Weber’s Inn is the go-to place for a lot of folks here on The Planet Ann Arbor for special occasions or a fancy dinner or whatever. For whatever reason, it isn’t often on my beat. Not because it isn’t any good because it is. Just, I dunno… For one thing, I was acquainted with the owner the last couple years of college. On the off chance I mention this factual tidbit to anyone local, I *always* stipulate that I doubt he would remember me and I do doubt that. We were just acquaintances. Actually, I am aware that his children went to the same middle school as mine and I can even remember sitting at the PTO table at registration taking his t-shirt check for his kid and hoping to hell he didn’t recognize me. If he did, he didn’t let on and that’s okay. Why? Just because. I would re-write that period of my life if I could, but I can’t, so I write about it very occasionally, in painful little bits and pieces and kind of hope that nobody remembers it… (Not that the Weber kid had anything to do with that. As I said, he was just an acquaintance.)

I have eaten at Weber’s a few times over the years, mostly at retirement banquets or company parties or whatever. The food is always adequate at those things but not spectacular but who can pay top dollar for food for a large group of people? I think the only time I actually ate a regular restaurant meal at Weber’s was lunch once with The Comm and her friend Pauline, who was living in town at that time. I don’t remember too much about the lunch. What I do remember is that The Commander made very specially prepared finger-food lunches for the preschool-aged beach urchins before we left. She covered the plates with plastic wrap and instructed Grandroobly to place them on the table and remove the plastic wrap for the little munchkins. When we returned from lunch, the beach urchins were wide-eyed with excitement about the wonderful lunch *grandaddy* had made for them. Indeed…

We ate at Weber’s tonight in celebration of a very special birthday. I won’t call out the person or the year but it did have a zero at the end of it. I am thinking we have been missing a wonderful place all these years. The food was good and the service was superb. The young waitress even put up with all of the boyz’ cheesy jokes with aplomb. If I have a complaint, it is that we can’t easily walk there. It’s a lot closer to The Landfill than some of the other places we walk to but it is in a pedestrian no-man’s land.

One of the best things? (I mean besides Ray.) It had to be the piano player. I wasn’t paying attention at first. I was hearing a typical lounge-style piano player doing lots of flashy runs, rich chords, glissandos and whatever. And then I started listening a bit more closely. He was playing Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd! Here’s a link to a video. It’s pretty long (as is the song) and I won’t be offended if you don’t click over. I loved Pink Floyd back in my teen / early 20s “emo” days and many was the time I walked over to Cedar Point alone singing that song right out loud. That was before the iPod and even before the Walkman. I had to *sing* it with my own voice and so I did. Nobody was around to hear me. I was wondering who the heck I was and what I would turn into and wishing I really was a “crazy diamond”. (There. That was a little bitsy piece of the part of my life I wish I could re-write. Er, except for the singin’ out loud part. We all need to do that more often!)

I am a baggy old kayak woman now. A few years ago, I wandered into work on a Friday. Casual Friday, that is. I was wearing what passes for biz-caz because I’m more comfortable in that than holey old cotton/spandex leggings. The LSCHP was wearing a rather outlandish outfit that included a Pink Floyd t-shirt. I fergit exactly what the conversation was. I think WWWD was involved and maybe FZ. At some point the LSCHP pointed at meeee and said, “And KW partied with the band.” Well, not so much (and he *was* kidding) but I totally cracked up. I have actually evolved to the point where some of the other baggy old folks who work with me think I might actually have been *cool* when I was young? Bwa-ha-ha-ha! (And the young version of KW is now walking to Cedar Point singing just a little bit louder.)

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