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Hot Date: Olive Garden and Baby Mama

Last night I had a hot date with my girl. I showed up at her place and I was dressed up to try and look good for her, but it was pretty irrelevant next to the sight I saw when she opened the front door. She was gorgeous! She wore this little black dress she has borrowed from a friend. It’s a little low cut but tasteful, straps, bows, etc. and an open back. She had her hair down but back, and she was glittery (she calls it shimmer). She was also wearing fish nets and combat boots. Yeah, that’s my girl! Be jealous.

We drove out of town, because our small mountain town doesn’t have too many good restaurants, and went to an Olive Garden, which happens to be one of our favorite restaurants. The breadsticks were delicious as usual. I had the potato and sausage soup, which was delicious but I burnt my tongue - my own fault. She had salad. She ordered the Tour of Italy (basically three entrees: lasagna, chicken parmigiana, and fettuccine alfredo) and I had the Steak Gorgonzola over fettuccine alfredo. We followed that up with dessert (and more than half our food in boxes) - tiramisou for me and a black tie chocolate mousse cake for her.

The waiter came by with the check and said “Oh, by the way, don’t tell anyone, but dessert is on me.” That must have been about $12 worth of free dessert he just gave us. Overall, our dining experience was awesome. The waiter gave us excellent service, and I spent the money I would have spent on dessert on his tip.

We left Olive Garden (or the “OG” as I refer to it) and went to Books-a-Million to window shop. Kylara picked up some bargain bin books, and I picked up Cracking the GMAT (2008 with DVD) to help me study and pass the GMAT sometime soon. I think I’m going to have to use my Economic Stimulus Payment to cover the test cost - it’s about $250 to take it, and I don’t intend to have to take it more than once.

We finished up our evening away by seeing “Baby Mama” - the new movie with Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Dax Shepherd, Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver, and Greg Kinnear - where Tina Fey needs someone to be a surrogate mother, so she hires lower-class white-trash Amy Poehler’s character to do the job. There are some other plot twists that weren’t mentioned in the trailers, but certainly make it slightly more interesting than it looked in commercials. I enjoyed the movie and laughed a lot - but if you’re on the fence about seeing it in theaters or waiting to rent the DVD - wait to rent it.

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Insurance Checks at Grocery Stores

April 27th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Business, Daily Life, Lifestyle, My Life, Technology, Tidbits

This Friday, I received a check in the mail from my insurance company that I had been expecting. This weekend, that money would have been particularly useful. But you see, I get my mail after 5pm nearly every day. All the banks around here either close at 4:30pm, 5:00pm, or 5:30pm, so I had no time to get to a bank by the time I got my mail.

I started to call around and I learned something interesting: most grocery stores will cash payroll checks from anywhere, even if you don’t shop with them. What they won’t do is cash a hand-written check, or a non-payroll computer-generated check. Specifically though, they would say things like “Sorry, we don’t do insurance checks.”

Are insurance companies going around and dropping bad checks? Or more likely, are people going around ripping off stores with fake checks from insurance companies?

I’d like to give special mention to GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411), because I didn’t have to get out of bed to call the stores to see if they would cash the check. I just called, said my city and state, and then the name of the business I wanted, and asked to be connected. Plus, it didn’t cost a dime. Put that number in your cell phone, it’s powered by Google and is pretty useful. So far, they only have business names and not personal addresses.

It’s not a big deal, tomorrow (Monday) I’ll just go to my bank and cash the check. Pay day is Wednesday, and that will be a nice day. I’ve got a date planned for me and Kylara to go out of town and eat at the Olive Garden, maybe go to a movie or something.

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