Center City Philadelphia.

Earl and I spent the evening walking the streets of Center City Philadelphia tonight. We stopped at a neighborhood bar, the Westbury, for a beer and some eye candy. We walked the quiet side streets, admiring the residences that sit in the middle of the city yet in a quaint, quiet setting. We admired the art deco styling of Suburban Station and the rebuilding of the City Hall. In fact, a very nice gentleman offered to take our picture in front of City Hall and if I had remembered the cable to connect the camera to my computer you’d be able to see it right now. Instead, the captured moment will have to wait until Sunday night.

Tonight I feel like I actually experienced Philadelphia. In the past, I’ve felt like I only saw it, tonight I felt it. And the feeling was good.

He Eats Tacos!

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When I got back to work this afternoon I just knew that I had jinxed myself by my lunch time blog entry. Here I am proclaiming that I was eating healthy and sticking to it in order to reach a “magic number” by Thanksgiving.

That “magic number” must be two. Because I just downed two honking big tacos from the local Taco Bell not five minutes ago. I chased them down with a big gulp sized Diet Pepsi because after all, I am counting calories.

Before dashing off to school I had some popcorn made with PAM and iced tea. Doesn’t that sound sexy? I wasn’t even in the classroom yet when I started thinking about food. Any kind of food. The teacher talked, I paid attention and went through all the exercises we were given but I couldn’t stop thinking about food. What did Wendy (to my left) have for supper tonight? Does Dan (to my right) like diner food like we do? He seems like the type. Then the instructor mentioned he was going grab a snack after class because he’s been running around like a maniac today. I wasn’t even running around and I was feeling like a maniac. I wanted Taco Bell. NOW. Damn the convenience store down the road from us for getting rid of their Taco Bell franchise license. DAMN THEM. So I drove over two towns and whipped through the drive thru window and got myself a combo number one.

The food was freakin’ awesome.

I find it rather comical that I can’t be talking on a cell phone here in New York State while I’m driving, but I can balance a Taco Supreme on one leg, drive with the other knee and shift between bites and slurps and not get a ticket for it.

So here I am admitting it. I eat tacos. I love them. And you don’t even have to call me Anastacia Beaverhausen.*

*See your local Will & Grace fanatic if you don’t get the reference.

Cabbage Patch.

So I’ve got this vegetarian thing going on again. I know, it runs directly in conflict with my love for BBQ joints, but I figure we can still go to those places, I’ll just have to eat corn on the cob and whatnot.

I’ve been maintaining my weight pretty well since losing around 35 pounds at the beginning of the year, but there’s a magic number I want to hit before Thanksgiving and I am determined to do it. I probably could achieve it a little easier if I got my butt to the gym but with school, on-call and social obligations, I’m not up for working out at the gym at 2:30 in the morning. I hear the place is quite popular then, so who knows, it might be interesting, but I’m too lazy to do that.

To think that on several occasions in 1990 I set the alarm for 3 a.m. so I could go tanning!

With all the health conscious people and crazy diets floating around our fine nation these days, it’s not hard to fine something vegetarian at any given restaurant. “I’d like a Whopper without the Whop.” That usually goes over the BK drone’s head, so I end up saying “leave off the meat”. I know, I could opt for a BK Veggie Delight but it takes something like an act of congress and a bunch of glares and sighs to get one of those at the closest BK.

Now if Wegmans would locate a little closer to us so I could enjoy the “Nature’s Place” section, I’d be golden but for now I’m relegated to the local Hannafords. It could be worse. I could be limited to Price Chopper where they think vegetarian includes “Vegetarian Baked Beans with Bacon”. “Are these beans vegetarian?” “Yes, just as the sign says.”, replies the deli clerk. “Why is the bacon on there?”, to which she replied, “For flavor of course!”.

I think tonight I’m going to have a BBQ steak salad without the steak. It’s yummy.

Leashes, Anyone?

Earl and I eat out quite a bit. Why? Because we’re lazy. We’ve worked all day. We’re not in the mood to cook. So we take the easy way out and we head to one of the local restaurants. It happens a couple of times a week.

Since we’re rather well versed in restaurantese, we’ve had the opportunity to see some very odd things in our travels. There was that time at Mc Donalds in Horseheads when two men dressed up like the Blue Brothers came walking out of the bathroom with toilet paper dragging from their feet. At that same visit, a woman stood her toddler up on the service counter, complete with saggy diaper, and told him to keep his clothes on. (Apparently the kid liked taking his clothes off in public. Perhaps he’ll be a congressman someday.)

