10/3, 5pm—Austin TX, South Lamar

This worked out nicely. I had a hectic afternoon, and I have a busy evening, but I also needed to be in South Austin by 6pm for a therapist’s appointment, which is located just off of South Lamar. Trying to traverse the city on a weekday at rush hour takes an hour or longer. Because the rest of my afternoon was hectic, I skipped lunch, came down around 3:30, and finished working at a Starbucks in the same parking lot as the Olive Garden. Once I filed my post for the day, I walked over to the Olive Garden for a combination late lunch/early dinner.

I strode past the host’s stand after a brief greeting for a table at the bar. The server was not busy, and neither was the section, so we got down to business: I told her that I had a pasta pass and that I would be skipping the salad. She understood. “You’re a pro,” she said. “I see.” She asked if I knew what I wanted, and I actually did not, so I faked it—I ordered fettucine with marinara sauce and grilled chicken. She didn’t waste time, and came back moments later with the meal.

Obviously there’s nothing particularly unique or innovative about this order—with alfredo sauce instead of marinara, it’s a classic—but I found it really satisfying, probably because it was enough of a deviation from the way I normally order that it felt like a delightful surprise I crafted for myself. I like alfredo sauce, but I don’t order it during pasta pass season, because the risk of overdoing it is very real, and I’ve chosen to set this boundary. (In 2017, I actually lost five pounds on a two-month all-pasta diet.) But the dish, with red sauce instead of white, is still good. Why wouldn’t it be? Why let, as they say, the perfect be the enemy of the good? Especially when the good is still long, flat noodles covered in a sweet, rich sauce of some kind, topped with chicken?

There’s a joke early on in The Good Place, where Ted Danson’s character talks about why the version of heaven his character has created is full of frozen yogurt shops. He says something to the effect of, “I love how human it is—you ruin something, just a little, so you can have more of it.” It’s a funny line, but I don’t think it’s actually wisdom about the human condition. You can, of course, have as much ice cream, or alfredo sauce, or whatever else that’s bad for you, as you want. There are just choices involved in that, like there are in everything.

But that’s a weird tangent, and not really anything that was on my mind while I was at my early-evening meal. I mostly watched the television, which was replaying highlights from the brutal Cubs/Rockies game that I stayed up hours later than I intended to, just to watch baseball break my heart the way that it usually does. Still, it beat a 24-hour news channel, and they showed Javy Baez’s 8th-inning RBI, achieved by pure force of will. In retrospect—in the vague pseudo-wisdom that comes 16 hours later, anyway—it’s worth remembering those good moments, even if they were followed by disappointment a few innings later. The good moments happened too, and the ending doesn’t change that.

The server cleared my plate and asked if I wanted a refill. I still had twenty minutes before my appointment, and she seemed invested in the idea that I got value out of my pass, so I felt obligated to say yes. Second portions of never-ending pasta are always pretty small, and it was meant to serve as two meals, so the obligation was not strictly to the bored server, either. I asked for cavatappi with meat sauce. She asked if I was sure that I didn’t want a topping, and I told her that, in this rare instance, I was.

I ate the second portion of pasta, and watched Javy’s double one more time on my phone. The server swiped my pasta pass, and seemed surprised when I asked her for change for a ten dollar bill—maybe down at the south location, pasta pass holders don’t tip?—and I left my customary three singles on the table before walking back to the car, still parked in front of the Starbucks.