Vacations over, let's eat steak.

Here it is, the eve of my departure. I'm off again on tour with the Blue Man Group. My flight is 1st thing in the morning on Northworst airlines to... Exciting Grand Forks, North Dakota. I'm out until the 2nd week of December, with a couple of 4 day breaks interspersed.

Summer vacation has ended. Well, it really ended on the 31st of August. That's when my month pass for lap swimming at Loma Alta pool ran out. Since then, I've been sitting at home trying to get to level 20 on my video game. I'm probably not going to be playing it for at least a month. I'll be back for 4 days at the start of October. I'm sure Nicole would rather us hang out than me sit in front of the TV. If the itch is terrible, I'll break the piggy bank and buy a flight case for the Xbox360.

As is tradition with Nicole and I, we go out to a really fancy dinner before I leave. Last night we made a stop at Ruth's Chris Steak House, a favorite. They just opened one in Pasadena so we had to take a look.

It's quite a nice one really. If anyone has ever been to a fancy steak joint you're probably very familiar with the standard decor. Dark wood, dark lighting, few windows, if any, and lots of fancy leather seats. The Pasadena Ruth's Chris is different. It's got huge windows that look out onto the street, and across at DSW Shoe Warehouse. So for certain people, it's probably quite a view. There is still the dark wood and dark lighting, either for a romantic evening, or to hide the fact that there are famous people there, or not. Keep the paparazzi guessing.

It was going to be an all out evening so we started with martini's. Nicole ordered the lemon drop martini and I had the house black cherry. It kinda looks like we reversed the drink order, Nicole should have gotten the girly pink drink and I should have had the thing with stuff on the rim. But I promise you, I drank it with my pinky out. I am a dainty flower.You'll have to forgive the quality of the photo, it was a spur of the moment thing taken with my phone. And only in the 21st century can we say, "Hey let me get a picture of that with my phone." One day we'll be able to say, "I'll call you on my camera."

A normal meal at Ruth's Chris for us would be, Dan has the tomato and onion salad with blue cheese crumbles and the biggest steak one man can eat, while Nicole would have the lobster bisque, and the smallest steak they can serve without snickering. With my sudden change in diet, we thought we try something different. So I had the arugula salad (the rest of the world calls it roquet or rocket), which was my bid at being healthy, and Nicole had the lobster bisque, which, quite frankly is where should could have stopped until dessert. For her, the main course is just the break time between lobster bisque and dessert. For the main course, Nicole ordered the fish special, Chilean sea bass with curry banana butter, and I had the special meat... A large honking New York strip of Australian raised kobe beef. Not so health conscious on that bit, but I've been really good for a month eating only cheerios for breakfast and staying away from bacon, salad or sandwich for lunch and then something from the weight watchers cookbooks for dinner. I can splurge once right?That plate is 1 and a half feet in diameter, it took two waiters to carry it out to the table, and they can only get two cuts of this steak per cow. Just kidding, but that was a big piece of meat.

And expensive too. I'm not going to tell you the price, but I did keep telling Nicole I was going to ask for a refund of 15 to 20 dollars for all the fat and gristle I had to cut off. That's not to say it wasn't good. If there's one thing I've learned in my 37 years of life, I'm not a vegetarian. I like meat. And this was a fine cut. Not the best kobe I've ever had, that honor goes to a restaurant in New York City that Nicole and I ate at. But this steak was up there in the ranks.

But with this diet came the new ability to not eat really rich foods. Back in the good old days of "health naive" Dan, I could have polished this steak off and licked all the butter off the plate. This time, I had about 2/3rds and couldn't eat the last bit. I choked it down because dammit, thats at least 20 dollars worth of meat I'm not eating! Nicole couldn't finish her fish either. The fish was good, but something has happened to us.

We collapsed backwards in our chairs, not wanting dessert, which is unusual to say the least. But the waiter convinced us no meal is complete, so we ordered the apple crumble tart and proceeded to slap that on my love handles. Luckily the waiter bought us our dessert as a good bye present for me, which was nice.

...

12 hours left for me at home. I've been really moody for the last week. I don't want to go. This has been a good summer. But I have to get back to baking the bread and winning the bacon. And the money and client are too good to leave hanging. I'll miss my cats, and my dog. But most of all, I'll miss my wife. That's the hardest part. When we first got the dog, I teased her that we should name it, "Great Reluctance" so that when ever I go on tour, I can say, "I left my wife with Great Reluctance". It's an old joke from the Peanuts comic strip, it that sounded familiar.

A last request for anyone in California, please call my wife every now and again and get her out of the house. The TiVo has a great draw when I'm not home. And she needs to scout out other restaurants so the next time I leave, we go somewhere other than Ruth's Chris.

And for those of you not in L.A.. Call her anyway. I want to make sure she's fine.