I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND SOME PEOPLE. No, that’s not accurate. Closer to the nugget of Truth would be, “I just don’t understand most people. Of course, of the few people that I do think I understand I’m usually wrong.
It’s not that I think I am superior or more intelligent than the bulk of humankind it’s just that my most frequently muttered phrase is, “Why they do that?”
A prime example of my mystification with people happened yesterday.
FOR AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER my doctors have been on my case, saying that I need to “Get more exercise.”
I’m Alive.
And I don’t say that lightly. Recently there have been questions.
Today is the second day of June, 2021. On May 23rd – just a little over a week ago I was one sick Geezer.
I had been fighting what I had taken to be the remnants of a cold and the congestion had been coming and going for a week or two. On that Sunday, the 23rd, it was getting worse. I was having more and more difficulty breathing. My wife, the lovely, observant, and concerned for her Geezer, Dawn, could see that I was struggling. She suggested and I agreed that a trip to the ER was in order.
Ten minutes later I was sitting in a wheelchair with a stethoscope moving about on my chest. My lungs were filling with fluid. I felt like I was drowning. The ER doctors began to inject me with something called Lasik and told me to be ready to to start urinating like a Race Horse.
They weren’t kidding.
Within the next two hours I put out more than two liters of sickly looking fluid from my lungs. I could begin to breathe again. The X-Rays said that I was showing signs of Congestive Heart Failure.
Those are three scary words.
I was admitted to the Hospital – Room 3014. I felt like crap, but I was in no apparent immediate danger. Dawn finally was able to go home at about 3 AM on Monday morning.
I continued to crank out more fluid for a couple of days. I also had a lot of blood Vampired out of me. There were tests, tests, and more tests – with no conclusive finger pointing at why I was in that hospital bed. As the week progressed I was poked, prodded and punctured all day and all night. I met more people with letters after their names than I had ever encountered before.
Everyone was kind, helpful and very professional. I felt that I was in very good hands. With the weekend looming it was decided to cut me loose and, since my condition had improved and stabilized, I would now be able to be an outpatient. I was OK with that. I desperately wanted to go home. I was feeling better, Dawn was exhausted, and I had begun to seriously complain about the food.
No matter how advanced that Hospital may be and how brilliant the staff may be it is without a doubt that the place will never become known as a Culinary destination.
Hospital food, while they try to present a wider menu, still sucks. I’m sorry. I have nothing but respect for everyone there, but the person who ruins their version of Macaroni and Cheese should be forced to eat it. As a man with the last name of KRAFT I tend to take it all personally.
I’m home now and making the rounds of my various doctors still trying to discover what caused our late night adventure to the Emergency Room. I’m feeling so much better, but I still need to know what happened and why.
I’ll keep you advised, but right now I’m looking forward to a nice steaming bowl of real Mac and Cheese straight from that little blue cardboard box.
IT’S TUESDAY AND I SMELL.
Due to some technical difficulties I am having with WordPress it is necessary that I post a few more things from the past. This post is from 2015.
Enjoy and bear with me.
Last Saturday I volunteered to help out at a Kiwanis Club Fish Fry fundraiser. I was there from 3:30 PM until about 7:30 PM. I helped out selling tickets at the door and greeting the several hundred people who showed up to dine until they dropped. The thing is – I don’t belong to the Kiwanis Club.
This is a throwback from a few years ago about food, health, and some other stuff.
“FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD!” WE CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT and, all too often we can’t live with it. We eat too much. We eat the wrong stuff and there are people who eat, yet are starving.
We have TV shows featuring the lives of people who have hit 600#, making themselves into virtual prisoners in their homes. Following that show will be another about Anorexia. In between there will be ad after ad for dubious products to help us slim down or bulk up. I can’t keep it all straight in my feeble head. I need to think about food on a small scale.
No matter what I might donate to help feed the starving it would never be enough. I have to start with myself
Sometimes there are just too many choices. Every day I am faced with the tasks of making choices as soon as my eyes pop open.
Get up or not get up?
Matching socks or just grab any old two?
It goes on like that until I have made the choices that will make m,e presentable to the world.
