The fourth time's the charm...

Forget all that you've read about that the 'third time's the charm', I now believe that it's really the fourth...or at least it was tonight.

I've been in contact with a really nice woman lately, Cari, we've exchanged emails and decided that we would go ahead and meet. A couple weeks ago she invited me to a play that she was performing in, but plans didn't work out, so we decided to take the proverbial plunge and go out to dinner tonight (with Josh in tow).

Since we hadn't met before, we had been jokingly referring to each other as the Jolly Green Giant and Sprout. I'm 5'10" and Cari is 5'0"...we figured one of us would 'stand out'. Though Josh was cute and wore his Canada/China friendship pin.

We ended up at Sierra Grill as it's a good location for both of us. Actually, she's the first A-mom who lives within a 5-10 minute drive of our apartment...bonus!

Anyways, we sat down at our table, talked a bit and looked at the menu. Cari ordered an Asian noodle and chicken dish, Josh ordered the meatloaf, and I ordered the cedar plank salmon. Seems simple enough, right?

Wrong.

With my order I had the salad bar and Josh added that to his meal as well. We went up, got our salads, came back to the table and chatted some more. We ate our salads, talked a lot, and waited for our meals to arrive.

Cari's arrived, Josh's arrived and mine arrived a minute or two later. What could possibly be wrong? Well, unless they changed how cedar plank salmon looks...they brought out a chicken dish swimming in sauce with onion rings on top. Hmm, I think they got that one wrong. So back it went.

We talked a lot about travel, work, adoption (of course), while I waited for my second kick at the proverbial cat. The waitress finally brought out the salmon but it was overcooked. Well, not so much overcooked as dry as the Sinai. So back it went.

We continued talking as Cari and Josh were enjoying their meals. I think they both took pity on me and ate extra slowly. The waitress came back out with yet another cedar plank salmon. This time, not only was it undercooked, it was RAW in the middle. I'm sorry, but I didn't think we were having sushi tonight...So back it went.

At this point, I was getting exceptionally annoyed at the whole endeavour, but I held my tongue. Normally I would have opened up with both barrels, but I held back since it was the first time I met Cari and I didn't want her to think I was some witchy woman. ;)

The manager came to our table, knelt down beside me and started apologizing. She said that if it wasn't perfect this time, I could go into the kitchen and beat the chef. We suggested that if it wasn't perfect we would all go into the kitchen and beat the chef senseless. She also said that my meal would be gratis, well I would bloody well hope so.

Finally the fourth order came out...and that one was JUST RIGHT. I swear I felt like Goldilocks tonight.

We both had a really great time with Cari tonight and hopefully we can get together again soon! This is the one amazing thing, not only about adoption, but the online a-community...the amount of support that we're receiving (and hopefully giving), is truly remarkable. I can't wait to have "Little Maple" home so she can meet all our friends that we've met along the way.