The post in which Em says "penis." Twice. Hooray!

It's Sunday today. I can't stand Sundays.

Don't get me wrong, I like the whole "not being at work" thing. But frankly right now, the "not being at work" is stressing me out because I have customers who are stressed out by me having to take a weekend off when their car's not workin.

(Hm. Am I violating privacy ethics if I don't give any place/name details at all? I don't think I am.)

( Okay, so I have one customer in particular... )

So. Today, I am hating Sunday mostly because first thing on Monday, I have to call these people's mechanic and ask him if he'll consider waiving the diagnosis fee (which will totally be me going through the motions, and I hope damn well he knows I'm just going through the motions and that I don't actually expect him to), and then straight away call these people and royally infuriate them with those most deadly of weapons, the Dagger of the Blatantly Obvious and the Sword of Common Sense, while protecting myself with the Shield Of Unfailing Politeness and Professionalism.

On Prefixes

Holy cow, I just noticed that the postcards my parents sent me from Costa Rica (which are hilarious - I quote from Dad's "Recovering from breakfast beer and morning cocktails by relaxing at the pool bar. Drinks are unlimited. So is the food. Long term survival prospects not good.") are not, as usual, addressed to Miss E. F------, but to Ms. E. F-------.

I'm not sure what this implies. I don't dislike it, as such, but it weirds me out.

On a related topic, people have started ma'aming me. This, I don't like. Miss works fine, or, say, my name, which I give to anyone I expect to actually interact with me. If I'm in a situation where something more formal is necessary, then hell, go for madam, because it makes me giggle with implications. Ma'am makes me feel like my mother.

Culinary Confessions.

I don't eat at sit-down restaurants much. (If I'm going to indulge in gastronomical laziness, I tend to go with pizza.) I think the last time I was in what one would qualify as a Nice Restaurant (as in, one which cost more than twelve dollars Canadian for the average entree and had an actual wine list) was in 2003 shortly before breaking up with The Most Recent Ex (sidenote: I have been single a long time.) It was a fairly classy Italian place and I'm assuming it was probably fairly expensive since I don't actually remember the prices being on the menu anywhere.

That said, it is entirely likely that at some point in the future (hopefully soon. *grin*) I will have opportunity and means to eat at a Classy Upscale Joint. (Jungle Jim's, wonderful as it is, does not count)

This concerns me slightly as I really am not all that cultured when it comes to fine dining. I know what forks to use for what, but the actual food and drink, I confess, baffle me.

I know I'd never order beef out. This is because I have had it everything from rare to well-done and really do like it best on the well-done side of medium-well. My food should not be still mooing. I'm aware this is a restaurant faux pas for some reason (provided I actually eat it and none of it goes to waste, I fail to see the problem), so I'd just steer clear and get chicken, fish, pork or pasta of some kind.

That's easy enough. My main concern is wine. I am, and this is no secret, a beer girl. I'm fairly discriminating when it comes to beer, even. I love a really delicious microbrew. I don't chill the life out of a stout. But I have, and I freely admit this, absolutely no clue about wine other than what I learned from Sideways, and as the teacher-of-winely-things in that was a very depressed and obsessive man who really may not have been thinking quite healthily about his wine choices, I'm disinclined to trust that Pinot is God and that Merlot is the devil. (Oh, and thanks to an absolutely disastrous attempt at picking a wine to go with a nice meal I cooked my folks for their wedding anniversary, I also know wines should not say "blended" anywhere on the label. Bad sign. To their parental credit, they choked down a whole glass of it each before annihilating the taste of it with my cooking, which is actually much better than my wine-picking.)

Is it a complete restaurant social faux pas to admit to not knowing the first thing about wines and to being on a budget and say, essentially, "I'm a wine noob on a budget. What would you recommend with this meal I just ordered that would cost under ____ a bottle?"

Because I recognise you don't generally have a beer, even a really nice one, with high-class Italian or French food. (Or do you? See? Clueless.) I can recognise if something is a nice wine when I'm already drinking it, but that's about the limit.

Oh, and is it appropriate to ask how things are pronounced rather than embarrass myself and the server while I feebly stumble through Names Of Food with eleventy billion syllables in a language that's not one I speak?

At this point in my life, these are all hugely hypothetical questions, but one never knows, really.