I've been meaning to post this story for a few days, but I wanted to have some kind of conclusion. Unfortunately after almost a week I still don't have one, so I figured I'd go ahead and at least begin the story. It starts last Friday evening when my wife and I had friends in town that wanted to meet us for dinner. When you live in the tourist center of the United States, it's inevitible that a friend will be on vacation and want to say their hellos while they're in town. Not a bad thing at all. Usually we'll meet up and take them to a local spot that the tourists don't know about or we'll hit up a restuarant at one of the big theme park hotels and enjoy something there. Not this time. You see, these people, while very nice, don't exactly have the most sophisticated palattes and they wanted to go to Olive Garden.

<insert eyeroll here>

My wife tried to protest a little, but they were insistant and it was their vacation so we relectantly agreed.  Now for anyone outside of the US, you might not be familiar with this a restaurant, and I use the term restaurant very lightly here, allow me to give you a quick explanation of it.  The Olive Garden is a nationwide chain of Italian restaurants that has a lovely southern Italian atmosphere. Their philosophy is to offer good breadsticks and salad, and then have everything else on the menu be just good enough that if you wind up in an unfamiliar area and see an Olive Garden you'll go in there because you know its safe. At least that used to be the philosophy. Over the past decade the quality of their food has really gone down to the point where when someone recommends going there, they're just going for the joke. No one wants to eat at the Olive Garden.

And just to be clear, I'm no food snob. If you give me a choice between The Waffle House and any other restaurant, I'll take the Waffle House 2 out of 3 times. The Olive Garden is just crap. It's Italian food for morons or for people who have never eaten food before.

So, you can imagine how excited I was to go back. Here's the funny thing though. The food wasn't terrible this time. It wasn't great, but I wasn't offended. The last time I went about 2 years ago, everything came out cold and tasteless. This time.... it was the old slightly-better-than average Olive Garden. Dinner with good friends and almost good food. Not a bad way to spend an evening. But you know what's a really bad way to spend your morning? Shitting your guts out.

Yep, the meal that started with the never ending pasta bowl finished with never getting off the toilet bowl. Yes, Saturday was not a good day. Not since Gaming Geek visited the exotic sub-continent of India has one man shit so much. I had planned to get through a big chunk of Kingdom Hearts that day. It wasn't meant to be. Apparently only Hearthstone and other cell phone games could be played. Sunday wasn't much better. How I wasn't completely hollow at this point was truly a mystery. I can only assume that amongst my dish of tortolini was a small wormhole that lead to the feces dimension, and it still hadn't gone through my system.

The rest of the work week hasn't been much better. I've been keeping it to soup, crackers, and stuff like that in hopes that it would end. While the constant barrage has ended, I'm still having bad moments. Today while I was driving home, I had to stop and use the bathroom at a Home Depot. For the record, lets take a moment and thank the fine men and women who keep those bathrooms sparklingly clean. I hope that was the last of it, but I'm not really sure. My current theory is that I may have completely shit out my colon and lower intestine, and this is just how the rest of my life will be. Guess I'll find out tomorrow.

At any rate, hope you guys enjoy reading this over breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Posted by robio Thu, 18 Jan 2018 04:18:37 (comments: 15)
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Thu, 18 Jan 2018 13:10:16

Yikes!  We used to go to Olive Garden all the time but it’s lost it’s luster to us as well.  We do end up going once every year or two when someone gifts us a card to use there.

 
Thu, 18 Jan 2018 15:09:03
Whoa, sorry to hear that, Robio. Sad

Olive Garden salads are great, but everything else is very, very bland.
 
Thu, 18 Jan 2018 17:00:14
Brother. I feel your pain. And smell it. Did you play Switch on the toilet? You know what's good for the runs? Co-codamol painkillers. They block you up. So when you have the runs they give you a perfect equilibrium. Also thanks for the Olive Garden explanation. Seth Myres is always cracking jokes about them and I never understood why.
 
Thu, 18 Jan 2018 18:59:34
I still don't own a Switch, so just gaming on the phone for now.

And as far as the Olive Garden, glad I could offer some context for the jokes. Really, about 20 years ago no one cared too much about it. It was actually a pretty good place to take a date. At least when I was in college. Nowadays though, just beware.
 
Thu, 18 Jan 2018 21:16:21

As someone who has no idea what Olive Garden is, or who Seth Myres is, the context was even more helpful!

At least it sounds like Home Depot didn't demand you buy something to use their facilities...so that's some consolation, at least.

 
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 18:37:07
Foolz said:

At least it sounds like Home Depot didn't demand you buy something to use their facilities...so that's some consolation, at least.

He could have bought a nice pack of duct tape for his asshole....just in case.

Robio...same story up here in new england for Olive Garden. I never ever go there...especially after hearing stories from people who worked there about people spitting in the salads or putting...things in the food if they didn't like the folks they were "serving".

 
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 19:00:24
For the record I did do some shopping at Home Depot last weekend, and may be there again this weekend. Their clean restrooms and reasonably soft toilet paper have earned them a customer for life in me.
 
Sat, 27 Jan 2018 02:11:17

When I was kid my family would occasionally go to the Orlando Oliver garden outside Disney. So probably the same one, it was alright.

The most shocking thing of your story was that Home Depot has clean bathrooms!

 
Sun, 11 Mar 2018 17:02:07
LTTP but I'll leave this here


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