The RantWoman are slowly easing back into regular in-person contact. Today for instance, "slowly" meant initial plans to go to an in-person individually wrapped treats ice cream social at RantMom's church ...got washed away in the afternoon monsoons. The event got cancelled. Neither of the RantWomen wanted to go anywhere. Even worse, RantWoman is looking at summer drought estimates and figuring WA should soak up every drop of moisture it can get no matter how much the rain extends pandemic separations.
But enough about not going anywhere! Memorial Day dawned bright and sunny and never wavered. The bus gods lined up and RantWoman made it to RantMom's in time for some good visiting before we decided to head over to Isam Thai for some in-person dining.
The restaurant has a relaxing wood-themed interior and there was cheerful Thai music playing. Say one thing about pandemic social distancing rules: the days of trying to dine with someone else's elbows in one's lap are Gone, Gone, GONE, at least for now. The tables are well-spaced AND every other table sports some kind of largish decoration meant to deter anyone from sitting there. RantWoman definitely encourages people to dine to help keep the space open!
The waitress showed the RantWomen to a table and left a carafe of water. She also...invited the RantWomen to find the menu using the QR code on a small plastic stand on the table. RantWoman almost burst out laughing. RantMom went straight to "Do you have a paper menu?" The RantWomen are not big alcohol drinkers but RantMom went for RantWoman's suggestion to try Thai iced tea.
The paper menu turned out to be a simple xeroxed legal size sheet. It also turned out to be a GENIUS option for RantMom. RantMom took the paper menu back home and plans to read up on all kinds of choices, hopefully especially choices that do involve lots of excellent vegetables (should be easy) and do not involve Thai chili peppers.
RantWoman is getting ahead of herself. RantWoman for her part whipped out her phone manage to point the camera at the QR code and get...all the way to the menu. RantWoman was thinking "Oh good. The menu will be the same easy to navigate menu as on the website.." Um no. In the restaurant, the QR Code photo method summoned... individual PDF pages for the different menu categories such as Appetizers, Entree. Ummmm.
RantWoman has enough vision and command of her phone's Zoom in/out features to be able to make that work. Making that menu work meant lots of swiping around and visual navigation, definitely not trying to digest the layout for any available text to speech attention. RantWoman imagines though that there may be many customers especially in the Ravenna location right across from a retirement community who find print on the paper menu too small but who, if they know how to use zoom in and out on their phones would be much happier than having to rely on text to speech features they may find harder to learn or not know how to use at all.. (We will not talk about hand-held magnifiers partly because smart phones replace so many different accessibility aids in so much less space that RantWoman would say get a smart phone if at all possible. And then keep playing with it as long as it's fun. Then stop, come back to it another day. Use previous social time with others to mess with the tech...
There. RatnWoman will now stop rambling about usability use cases and go back to talking about great food. The RantWomen ordered tomato salad and one of the curry plates. In other words the RantWoman split their orders and needed extra plates, one of those courtesies for which RantWoman prefers to tip well.
Just to check, while composing this blog post at home, RantWoman whipped out her phone, used her search engine and found...a website more like she expected; it worked fine with RantWoman's text to speech. RantWoman also checked her history. The swipe around a lot version is also in the history. RantWoman is glad to have multiple options as far as the tech--including PAPER; RantWoman is also excited to try more of the items on the menu. RantWoman will even look for a dining companion who likes spice much more than RantMom does, perhaps for separate excursions.
RantMom took the paper home and when she and RantWoman talked later RantMom had already picked items to try on future visits. We'll be back!
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