Tonight we watched a similar scene.

We were seated at a table in this diner wannabe type place called Zebbs. The corner was occupied by three women, all around my age or so, and three children. The youngest, a girl, was seated in a high-chair behaving herself quite well. The two other children were boys, probably four or five years old. Though they weren’t twins, they were dressed alike with matching shirts. One had very thick glasses. He amused himself and those around him by jumping up and down on the booth seat shouting “I’m bad! I’m bad!”. Did Mother stop him from this outburst? Of course not. She pretty much ignored him and let him carry on.

He was the tame one.

When the server came out with their food, I breathed a sigh of relief since it was obvious that the kids would be occupied with their monster meals.

Wrong.

Boy number 2 proceeded to make like a plant and sit on the back of the booth, wedged where the two windows met to form the corner of the restaurant. He amused himself by flapping the vertical blinds back and forth. When that didn’t grab Mommy’s attention, he proceeded to jump ONTO THE TABLE.

This got Mom’s attention where she threatened him with a timeout and then proceeded to carry on her conversation, unphased by the fact that her child had practically walked across the dinner table. Afraid of this always scary threat of “timeout”, the kid jumped to the back of the booth where he made like a bat and sat upside down while enjoying his meal.

I have fairly accurate memories from when I was a child. On the rare instances we did eat out and actually sat in the restaurant (usually we sat in the car outside of Carrols or Red Barn), I don’t ever recall ever having to be told not to walk across the table. Especially while food was on it. Perhaps my mother will chime in and correct me on this, but I’m pretty confident that I didn’t do any acrobatics in a restaurant when I was a kid. If I had lept across the booth of a restaurant, she would have smacked me six ways to Sunday and I would have remembered.

I wonder what tonight’s terror is going to be like when he’s grown. Maybe I witnessed the making of the next flying Wallenda.

Beverage Curiosity.

As I’m sitting here drinking another glass of iced tea, a few questions about beverages cross my mind.

  1. How do they take the caffeine out of tea?
  2. Can a person OD on iced tea?
  3. Does diet soda damage your teeth like regular soda does? I mean, it doesn’t have sugar in it so it should be as bad, right?
  4. How does adding chlorine to sugar make the sugar lose all its calories?
  5. How come a combination of chlorine and sugar is safer for you than that old saccharrin? Why don’t we just regular soda with a Chlorox chaser?

I know, it sounds like I’m having a Jessica Simpson moment.

Autumn in the Back Yard.




Autumn in the Back Yard.

Originally uploaded by bluemarvel.

During this time of the year in these parts you have to wonder if this is the last nice day of the year. Around here snow can fly at any time pretty much after October 1st. Today it’s in the mid 60s and very humid. I think there’s a thunderstorm brewing.

The fall colors are coming along nicely as evidenced by the trees along the back yard. Tom and I took a stroll around the lawn during lunch. He followed the obligatory path he always follows when he does his “rounds”, I just walked around, picked up some garbage that had blown our way and enjoyed the crisp, yet warm autumn air.

I always can feel such magic on the wind this time of year. It does wonders for the soul.

Wrong Way.

I’m taking some comp time from work today simply to catch up on some household chores. I had a whole bunch of ebay stuff to ship, plus I wanted to get caught up on laundry and everything since Earl and I are going to be in Philadelphia this weekend.

So I was driving home from work following my normal route. I am fortunate that we live near one of the local freeways, so aside from a few blocks of “city” traffic, it’s smooth sailing on the short drive home.

Except when someone is driving the wrong way up the freeway.

I had just jumped on at my usual interchange and had BT cranked up on the iPod. I was behind a tractor-trailer when all of a sudden the tractor trailer made a quick swerve to the right, into the shoulder. I immediately slowed down, not wanting risk damage to my beloved Acura (who cares about me, SAVE THE CAR). Then I noticed that there was a mid 90s Oldsmobile headed for me. The elderly driver, a man from what I could tell, was straddling the dotted white line, apparently oblivious to two things: he was headed the wrong way down the freeway and he was headed for other motor vehicles. I jumped into the shoulder, beeped my horn and yelled at him (surprisingly without profanities). I don’t know what I hoped to accomplish by yelling, as if he couldn’t see the car or the tractor trailer or hear my horn blaring, I doubt he was going to hear me yammering away at him from inside the car with the windows closed. He got by us and from what I could tell in the rearview mirror, he proceeded to drive several other vehicles off the road as he made his way up the freeway in the wrong direction.

I have a couple of thoughts about this.

