Red Red Red

BGF and I are dieting again and we both pretty much suck at it. Him because he doesn't care and me and because I LOVE TO EAT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME WILL YOU PASS THE NUTTY BARS PLEASE.

So in honor of "dieting" (By the way it's Day 2 and I am already close to cracking.), we had to eat as much bad-for-you stuff as possible this weekend. So Friday night meant Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster. Sigh. My mouth waters just thinking about those warm cheesy biscuits, followed by a tasty salad drenched in Buttermilke Ranch dressing, followed by shrimp scampi, followed by popcorn shrimp, followed by coconut shrimp, followed by....

I'm kidding. I was down for the count by the time that coconut shrimp came out and I could barely manage a morsel or two into my mouth before I passed out on my plate muttering "Gluttony! Gluttony! Gluttony!"

But before the feast began, we had to do the usual wait for the table. Except this night turned out to be far from usual because the hostess turned out to be the proverbial blast from the past where you least expect it.

I'm not sure I've ever done a real live double take until this night. I walked in, ready to put my name on the list when I noticed that the hostess looked familiar. And I thought, "NOOOOOOOOO. It CAN'T be." And then I looked again and low and behold, it was. And all of that happened in about 5 seconds. Because who stood before my eyes but the secretary from my old job.

You have to understand that this was a rather frightening experience because my former job was ROUGH. It's a place I'd rather never ever go back to and generally spend most of my free time avoiding it and the people I worked with. Not that they're all bad people, but the association, you know? Anyway, there she was and I realized I couldn't turn around and run like I do when I see people at the mall, so I walked forward and smiled. I had a small glimmer of hope because she didn't recognize me at first either. But then it happened. I saw the recognition. And if you've ever seen somebody see a ghost, then you know exactly what look I saw.

She recovered quite nicely and we proceeded to have a good chat about life so far and things went well. She even remembered that I had family in south Louisiana, so I gotta give her props on that. And honestly, she's a sweet lady. I like her a lot. And I was actually glad we ran into her because it gave me a chance to remember that not everything during my tenure in the hell hole was actually hellish.