In the course of his move into his own place last month, one of his friends with a car helped him take the TV. But, Laurent hadn't gotten keys to the new place, so instead of leaving things here and waiting until he had a key, he had the friend hold on to the TV. The problem? The friend lives in Greencastle, Pennsylvania.
Laurent got it into his head that we should rent a Zipcar and drive up last night after work. He insisted that he had to get his television NOW. Thus, off we went on the mission to recover the television.
Greencastle is right about in the middle of Pennsylvania, along the southern border of the state. When we got to Hagerstown, a little town about as far northwest as one can go in Maryland and home to the Prime Outlet Mall of America, we stopped for dinner at a chain steakhouse there by the mall.
We had a nice little meal there at Longhorn Steakhouse. Laurent isn't used to going to places like that, but it's really a very standard national chain-type "Texas" steakhouse much like those we see all over the place in Oklahoma and out in the middle of the country. I'd never experienced this chain before, but from the looks of their Web site, they are all over the eastern part of the country (but not in Texas!).
The decor featured lots of enlarged photographs of cowboys and oil rigs, all allegedly old and from Texas (and all West Texas, at that, since the landscapes were as flat and dry as they could be), plus saddles and cowboy boots and other southwestern bric-a-brac. Right by our booth was an Indian rug from New Mexico, not Texas, and I was very amused to see several old signs from "Wichita." Well, Wichita is a town in Kansas; I guess they had it confused with Wichita Falls, a town in north Texas.Service (from a high school boy) was friendly and the food decent.
Laurent started with a 25-oz. Yeungling beer that was practically bigger than him. For his main course, he had a healthy Seven-Pepper Sirloin Steak Salad with chipotle ranch dressing that was large and apparently good, since he quickly ate the whole thing, even though he claimed to have eaten dinner before our trip.
Then, once he'd eaten that big, healthy salad, he ordered the Golden Nuggets Fried Cheesecake. The dessert involved cubes of cheesecake rolled in what looked like cornflakes then deep fried and served with vanilla ice cream, strawberries, squirts of strawberry and caramel sauces, and mounds of whipped cream, garnished with a sprig of fresh mint. He ate it all.
Meanwhile, I just had "The Renegade," a little sirloin steak served with a baked sweet potato and a big side salad. It was quite tasty, and cooked to between medium and medium rare as requested. I drank blackberry iced tea, and it was good, but they used blackberry syrup to impart the flavor making it very, very sweet, so I converted to regular unsweetened iced tea for the refills. I didn't get dessert. I think I gained weight just watching Laurent eat that fried cheesecake!
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