First of all, I don’t believe that just because you’re elderly that you no longer have the privilege of being a motorist. And it’s just that, a privilege. It’s not one of your rights. George Washington did not cross the Delaware to secure a driver’s license for all. And that includes horse and buggies. Older people need to ambulate just as much as their younger counterparts do.

That being said, I believe that all motorists should be tested on their driving skills at least once a decade. Vehicles change, roads are reconfigured and driving habits deteriorate. Now I’m not saying that you should go through a full-blown road test with hand signals and all that, but I believe that you should have to demonstrate to a certified test official that you are able to navigate both local roads and freeways safely and efficiently without causing harm to yourself or those around you, and you should have to do this every ten years.

I also believe that if you drive something bigger than your average Cadillac sized sedan (read SUV) then you should have to demonstrate competency in being able to handle that safely. Yes, I believe that to drive an SUV you should have a special rating on your license. And to get that, you need to be able to drive it, park it in a parking lot, navigate a narrow street and parallel park.

If the requirements for maintaining a driver’s license were a little more stringent then perhaps we’d all pay a little more attention to what they were doing instead of yakking on the cell phone/slapping children/shaving/applying makeup/etc.

I’m Not Really That Cranky Today.

I just reread the previous two entries from today and found that they made me sound quite cranky today. I don’t feel cranky at all, just full of opinions I guess. I’ve been busying myself about the house while covering on-call for a couple of hours for a co-worker, Earl is parked on the sofa (or in old English, Davenport), watching the Eagles game on Monday Night Football. I occasionally hear a loud “YES” or “GO” in a very authorative football fan voice.

Go Eagles!

So while it may seem that I’ve been a little cranky and/or spacey today, rest assured that I was my usual jovial self. And thank goodness tomorrow isn’t Monday.

Law of Rant.

Over the weekend our Fine Folks in Washington tacked an amendment banning online gambling onto a Port Security bill. Can someone please take a moment and explain to me what the hell online gambling has to do with securing the ports of the country? Who does the government think they are in banning online gambling anyway? How dare they decide that they’re my babysitter and tell me what to do with my hard earned money. If you’ve got a problem with my gambling habits, well, quite frankly its none of your business. You mind your business and I’ll mind mine. You don’t like gambling? Don’t do it! And don’t come crowing to me about I’ll end up on welfare, blah, blah, blah. If a person loses all their money gambling then they deserve to be out on the street.

By the way, has the entire country lost their mind? School children were killed at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pa. today. That has to be one of the more tragic things I’ve heard in quite a while. What the hell? The Amish are probably one of the most peaceful people left in these parts and their children are gunned down.

Then we have this whole constant fear thing going on. My sister can’t take a tube of toothpaste on a flight to Russia because she might build a bomb with it. Are you kidding me? They blue chemicals in the airplane toilet are probably more dangerous than a tube of Crest. She’s flying 12 hours and can’t brush her friggin’ teeth. Unbelievable. But I bet you they’re still serving alcohol in first class, never mind that alcohol can be quite ignitable. As long as they have bad breath, I suppose the world is safe.

I am so sick and tired of all this fear mongering going around. Be afraid of the terrorists, they could get us at any moment. You know what? Someone please tell the current administration to shut the fuck up and go stand in the corner and don’t open your mouth until someone asks for your opinion. I’m sick of all this chatter about how something bad is going to happen. When is something good going to happen? Why doesn’t anyone tell us that? By the way, as it stands right now, the *American* death toll in Iraq is higher than the number of Americans killed on 9/11. This number does not take into consideration the thousands of Iraqi civilians killed. You know what they say about “two wrongs”.

Everyone has flipped their lid? The news media is jumping for joy because gas is at $2.50 a gallon. “Oh look, gas is so cheap now.” Are you kidding me? Two years ago it was half of that. What in the world are these people thinking? Has everyone turned into a mindless zombie?

I just had to get that off my chest. Thanks for listening.

In Too Deep.

During a particularly agitating phone call with a customer today I decided to let my mind escape for a few moments while the customer ranted and raved about something quite trivial in the great scheme of things. What I find insane, quite frankly, is I daydreamed about singing a cover version of Dead Or Alive’s “In Too Deep”, complete with cowboy hat and chaps with my ass hanging out for the video.

Thank the Universe I’m not trapped in an episode of Ally McBeal or I would have found myself sitting at my desk in that very outfit.

Oy. Where the hell did that come from? Shockingly, it’s just another Monday in my book.

Maybe I need my own theme song or something.