Date Night, Part 1a: Learning to drive and Harp Lager

Two questions:

1) Can you drive a stick shift?

2) Do you have a favorite "watering hole?"

The answer to question #1 is simply a yes or no answer. The answer for me is, "no." I can't. And apparently I *need* to be able to drive a standard when we move to Poland. (because my list of things I need to do before we leave apparently wasn't long or daunting enough already...)I haven't quite gotten a straight answer as to "why" yet. I mean, I've survived this long avoiding ever having to drive a stick shift. I think I can do it for another 30 years. I'd like to try. I've been asking Martin for, let's see, about 15 years now to teach me. We just never really have the chance to spend quality time doing it and neither of us want to go to the trouble to get a babysitter just to spend that precious time ruining the transmission on his car.

side note: Martin has a car. A whole car. An ENTIRE CAR, that I can't drive. Can you believe that? What family owns an entire vehicle that half the licensed drivers in the home can't drive? Ridiculous, I say! (ridiculous NOT because I don't know to drive it, but because he bought the dang thing in the first place, knowing full well that I couldn't...I sense an ulterior motive here...) end side note.

So, Saturday night, we took some time to ourselves, planned a "date night" and Martin surprised me with a little impromptu driving lesson. It was sweet at first, it felt a little like high school when he would let me try to drive his Tercel around the block and I would run over curbs and barely miss small animals and we would just laugh and laugh...yeah... that was nice...sigh...and then 2 min. later, when I stalled the car with a rather loud grinding shuddering noise, just as a woman and her dog were walking by, the nostalgia ended. Let's just chalk this up to another experience that just isn't as fun now as it was when you were fifteen. Like rollerblading, or seeing how many warheads you can eat at one time, or, you know, just about everything you thought was fun when you were fifteen.

I promptly exited the car and hung up my driving hat. Martin accused me of being embarrassed in front of the lady walking by. To show him that I was indeed embarrassed and not ashamed of it, I yelled out the window real loud to make sure she could hear, "Well, it *is* embarrassing to not be able to drive a stick shift at the age of 30!" I do these sorts of things. These are the sort of things I do. And yet, I found someone who was willing to marry me. There is someone out there for everyone, folks.

(this chick is obviously on some sort of drug.)


So, we will leave the driving to another day. Perhaps when the lure of fresh beer being drunk in a place not my living room in clothes that are not my pajamas is not so palpable. Clock is ticking my friends, clock is ticking... babies will wake.

Answer to #2: We don't. Not really. We did, but it got shut down. The rent was being raised, and of course the only type of place Martin and I would consider to be our "favorite bar" wasn't really a place many other people called their "favorite bar" so it couldn't pay the rent. This place had Pinball machines, darts, Foosball, pool tables, a *real* jukebox, a wood burning stove in the middle of the room (and it was lit in the winter) with a rocking chair in front of it and, of course, Big Buck Hunter. Many pitchers of beer and games of cricket were played there. But it's gone now. It's been replaced by a place called "The Local Pub and Patio." Oh irony of ironies.

BUT...we happened into a place that we had been before once, in college, that I thought we should try again. We walked in, realized we were the youngest ones there, and felt right at home. Darts, a pool table, and Soccer playing on the only T.V. in the place. I lost two games of darts, and had two pints of Harp Lager. Awesome.

(and you thought it was going to be a picture of beer... )


P.S. I misspelled the word embarrassing every time I typed it in this post. I don't apologize for that, nor am I ashamed. It is stupidly spelled. It does not need the extra "r" or the extra "s." And that's how I feel about that.