Come On!

You never know who's going to be on vacation any given week during the summer.

A friend and I were craving Garnett's today but arrived to find an "On vacation until 8/1" sign on the door. Time to regroup.

We decided to give Six Burner a try since they're now doing lunch and arrived to find business men types, small groups and two women at the back table with a small baby.

Considering the blanket of heat, it was amazing that anyone was venturing out at all.

Opting for the bar, we absorbed the menu quickly so we could order as soon as possible. We'd gotten a late start, we'd already made a detour and we were both hungry to start with.

My friend is the kind of guy who can eat a burger every day if presented with one. On the drive over, he'd mentioned getting a salad today because he'd had two Five Guys burgers yesterday. Two.

Luckily for him, there were four salads on the menu, in addition to things like an oyster po' boy, a monstrous grilled cheese with avocado and fried green tomato, and a BLT with avocado, which I ordered.

To no one's surprise, he got the 1/3-pound burger on a brioche bun with a mound of fries, essentially a slight  variation of his lunch yesterday. And, for all I know, the day before.

But I don't judge such things, so we moved on to more compelling conversation.

Our bartender friend who'd given up his player ways, gotten married and moved north is now expecting his second child. Color us both impressed.

He surprised me by saying that every single day he still thinks about a mutual friend who died unexpectedly a few years back. I have a picture of her that he took and it always gives me a twinge when I look at it. She was so young.

Naturally he asked about the state of my love life, giving me a disgusted "Come on!" and a brief lecture about its lack of forward progress.

If he weren't right, I might have given him crap about the lack of forward progress in his diet, which is still heavily indebted to pizza and burgers at nearly 40.

In any case, forward progress varies from eater to lover.