G.P.S. Schmee.P.S.

My grandparents came to town yesterday evening. The goal: to go out to eat (and I also needed to hit Bed, Bath, and Beyond to get some kitchen utensils since several of mine broke within the space of a week).

Grandpa bought this new Jeep a few months ago, and he pretty much hates it. Aparrently it's not comfortable, has dumb features, and gets disdainful gas mileage. (We were getting 16.7 on the interestate last night, if that tells you anything.)

BUT...it does have this really sweet, and partially unnerving, GPS system. While Grandma and I were upstairs in my apartment fixing one of her shirts, Grandpa was down in the car having the GPS map him out a route from our apartment to Dallas, TX. The screen showed him where we were (streets with names, railroads, and "bodies" of water included) and had a little arrow deal pointing the direction we were going.

It creeped me out that I was being stalked by a sattellite.

I watched, mesmerised, as the little screen showed we were travelling on 1st street, and then it said "In 200 feet, turn right on to the interstate". Sure enough, there was the on-ramp on the screen. And we were on it.

We made a pit-stop before dinner and decided to use the GPS to find us a Chinese restaurant. It found us one 1.7 miles away, in the direction of Bed, Bath and Beyond. So we drove off, merrily.

When we reached our destination, we drove around for about 5 minutes before we realized it looked like the place had gone out of business. Grandma ran into the restaurant next door and, sure enough, it had gone out of business 3 years prior.

Three years.

So we tried again. We headed .7 miles away to China House and...it was closed, too. Grandpa was not a happy camper. Not at all. The Jeep was about to get sold, punched, and blacklisted. (Maybe not in that order.)

We were all hungry, by this point, and morale was dropping at an extremely fast rate. We had three options, I told them. The food court in the mall, a sit-down place that wasn't Chinese, or Panera.

Panera it was. At Panera, I mentioned about our Marble Slab break-up experience and Grandpa perked up immediately. (Not so much about the break-up, but the minute he heard "ice cream" he was a changed man.)

So, an hour or so later, we were sitting out in front of Marble Slab. Grandpa was eating a regular sized cone, and Grandma and I were happily eating our "under 12 or senior" sized dips. (Poor Grandpa felt left out since he didn't get an "under 12 or senior" dip, but he didn't seem to be any worse for the wear after eating all that extra ice cream.)

Afterwards we went back to our apartment (sans GPS instructions) and Grandpa let Henry misbehave and chew on his fingers. Oh well. That's what grandparents are for, right?