Sometimes you have to dig into the milk crate to find the really fun tracks. A top 10 dance track from 1987 and from her “Nightwalkin'” album, here’s Alisha with “Into My Secret”.
J.P.
Simple.
I had a grilled cheese sandwich and some tomato soup for supper tonight. Some may roll their eyes and think to themselves, “oh god, his blog has hit a new low, he’s writing about grilled cheese sandwiches”, but the truth of the matter is, I’m kind of proud that I went to the effort of making a grilled cheese sandwich tonight.
You see, both Earl and Jamie are out of town tonight and scott has returned to his home base of Boston, so I was here to fend for myself for supper. In these circumstances I would normally go out to get something to eat or I’d take the easy route and pop some corn for supper and call it a night.
Now, all I did was butter two slices of lite bread, throw some shredded cheese between the unbuttered sides and throw it in a frying pan for a bit. Piece of cake, well, not really cake as much as it was a grilled cheese sandwich, but it took effort and I ate something other than popcorn this evening. The soup was a no brainer, after all, if you’re going to have a grilled cheese sandwich you have to have soup. That’s a written rule or something.
So, while what I did for supper was no big deal in the grand scheme of things, the truth of the matter is, it was a Big Deal for me because I made a simple effort and ended up with glorious results.
Maybe the next time I’ll go crazy and grill a burger or something.
Newbie.
I did not recognize the young lady behind the counter at Dunkin’ Donuts today. She appeared to be on her first or second day on the job; she seemed a little disoriented as to where important things like donuts and coffee were located. Because of this, I decided not harass her with a “why isn’t my tea waiting for me?” type of attitude. The prince can be reasonable.
The woman at the customer side of the counter, who was two people ahead of me in line, ordered nearly a dozen cups of coffee, all with differing sidearms. She seemed impatient and conversely very relaxed at the same time as she counted out pennies and nickels on the counter. After the cash portion of the transaction was completed she stood there at the counter. She didn’t head to the “pick up” area that is common in places like Dunkin’ Donuts, Tim Hortons and Starbucks. She planted herself right there in front of the register. Her roots went deep. She was shaped like a potato.
After all the differing cups of coffee were inefficiently assembled and distributed, the potato woman left and the balding woman in front of me (I notice things, what can I say) ordered her coffee and donut. She paid and then planted herself in front of the register. This slows down efficiencies by half, because the person that could be assembling the drinks is constantly reaching around the person that is taking the orders instead of working in her work area over near the pick-up window. The balding woman likes change as well. And since the customer is planted in front of the register, there’s that awkward moment where the cashier asks for the order of the next customer in line whilst screaming around the customer that is planted in front of the register, forcing the very dignified gentleman (that would be me) to yell his order and have his view obscured by a prominent bald spot on the back of the woman’s head.
I don’t mind bald people. I am proudly a bald person. But I do find it disconcerting to see a bald spot surrounded by the remnants of three different dye jobs in a woman’s hair and quite frankly, this type of balding is entirely too prominent in this part of the state. Someone needs a license revoked somewhere.
Now, I knew that when I got to the counter there would be mayhem because I am all wild and crazy and tend to pay for my order with the Dunkin’ Donuts app on my iPhone. When the overpriced iced tea came to $2.86, I showed the screen of my iPhone with the barcode prominently displayed.
The new cashier asked, “do I scan that?”.
Ok, I had a brief moment of “and then there’s Maude” and I was going to say something like, “Why don’t you call President Obama and ask him for the money?”, but that would have been extremely rude, especially to an employee on her first or second day. So instead, I simply said, “Yes, you scan it but after you press the MPAY button in the lower right hand corner of the screen.”
In another life I write cash register programs. In an alternate universe I am a secret spy that can easily memorize computer screens without even thinking twice about it.
She did as ordered and all was well.
“Thank you for your help”, she said sheepishly as I shuffled over to pick-up area, determined to get the precedent back to where it should be.
