Slumming in Joe's Garage

About once a year I get to thinking about how nice it would be to sit out in the sun on the rooftop, gaze over Loring Park and have a relaxing meal with a couple of glasses of wine. Then I go to Joe's Garage and spend a week kicking myself. Why did I just waste all my money on that stupid place that always sucks!?
We started out fine and were seated right away, by the railing over looking the park. Then I opened the wine list. White Zinfandel, Whoop Whoop Shriaz, and that merlot that tastes like feet (luckily, it's lable has a big bearfoot print on it. If you see this wine, ignore the little wine spectator note and find something else.) Dammit. I forgot that there's no wine there. I stupidly ordered a glass of any way. That was bad. I couldn't drink it. I stared longingly at Matt's Newcastle. I hate beer, but man that looked good, all cold and rich. We ordered chicken strips with some kind of jazzy little dipping sauce and the burger of the day, week, whatever, it was stuffed with procuitto and goat cheese. The sun was setting, actually, very slowly.. and it was so... warm. They'd just taken all of the umbrellas off of the table. Then there were the wasps, not the kind you would expect, but actual insets hovering over the jazzy sauce accompaning the chicken. And you don't want to piss the little fuckers off, but Hey! That's MY food! We flagging down one of the seven waitresses milling around and asked if we could move two tables over, out of the direct sun and away from the insects. She said no. ...?... Seven waitresses and only one other table taken by customers on the whole deck! She brought one of the umbrellas back, set it up and then stuck a bundle of silverware in the hole by the umbrella pole, supposedly to keep it steady. It didn't work. At all. Nor did it block the sun. Evenutally, we put the chicken at the empty table next to us to get reprieve from the wasps, a near swarm now. I don't know how many that takes actually, somewhere between a couple and a couple of thousands. But they had food now; I just knew they were coming back with their buddies like a bunch of bad cocktail party guests.
Mindlessly, I prodded the milk glass full of stale wine. No one even noticed I hadn't drank any. Nobody cared. The decidedly unmagnificent seven. Our burgers came. It was so bland. There's procuitto in there and I wanted to salt my burger. How wrong is that? And there was a glaring lack of goat cheese. I could tell by the look on Matt's face that he was as disappointed as I was. Probably more. Sighing heavily, I threw down the exact change on the table and left a breif note explaining the royal stiffing one of them would receive.
Now that I've committed this to the electronic page hopefully I won't be tempted to go back to that stupid patio next summer. I can save a little money and sanity.