Wayne the Denny's Guy

I had the greatest experience at Denny's a short while ago. Yes, I did say Denny's. Most people have good experiences here the morning after they've been partying all night and are ridiculously hungover. I, however, went there for the sole purpose of meeting up with a friend and we would both term this Denny's location "epic". Generally speaking, when you head into a restaurant of any sort, you get the typical server who is polite and cheerful and gives you pretty good service for the duration of your stay. Then you get the occasional server who you know doesn't want to be at work that day and it shows in the way you get treated. On this day, however, we walked into Denny's and right off the bat our server and seater, Wayne, was the most flamboyant server I have ever seen. He was amazing. He whisked us to our seats and took our drink order immediately, and then was back in a flash to take our food order. When it was my turn to order, he turned and said "fire at will!" rather than your typical "what can I get you?" As he was running in between tables, Wayne continued to look over and, while running by, would yell "you ladies okay?!" We'd always laugh and say yes and then he'd be gone again to help another table. When our orders did come, Wayne came to our table and stood there, setting down one item at a time and letting us know what it was.

"App sampler. Marinara sauce. Honey mustard. Jam. Butter. Grand Slam. Syrup. There you go! Enjoy!"

Then he was gone again. We ate our meal and as Wayne tended to another table of two guys, he asked them how they were doing. Clearly annoyed, he walked by our table saying, quite loud, "That's okay, don't answer me. I like to be annoyed." Awesome. Because quite clearly, the table of two guys were not enjoying this service as much as we were.

Wayne came back to clear away our plates and when asked if there was still pumpkin pie to be had, Wayne joyously told us there was and quickly brought a piece to the table along with a can of whipped cream.

"Say when!!" He seemed quite excited about placing the whipped cream on the pie.

Probably the best server I have ever seen. He wasn't at some high end restaurant, where you are expected to act classy. He works at a Denny's and has fun with his job, which more servers should be like.

Needless to say, we tipped him quite well at the end of the night. While leaving we let him know that the money was on the table and his response was, "Alright ladies, thank you so much! Have a great night! See you later! Bye!"

Epic.

ICE School

When you head out to a hockey game, most people see a sign that says "Oilers ICE School" but have no idea what it is. I got the chance to spend a day up close in ICE School on Monday and it answered a bunch of questions I had. What happens is a school applies to bring their class to ICE School and priority is given to some special needs classes and schools outside of the city.

On Monday, I happened to be there when a grade six class from Entwistle attened the school. They show up in the morning and head up to the classroom and on that particular day (October 20) the Sportex was being taken down. So the class got together and walked from Rexall across to the Northlands grounds and watched tractors destroy the walls of the Sportex. The kids then headed back to Rexall where a security guard was waiting outside the entrance doors with his security car. The class got a chance to try out their interviewing skills and then had the opportunity to look inside of the car.

The kids then headed back up to the classroom where they were able to eat their lunches followed by a quick reading period. After gathering together again, it was then time to do a building tour. This is probably everyone's favourite part of the day because we all got to see the ins and outs of Rexall Place.

We first headed up to the gallery section (aka the "nosebleeds") and on this day, the staff at Rexall was actually getting setup for the NBA pre-season game that night. It was an interesting setup, as the basketball floor they used was actually the basketball court from the U of A main gym and the nets were brought in from Vancouver.

While sitting in the seats of the nosebleeds, we all got the chance to sit and watch the Denver Nuggets practice - definitely something that is not seen every day!

After touring the other levels of Rexall, the class was finally taken to level 2, a level where no one sees but the employees of Rexall, which was a neat experience for everyone. After the tour, the class headed back up to the classroom and wrote about their experience in their journals. After a quick question and answer period, the class then headed back down and out to the bus after a busy first day.

Since the class was from out of town, they only attend the school for four days, compared to the five days for schools from Edmonton. The difference between the two is that the four days are longer days, as more information must be crammed into a shorter period of time.

Overall, it was a great experience for everyone, including me as I now know what the ICE School is and can see the signs hanging around Rexall and know what they're all about.

Good times parking this week

I had tickets to the Oilers season opener on Sunday and left work at my usual quitting time, 6pm.  I had forgotten that the hockey game actually started at 6 as well, since it was a Sunday game and those games are generally earlier.  I got off work and drove to Rexall where I expected to outwit the parking gate guys and park in the Northlands parking lot and walk over to Rexall.  As soon as I got to the gates where you should pay, I realized all booths were empty.  I looked around and proceeded to drive straight through the gate, saving myself a whopping $12 on parking.  But I wasn't just going to be satisfied with free parking.  I maneuvered around parking attendants and illegally park cars until I found it.  At last.  After I had just missed the first goal of the game by Shawn Horcoff.  The closest parking spot possible right by the ramp to get to Rexall was open, or at least it looked that way from where I was.  I figured when I drove up to it, it would have a Smart car parked in it and I would have to park miles away once again.  But no.  Shockingly, it was open and I pulled right in and was in to watch the game in no time.

THEN, my parking luck continued yesterday.  I parked in the loading zone at school because really, it was way too cold and windy and I had too much to do to want to park at least 15-20 minutes away in residential.  When the time came to move my car when my 30 minutes was up, I drove around the parkade in hopes of finding a semi-close parking spot.  I turned the corner and luckily, two cars up, there was an opening.  I pulled up and checked for a fire hydrant or a "no parking" sign.  There was bound to be one of the two because those spots are never open.  But no.  It was actually an open spot.  Now it was time for me to perfect the finer points of parallel parking.  Let's face it: whenever someone gets their license, all driver's ed tips go out the window, and the first one is generally parallel parking because everyone hates it.  It's difficult to master and time consuming to repeatedly try to park while people that walk by just laugh because clearly you are having trouble.  This was definitely one of those days for me and took me at least three times to even partially get my car in the spot.  I did succeed, however, because I would never pass up an opportunity for close, free parking.

AND that's not all!  Today when I arrived at school at the early hour of 7am, I pulled into the closest parking lot there is to the RTA building.  Parking is generally $5 but for me today?  FREE.  Yes, my parking luck continued yet again as the parking machine read "Machine out of Order".  I really didn't have a problem with this but figured I should call the number on the machine just so that I wouldn't get a ticket.  Security picked up and when I told them the situation, he replied with "I''ll have someone check into it.  You'll be fine to park there today".

Score.