On Mondays, Phil likes to borrow my car to get groceries while I'm in my late afternoon class. Then, he picks me up for class and we usually try to get a quick dinner before he heads to the library. Sometimes it's a $4 burger basket from Bo James or a sandwich from Quinton's. Tonight he suggested Mickey's, a pub on Dubuque. After looking for a parking sport for 15 minutes, I pointed out that our laps around the block were probably costing ME more than the hourly rate at a parking garage.

Traffic in Iowa City is terrible. Not only are your chances of finding a parking spot after 5PM little to none, drivers in Iowa City are notorious for stopping in the middle of the street and turning on their flashers. Sometimes it's real quick and a passenger hops in or out of the car. Other times it's a little longer because the driver is determined to wait there for the next available parking spot or he's just decided to park there and go in for dinner. Our windy one-ways get backed up. And drivers get frustrated. After some honks and couple comments about "the worst driver he's ever seen" (usually a girl on her cell phone and in a car with Illinois plates) we left downtown.

We ended up eating at a Chinese place by the Hy-Vee on Highway 1. Our friend Dan really likes Chinese and raves about this particular restaurant. We've had it to go a few times and Phil says it's no China Cafe. I think it's marginal. Actually, I wonder if there are any quick Chinese restaurants like (China Cafe, Bamboo Garden,China 1, Taste of China, etc) that that are better than marginal?

I should have known the experience was going to be disastrous when I decided to order something "new". Usually at Chinese restaurants, I order a "safe" bet, Sesame Chicken. Unfortunately, for me, I learned through my last experience here that Sesame Chicken is NOT always safe. Before we even arrived at the restaurant, I'd made up my mind to have Lo Mien. I've had that at a few places and it's always been dece. The dinner special, which is your entree, rice and an egg roll for the $7 range, had a lo mien option. Chicken or Pork Lo Mien. I wanted beef. So I asked the girl if I could have beef. So, I asked the girl at the counter and she told me (I think - mostly she spoke Chinese and did a lot of pointing) that Beef Lo Mien is only available a la carte. No, no, I want rice. Maybe even the egg roll. This just wasn't going to do. My back up, Cashew Chicken, wasn't even on the menu. Ridiculous. So, I order Beef and Broccoli. So much for their dinner specials; the Beef and Broccoli also only came a la carte.

Phil is not the adventurous type when it comes to eating out. Usually he gets just a burger or maybe some chicken fingers. When we get Chinese, he likes a lot of white rice and he gets General's Chicken. He'd thought about mixing it up tonight, but after my horrible experience ordering, he stuck with the norm.

He asked for a glass of water and they pointed him around the corner from the counter. There, there was a fake Culligan water cooler and also some styro-foam cups. The water was hot.

The only other people in the restaurant had finished their meals as we sat down. They were kind of trashy looking and there were two girls, probably between ages nine and eleven. They were a little chubby and at that age when they're hair doesn't get brushed by their mom anymore, but they haven't started taking care of it themselves yet.

They both wore those annoying Sketchers roller shoes. The dining room had maybe ten tables, and they circled it multiple times, sometimes even going outside, or stopping to twist the handle on the quarter candy machines to see if anything would come out. Like anyone puts a quarter in there and then forgets about it. And they talked. Loudly. And not to each other, really, because the other was always too busy talking to listen. I think they were friends, not sisters.

I hate those shoes. My kids will never have them. They're not even this generation's equivalent of light up shoes. They are so much worse. Phil hates them because he says the kids are just being lazy and if they aren't already fat, they're going to get fat, just like their parents.

Phil doesn't really like fat people.

Anyway, the mother was on her cell phone talking to a friend or sister about one thing or another. Certainly nothing important. Apparently neither was the person on the other end of the conversation because when she wasn't talking, she'd yell at the two girls to go get a lid for the soup. After a lid was found, she yelled for a bag.

They had a big black man with them. A big black retarded man. I saw him when I sat down, but he was two tables away from the woman and the two girls so I never put them together. Also, he hadn't said anything so I didn't know he was retarded. I thought he was just eating a meal on his own. Then, the mother acknowledged him (while on the phone) and spoke to him like a baby. She took him to the bathroom. On the way out, she said if he was good, she'd take him to Wal-Mart to buy new shoes. He carried a Pepsi two liter like a bottle.

Finally we got our food. Marginal, as anticipated. Really, I only ate my broccoli. I wish Buddha's Feast was on the menu. I'd have chosen that, no question. Phil's food came on a red plastic plate, and mine was on Styro-foam. You'd have thought we were going to a picnic. The silverware was also plastic and as there were no knives, we were forced to take really big bites.

While we were eating, a man came in and ordered Stir-Fry without looking at a menu. The girl asked, "What that?" The man was annoyed, and said someone told him they had it here. He explained what it was and clearly they had it, by a different name. "Mixed Vegetables and meat." Phil did, however, point out that that's not quite the same as stir fry because probably they don't cook it in a wok there.

Also, they had one of those huge landscape lights that you hang on the wall. I assumed it was of Japan, which doesn't completely make sense as it's a Chinese restaurant, but it was an island and all the buildings had logos for the major electronics companies. I think that would lead a reasonable person to believe it was Tokyo.

And all I could think of was the trivial pursuit question about which three Japanese cities are made up with the letters "O" "T" "K" "O" and "Y". Why?