Bad Ending to a Good Trip

So, I would like to thank the woman who did the Invocation at my brother-in-law’s graduation ceremony for totally ruining the finale of “Lost” – thanks, lady!  :(   Some of us have been busy and are not quite caught up with our DVR…I mean, she didn’t give every little detail away, but decided to start her entire speech by giving away the very premise of the finale and then somehow relate it to the college graduates.  I was very upset about that!  Overall, however, the ceremony went pretty well – the honorary degree recipient/guest speaker was actually easy to listen to and made a very fitting and interesting speech geared towards the graduates and their life as it begins now that college is over.  Her name is Jane Bryant Quinn, if you ever heard of her.

As posted before, we went to The Chart House for dinner, and were seated at one of the tables right at the big windows overlooking the river and NYC.  Menus are printed daily at this restaurant in order to list the fresh fish catches for the day.  When my MIL made the reservation, she told them we would be celebrating a college graduation, so for the special occasion they printed special menus just for our table:  (Must be something new they do, because we didn’t get this when we went for our first wedding anniversary, and they knew about that.)  I ate entirely way too much…a couple of the family even left feeling ill from overindulging.  Very easy to do there.  We started off sharing fried asparagus in a bleu cheese butter sauce and crab stuff mushrooms.  Then came the best lobster bisque I have ever eaten (they even give you your own pewter crock with lid and all – sorry, no pictures – I was too eager to start enjoying to remember to take one!).  After that was our main courses, I ordered “Shrimp Fresca”, which was angel hair pasta topped with a very light cream sauce, tomatoes, and 5 very large butterflied shrimp that were panko breaded and fried.  Again, sorry no picture – still too eager to enjoy and remember to snap one.  Half of that went home, in order to leave room for the specialty dessert, so special that it must be ordered at the beginning of the meal in order to have enough time to prepare it.  This one I got a picture of:

Chocolate Lava Cake!  They even specially decorated Al’s dessert plate to say “Congrats Graduate” in chocolate (well, really the plate decorator screwed up a little and wrote “Congrat Graduete”, but it’s the thought that counts, right?), and put a candle on top to blow out.  My in-laws have the picture of this.  So, all-in-all it was a wonderful dinner, and I apologized to my Wii Fit board in advance!   :)

The drive home, however, was not so wonderful.  After today I have now told my hubby that I will not drive to his parents again, unless his car is so broken down that we won’t make it there.  This is now the second time that I’ve had a car issue on I-78W coming home from his parents house.  Today’s issue was nowhere near as severe as the first time (e-mail me/comment if you are curious about what happened then), but still distressing.  I now have to take my car tomorrow morning to replace one of my tires, hopefully at no charge if I’m lucky enough to be within the warranty.  I got a flat tire – air leaking from the valve and collapsed/deformed sidewall.  Not sure what caused which, but it was not a happy find.  I had to drive the rest of the highly traveled, very speedy highway at about 20 MPH less than fellow drivers with my four way flashers on.  Thank God for AAA!!!

So fun day ahead – taking my car in the morning for the tire, then taking my hubby to the dentist in the afternoon.  Sounds like a fun-filled day to me!  Please note the sarcasm….