We decided to meet at the Dogfish Head Alehouse
in Gaithersburg, as we were trying to rendezvous
with Nancy's brother Rob and to minimize the
amount of evening slogging in the somewhat
uninviting weather. This is less than 2 miles
from the Hilton where Rob is staying and only
5 miles from where Jonathan works and on the
way home for him - when I suggested it,
Jonathan acquiesced happily - he apparently
likes the chicken wings here.

He was actually early, waiting outside as it
hadn't started to rain. We were welcomed
reasonably warmly but were led to a pretty
crummy table upstairs right next to the
kitchen. No matter, I like the kitchen smells
and to a lesser extent the noises.

Jonathan was on his best behavior, which
means professionally dressed (he'd just come
from work) and less bizarre in the ideation
department than usual, not too sullen, actually
cracking a smile here and there. Bonnie was a
psychiatric social worker and drew him out well,
pronouncing a relatively okay prognosis - the
last such I'd had doing an eval on him was very
negative, but that was before his latest round of
care, which tough costly, might be doing something.

At about half past, Rob showed up, cheerful
despite having had a long day's driving and work.
When we were just three, Jonathan had been relatively
okay, but when he started talking with Rob, he really
lit up, and the next hour was spent with animated
discussion of engineering wonk things in which Bonnie
and I caught only a few comprehensible phrases.

Jonathan started with the Old Bay wings, which
smelled smoky and salty and that he seemed to
enjoy enough - he didn't offer anyone any tastes,
which is actually relatively unusual for him.
Followed by some kind of burger and fries, which
he wolfed down in record time.

Bonnie, having learned from Lilli, had a plain
burger. As there were enough fries coming, she
subbed out onion rihgs, which were worth the price
of admission - sweet medium-cut rings in a quite
excellent crispy not too salty batter, deftly fried.

My 12 oz New York ordered very rare came very rare,
a decent piece of meat with reasonable marbling;
beefy but despite the probably low-end Choice grade,
rather chewy. It comes with some kind of spiced
butter (I pushed it off), grilled asparagus, tasty
but not well enough trimmed, and I substituted
Spanish rice (Uncle Ben's with tomato and cumin)
for the mash that normally comes.

Rob didn't eat with us but just had a beer or two,
as he was planning on eating with colleagues after
their meeting later on.

The bill was not disagreeable.
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