Money & the praises of Mai Lee

I have a sugar mama. Angela likes to buy me little things that she thinks I need – things I won’t buy for myself. It’s all part of a queer-eye-for the straight Karl upgrade. This is I guess also part of the couple swap and falls under the “it all comes out in the wash” philosophy. I cook a great deal and generally buy lots of expensive ingredients, which we then consume together. I fix things around her house, and for her birthday Vanessa, Bethany & I repainted her whole place. So yesterday I was gifted with four new oversized bath towels and two hand towels from a linen sale at Linens and Things – just odd to get a mid week gift of towels (which came in response to me saying I was thinking about getting new towels so I guess I set that one up).

We tried to go shopping in Dillard’s for new shirts, even at eighty percent off I couldn’t find anything that I both liked and could afford – the Marxist in me loves the Lands End Outlet Mall in Oshkosh Wisconsin, I buy nearly all my clothing there, probably depression era parents affect this – the heat is currently shut off in my house as I need a roommate and am warm blooded by nature. I turned it off over a week ago and only feel a slight chill as I type away in boxers and t-shirt. Perhaps I’ll make some hot coffee and start warming from the inside out. Angela was cold last night as we watch School of Rock on DVD. In addition to the two blankets she was covered with – I found four brand new oversized towels on the dinning room table, which I used to bundle her tightly.

After our abortive shopping venture, I took Angela to dinner at Mai Lee. Our friends Dan and Yumi turned me onto this place. To listen to Dan talk about the meals he’s had there is to experience an interactive commercial – the sort they play on Sunday afternoons that do not reflect the views of the station, but do get an hour of station time. Not the best metaphor as the Dan-fo-mercial does reflect the views of this station – excellent food – lots of food – cheap (again, I love finding more for less). I remember starring in wonder at Yumi’s platter of muscles surrounded by gigantic and fresh baby boc choy. Mai Lee recently redecorated from a sort of fifties greasy spoon look to something that was modern in 1985. The current décor is a mixture of lightly toned raw wood chairs, hot orange walls with black sketch murals of peasants leading oxen, and black ceiling triangles and circles that remind me of the gaudy earrings one can still find in abundance at the yearly Clayton art Fair – (which becomes more of a waste of time every year). If you think “eighties trendy Chinese” then you’ve got it.

Mai Lee is both a Chinese and a Vietnamese restaurant and has over 500 items on the menu. I often get the Vietnamese fried chicken – which is a whole fried chicken segmented into more manageable pieces, served over a bed of fresh lettuce with this sweet brown sauce that has a slightly orange flavor. Last night we had pork spring rolls with that thick chopped peanut sauce – the rolls were overflowing with fresh cut cilantro – mmmmmmm. For our main entrees we had #74 and # 83 from the Vietnamese menu - #74 is beef strips in a satay sauce with large hunks of cabbage, carrots, and other veggies. #83 is a ginger chicken where the ginger is cut in pieces as large as the chicken and stir fried together with it – also served over lettuce and shredded cabbage with rice of course – and some mixed veggies thrown in. What would you expect to pay for a meal like this? Remember that when we could eat no more, it still looked like we hadn’t eaten anything and we took two full large size take out boxes home with us. Final bill with 20% tip was twenty-one dollars.

Some days you just float about the more substantive blogs, you can’t quite cut through the everyday, instead you stand on it like a river spider supported by the surface tension.