I like the newbie behind the counter. I hope to get her trained to have my unsweet tea ready and waiting.
Cold.
Since the return of my bicycle from the shop on Monday I have been determined to get outside and enjoy one of my favorite activities this week. I have been up at 0530 ET each morning with the intent of burning many calories and enjoying the open road.
This morning it was 32ºF.
Not to be deterred, I ended up wearing five layers of clothes for the ride, including my snowmobiling gloves and a wool hat under my bike helmet. To be truthful, the ride wasn’t too bad though it was still chilly. I probably should have wrapped a scarf around my face to keep my cheeks from getting cold but when all was said and done I logged just shy of 10 miles over some pretty good sized hills in 53 minutes.
One of my goals this year is to not stick to the east-west routes all the time and to enjoy the challenge of the hills more often. Yesterday I road down the long hill on our road where I can usually hit almost 40 MPH on the bike, however, I only hit 30 MPH and I didn’t feel the need to ride faster. Riding down that hill is usually reserved for later in the season but apparently my exercising efforts over the winter paid off because I was able to get up the hill with relative ease.
It’s amazing how much better I feel during the workday when I do some sort of exercise in the morning. I feel energized and motivated. Tomorrow’s weather forecast shows that’ll be much warmer than it was this morning.
It’ll be good to ride without five layers of clothes on. I’ll settle for three.
Eco.
I like to think of myself as a caring individual of this planet. I am trying to leave as little destruction of the environment as possible during my stay here and for the most part I think I’m doing an ok job. Of course, I drive a Jeep Wrangler, which is not exactly the most eco-friendly vehicle one can choose, but like I said, I do an “ok” job.
I noticed shortly after purchasing my Jeep that there was an indicator on the dashboard that showed when I was driving in an ecologically friendly fashion. A little “Eco On” light would blink on and off when my driving habits were where they should be and it didn’t take long for me to figure out where the “sweet spot” was to get that light to be on as much as possible, for example, the light never came on over 72 MPH and it would not come back on until you slowed down to 65 MPH. When commuting back and forth to the office, I would drive at 70 MPH on the Thruway and watch others whizz by me, knowing that I was doing my part to make a smaller impact on the environment. I didn’t feel smug.
The past weekend we had to get down to the Philly area pretty quick, so I kind of shunned the Eco indicator on the dashboard and, thankfully, was able to turn the indicator off so I wasn’t constantly reminded of my temporary driving habits. I felt some guilt but I did my best with it.
Imagine my surprise when the fuel-use indicator showed that I gained a greater MPG rating than when I was trying to drive with the Eco On indicator illuminated. Instead of averaging around 18.5 MPG, I was able to hit a little over 20 MPG and that was be driving faster than usual.
Thinking that there must have been some helpful hills and the like, I decided to experiment again yesterday during my normal commute to the office and sure enough, when ignoring the Eco indicator on the dashboard, I was able to achieve a higher MPG rating.
What’s up with that?
I don’t think I’m missing anything here in determining that a higher MPG means a touch less of an impact to the environment, so why the discrepancy? No clue. Earl says that the Eco light is a gimmick. I’m starting to wonder that myself.
There’s too many gimmicks in the world.
Realizations.
So the blog has been silent for a few days and it is with good reason. Earl and I made the trek to Earl’s hometown to attend the memorial service of our brother-in-law. It was good to see the family as it has been way too long since we last saw them, however, we really need to get down there on happier occasions. It really pained me to see my in-laws grieving; I don’t do well with seeing others feel pain.
I wasn’t particularly close to my brother-in-law; we always had pleasant conversations but we didn’t have a lot in common. I could tell that he loved his family very much and that he seemed happy in the little niche of the world he had carved out for himself. As long as a person is happy that’s all that matters.
