Weekend Madness

So, the parental units were in town this past weekend for one night. They were basically doing a fly-by visit. We went out to dinner in Santa Monica and stopped into a small hole in the wall place to have dinner. We did not have reservations and knew we would have a long wait anywhere we went so we put our name in and saddled up to the bar...the very very crowded bar.
After waiting about 30 minutes and making conversation with a few strangers, I look over at the door and see a semi-celebrity from SNL fame. He often plays a monkey and looks like one too. He and his friends stroll up to the host and act as if they own the place. All I could think was...Crap there goes our table. We waited another ten minutes and watched as the monkey and his friends were seated at a table before us, but at a very undesirable table. It was the first table inside the doorway and was surrounded by people standing at the bar and squeezing past on the other side to leave the restaurant. My parents and I were seated within a couple of minutes after them and we were taken through the kitchen, past the ice machine and back into a small room that held three tables.
It was called the Rat Pack room because a long while back the Rat Pack used to enter through a back door and use this room as their private dining room. We shared the room with a bunch of guys celebrating a bachelor party and another table of four women who flirted with the bachelor party. It was a strange evening to share with the parents but all in all it was a lot of fun. The host explained to us later that he had no idea who the monkey was and that the bartender made sure he sat them so there was not a scene. We were just happy that we got a better table with more room and toward the end of the dinner we were the only ones left in the Rat Pack room.
Wish the parental units could have stayed longer, but they flew out the next morning after a great breakfast at the local cozy cafe.
Just finished "Plain Truth" by Jodi Picoult. Are all of her books court room related?? Fast read and good, but I know that I could not read her books back to back because the characters are all written very similar.
Got a new library card in a neighboring town and rented the second Tales of the Otori book that I could not find at my regular library as well as a book called "Serving Crazy with Curry" by Amulya Malladi.