Once I get downstairs I am faced with an unending Q&A. It goes on all day. It seems like I can’t go anywhere or do anything without having to make choices. My only respite has been a those few precious minutes in the early evening when I’m able to relax, pour a cup of coffee, and nibble on a cookie or two….or three. But, now even that oasis has been overrun by a stampede of “Choose me! No! Choose me!” When I go down the Cookie Aisle a the Supermarket I am ambushed by a wall holding Twenty-Seven (Read ’em – 27) different Oreo Cookies! How am I supposed to make a choice for my evening snack when I am faced with that?
Jesus only had 12 Apostles to deal with. I have 27 Cookies staring at me. This is gonna be rough.
Ever since I was knee high to a Cookie Jar I loved the Oreo cookie. It was a simple chocolate cookie with a sweet layer of white stuff. Pulling the Oreo apart and eating the “White Stuff” side first was half the fun. I still do that. It’s Tradition! Now, with 27 different Oreos I am going to be hyper-busy pulling them all apart in the Krafty Oreo Test Kitchen. Here is a list of all the choices I am now faced with. Brace yourself.
1. Birthday Cake 2. Fudge Dipped Thin Bites 3. Mint Thins 4. Thins Bites 5. Chocolate Thins 6. Chocolate Oreo 7. Peanut Butter 8. Fudge Dipped Mint Thins 9. Red Velvet 10. White Fudge Dipped Thin Bites 11. Mint Oreo 12. Oreo Thins 13. Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie. 14. Spring Oreo 15. Dark Chocolate 16. Golden Thins 17. Fudge Covered Oreo 18. Carrot Cake 19. Mega Stuff Oreo 20. Pistachio Thins 21. Golden Oreo 22. Most Stuff Oreo 23. Oreo (The Classic!) 24. Lemon Oreo 25. Double Stuff. 26. Toasted Coconut 27. White Fudge Covered Oreo.
I had originally thought that there were just 25 varieties, but I was corrected by the nurse at my doctor’s office. I told the Doctor about my personal obligation to sample all of the Oreo varieties. He looked at me…then smiled. I think he was seeing himself behind the wheel of a brand new Ferrari.
It is going to take a while for me to sample all of these new Oreo cookies. I’m not going to try to get it all done over a weekend. I’m going to have to pace myself. Every night I’ll sample a few cookies along with my coffee. I am not a glutton, but I assure you that none of the cookies will go stale.
I have cleared a space in the kitchen where I can store all 27 packages of Oreos. We don’t use oven all that much.
In this hustle-bustle world where we all find ourselves these days we don’t often get the opportunity to lift someone’s spirits and “Make their day.” I recently had that opportunity.
We were down in Texas for most of January and February – right in the middle of the winter storms that wreaked havoc in most of the state. Where we were in the Corpus Christi area did not escape the troubles. We were without power for several days and had water pipes burst that had us all seeking shelter in a local church that miraculously still had power.
As the week progressed everyone in town was feeling the stress. No power and, even if you had water, it was under a “Boil Order” to make it potable. Fortunately, there was one large supermarket in town that was open and trying to service all 5000 souls. I was sent to the supermarket several times to try to find water and food.
Not surprisingly the store was crowded. Everyone I saw looked haggard and worn down. The aisles were jammed and there were many empty shelves waiting for trucks to arrive from San Antonio to resupply the store.
At one point I was at the end of a crowded aisle in the Meat Department. Shopping carts were tied up in a gridlock as people were looking for anything they could take home. Moving in any direction was almost impossible. Caught in the middle of this traffic jam was a woman with her cart completely stuck and unable to move.
One look at her and I could see that she was on the edge of a complete breakdown. The stresses of the pandemic and lockdown and now with the power outage and freezing temperatures it all had pushed her to the brink. She was physically trapped, surrounded by other desperate people. She was on the verge of tears. Looking around she yelled out, “I want to back up. That’s all. Please let me back up.”
She was starting to panic.
People could see what I did and began to give her some leeway. She started to back up with her cart and get some room to move.
For a reason I still can’t understand, as she backed up, I began to make “Beeping” noises like a truck moving in reverse. The woman stopped and looked at me. I hadn’t meant to upset her or anything it was just a spur of the moment bit of silliness. I just shrugged and she smiled. Then she laughed out loud and began beeping as she continued to back up her cart. When she got her cart free of the gridlock she looked back at me again, laughed, and started moving down the “Bread Aisle.”
Thirty seconds earlier she had looked as if the world was crushing her and now she was laughing with a smile on her face.
