little bro

I went out to dinner with my little brother Sean last night. We met in Centreville, Virginia, where my job at YB Near is located, since Sean had been teaching back-to-back lessons in Vienna. I had given Sean a choice of restaurants in the area to try; he chose Copper Canyon Grill, texting that CCG's menu appealed to him. I'd never been to the Canyon before, so I thought it might be worth a reconnoiter. Since I had a few hours to kill (my job ended around 3PM yesterday, but Sean wasn't to arrive in Centreville until 8PM), I followed the suggestion of a coworker and went to the second floor of a local Wegmans, there to enjoy the free Wi-Fi service and the constantly wafting scent of food drifting upward from the self-service food court below.

Around 7:45PM, I drove over to Copper Canyon Grill to meet Sean, who told me he was stuck in traffic. I arrived at 8PM on the dot and grabbed us a booth. Sean arrived at the restaurant around 8:20PM, and we ordered. I got a crab-dip appetizer and CCG's "Rattlesnake Pasta," which featured rotisserie chicken, not rattlesnake, as the meat. Sean got a salad instead of an appetizer and a rib-eye steak that turned out to be perfectly cooked to the degree of rareness that Sean treasures in his steaks. Sean actually gave an interesting disquisition on good rib-eyes, and talked about how disappointed he had been when, a few years back, he had ordered a rib-eye at Cut, a San Francisco grill-restaurant owned by Wolfgang Puck. Puck's rib-eye was a neat little rectangle of flesh from which all the delightfully marbled meat on the end had been trimmed away. "But that's the point of having a rib-eye!" Sean averred. He therefore took great delight in Copper Canyon Grill's rib-eye, which was fatty and done up perfectly. I tried a bite of Sean's steak and regretted having ordered chicken pasta.

Dinner was great, and we were both stuffed. Sean gallantly treated me to the meal; Copper Canyon isn't easy on the wallet: all of its menu items are about $3 to $5 more expensive than they should be.

My little brother is heading out to New York this morning, so he needs me to house- and dog-sit for him for two nights. I'll be at his pad from late this afternoon until Sunday morning. Sean warned that, on Sunday, there might be visitors: he's been trying to sell his condo (possibly for a move back to Boston, where he did his graduate work), so there's a chance that some prospective purchasers will want to come over to take a look at his place that day. I'm supposed to be out of the house when such visits occur, so I might have to grab Maqz the chihuahua and drive him over to my other brother's place, there to drop the dog off.

This weekend, I also need to start packing up my belongings and getting them ready for storage. At some point soon, I also have to talk to my buddy Mike about what's happening with my car. Lots to think about, lots to arrange.


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