I'm so pooped.

We had a minor family crisis last evening (won't go into details -- it's over) that threw our whole evening routine out the window. By the time the crisis had passed and things had gotten back to normal, it was a little after 8:30 p.m. We are usually getting in to bed at that time on a normal night. Last night, we hadn't even had dinner yet. We ended up going out rather than try to pull something together at home.

We live on the edge of hamburg alley. As the crow flies, we're not that far from highway 401 and the exit we live near has a string of fast food places at it: Wendys, McDonald's, Pizza Hut, KFC, Arbys, Harvey's, Taco Bell, Mr. Submarine, 3 Tim Hortons (yes, 3!), Dairy Queen and Harvey's as well as a Denny's, East Side Marios and a Chalet. I suggested we try the Chalet. If we had to eat late, it might as well be salad and chicken.

When we got to the Chalet, a bus load of French-Canadian tourists were swarmed around the entrance, smoking (our town recently passed a no-smoking bylaw - you can not smoke in public places but you can smoke like 2 feet from the door -- they didn't really plan it out very well). When we got through the cloud of disgusting cigarette smoke and into the restaurant all I could smell was cleaning products. The manager came running over toward us to tell the hostess not to seat us in the dining room. We were directed to the bar. I'd never been in the bar before, it was very brightly lit, a little too bright for my liking actually, and the tile floor felt slimy. I'm not sure if the humidity was causing it but it was really dangerous. There was one other couple in the room, looking as thrilled about it as we were. The bar had 6 TV's showing the baseball game. I asked the hostess, politely, if she could mute the sound on the television. She informed me that she couldn't and that it just seemed loud because the radio was also on. She walked away and I went over to the bar (there were no staff in the room) and tried to mute the television with the remote. She was right, the sound would not go down. The whole thing just felt wrong and I knew that our dinner would be really bad if we lasted that long (the cleaner smell was now drifting into the bar). We walked out. I'm pretty sure that the other couple were not long behind us.

Fortunately, this all transpired in about a 5 minute period. We headed across the street to Denny's and I had a really nice club sammich, on whole wheat. The lettuce and tomato were so fresh and the turkey was delicious. It was a big meal but I was starving, from eating so late. By 10:08, we were in the car, heading back home. I still can't believe how messed up the Chalet was last night. There was something really weird going on that I'm glad we weren't really a part of.

I thought I may have trouble sleeping after eating dinner at 9:30 but I was okay. We didn't actually get to bed until around 11 or so. I totally slept in this morning though and didn't workout before work. I plan to do it tonight. We'll see how it goes. Our phone got knocked out yesterday and the service folks are coming back tonight after 5 p.m. to try to fix it. I don't usually wish away the week but I'm going to be very happy to see Saturday morning roll around this week! My period being all wonky really knocked it out of me. My eating has been okay but not fabulous, it's really been a lackluster week. Hopefully next week will be better!