January 8, 2012

Spent the morning walking and listening to Podcasts. My favorite right now is one James Croft turned me onto, The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, by Peter Adamson of King's College London. Honestly, there's more to these Podcasts than I ever got studying Philosophy in college. There's over 60 episodes right now, and I'm only just starting number eleven, concerning Empedocles, the man who came up with the theory of the four elements (or was it six?) that everyone knows, even if they know nothing about preSocratic philosophy. (Hint: Earth, Fire, Water and Air)

Wrote a piece on the Providence Journal's review of the new Roger Williams book this afternoon. I really think people are missing the point about this state's founder. Williams established his colony to be a place where church and state were firmly separated. Finding ways to mix them, whether via Christmas Trees or prayers in schools, is simply wrong.

For my birthday my sister-in-law Sara gave me a gift card to the new P.F. Chang's that recently opened downtown at the Providence Place Mall. This was a pretty funny gift, because originally Sara wanted to try the restaurant out for her birthday, but when my wife called for a reservation, she was told that they could not accommodate a reservation for eleven people, unless we all wanted to be seated separately. This refusal to help out a reservation that was going easily generate between two and three hundred dollars of business angered my wife, and she arranged the dinner/birthday party at another restaurant. My wife then said that she would never eat at P. F. Chang's, because she was treated so poorly on the phone.

With the gift card, my wife of course changed her mind. My wife and I invited Sara and my daughter Ayla to go to P. F. Chang's today at four o'clock, so we could use the gift card together. A little after noon I called the restaurant and attempted to get a reservation for four at four o'clock. I talked to Amanda, who told me that they weren't taking reservations anymore today, because they were full up. I said something like, "Oh, you don't have any tables?" and Amanda said, "No, you can still come in and get a table, there are plenty of empty tables now and I don't think they'll be much of a wait at 4:00 PM, we just can't take anymore reservations."

Now, I couldn't understand this at all. I asked how can they have empty and open tables, and yet be unable to take a reservation for four people at four o'clock. This wasn't a big deal, this is the way restaurants work. Amanda was like a broken record. She simply repeated the same thing over and over, unwilling to help me out. I hung up the phone frustrated, and told my wife what had happened. She suggested I look on-line and try to find out what the reservation policy at P. F. Chang's was. 

When I got on line, I found a link on the restaurants website that would allow one to make a reservation. I clicked it, filled in my name, email and phone number, and voila! I had a reservation for four people at four o'clock, no problem at all. We arrived at the restaurant, they confirmed our reservation on their computer, and sat us right away, no problem at all. The meal was great: the food was clean and good, the service was excellent. A fine time was had by all.

But I can't help wondering, what the hell is wrong with P. F. Chang's that you can't just call and get serviced without a hassle?

After getting home I went to work on a Media Contact List for Humanists of Rhode Island, so we can broaden the impact of our Press Releases. we want to heavily advertise the photo we're taking under the FFRF billboard.