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weekend with the inlaws
We had interpreted the original time prediction as meaning "leave after work Friday". So I was surprised when my MIL talked about having gotten up at 6AM for the trip. It turns out that they left early in the morning and spent 5 or 6 hours in the outlet stores in Grove City. (!) These people consider shopping to be a sport or a fun way to pass the day, apparently. They had Dani hunt down (via the internet) the limits on what they could bring through customs without declaring it on the way home. I didn't hear whether they were over.
Unbeknownst to me even though we talked about my cats as recently as Pesach, the outlaw (that is, an inlaw's husband) is allergic to cats. They were staying in a hotel (MIL stayed with us), but it meant we couldn't socialize Friday evening in our house and we ended up migrating to their hotel. If they'd, y'know, said something, we would have done some touch-up vacuuming Friday afternoon and things probably would have been fine. He's not so allergic that he can't be in a room that's ever had cats in it or something like that. (The living room has doors, so keeping them out after vacuuming is achievable.)
We were hosting lunch on Saturday, which they thought would be a problem. I managed to say "so we'll eat outside" before anyone else could get the restaurant suggestion out; I could feel it coming. (We have a patio in back and a covered porch in front, so this would work regardless of the weather.) So that was fine.
We didn't get the predicted rain after all, so we took them to the arts festival in the afternoon. (Yay! My effort to get people to agree to something that wouldn't be a horrible Shabbat violation succeeded!) There weren't as many exhibits as I remember from past years (though it's been a few), at least in the main area (Gateway Center and Point Park). We walked through the marketplace and saw lots of nifty stuff, though, so that was fine. They bought; we just looked. My favorites were the birds carved out of stones (by which I mean things like quartz and onyx, not masonry). There was a beautiful pelican (I don't know what the white stone was) perched on a piece of rose quartz such that it looked like the bird was leaning over a pool. Very pretty, but the $700 price tag menat that we weren't buying even if it hadn't been Shabbat. :-)
After Shabbat we went to dinner at Mallorca. This turned out to be somewhat disasterous, but mostly due to the outlaw rather than to the restaurant. (Still, the restaurant contributed enough to the problems that we have crossed this place off our places-to-take-guests list.)
The outlaw is on the Atkins diet (though I saw him eat a bagel at lunch, so I guess not entirely). This I knew; that's why we chose a place that's heavy on meat and fish instead of, say, pasta. I didn't know that (1) he doesn't eat fish and (2) he's a very fussy eater. After learning that they were out of the lamb special, he studied the menu (containing, oh, 15-20 meat dishes) and then declared that none were acceptable. The rest of us had already ordered by then (it was when they came back with the salads that they also brought news of the lamb), and he didn't try to suggest that we leave. But he sat there and pouted. The waiter made several suggestions to him, including offering to leave the objectionable mushrooms off of the otherwise-unadorned Delmonico steak, but ultimately he didn't order anything. Sigh. There comes a point when you conclude that it's not really about the food any more.
(As for the problems with Mallorca itself: smoke-filled entry (where you have to stand until they take you to your table), noisy party a couple tables over (we sometimes had to shout to be heard), and repeated failure to deliver cream for the coffee.)
Fortunately, brunch today at Sunnyledge was much better; a buffet helps with a restricted eater. (I can usually eat about half of the stuff at the buffet, which is enough to satisfy me.) My parents joined us for this; it's been a while since our families have seen each other. So that was nice. Then Dani's family headed back to Canada and the rest of us went home.
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