Predicting the future: nightmares ahead

Friday night LOML and I went out to dinner -- an old friend, Sue, was in town, and her mother-in-law wanted to take us all out to dinner at a restaurant on the lake. As it turned out, this was a wonderfully nice thing for her to do, but I wish that she would have taken us to our favourite place, across the parking lot -- the food was not great, and the service was laughably bad.
We were seated quickly, and the view was nice: our waiter came over immediately, and asked us if we wanted to order drinks. No wine menu. It took him a minute or two to find one -- no problem there, but could you give us a minute to actually look at the wine menu (and the food menu too) before deciding? Perhaps bring us some water? Tell us the specials?
One of the specials apparently comes with ganache-y as a side: I am able to figure out what he means, but Sue misses it and asks: finally she gets that he is talking about gnocchi.
We order wine. He brings back an open bottle, and we are able to tell at a glance, almost instinctively, that this is not the one we ordered. Oh yes it is, he insists, pointing to the winery name on the label. Oh no, it isn't, we insist, pointing out that merlots are usually red, and like most chardonnays this is white.
He apologizes profusely, and heads back to the wine station, brings a bottle (unopened this time), shows the label and proceeds to not open it. He tries to open it, just can't quite figure out that the corkscrew needs to be further into the cork. A lot further in. LOML suggests that one of us can perhaps help, and in short order the cork is released.
The service was okay from this point on, not good, but not awful either. The food: mine was okay, LOML's was apparently awful: Sue took forever eating hers, and her mother-in-law proclaimed it wonderful. Of course, I am not sure that her MIL actually knows much about good food....
At least we had a very pleasant evening.

Anyway, I enjoy watching Doctor Who, and here they are showing new episodes on Friday nights -- but that's okay, since we have TiVo now: I recorded the new episode, so I could watch it Saturday evening instead. The kids have decided that they want LOML to read them to sleep, and I sit down to watch Doctor Who. However, as is often the case, Skibo is bored with the book LOML's reading to Boo, and wanders into the living room. He stands, transfixed, mouth agape. And another Doctor Who fan is born. I can see the nightmares now, and am ready for weeks ahead with him hiding behind the sofa during the scary parts!

This weekend was also the premiere of the new spinoff series Torchwood --- it was okay: the pacing worked, I liked the reappearance of Captain Jack Harkness from an earlier series of DW: I watched the episode twice, as there were a few things I missed first time round, and the second viewing certainly helped a bit. Not sure that it is going to work: we'll have to see. I'll give it a try for a few weeks, probably.

Yours, with thrills, chills and dinner spills,
N.