Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

So I am on my way to a weekend adventure with our friends Jeff and Mark in Durham, N.C.  On my way to the airport, I came to the realization that I hadn’t had any lunch and that I would probably not get much to eat in between here and there, as eating on a plane is usually limited to a bag of peanuts and half a can of diet pop. On the bright side, since I’m taking two flights to get from here to there, I will manage to squeeze in a full can of pop by adding the two half-cans of pop from each flight together.

And they say math is difficult.

In many areas of the country there are interesting restaurants and the like near the airport of said destination. In Syracuse it’s a different story. Syracuse Airport is actually near the Village of North Syracuse and while there’s a lot of chain restaurants in the area, nothing that I would really call “nice” comes to mind immediately. I decided to indulge my curiosity and gives these new “Satisfries” a try at the Burger King closest to the airport.  I remember this location from my childhood when it was actually a Carrols¹, but it’s a Burger King now and it’s been there for a long time.

Upon entering the restaurant I noticed a warning sign on the door that proclaimed no videography or still photography was allowed in the restaurant. I think this sort of thing is kind of bogus and I was a rebel, because I noticed that a group of people had just left a HUGE mess in the dining area.  

Now, I think that I’m a pretty responsible citizen of the United States (rebellious photography notwithstanding) and for the life of me I can not figure out how anyone could leave a public place in such a state and not give any care about it. This is mind boggling to me and such activity only leaves me to be seriously concerned about our society as a whole.

So I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich (hold the mayo!) and the new Satisfries. They smelled and looked like fries, albeit krinkle-kut fries instead of the usual shoestring fries that Burger King serves (I think).  I’m thinking the krinkle-kut approach is so they can tell the difference in the fryer, but that’s just me.

The first thing I noticed about the fries is that if you like salt, you’re going to love these because they are really salty. Like, the way salty fries used to be before people cared about sodium and all that. I liked that, though my blood pressure probably doubled in the process. As far as fat content and coatings and all that stuff, I couldn’t really discern a difference from regular fries and I suppose that was the intent. Other than the krinkleness of the fries, they seemed like good ol’ unhealthy fast food fries.

After watching a very large woman make her way to the self-serve drink station not once but TWICE with a 32-oz cup, and watching her fill said cup with regular coke², I finished my meal, made my way around the mess in the dining room and headed for the airport.

I was barely in the airport ten minutes later when I was making a bee-line (not the Florida tollroad) to anything that resembled a toilet. I didn’t care if it was unisex, no sex, all sex or a potted plant, but I needed to use the rest room. Immediately. I found this curious as I had done my business at home before leaving for this little journey, so I’m thinking the Satisfries did something to my digest system. Or it could have been the premium chicken (hold the mayo). Or it could have been the fact that I ate at Burger King at all, since I tend to avoid that sort of thing nowadays. 

I felt much better 10 minutes later.

Did I find the Satisfries satisfying? At the time of consumption, yes I did. However, based on my one experience with these, if you’re going to eat these things, I would suggest that you plan your rest stops accordingly.

Best of luck and bon appetit.

¹ The Carrols brand is still alive and well in Helsinki and I have actually considered flying there to see if the fast food there is as good as I remember it being when I was a child.

² I really struggle with the revenue model implemented by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) when I see people blatantly making poor health choices and then the entire population ends up paying for these poor health choices. While I believe that everyone is entitled to health care, I believe that people need to be accountable for their own actions. I don’t have a solution to the problem, so I don’t wretch about it too loudly, but I don’t think that any of the legislated or proposed ideas fulfill the need adequately. I think a societal shift is in order and I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

So at work we have this internal communications tool called Microsoft Lync. It’s an Instant Messaging platform offered through the company’s Office 365 subscription and has replaced the multiple and makeshift platforms we were using before (some of us were on AOL, some on Yahoo, some on an internal Jabber server, etc.)

As a telecommuter I feel that it’s important to have Lync up and running at all times. This keeps me connected to my peers and it lets people know my current status: whether I’m at my computer or not, whether I’m in a meeting or not, etc.

While Lync is wonderful for impromptu and quick conversations, I have to admit that I often feel like this as more and more Lync windows open up on my MacBook screen. (Video may be loud and contain salty language).

So earlier this month I wrote that I was going to do a 30-day challenge, as inspired by Matt Cutts from Google in his TED talk from a while back. My personal challenge was to be a little more outgoing: I would try to steer clear of my shyness and, as the opportunity presented itself, I would talk to someone I wouldn’t normally talk to. I desired to be a little more outgoing.

Here it is 30 days later and I have to say that this first 30-day challenge was mostly a success. This month I struck up a conversation with a bartender at a bar, complimented a woman in an elevator on her lovely dress, smiled at strangers more and pulled myself up by my pant strings and openly participated in a seminar full of strangers, a scenario where I would normally be content sitting in the corner and just drinking it all in.

You know what? I feel good about these little things I did under the guise of this challenge and I think I’m just a little bit better for reevaluating my life in this way and addressing this. This is something that I’m going to continue in my everyday life. So if I come up to you and start chatting, even though we’ve never met in person or something, don’t be surprised.

Tomorrow starts another month and I’m going to try another 30 day challenge. My focus is going to be focus. I need to focus on some key areas in my life: my career and work responsibilities, my healthy living goals and on some extracurricular projects I have going on. One of the ways that I’m thinking I’m going to tackle this is by ramping way back from Facebook.

I am active in primarily three social networks, in descending order of usage levels: Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Twitter keeps me in touch with what’s going on in the world. I get a lot of my political information via Twitter and while I might not tweet a lot on some days, I do read quite a bit on Twitter and I try to keep on top of my timeline.

Google+ is where I gather information and debate the tech world. Google+ can be hostile towards Apple folks at times, but aside from that annoying aspect there are a lot of interesting people over there.

Facebook consumes a lot of my online time but I can’t tell you what I really get from it. It’s a great place for me to share witty events and photos and the like with those I call friends and family, but other than that, I don’t feel engaged. Don’t get me wrong, I like everyone on my Facebook feed, I just feel like there’s a lot of “stuff” without a lot of “important stuff”.

So taking the lead from the handsome lad Phil in D.C., I think I’m going to ramp way back from Facebook for 30 days. Inversely, I’ll concentrate on contributing more to my own blog right here. Everything connected to my Facebook account will still be connected; I’m not shutting anything down. I just think for the next 30 days I’m going to refrain from checking my news feed several times a day. I’ll live in the physical moment instead of the virtual one.

I’m interested to see how I feel after 30 days. I’m hoping I feel more focused.