decent day - great night: pre-post part 2

[continued]

we went out to a kosher restaurant for lunch to celebrate one of my team-mates heading off for the officer's course. a restaurant and grill, we started off on the wrong foot as we weren't interested in paying NIS 100 per person for their "special deal".

it's a traditional thing in israeli grills to provide salads for the entire table, and usually it works out to "X salads per person". these guys were charging NIS 16 a head for the salads, but were unwilling to bring more than the set amount. so at 16 per person, two people will get eighteen dishes, and twenty people... eighteen. that's insane.

in addition to the prices being excessive, the service was absolutely atrocious. the food was... "edible"... but all in all the experience was laughable and we won't be going back there again. i walked out of there with a version of rocco's "worst day of my life, man" in my head: "worst meal of my life, man, worst meal of my life". [only a slight exaggeration]

one of the waiters recognized me from my previous assignment - more than three years have passed, i'm sporting a beard and in a different uniform, and i don't think i've ever spoken to him. that's a damn impressive memory he's sporting!

so two of us went to the laser range in the hope that they'd let us in. i slept well the entire drive there - i was dead tired - and the first thing i did when we arrived was buy myself an ice-cream in an effort to remove the after-taste from lunch.

i played the guide, not only in pointing out points of interest (the range is on my original primary base) but also in advice and tips for her new course adventure. we were extremely fortunate on arrival - the cute girl in charge was forgiving and allowed us to shoot without having been registered. aside from a fifteen minute break (the poor dude overseeing us needed to pray), we were out of there in record time.

and that was it. i said goodbye and wished her luck, then hopped a bus home. without turning on my pc, i switched into my human-being disguise and skipped to the beach with a book and a frisbee. i don't know how long i was there, but as i got up to leave i spotted the skipper, a friend from the rollerblading group.

i joined him and his ex, and when they got up to play beach-bats i had a frisbee session against the wind - it's going to take a while before i learn proper control, but it was fun nonetheless. we all sat talking for a while afterwards, and the skipper invited me to his boat for coffee.

if there is a man i know who i'm properly jealous of right now, it's him. instead of owning a home, he owns a boat and lives on it. it's a fine size, comfortable, and affords him the ability to go where he wants when he wants. spending the evening lazing in the bobbing sunset rocked.

we'd gone inside for a bit to discuss both music and business (i showed him protoplasm's looping trick for protecting headphone jacks while we messed about with the portable speaker he was bringing to the group, and he showed interest in a plan i've been hatching), and it was a lot nippier than i expected when i left to get ready for frisbee with scrapper.

we warmed up quickly once we got going.

i had a quick shower before heading off to the group.