I almost forgot

We're in St. Cloud (or some town around it) eating lunch at Applebees before getting back to Matt's and driving back to Illinois.

The wonderful thing about Applebees was they had 3 items on the 'all you can eat' side of things.

1. Shrimp

2. Rib niblets

3. Chicken fingers

I love chicken fingers.

I also drank heavily with Matt the night before.

Before the gun range there wasn't any breakfast or coffee consumed.

There was nothing that would satisfy my 1/4 hangover and serious malnourishment.

After the range, there was Applebees (despite the 25 minute debate (if you could call it that) on where we should eat lunch).

It was a nice Applebees. The server was really nice and had a bit of sass to her.

Our order was roughly the following:

Matt: AUCE Chicken Fingers

Mark: same

Kim: some sandwich off of the regular menu

After we received our meals we begin to plow into them making great progress and I was allowing the breading to absorb most of the remaining alcohol that sat happily in my stomach.

The waitress comes over and asks Matt and I if we'd like her to put in another order of chicken fingers (yes, please). I ate them at record speeds so my stomach wouldn't know I was full and I could continue my lunchtime gluttony.

Matt says to the woman, "yes, please, but don't worry about the fries. I don't need them. I'm going to focus on the chicken."

Anyway, point of the story...

A few minutes later the manager is doing her walk through and she arrived at our table.

She does the typical manager thing and asks how everything is and tastes then looks over at Kim and her meal. This next part is classic.

Manager: Well, hey there guys, how's everything going? Is the food good?

Us: Yes it is.

Manager: (to Kim) Ma'am, how's your sandwich?

Kim: Good

Mgr: Well, is it your favorite sandwich here at the Applebees?

Kim: Um...(looks at Matt and I), I don't eat here very often, so...yes?

Mgr: Good. Well, you better enjoy it. Because, this is the last week it's going to be offered.

She then smiled and walked away

We bust out laughing. What do you say to that? How do you reply? Kim should've shed a tear, that would've been magical.

It's probably a story that you 'had to be there for,' but to see the stone-serious look on this managers face and she meant it with the greatest care for Kim and her sandwich...she really wanted Kim to enjoy this sandwich and was there to comfort her if Kim were to be sad that this was the sandwich's last few days with the company. That plus 12 chicken fingers, 5 glasses of water and a overly-sincere hillbilly manager at the Crapple definitely sealed our trip up with the right amount of MN perfection

Needless to say, it provided a lot of funny stuff for the rest of our lunch.

"Uh...Server. Did you enjoy serving us today? You did? That's good, because this is the last time we'll be here."

I love Applebees. Fact.

I know, I know, it's Crapplebees and that will never change but it is what it is. It knows it'll never be better than a B- TGI Fridays. A non-bankrupt Baker's Square without as many old people or pie.