Semi-Journal

So most of you my dear readers know my brother in one form or another, so use your context of my brother to fill in the gaps of what follows…. Or you can take it as it is and just run with it.  Run all the way to the hills with it.

My brother used to come down on a regular basis once upon a time, but due to changes in his personal life and scheduling conflicts he hasn’t been able to come down in almost a year.  Sometime last month he signs up for a conference in Phoenix so he can have an excuse to come down and try and hang out with his brother… at least that is what he told me.  At the very least he saved his work a few dollars by crashing at “Chateu de me” instead of a staying smart at a Holiday in Express.

So I roll in from work at my usual time and there is my brother watching TV on my couch… strange how he always has a key to my house, but yet “the key to his house can’t be copied and he has only one” very very very strange.  So we chat for a bit and I ask “what do you want for dinner?” because as you all know I keep exactly enough food for one person for about 2.5 days in my house.   After the usual hemming and hawing he doesn’t really have a answer.

At one point he was wanting to do the “Man VS Food” challenge at Chompies in Tempe, but he backed out of that because “he wanted to make sure he like the sliders first”…. Ok kind of weak, but I will give him the pass our family is known for having notoriously sensitive stomachs.  So I suggest the “Tilted Kilt” the following conversation ensues…

LilBrother (LB); What’s “Tilted Kilt”

Me; Bar food but more of a Irish flavor, even though Kilts are Scottish.

LB; Uh ok, I guess.

Later on in the truck as we are pulling into the Tilted Kilt on Baseline and Gilbert in Mesa….

LB; So really all this way for something we could have gotten around the corner from your house?

Me; Food yes, but the service is really good here.

And as we walk up to the door and I open I all I hear from my brother is…

LB; whoa (just loud enough that I could hear it)

So yeah, he enjoyed the “Tilted Kilt”  after we finish he says “I saw this place called ‘Aunt Lena’s’ by Chandler Mall we should go there…. OK the boy doesn’t get out of the sticks much I will indulge him…

Turns out that using his smart phone to look up directions is not something that ever occurred to him… I finally have to pull over to look up the place… and it’s nowhere near Chandler Mall it’s over on Arizona and Ocitllo… The following conversation ensues…

Me; how did figure this place was near the Chandler Mall?

LB; I saw it on “Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives” and I when I saw the background shots it looked like the strip malls around the Chandler Mall.

I guess nobody told him that all the strip malls in that part of town look the same.  So we trek out there… and sure enough there are two identical strip malls across the street from one another the only difference is one has a Lowe’s and one has a Home Depot.   So we drive through both, I do the Google maps thing, and we can’t find this place.   Finally little brother calls the place listed on Google maps page… and the number is disconnected….

LB; Man way to kill a fat kids dream there

So we begin the trek home… somewhere along the way we get detoured to a cold stone and a movie about a guy who kills people with carrots… The movie was almost as good as the Kilt…

As a interesting side note on why you should research before going anywhere, after I put in a cursory Google search I found this article and it’s #1 on the Google results!

http://thedish.freedomblogging.com/2009/01/05/restaurant-closings-aunt-lenas-lucs-carrabbas/2660/

I think someone missed the boat just a touch.