I was feeling stressed myself, but our little beeping interaction lightened my heart as well as hers. Could there be something as out of place as two strangers making beeping noises in the middle of a crowded supermarket?
A moment of laughter surrounded by all that chaos.
It may have been a rough time for all of us but those few moments made our day
I love my Microwave Oven.
It does what I ask of it. It makes me feel well fed and it warms my innards. There aren’t many things in this world that can make that claim.
I use my Microwave Oven to heat up my favorite frozen burritos. I use it to make my favorite instant Oatmeal. What more can I ask?
My Microwave is a Thousand Watt device and I know just how long I need to set the timer thingy to get my yummy stuff done properly. I know just what I need to do and, PRESTO! I have a bowl of hot Oatmeal! I don’t need to think about it. If I do have to think about it…that’s where I get into trouble and my Oatmeal goes airborne.
If I am at home, in our own kitchen, with our own warm and friendly Microwave, Life is good and so is my Oatmeal. I know that I can trust that Microwave. I know that it will not trick me or try to fool me into exploding my frozen burritos.
Trust is important in a Microwave.
Earlier this year my wife, The Lovely and not a fan of frozen burritos, Dawn, and I had traveled to visit with Family in Texas. While the visiting was grand the traveling presented me with a variety of Alien Microwave Ovens.
On the road we were faced with different Microwaves in each hotel along the way. I knew that would be the case. I just knew it! This was not my first rodeo. So, to avoid crushing problems with my Oatmeal and/or frozen burritos, I didn’t use those Alien machines for anything other than heating up a pastry copped from the Hotel Lobby Breakfast and Coffee Buffet. Their Microwaves were of questionable quality and wattage. I wasn’t about trust them with anything as important as my morning Oatmeal.
Once we arrived at our destination in Texas I felt that my Microwave Angst could safely be shed. One Microwave. One new and reliable machine. One good steaming bowl of Oatmeal and/or formerly frozen burrito.
My needs are simple.
In my dreams.
I discovered, much to my dismay and the need for a fresh roll of paper towels, that the Microwave Oven in our temporary kitchen was not a 1000 Watt appliance, but a 1200 Watt Destructo-Matic Furnace. While I knew that 90 seconds in our Microwave at home produced flawless Oatmeal this 1200 Watt Hiroshima Machine worked much faster and hotter.
90 Seconds at home. 55 Seconds in Texas.
“Houston, we have a problem!”
In a sense of misplaced trust I set the timer for 90 seconds and walked away. While I was away in blissful ignorance that Steel-Making Blast Furnace heated my Oatmeal into a Quasi-Magma and erupted – sending my Oatmeal off on a 360 degree Diaspora onto the walls and rotating base of the Microwave.
I never knew that Oatmeal could fly with such force.
Later that day, as my need for a hot lunch arose, I popped a pair of frozen burritos into that same, now Untrustworthy Microwave.
My Mama didn’t raise no fools! A couple of whining neurotics perhaps, but no fools! I wasn’t going to leave my frozen burritos alone inside that Microchipped Inferno. At home I would have set the timer at a few seconds shy of three minutes. In Texas I set it for a minute less and hit the Start button. I stayed, staring at my burritos as they rode the merry-go-round in the Microwave.
At little more than one minute my lunch began to twitch on the plate. Ten seconds later they began to disassemble themselves. The tortillas opened up and the filling oozed like a Hawaiian lava flow. I hit “Stop” and rescued my now Soft Tacos. They were still quite edible, but just mutated from their original form.
Lesson Learned: Never trust an unknown Microwave.
Other Lesson Learned: Hyper-Microwaved Oatmeal is not easy to clean from the rotating base without a mild abrasive and a few curse words.
It’s not easy, but it can be done.
Let’s Eat!
DON’T CALL ME SCROOGE, but I am glad that the Holiday Season is over. It’s not that I don’t enjoy getting together with family and friends, sharing good memories, and hopes for the future. I truly do love all of that. It is just that I find it all so very exhausting.
The “Holiday Season” starts with Halloween (Like it or not.) and doesn’t end until after the New Year’s Day festivities. For some people the end doesn’t come until the Super Bowl. Personally, I could not care less about that. I might care if the Cleveland Browns were in the game, but I‘m not holding my breath on that.
