The local Olive Garden has added these devices to the tables. My first thought was to be annoyed at the fact that this thing takes up a significant chunk of the table. Then I messed with it a bit - it seems to be mostly a neat idea with one think that’s a bit out of place in a semi-classy joint like Olive Garden.

Let’s look at the positive aspect first - you can order drinks or ask for your drinks to be replenished. This helps to alleviate one of the biggest sources of annoyance when out to eat. You also pay on this device so if you’re completely done and don’t need boxes, you can just pay and leave. While a place with good service that isn’t swamped shouldn’t leave you wondering if you should skip the check because you’ve been waiting over 15 minutes for the check, it does occasionally happen. Again - happy customers.

When Dan and Katie were last in town, they invited Scarlett and I out to the Papermoon Diner. If you’ve seen John Waters movies and wondered if that Baltimore still exists, it certainly has one enclave at the Papermoon Diner. If you’ve been to a TGI Friday’s or a Chili’s you’ve seen restaurants with crap on the walls.

Well, the Papermoon Diner takes that and filters it through a Baltimore sensibility:

The Witcher ( 2 hours):

https://youtu.be/QfdQUWWHgY0?list=PLEJrELYLxNgUtl5L7oM52YnJj9Jt4c5yp

Yeah, so the first video I recorded in September is missing the video game footage. Whoops! Either way, I finished The Witcher this month. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned, this is another game I tried thanks to the Giant Bomb guys - specifically Vinnie. I thought the game was overall a lot of fun. I feel  like the throughline of the story could probably have been done a little better. Even before I spent a couple months away from the game, I was only tenuously connected to how my actions were leading to anything being done other than being against the Salamandra. Still, the story was neat and the twist at the end was pretty crazy in a good way. I look forward to The Witcher 2, but I probably won’t get to it until 2016 due to some family stuff coming up over the next few months.

This year

We had an inflatable pool for use with ball pit balls, but I thought it would be fun to take it outside so Scarlett could play with a water in a different way than usual.