Breakfast At Denny's

AKA: The "I Do What I Want" Post

There was one day last month when all of the "big kids" around here shared the same day off. This is a great rarity these days, and we celebrated by going out to breakfast at Denny's.

Now, we are not really much of a going-out-to-eat family. We like our own cooking very well, and generally prefer to eat that. However, breakfast at Denny's is something of a thing with us; a long-standing thing from back in the the days when we were all young and mostly broke, and the friends who came to visit us were in similar financial straits. Breakfast at Denny's was an economical way to get out for a bit, and it turned into something of a tradition. Sometimes, when several of us had guests to visit at the same time, we'd end up going in with quite a crowd, and take the place by storm. We didn't just have our own booth. We had our own wing.

We also like to play with some of the kiddie entertainment that Denny's occasionally provides. On one notable occasion, several small people were included in the excursion, and were presented with a plastic tub full of Tinker Toy like doodads, which we all pounced upon like budding engineers. In short order, the table was covered with fantastical structures, and the waiter, much amused by us, had brought forth two more tubs to feed our passion for architecture. 

It is probably just as well that at last month's jaunt to the old restaurant, that we had nothing with which to entertain ourselves, but our own brilliant conversation, and a maze on the back of the kiddie-menu place mat at each place. A suggestion was cast out, that we should hold a race, and see who could complete her (or in my brother's case, his) maze the fastest.... I don't remember if there actually was a winner. We all dashed through the challenge quite nippily, and compared the results. Here is what I produced:

And all thought of a winner was forgotten amid gales of appreciative laughter. Treski snapped this picture, and entitled it, "I Do What I Want".

Now, I must point out that I was not trying to pull a Loki here. For some reason, I genuinely thought I was supposed to use the white lines to get to the FINISH in the center of the maze. Yes, I know, the actual paths through the maze are far bigger and more obviously THE MAZE than the skinny little white lines, so it should should have been blindingly obvious to the meanest of intelligences, how, exactly, one was to proceed in this endevour, but... well, that is me for you. Doing things the hard way again, what? Oh, yes indeedy!

 I do what I want!

In Which I Emerge from the Cave

Yes, it has been a long time. No, I really do not have a good excuse:

From 123giggle.com

And that about sums it up. I was sort of hoping that if I ignored them, the dragons would go away, so I pulled up the drawbridge, barricaded myself in my house. I feasted upon small feasts, and had honey whiskey to stand me in the place of mead - and if the whiskey soothed a soreness of the throat, so much the better. Various portal, magic or otherwise, allowed me visitors, who could come and go without attracting attention. And so, some of my time was spent in the company of Agents Fitz, Simmons and Coulson. I would occasionally entertain 5 Allied POWs who slipped away from WWII at Stalag 13 through the very clever tunnel-system they have devised. A high-functioning sociopathic detective made an appearance, as did an Army doctor, who knows how to sprain people, and his very companionable wife, who knows how to shoot people. Sometimes there was an FBI agent named Peter, and con-man who calls himself Neil. I also might have been visited by King Arthur and Sir Gawain, as well as a firebird, an enchanted prince whose heart was given to a witch, and the Princess who got it back for him. Hobbits might possibly have crept in, too.

At last, I thought the dragons were gone, and I emerged into a world that seemed too sunny to be safe. The dragons were merely bidding their time, and I have had to chase them away with swords and un-answerable riddles, and the threat of a clan of female warriors, who will sing the Cup Song to them for hours on end, until they (the dragons) go mad and die. That scared them, and they went away, and the rain came, and the snow came, and I went home again, basking in the satisfaction of a Job Well Done. 

In short, there has been Life and Work and Disease, and I have been watching too many TV shows, and reading too many books, and ignoring Ye Olde Blogosphere most reprehensibly. I ought, at this point, to make professions of renewed dedication, but I am not. I am going to put a chicken-and-mushroom pie in the oven. And see if I cannot find Alan Breck Stewart to come share it with me.