the sweet pungency of the onion bagel ode immediately fills the car, causing Melissa to whine and me to revel in glee.

I pose three options - Hard Rock Cafe, Rainbow Bar & Grille, and Hafbrauhaus. We decide on Rainbow Grill because it was the most "Vegasy". Rainbow is usually a great place, but on this night it was empty, and I guess the emptier a restaurant is, the shittier the service. So the chick Susie doesn't take our order for 30 minutes (not kidding) then when she does, in heavily accent, very low volume English reads off about 8 specials that we have no interest in. Just as I'm about to order my Veal Piccata, the girl says "Oh and we're out of veal". Strike 1. So I order Mussels Marinara and a side salad.

10 minutes later Susie is back, "I'm sorry this isn't your day, we're out of mussels." Strike 2. So I order filet mignon, medium rare, that's medium rare. See, YOU heard me, right?

15 minutes later no one has their food and I ask "can I get my salad at least". Susie says she was waitin to bring me the salad with the meal. Bzzzz strike 3 you're out. But wait, the food is around the corner, so let's call that a foul ball. Here it comes, and looks great. I put some A1 on the steak, slice up a chunk, and... uhh.. what's this... it's charred. I slice it through the middle - it's brown. BZZZZZ strike 3 you're out again! Unfortunately the waitstaff has completely disappeared, so it's another 5 minutes before I can give the steak back to the girl, who then comes back and tells me that the chef says it's medium rare, and it must be the lighting in the restaurant that's making it look brown. Now had I been at my wittiest I would have said "does the lighting make it taste brown too?" but I was hungry, so I just took it back and ate it. It wasn't bad.

So I end up learning quite a bit over dinner. Phyllis and Martin winter in FL now, which I didn't know, and they are 30+ min from Nana. Nana hurt her back and needed to come back to NY for an MRI. Mom learned to drive in the same car I'm now driving - a Delta 88. Everyone was scared of her - "No one fucked with Diane" was the quote, I believe. Dad was everyone's favorite when he started dating Mom. Awwww. Martin is totally dogmatic (which I guess I knew) and a certain relative of mine was a bit of a dope fiend back in the day, and was feeling "significantly improved" at a family wedding as he ran in late to usher someone down the aisle. That would have been funny to see. Papa was a hell of a butcher, and Jeff used to run deliveries for him, but he was never allowed to touch the meat.

So when I got home, totally stuffed... Lake called from NZ, and we chatted a bit. He's gonna be in NJ the first couple weeks of June, and I was planning to do some NY/Boston visitations then, so hopefully that works out. But since I have to be in NY in October, and Boston in October, and NY and in either Nov or Dec - I might skip the summer thing. We'll see how the money looks when it gets closer I guess. I sat down to watch TV and have a martini after hanging up with Lake... the scent of the onion bagels carried through the air and to my eager nostrils. Although I wasn't hungry, i could not deny the bliss... I cut off a half and toasted it, although I knew I had no cream cheese nor tomato. I had to suffice with butter, well, margarine - but that was all I needed. Half a bagel later, I settled down with the TV and had a sip of the martini... but a waft of air once more brought the succulent oniony bouquet to my proboscis. And so the other half was consumed as well.

I had another just now, after going shopping for nova, lettuce, tomato, and diet onion & chive philly cream cheese. 2 down, 2 to go.

So long

Has it really been over a month since my last post? Whoops. Well, Jeff brought me some onion bagels last night, and I am PSYCHED, so I am off to get some lox and cream cheese. I'll post more later.