On restaurant quality

Two posts in one day! This is *serious* procrastination.

Anyway, I have to pile on a local "restaurant" -- the scare quotes are there because I think there is an expectation of quality when you use the word without quotes, and as I'm about to point out, this place doesn't qualify.

I've complained in the past about the local group that owns basically all of the non-chain places in this town and has apparently decided to rigidly enforce mediocrity throughout their kingdom. Well, a bunch of us went to one of these substandard locations tonight. It has probably been 5 years or so since the last time I went, and if I can help it, it will be more than 5 years before I'm back again.

Tonight was Mexican night, and out of 9 of us, 3 of us ordered enchiladas. The menu listed them at $10.99. One of the other folks ordered a combo plate for $12.99. My enchiladas were, as expected, completely mediocre. Had that been the end, no post would be here. However, when the bill came, they charged us $12.99 each for the 3 plates of mediocre enchiladas, and $10.99 for what I can only assume was a mediocre combo platter. So in the end we ended up on the losing end by $4. The majority of the group felt that $4 wasn't worth complaining about. So, we left out an extra $4.
Thus, the post.

In return for the $4 overcharging, I'll register my complaint here. I suggest that all of you consider skipping the Deli for your next meal in downtown State College.

On canine entrees

At dinner tonight, I was chatting with two of the hundreds of thousands of readers of this blog, and I was mentioning that I really don't have 10 minutes anymore before bed to post -- my life in the summer is overscheduled, and I won't have a brief respite until the week of June 25. I'm in my office now because I'm scheduled to give a presentation at 10pm (seriously), so I figured I'd put off the mountain of work to mention an excellent email I received today.

As I said last time, I'm teaching this summer, and I have a crop of students that have not yet ceased to amaze me. Unfortunately, I do not mean because of their endless dedication to the subject of my course. No, I mean because of their creativity in coming up with excuses.

Student A is three weeks into my course, and needs to improve significantly to hope to sniff the D level. He did not turn in this week's work and his excuse boiled down to (and I'm *not* joking at all) -- the dog ate my computer. Seriously.

Maybe it's time that all students are required to switch to cats. They have much more refined palates.