ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Q. How do you tell a male lobster from a female lobster?
A. Hold a $20 bill in front of it. The one that reaches for it is the female.

Because everyone who offered their two cents considers it a staple of the Portland cultural experience, or at least thought it was worth going if the company was paying for it anyway, my coworker friend and I visited the famous floating restaurant DiMillo’s in Portland. We were urged by a friend to visit a locally owned restaurant named Cap’n Newick’s, but when we found the place it turned out that after 31 years of business, it had closed. Yesterday. Oh, the irony.

I was extremely excited to be dining at the famous DiMillo’s, which in my opinion was going to be a truly authentic seafood experience, but because about half of the entrees are over $25 for something that doesn’t even get you any leftovers, we had to order carefully to avoid causing our boss to poop a brick in his panties. We also made sure to split the ticket even though we had been taking turns paying, so instead of seeing one obscenely expensive giant meal ticket on one expense report, he would see two merely nauseatingly expensive meal tickets, which would appear on completely separate expense reports.

I chose the daily special, which was this thing called “Seafood Napoleon” that cost $23. Basically, it was scallops, crab, and tiny shrimp in some kind of pinkish cream sauce, sandwiched in puff pastry. The first bite was delicious and I thought it was the best thing I’d ever tasted. Maybe it was the $23 I was tasting, though, since it didn’t taste quite as good anymore by the time I got about halfway done, and by the time I was three quarters through it, I could not bear to take another bite. To my great shame, I realized I did not enjoy it as much as I had the $12 tilapia fillet I’d eaten the night before at Ruby Tuesday’s. Maybe the cream sauce was just too rich for me. I felt strangely disappointed in myself, because I like fish and thought this was going to be one of the ultimate seafood dining experiences ever, but was comforted by the fact that I did not pay a dime of my own money for it.

When we were done eating, we took each other’s picture with the marina as the backdrop, and headed back to the car. I really cannot explain what happened next. Not realizing anything was amiss, we climbed into the car and put on our seat belts. Then, after we had been in the car probably 8-10 seconds, my coworker friend looked puzzled and said, “Whose sunglasses…WAIT THIS ISN’T OUR CAR!” We immediately freaked out and went into a violent frenzy in our desperate efforts to extract ourselves from this strange car that was OH GOD NOT OURS!!!! and in our panic it seemed to take hours, days, to remove the seat belts and WHERE ARE THE HANDLES!! ARE WE TRAPPED?! get out.

After I took a picture of the car for posterity, we spotted our pink Saturn and sprinted for it, hoping that we had not been observed trying to steal a stranger’s car!! When we calmed own and stopped laughing, we speculated that the owner of the car must have left it unlocked, and since we were talking the whole time we probably just didn’t notice that the keyless entry thingy did not really do anything.

We laughed on and off about our brush with vehicular trespass for another 10 minutes or so, then began a serious debate about where to eat breakfast the next morning, since we are both so sick of the Holiday Inn “Express Start” breakfast that we would practically rather eat moldy beef brains than even look at another one of those freaking cinnamon rolls. By this point, we were both very curious about Tim Horton’s, but all the locals we had asked about this place had basically expressed the opinion that it is crap shit and that all the stores should be packed up and sent back to Canada where they came from. “And stay gone, ya varmints!”

We are told that Dunkin’ Donuts is the way to go or Mr. Bagel if you have time. Either way, we will not eat another Holiday Inn breakfast.