Paying to Pee

I seem to remember that Magnum was the owner of the Chateau, or maybe it was Magnam or Magnim, something like that. It was this fancy pantsy place where you were supposed to take somebody who you wanted to impress. I think my parents went there a few times for their anniversary or some other special occasion. They were having a prom night special that night and the whole place was full of prom people like us. I had something called "lobster thermador" which was a big disappointment. I have always liked regular lobster, but I found out that lobster thermador is not the same thing. I think they start out with a regular lobster, take it out of its shell, grind it to mush, mix it with some other stuff, and put it back into its shell.

Another goofy thing was this guy in the men's room who tried to brush my tuxedo off with a whisk broom, and I'm pretty sure there was nothing on it to brush off. Then he tried to give me a whole stack of bath towels just to dry my hands after I washed them. It finally dawned on me that he was kind of the bathroom custodian and expected me to tip him. I gave him a quarter, and he left me alone after that. I ran across something like that in Berlin once. I went into this public rest room, where I was surprised to see a little old lady sitting by a table knitting something. At first I thought I had gone into the ladies room by mistake, but there was a urinal in there, so I figured I was all right. When I tried to leave afterwards, the little old lady jumped up and started hollering at me in German. Then she went into a kind of pantomime routine where she pretended to clean the toilets and fill the soap dispensers. Then she pointed to a plate with some coins on it and I finally got the message and put one of my own coins on the plate with the others, and then she allowed me to leave.

I seem to remember that the boat ride was nice, but I don't remember any details. I don't think that parking thing was an elaborate conspiracy or anything like that. I think this guy just hung around the entrance trying to pick up a few bucks from the boat customers. Apparently there was someplace to park right around the corner, probably on the street rather than in a lot maintained by the boat company. We might have found it ourselves if it had been daytime and we hadn't been in a hurry. The guy was right, though, we would have missed the boat that night without his help. The only thing he did wrong was not bring our car back as he had promised. He could have just told us where to find it when we got back, but he didn't do that either. He likely bought some cheap wine with our two dollars and, by the time he drank it, he had forgotten all about us.

Where we are going for Thanksgiving is The Inn, a hotel in Bar Harbor, which is about half way between Petoskey and Charlevoix on U.S 31. Bar Harbor is a big fancy resort village that was built some years ago on the site of an old abandoned cement plant. I looked it up on Google Earth and zoomed in on the Inn. It's a large building, and the restaurant is only part of it. There is a lot where you can self park, but my grand daughter recommended that we use the valet service, especially if the weather is bad, because the lot is pretty far from the main entrance.

I can't seem to get excited about all those political scandals that are going on. I think that Watergate burned me out on stuff like that a long time ago. I believe I have mentioned before that I wonder why it took so long for all those alleged victims to come forward but, other than that, I have little interest in the whole sordid scene.