I'm watching Good Morning America, and they did a quick teaser for something they are going to talk about later this morning.  The question is:

You go out to eat.  You had water.  Your friends had wine.   Should you pay the same amount?

Am I missing something here?  What kind of friends would expect you to pay for something you didn't have?  If they can't look at the bill and determine who had what and how much it cost, then they should just get separate bills.  Because, seriously, if I went out with a friend who had steak while I just had a salad, or something like that, I would not be paying for part of my friend's steak in addition to my own salad.  Maybe I'm just cheap or selfish?  But if I have a certain amount I'm willing to spend when I go out, I can only control what I order, not what someone else orders.  Each person should determine how much he is willing to spend and plan accordingly, not depend on someone else picking up part of the cost.

Now, if we choose to pick up the entire tab or pay for more than our share, that's a different story. 

which is, of course, the way it should be!

Jeffrey got his eyes checked a couple weeks ago.  This time he gets to wear bifocals.  Since his eyes aren't really that bad, he decided to wait to get new glasses until I found a good deal on them.  This Sunday's paper had an ad from Stein Optical advertising no-line bifocals - two pair for $149, so we figured that was the deal.  He called from work yesterday saying that he had gone over there to look at lunch time - there's one really close to work, so that was convenient.  He found some glasses he kind of liked, but he wanted me to look at them and help him pick some out.  Since Beth had to work at 5pm, I decided (Jeffrey's idea) to get a ride with Beth.  No sense in having all three vehicles there when we didn't need to.

Cory was going to stay  home, but he's been wanting to get his hair cut.  He has been looking rather shaggy recently.  He doesn't seem to like the idea of just letting us take the clippers to him anymore.  So, when I mentioned that Cory could help his dad pick out glasses and also get his hair cut, he jumped at the chance to tag along.  Jeffrey met us at Marshall's, where Beth works, and we went looking at glasses.  Conveniently, there was a hair cut place just a few door down from the optical place, so Cory went down and found out they could get him right in.  So, while Jeffrey looked at glasses, Cory and I walked down and got his hair cut.  He looks so much better now!

Then we went back and got Jeffrey's glasses picked out.  We took him his motorcycle helmet, because one of the things he was looking for in glasses was that he could put them on fairly easily with the helmet on.  Priorities, you know.  They were trying to talk him into upgrading to the thinner lenses, but, because his prescription isn't that strong, he really doesn't need them.  So he just went with the basic lenses.  I did find out that if I go there to get glasses, I can upgrade to the thinner lenses, which I do need, for just $50 - for two pairs.  With the bifocals, Jeffrey would have had to pay $50 for each pair.  I will probably be going back there to get myself some new glasses after the first of the year.

By the time we got finished with the whole glasses thing, Cory was starving, so we decided to go somewhere to eat.  I said we had leftovers at home we could warm up, but neither one of the boys thought they wanted that.  We have a coupon book that expires at the end of the month, so I had grabbed that, just in case.  I found some coupons for a couple different Italian restaurants, so we decided to try one.  The coupons are for buy one dinner, get one free.  It's a good way to get people to try something new.  It was a pleasant restaurant, and there were quite a few people there.  We weren't overly impressed by the food, and I noticed that most people were eating the pizza, so maybe their pizza is good?  I mean, the food wasn't horrible, just nothing to write home about.  Come on - a little garlic and Italian seasoning in the sauce would have been a huge improvement.  Anyway, we got the bill, and the total didn't seem right.  We were trying to figure out what they did because it wasn't clear.  Come to find out, our coupon was good for one free dinner, up to $10.  Mine was $10something, Jeffrey's was $9something, and Cory got a burger for $6something.  They took Cory's burger off for the coupon.  Oh yeah, I'm sure that's what's best for them - take off whatever costs the least.  However, since we bought one dinner and then another one for less than the $10 the coupon could be used for, I expect to get the second one free - not the item that costs the least.  It's like being penalized for spending more money in their restaurant.  If Cory had stayed home and Jeffrey and I happened to go there on our own, then they would have automatically discounted the $9something dinner.  But, since we brought another person along, they wanted to apply the coupon to the extra, cheaper thing.

Sorry, I just don't think that's the way it's supposed to work.  Our waitress ended up calling the manager over, and she offered to re-do the bill and deduct the dinner and not the burger - because she hopes we'll come back.  We didn't tell her that we won't be, and not because of the coupon thing.  It's just that their food isn't worth going back for.   I almost wish we had just gone to Subway again, since I still have one more coupon for that.  Yeah, at Subway, we buy one sub and get one free.  If we had gone there, both the guys would have wanted a foot-long, so we would have paid for one and gotten one free.  Then I would have gotten a 6-inch, and we would have paid for that one.  I know, because we've done it before.  They don't try to get away with making us pay for the foot-longs and only getting the 6-inch free.

