I hurt my back and it's all The Girlfriend's fault. Sure, she'll deny it to the bitter end. But if you look at the facts, it's all her fault. I went over to her house. I saw the she left my water bottle on the table. I bent over to pick it up and--BAM!--just like that, my back is killing me. It's some sorta pulled muscle I think. I need some quality time in the hot tub and with a whole heckuva lotta Icy Hot. But if she had left my water in the fridge, I wouldn't be in this mess.

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My family as a bit of a birthday tradition where we all get together and go out to eat. Nothing fancy: just a nice meal with everyone together at a sit-down restaurant. Dinner at Chili's or Outback might not seem like a fancy meal to most folks, but considering the house I grew up in (going out for pizza was considered a treat) it sorta is. Or at least was when we were all kids. Now that we can all afford our own meals, it’s sorta no big deal. But birthday dinners is a tradition we established when we were younger and now it's something we do as adults.

Now the birthday dinner rarely occurs on one's actual birthday. For five busy adults, it sometimes takes a while to find a simultaneous day off. Usually the birthday dinner doesn't happen until two or three weeks after the actual birthday (you'd think we would've figured this all out by now and start planning the birthday dinner a few weeks prior to one's birthday). Recently, we all went out for Arnold Schwarzenegger's birthday--a mere two weeks after his special day.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a big pasta fan. He's kinda like me and tacos: pasta anytime it's available--even if he's not hungry. A trip to the Macaroni Grill was an ideal fit...especially since he gets an employee discount.

I've never been to Macaroni Grill. I grew up in an Italian house, eating pasta only from the finest Italian chefs (my mother and her mother). I never went to Italian restaurants for Italian food. In fact, since my grandmother died 20 years ago, I haven't eaten a single bowl of pasta not cooked by my mother.

When I was a kid, I never cooked different kinds of pasta--my mother did. She made her sauce from scratch (we called it gravy). She grilled her meats and made her own meatballs. Because of this, I never learned the difference between penne or rigatoni--it was all just pasta to me. My mother made the dish and I ate it--it was all that simple.

That's what made a trip to Macaroni Grill so embarrassing: I looked at the menu and had no idea what anything was. This was a unique experience for me because I've never had to order Italian food. The names on the menu seemed like exotic Italian cities--not various cuisines. I had to have my family members tell me the differences between all the various Italian dishes and macaroni.

It was an eye-opening experience for me. Besides looking like a damn fool, I realized I'm nowhere near as smart as I thought I was. I always claimed to like Italian food, but in reality I like only my mother's Italian food (I suppose that's not eye-opening: I knew that already). The food at Macaroni Grill was absolutely terrible. I ordered some sorta pasta in meat sauce (meat sauce? What the hell is meat sauce? Gimmie some good old fashion tomato gravy). The waitress had to freshly grind the cheese on my dish (limiting my parmesan cheese to a one-time-only helping). Would it have killed her to leave the cheese on the table? I'm a grown-up and can grind my own cheese...I just can't order my own pasta.

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