Chop Suey

The wedding festivities have officially kicked off with the arrival of my brother and sister-in-law from Texas today. It's the first time since 2001 in Atlanta that all four of us kids have been together without our parents. We played 6-handed Canasta, or at least what we call Canasta. The classic Kramer version we all grew up on may or may not be the way you actually play the game. It just felt... I don't know... good... to be sitting there with everyone talking about everything from pit bulls to Judge Judy to Singing in the Rain to anal seepage.

We ate at the newly opened Atlantic Buffet in Woodbury, in the building where the Timber Lodge used to be. We had liked it when we had eaten at the Atlantic Buffet in Bloomington (and yes, they are owned by the same people), so we were excited to try this one out. We decided that we're excited to have a Mongolian BBQ place so close to us, but the Chinese Buffet part is disappointing. The Mongolian part was alright in as far as the selection went. There was a bit of variety, as they offered my standard favorites of pineapple, water chestnuts, peanuts, shrimp, chicken, and at least a dozen sauces. The shrimp weren't the freshest I've ever tasted. I was disappointed at the service as well; there were only three people in line ahead of us and we literally waited 10 minutes for our food to be cooked. The cook kept changing out the food and finding other random tasks to do. The buffet food was so-so; the crab legs, cream cheese wantons, and dim sung were fantastic, the coconut shrimp and egg rolls and muscles were bad. And worst of all, we couldn't get the ice cream machine to work.

Our final verdict: not as good as BC's in Stillwater, but much more convenient. When we go next time, we will stick to the Mongolian.

Funniest quote of the day (and the accompanying back story, with names withheld to protect the innocent):
I work with a technician named Hope and a pharmacist named Kim. Today was Hope's birthday, and her husband Dan baked some wonderful cupcakes to celebrate. In order to help with the celebration, Kim's husband Tom also made fresh cinnamon rolls from scratch. Both were of course wonderful. We had a rotating pharmacist today who is Indian (dots, not feathers). She had tried some of Dan's cupcakes and had just learned about Tom's cinnamon rolls around here. She commented that there was a lot of baking going on by the guys in our pharmacy. I mentioned that I had a history of bringing in chocolate chip cookies in. Kim immediately mentioned how good they were, to which our rotating pharmacist said:

Damn, I gotta get me a white husband.

Trust me, it was really funny if you were there.