I do like having the coupons though, because they do their job of getting people in the door to try a place they might not have tried otherwise - or even known existed, for that matter.  We found one of our favorite restaurants by using one of those coupons - Lemon Grass.  That place is awesome!  We have gone back several times, even without a coupon.  Also, we tried Papa Murphy's pizza because we had the coupons, and we love their pizza.  I don't know why we never tried it before.

I actually went out with my husband tonight.  We went to dinner and then went shopping.  Jeffrey was going to stop at the store on the way home from work and pick up a few groceries.   He's awesome like that.  If I don't need enough that I want to make a trip to the store, I send him a list and he stops on the way home.  You know, since he's already out.  Today I had the whole list and the coupons he was supposed to use all together.  Pick 'n Save had General Mills cereals on sale 6/$12 - and buying 6 boxes of cereal would earn coupons for two free gallons of milk.  The store he stopped at didn't have the cereals marked clearly to show which ones were on sale.  All he could find were the sweet, sugary kid cereals - not what he wanted - so he gave up and came home.  I had already said this morning that if he didn't have time to get to the store today, we could go tonight.  So we decided to go to Mukwonago tonight - together.  Without the kids.

First we went to dinner at this restaurant we hadn't tried before.  I'm actually amazed at the number of restaurants Mukwonago has now.  Anyway, we had a coupon to buy one dinner and get the second one free, so we decided to try Estella's Italian Grille.  It was really nice.  The food was good.  The people who work there are extremely  nice, very friendly.  We had to switch tables shortly after we got there because a woman with overpowering perfume sat down at the table right next to us.  Why do I attract these?  Anyway, after our server cheerfully moved us to a new table, it was very pleasant.  (Since they have Martini Nights during the week, we did check out their Martini List, but we didn't get anything.  Is $6 good?  Which ones are good?  We had no clue!  If only we had known, we could've asked krikketgirl ahead of time!)  It was just nice to sit and have dinner and talk to my husband.  Maybe we should do that more often?  Now that the kids are big enough to be left home alone and can fix their own dinner.

After dinner we stopped at Walgreens and Pick 'n Save and picked up our groceries.  I admit I did buy more things than I had originally put on the list, since I was there.  We found some decent cereals and got our 6 boxes so we could get the free milk.  I also had 3 $1 coupons for the cereal, which got doubled - so I got $1 off of each box, making them $1/box.  Then we got the free milk coupons, which I passed back to Jeffrey so he could buy the milk.  Come to find out, they didn't just give us two gallons of milk free.  The coupons were worth up to $4.50 each, for a total of $9.  Since two gallons of milk did not cost $9, we even got change back!  It was kind of fun buying groceries together.  We used to do that, back when we first got married and had one car.

At dinner, Jeffrey said that we could've waited until next week to go out to dinner, for our anniversary.  But, you know, we could just go out again next week to celebrate our anniversary, right?
 

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and we were in Jacksonville so we could see Jeffrey's mom and grandma.  We decided to go out for brunch, and someone got reservations for a little restaurant with a buffet.  It sounded good, until I walked into the restaurant.  As we walked in the front door, the smell of cigarette smoke assaulted me.  To the right of the front door is the counter area, where people are allowed to smoke.  Then we walked through another area of tables.  I was still smelling the smoke, but I hoped by the time we got to the back room where everyone else was already waiting, that I would be away from the smell.  Wrong - the back room was the smoking area, and there were people smoking, so the smell was even worse there.  I simply turned around and walked out.  Why should I have to subject myself to that in order to go out to eat?  I don't think I should.  I had already had a really bad headache the night before, and I really didn't want to get another one.  The waitresses there tried to figure something out so we could stay, but the front part of the restaurant (which is supposedly non-smoking) smelled just as much like smoke as the back area, and the buffet was actually in the smoking room. 

So, even if we could have managed to sit in the front area, we still would have had to go into the smoking room in order to get our food.  Who plans this stuff anyway?  I shouldn't have to walk through a cloud of smoke in order to get into a restaurant.  I shouldn't have to walk through a cloud of smoke in order to get food at a restaurant.  If a place cannot be set up so that the smokers are off in their own little place where they can't bother real people, then they shouldn't be allowed to smoke there.  They can smoke before they come in.  They can smoke after they leave.  I don't have the choice to breathe before I go in and then wait to breathe again until after I leave.

We ended up leaving that restaurant and going to another little place.  On the front door, they had posted a sign saying that due to Mother's Day, the entire restaurant would be non-smoking starting at 11am.  "Sorry for the Inconvenience."  Ha!  What inconvenience?  It was about 11am by the time we got there, so we got to enjoy a totally non-smoking restaurant, and the food was really, really good.  Our waitress was a sweetheart, and we had a really good time.    And I didn't end up with another headache.