Life doesn't have to be perfect to be wonderful

This past weekend I celebrated my roommate Nicole's birthday with my friends by going out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants.  This dinner was just like deja vu for all of the birthdays we have celebrated here in Orono.

From last years horrible birthday dinner.

This dinner started with us calling the restaurant (which will remain unnamed) ahead of time to reserve seats, or at least a spot in line.  They said okay we will have a table ready for ten people around 7:00, which was perfect.  We arrive at 6:50 just so we are not late, and we go and tell the hostess our name and they say about 20 minutes and our table will be ready.  We were a little frustrated by that but we understood because it was dinner time and they must be busy.  Our group was fine waiting for 20 minutes, until a group of 15 or more people come in sit for 5 minutes and go right in.  This made no sense, we called early and have a smaller group, but we let that slide too.  It was not until 7:30 and we still were not seated that we complained to the hostess and sure enough 5 minutes later we were finally seated.  Needless to say we were quite annoyed, but there is more.  We waited ten minutes for the waitress to come take our drink order, twenty minutes for the salad, and then ones we got the salad the food came out 5 minutes later.  The waitresses were rude and disrespectful, but the group of us still had one of the best times.  We laughed and joked and remembered all of the other horrible birthdays we have had together.  It seems with my group of friends, no matter where we go for our birthday dinner, the restaurants either mess up the name, don't write down the reservation, cant seat us all together, take forever to serve us, and even forget meals altogether.  

Even though we have had horrible luck with birthday dinners the memories and laughs we have had because of them is something to be remembered.  We might forget the servers name, or the amount of time we had to wait, but we will not forget the laughs we shared and the memories we created.  These moments made me realize that it is better sometimes that things do not go perfectly as planned, and I am forced to roll with the punches and be flexible.  The memories created when something doesn't go as planned can be even better than if everything goes off without a hitch.