> Has anyone else had a similar experience?

I find it almost impossible to order a steak anywhere, because I have really very little comprehension of what the various degrees of cooked mean. In my household, we have more degrees of "rare" than you've ever seen...

I recently cooked a steak dinner for myself and my fiancee (forgive, as always, the lack of accents). The result was a steak I branded "medium" and she called "rare." "Rare," to me, means "charred on the outside, purple and bleeding on the inside." "Medium-rare" is "charred on the outside, red and bleeding on the inside." "Medium" is "charred on the outside, with a nice pink tone on the inside." That was her definition of rare. My father just doesn't like his meat cooked, I guess.