Starting Monday, March 12th, work is set to begin on a roundabout at the intersection of Bond and Wilson, on the edge of the Old Mill District. Traffic will be detoured; check out the image below to see how it's being routed.

Via this blog.

We hadn't eaten at our local Outback Steakhouse in a couple of years, at least, so tonight we decided to try it for dinner. It's definitely not something we'll be doing again anytime soon—they've really gone downhill.

I'll start right off by saying the only truly good part of the evening was our waitress, who was great. The rest of the experience can only be described as mediocre at best, and there was some seriously shoddy service going on.

To start with, while waiting for a table, and watching the crowd grow behind us, I counted at least two tables that went unbussed the whole time we were in the lobby. One was a big six-person booth, another a four-person. They even tried to seat four people at that one, who had to stand and wait a couple of extra minutes for someone to clear the table. I'm sure there were more, too. How can you let a crowd build up and not clear tables? How can you just leave tables unbussed in general?

And when I did see someone cleaning tables, they were really slow. They could have been moving people in much quicker.

Once we got our table, the waiting went on. Waiting on drinks, waiting on food. The table didn't have silverware or napkins. So yes, while the waitress was otherwise great, there was a lot of waiting on her, and/or the food.

And, the food... prepared technically well enough, but the quality of food in general was really poor. The prime rib I ordered was literally—literally—one quarter to one third fat, all in one greasy lobe. And it was the thinnest cut of prime rib I've ever had, anywhere. Used to be the cut was a good one and a half, two inches thick. Tonight? Three-quarters, tops. My wife's filet looked more like a tougher sirloin, and it was a bit overcooked.

What's really disappointing is that Outback's steaks used to be some of the best in town.

So overall, we spent way too much time there, ate sub-par food, and walked out talking about what a poor experience we had. Even better—I overheard the two guys behind us saying, "Well that was a fiasco!" or something similar.

Avoid Outback Steakhouse. If you're in that area of town for dinner, go to Zydeco instead.

Shannon sends along this tip: Avoid driving around the intersection of Wall and Newport in Downtown Bend this week. She says there's roadwork going on that's backing up traffic at least until tomorrow. (She also notes, "road rage city. poor guy that is running the stop/go sign is pissing ppl off.") So watch out.

Yep, I'm even blogging about things to watch out for. This time it's the Safeway over in the Forum Shopping Center on Highway 20 and 27th.

Why avoid it? Because every single time I go there, it takes forever to check out—they have what, 10 aisles? And it seems like they only open two at a time even when there's a huge rush of people (which seems to be every time I'm there). And the ones that are there are slow.

Plus, my wife and a bunch of people we were talking to this last weekend have continuously had bad experiences there. So in the end, it's just not worth it.