Last night, Mom watched Abby while Berta and I went out to dinner and a movie. We tried the new Hibachi across the street and went to see Harry Potter and the Chanber of Secrets.
The new Hibachi restaurant rocks. Apart from the great food that you usually get at a Japanese steak house, the atmosphere was such an improvement over all of the other places we go for Hibachi. The place has a large waterfall garden with a bridge in the lobby, and the hallways to get to the many hibachi rooms are lit with futuristic samurai neon green circles of etched glass. There were a ton of tables, and even a room with a raised floor to give the appearance of traditional floor sitting. Our chef, a white guy from Colorado, was perhaps the best hibachi chef I've ever had the pleasure of cooking for me. He did all of the tricks, including the Mt. Fuji onion volcano and the "fire in the hole" trick, where, when the chef for the next table over appears, he lights his hand on fire and sticks it near the other guy's rear end. (The other chef was oriental, and not very emotional. Our chef said after doing the trick, "They've got to get used to me eventually.")
I had Filet Mignon and King Crab on the hibachi, and it was great. The spicy tuna roll appetizer was darn good, too. Berta and I got this Chambord and sake drink in a snifter, which was very strong and entirely too voluminous for sake.
Anyway, dinner was great. The movie was ok, too, but I went into it biased because I think that the second book in the series is by far the worst of the series. Not to say that it was a bad book, just that it was the worst of the series. I don't really go for the Scooby-Doo mystery endings where you don't even recognize the villian when he's unmasked. And I found the whole posessed diary thing a bit silly. But the movie wasn't bad, as long as you had seen the first one. I look forward to the third movie, which is the best book in the series so far. Hopefully it retains its flavor, and doesn't go the way of Batman's sequels, which lost all of their substance in favor of cliched one-liners. See also: James Bond.
Only a couple more weeks to go before the Two Towers. Soon, my precious.