During the service, some thoughts that had been written by his wife were shared with the congregation. The words and the feelings that they conveyed were very moving as there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. That, and the military presentation, were the hardest things emotionally. However, there was one passage shared during the reading/eulogy that really, really affected me.
“No matter how upset or angry he was, he never yelled at me”. These were the words of my sister-in-law. I never knew that. I admire that. And I learned something from that.
My father always said my mother had a tendency to “bark back” due to the fact that she has red hair. I think I might have inherited that trait a little bit; I am often asked to stop hollering when I get passionate about something. There’s a chance that I might have a bit of a temper and to tell you the truth, that’s not something that I’m really proud of. I don’t know that I have ever accomplished anything by yelling a lot, but to be fair, years ago I worked in an environment where yelling was the only way you could get your point across. It’s still not something I’m proud of and it’s something that I really need to get a handle on. Yelling and cussing are two things that I find to be unnecessary and they’re two things that I need to stop doing.
So while the tears formed in my eyes during the memorial service on Friday night, I have to thank my brother-in-law for teaching me a little something through his actions as conveyed by his family. If I stop in mid-sentence during a passionate conversation, know that I’m taking a few deep breaths and trying to keep everything in check.
I guess we’re never too old to learn.
Pizza Casserole.
Here is a recipe I made for the first time this evening. Earl and Jamie really liked the end result, as did I. The recipe is from my friend Susan at work. She’s a really good cook.
Pizza Casserole
1 (16 ounce) package uncooked rotini pasta
1 lb ground Italian sausage
1 (24 ounce) jar pasta sauce
1 (16 ounce) container cottage cheese
1 (2 1/4 ounce) can sliced black olives, drained (optional)
1 (4 ounce) can mushrooms, drained
12 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
2 (3 ounce) packages sliced pepperoni
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9X13 casserole dish.
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Place pasta in the pot, cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until al dente, and drain.
In a skillet over medium heat, cook the sausage until evenly brown, drain grease. Mix in the cooked pasta and pasta sauce. Pour into prepared casserole dish.
In a bowl, mix the cottage cheese, olives, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese.
Spoon the cheese mixture over the sausage and pasta mixture. Top with pepperoni slices.
Bake 25 minutes in the preheated oven, until bubbly and lightly browned.
Rain.
“April showers bring May flowers.” It’s a popular saying in these parts, what with the ample rain we get every year during the month of April. As I look outside over our patio, I see the rain coming down in droves and indications that the temperature is hovering just about 40F.
Sigh.
I will say that I’m thankful that it’s not colder and that we are not getting snow at the moment. Worried isn’t the right word, but there is a thought lingering around in my head that tomorrow morning we’ll wake up to snow on the ground.
Sigh.
I keep looking at the weather app on my iPhone and seeing that by this time next week it should be in the 60s. I am really, really looking forward to that.
Event.
I mentioned a while back that I really enjoyed the NBC series “The Event”. True to NBC traditional behavior, the network canceled the series before we ever really found out what the event actually was, but that’s what network executives do nowadays.
One of the big themes of the series was that there was some big event that was going to happen. This contributed to the undercurrent of suspense that was always present. What was going to be life altering? What was going to change things? How were things going to change? What was The Event?
I’m feeling that way in life right now. I don’t know that there is an event on my horizon as much as I want an event to be on my horizon. Perhaps this is yet another chapter in some sort of mid-life crisis. I’m basically a happy guy and I love my life, but I feel like there’s something that I should be doing or something that should be happening that hasn’t been done or happened yet. I worry that I might be missing out on something. Whilst many parts of my life wade into the deep water, I feel like there’s way too much going on in the shallow. Do we need to move? Am I challenged enough? Are my current challenges too predictable? Am I in the wrong museum, looking at the wrong big picture, yet again?
