What a heavy weekend. My lovely and wanting to feed everyone dad came from sunny St. Louis to stay with and feed me in pitiful, frozen here. Here goes:

I retract a cruel, old review I wrote about the now next to perfect Modern Café. My dad had just bought me new glasses, which I let Helen pick out, so my eyes were too dilated (I needed an eye exam too) to drive. I asked the woman who checked my eyes a lot of questions and I learned how all the eyes tests work.

We picked up Hannahleh and James from their peaceful apartment. James had declared that he would take us to any restaurant my dad wanted to go to. My dad let Helen and Hannahleh decide and they said "French or Italian." James said "no problem." We all said "great." James knows everything, everything does he?

An hour and half later, very hungry, but somehow good-spirited, we were close enough to the Modern Café and hungry enough to give it another chance.

We were able to get a table after ten minutes, which was practically half out the door and we wore our coats on our legs. We patiently ate bread, in part cause if we wanted more than one basket we would have to pay for it, and I drank a beer and the girls had coffee, and we waited. Our waitress's attitude, like the food last time, was much like a pretentious and awry duck boob.

Helen ordered the baked cod, which came with tomatoes and I think basil. My dad and Hannahleh got the broccoli eggplant fluffy stuff. James and I got the "Best Pot Roast Ever." It may have been. The food was perfect, and in spite of our grouchiness and low-expectations, it was exactly enough.

At home my dad fell asleep on my couch where the button digs holes in his leg. I sat next to him sleeping and watched Cops and then America's Most Wanted. My neighbors had some party and there were some incredibly loud drunk people there and they were hanging out in the hall, and I was pretty annoyed. Lucky for them my dad didn't wake up and do his whole grenade routine.

I am omitting the complex presence that my dad is. I don't think I am doing this on purpose, just that I am certain that I could not explain him in less than one million words (which is two thousand restaurant reviews worth of writing - $60,000 of food).

In the next and last seventy words, I will discuss how tired this weekend has made me. The weekend started on Wednesday night. The weekend wasn't a weekend. We woke up every morning at 8:00 to my dad's "helicopter man" talking to the cats in helicopter language. On the plus side we didn't eat anything in the house. It was four days of eating out. The food was more exhausting than anything else. The food ate my energy. The food ate me.