Much to my surprise, shortly before 4:PM, I got a call from Joseph stating that he had free time until 10:PM that night...and that he'd like to go eat dinner at La Mie. Who am I to argue.
According to Joseph, normally they would have 30 or 40 recruits to be processed, but they had much less then that (like 4), so it went very quickly. Thus the extra time. So I went to pick him up at a hotel near the airport, and took him to my house.
I had to get some laundry started, so while we were waiting for Shannon to get home from work, I did laundry, and we watched the first two episodes of Dexter on onDemand. Before we started that I found out that in recording some HD tv, the DVR over recorded (by hours and hours and hours), which then deleted a Celtic Women concert we had recorded on PBS, The Queen, most of the TV that we recorded on Sunday, and episodes of Heroes and Chuck from Monday. Kind of annoying, to say the least. We've got everything but Heroes and King of the Hill setup to rerecord on alternate channels (sci fi, youtube, or rebroadcast).
My dad called to ask me about how dropping of Joseph went...and so I told him it went fine, and ask him if he wanted to talk to him. I think that he may have thought for a short bit that I had actually convinced Joseph not to go...but I explained, shortly, what happened, then passed the phone over to Joseph.
We headed over to La Mie, and they've changed the look of it a bit. White tablecloths, larger vases with smaller budded flowers in them (instead of wheat). Also they had large vases with large bunches of wheat in them. It looks like they finished the new section of their restaurant, and put in a wine bar (which is too bad since I wouldn't be drinking that night). Joe (the owner) was cooking and I believe his brother was there as well.
The meal was a prefixed 3 course meal ($20 a person), with options for first and second, with a finish of a salad with cheese (this night a good goat's cheese...I am not sure what it was). I ordered farrow with spinach and a pork stew. Shannon had carrot soup and clam pasta. Joseph had blood sausage with beans and beef with mushrooms.
Everything was excellent. The carrot soup makes me desire to make soups. And the other things remind me that the fall is here, and it's good to start making hardy and warm soups and stews and I'm looking forward to it.
The hilarious thing, was that we could not stop making fun of the lady sitting across from our table...she was talking the entire time...on the cell phone. She didn't stop to eat, she barely stopped to chew. We actually commented on her conversation, since we could hear it so well (She had recently been to Sioux Falls, had a problem with a fabric merchant, etc). It was a bit silly.
After dinner, when we were headed out, I stopped Joe (the owner) and introduced him to Joseph (my brother) and Shannon. I told him that as his last meal before he headed off to basic (and the implied lousy food), he wanted to eat at his restaurant. Which Joe, rightfully so, took as a compliment. After a little bit of chit chat, we left.
We headed back to the house, and we were there for a short bit, before I took Joseph back to the the hotel and dropped him off again. I think I was more prepared this time...and I didn't have to wait with him either. So by now, he should be getting the final processing done, and shortly be headed to a base in Missouri.