There's a restaurant in Cary I've read about a couple of dozen times, easily. The Independent, the local free weekly, always lists it in its restaurant issue. It's called “Abbey Road” and, to judge by a menu I'd seen in a magazine at some point in the past, it's a Beatles-themed restaurant.<\/p>\n
So, that's where we went.<\/p>\n
It's a hamburger place. You can tell, just from looking at the building, that it used to be a gas station. There's a fueling island attached directly to the restaurant, and though the gas pumps are gone the area is now the parking area for Abbey Road.<\/p>\n
It's a little bit of a dive. There was a smoky feel to the place, an odd odor I couldn't place. It was dark, the walls decorated with a melange of pop culture icons, from Big Bird and Winnie-the-Pooh to the Beatles and Sonny and Cher. And Yoda. Can't forget Yoda. And a really disturbing image that I know was John Wayne but actually looked more like Mel Gibson.<\/p>\n
I may not like Yoko Ono, but she makes a good hamburger. Yes, the items on the menu were all Beatle-themed. Well, at least the hamburgers. Salad platters — they had normal names.<\/p>\n
(The Yoko Ono, by the way, was grilled onions and American cheese. The Paul McCartney, as I recall, had blue cheese crumblies. The Ringo Starr was just like the Yoko Ono, but with grilled mushrooms as well. That exhausts my memory of the menu.)<\/p>\n
We talked for, what was it? Three hours? Yes, that does sound right. Three hours.<\/p>\n
Her vocabulary was occasionally shocking. Only occasionally. Raw, and shocking!<\/p>\n
The hamburger was fine. I've had better hamburgers — I think Five Guys makes better burgers — though I've had worse, too. It wasn't a fast-food burger, I'll give it that.<\/p>\n
It wasn't a date. Just dinner. I dropped her off, went to Total Wine, bought some beer. Tasgall Ale from Highland Brewing. No idea what it is, but it's got a cool name, and the label says something about Norse mythology. It didn't come in a six-pack, just a 22 ounce bottle, and so I also picked up the St. George brewery's Porter. I occasionally like a porter instead of a stout. As I told my dinner companion last night I wouldn't have made it through one of my history courses in college without the fortification of a porter before class.<\/p>\n
And then, a game of Age of Empires III<\/i>. And it was brutal<\/i>. Not brutal for me. Brutal for my opponents as I demolished their colonies. Take that, Suleiman the Magnificent!<\/p>\n
At midnight my neighbors decided to shoot of fireworks. So they did.<\/p>\n
And then, they started tearing up and down the street, honking horns, squeeling brakes.<\/p>\n
And then, around three, car alarms started to blare.<\/p>\n
And then, around four-thirty, more fireworks.<\/p>\n
My sleep was disrupted. My neighbors are insane.<\/p>\n
That was Saturday. And early Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There's a restaurant in Cary I've read about a couple of dozen times, easily. The Independent, the local free weekly, always lists it in its restaurant issue. It's called “Abbey Road” and, to judge by a menu I'd seen in a magazine at some point in the past, it's a Beatles-themed restaurant. So, that's whereContinue reading “On Saturday”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[4093],"class_list":["post-1387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}