Heather and I continue on with our entirely awesome alphabet dating project. We might be starting to get good at it. This particular alphabet date story is brought to you by the letter H.

It was a dark and stormy night when we stopped by a little hole-in-the-wall diner called Big Hoffa’s. It’s a BBQ joint in our hometown of Westfield. If you’re ever passing through, it’s most definitely on your itinerary. I just added it.

I wasn’t sure what I expected going into this place, but I know for damn sure it wasn’t a pirate themed restaurant. This wasn’t a bad thing. Heather loves the pirates. And the food was the bees knees. And as Leo Laporte once said, “It’s always fun to pull your own pork.”

Their catering menu gives you some background on barbecue and how it fits in with the pirate theme. ^{(See attached image.)}

We ended up doing most of our chatting for the evening there. Kids. Work. Pirates. You know, the usual. We just enjoyed each others company.

Our next stop wasn’t really conducive to conversation. This perhaps gets away from the point of alphabet dating, but it was still enjoyable. And so we rounded out the night at a downtown piano bar call Howl at the Moon. I’m not really the bar type. Or the alcohol type. Or the socializing type. But, come on—they have dual pianos. And pianists.

You have to have a lot of respect for the musicians that play in that type of environment: handling numerous requests, improvising songs, playing off or against the crowd. And above all, they seemed to really be having fun. I don’t think I’d be able to do that with some of the crap they had to play.

Seriously. Does anybody actually know the words to the Ball State fight song? Heather and I sure didn’t. And we’re alumni.

Overall, I’d say we had a fun time, even if we couldn’t talk over the slobbering drunks singing along to Elton John
and Billy Joel. We did have the whole car ride home to make up for it. Unfortunately, my car has bucket seats.