I don’t think that last question is the case. I like what I do, I like with whom I do it and I don’t feel a need to change there. That goes for all facets of my life. All of my relationships are rock-solid and I wouldn’t change a thing there. Maybe it’s the landscape. Maybe it’s the last vestiges of cabin fever, though we’ve been traveling enough that one would think that wouldn’t be an issue. Perhaps it’s a fear of a rut.
For lack of a better term, I feel like I’m not deep enough into the waters of life. I feel like I’m wearing a pair of floaties.
Maybe I need to jump out of an airplane or something.
Service.
So after a busy day yesterday, Earl and I were frankly too lazy to do anything about making supper last night. So we decided to go out. Not wanting to spend a lot of money and not in the mood for anything extravagant, but still wanting a relatively healthy menu to choose from, we went to a diner that isn’t too far away. We go to this diner often, but I don’t think we had ever been there on a Monday night. We figured it wouldn’t be too busy.
It wasn’t busy at all and before we knew it, we were seated in a large booth and looking over the menu. It was kind of weird being in the place on a Monday night because it was a completely different staff; it was kind of like watching a Broadway show with all understudies or something (nothing against understudies, by the way). The energy of the diner was more subdued than usual. We figured it was the Monday vibe.
Looking around I noticed a table of older woman sitting directly behind Earl and Jamie. They looked familiar to me but I couldn’t place where I knew them from. Had I encountered them at the grocery store? At a bank, perhaps? This gave me something to ponder for a while.
The server came over and didn’t really seem interested in pleasantries. She just kind of asked what we wanted to drink and shuffled off. When she came back, Jamie asked if he could have a plain, grilled-cheese sandwich to go along with a bowl of the tomato soup he had just ordered. She kind of clucked and said, “of course we can make a plain, grilled-cheese sandwich.” Her reply felt incomplete, like it was missing the words “you idiot” at the end, but perhaps she was into word conservation. Earl asked for a hamburger. She looked at him incredulously as he continued with his order.
“Uh, how would you like the hamburger cooked?”, again, with “you idiot” silently implied. Her cluck was accompanied by an eye roll.
At this moment I decided to keep my mouth shut and tweeted my frustration instead with a vague tweet:
tweet
I placed my order, filling in all the gaps that I already knew about because I always order the same thing and the pleasant server just confirms. There was no way anyone was going to cluck or roll on my watch.
She shuffled off to do her thing and I watched her busy herself around the diner. The kitchen door would wave open far enough where I could see food assembly in progress. A few observations:
1. She doesn’t like ice scoops. She’d rather use the serving glass as a shovel. That’s a NYS Health Department no-no.
2. She doesn’t like tongs. She’d rather throw a lemon wedge in a glass of water with her hands. That’s a NYS Health Department no-no.
3. She doesn’t like tongs. She’d rather throw the a pre-made lettuce salad into the bowl with her hands and then casually wipe her nose. That’s a NYS Health Department no-no.
I wasn’t in the mood to be confrontational so I let these things go because honestly, I had observed this behavior after we had all of our food and drinks and I figured I was already going to die so I might as well have a crowd join me in the better place.
As we made our way through the meal, she stopped by once and without ever looking us in the eye, she asked if everything was ok and then shot away. No refills for you!
She stopped by the table behind Earl and Jamie before stopping by our table to give us our check. Jamie snickered as he overheard the conversation at the next table. They had decided not to tip the waitress because of her rude demeanor. And that’s when it hit me.
The ladies at the table worked at the local DMV office. They worked with the woman I had called Donut Breath!
Now, if the ladies at the DMV think the woman is rude, there is no doubt in my mind that we weren’t being overly sensitive last night. So we learned a couple of things:
1. The diner shall never be visited on a Monday night.
2. The diner probably won’t be visited in a long, long while due to the health concerns that were observed.
3. If you’re having a cantankerous time at the DMV, remember, there are places where it is worse.
I have considered calling the county health department to set up an inspection, but I don’t want bad things to happen to the diner. However, I will probably send an anonymous letter to the location to let them know what I observed.