For over two months everything is in a whirl of shopping, eating WAAAAY too much, traveling, being pleasant with everybody, and wading through the tons of catalogs that overflow the mailbox. I find it all more than I can deal with calmly, maintaining a clear brain, and a digestive tract that doesn’t resemble Krakatoa West of my Liver. By the time the New Year starts I am a shambles. This year was even more difficult. I think I now know what all of those discarded Christmas trees feel like after a ride through the wood chipper.
This year we spent most of December in Texas. We drove there and back. Let me do the math for you – that was a round trip of about 2500 miles.
Ho Ho Ho
We split The Going and The Coming into three days each way. I can no longer do those marathon drives of 700 miles in a day. My butt just can’t take it anymore. Fifty years ago I could have made the Texas trip in two days, but no more. Back in 1970 I drove from Bar Harbor, Maine all the way to the Washington D.C. burbs in one day. That was about 750 miles in one day! I was young and foolish.
I’m not young anymore.
After traveling like that I need several days to recuperate. I can’t get up at 7 AM, make tea and coffee, and be a sociable breakfast companion. I need to stay in bed unconscious and eventually be a passable lunch companion.
I think what I need to start doing as the Holiday Season approaches again is to go into training as if I was going to compete in the Olympics.
I’ll start in July. I will spend hours sitting in an uncomfortable chair. I will start practicing on my Christmas present wrapping skills. This year everything I wrapped looked like it was done by an arthritic Orangutan.
Another area I’ll need to work on is Eating…Holiday Eating. That means eating too much, doing so at odd hours, and having a severely unbalanced diet. Cookies will become one of the major food groups. Did you know that there must be twenty different kinds of Oreo Cookies?
So you see…it’s not that I don’t like the Holidays. It is more like the Holidays have passed me by. I find that all of those things I took in stride in my youth now require some serious preparation. I’ll be ready when this year’s Holiday Season rolls around. I don’t want to face another year with my intestinal tract taking no prisoners.
SOME THINGS ARE WORTH EATING.
Other things are not.
A nicely done “medium-rare” steak – Yes. A “well-done” steak – No.
Fried Chicken – Yes. KFC – No.
Airline Cookies, Cheap Mexican Food, and Beets – No, No, and No.
Kolaches – YES!
Kolaches? Wazzat?
Sit and learn, my child.
Few places in the world produce more delicious pastries than the kitchens of Eastern Europe. I grew up enjoying the wonderful delights from my Aunt Annette’s ancient cookbook. That may also be part of the reason I graduated from size Medium to Large before I could read.
Kolaches are a Czech creation I believe, although there are variations from all over Eastern Europe.
When we were down in Texas with Family for Christmas I learned that kolaches are BIG in Texas. A flock of Czech bakers must have avoided Ellis Island and came into the country through Houston.
A few days before Christmas, with all of us caught up in a severe holiday hunger, it was decided that kolaches were needed – Now – and lots of them. Somebody had the phone number of the local Tex-Czech Bakery and – Poof! Kolaches appeared on the dining room table. More like 6 dozen.
These Czech Old World pastries that are as popular as Dr. Pepper and Barbeque in South Texas are a phenomenon. Some people might say that they look like your basic Danish pastry, but I wouldn’t say that in front of any Tex-Czech baker. They take their Old Country kolaches roots very seriously. I think wars have started over less.
There were about a dozen people around that table, ready to pounce on the six dozen kolaches. Those kolaches didn’t have a chance.
Picture, if you will, a school of Great White Sharks circling six dozen wounded sea bass. Apricot, Cheese (Not Danish), Prune (Still not Danish), and Cherry sea bass kolaches were devoured at a frightening rate.
Yumilicious!
Now, in complete honesty, I am not a big sweets person all that much anymore. Advancing age and A1C have tempered my childhood appetites – but I joined in the Great Kolache Feeding Frenzy of 2016. My personal score that day remains a family secret. I held my own, but there were a couple who could easily consider turning Pro.
There were six dozen kolaches at the start. By the end of that session there were five dozen MIA. In its own way it was both soul stirring and frightening. The surviving kolaches quickly disappeared under aluminum foil and were secreted away only to be wolfed down in a midnight raid on the kitchen. There were no survivors.
Back in Terre Haute (That’s French for “I want another kolache.”) I had my mind set on visiting the one place in town I knew of where kolaches could be found. As I drove up to the front of the building I saw a sign in the window – Closed! Just shoot me now. Go ahead, get my taste buds all worked up into a dither and then close down my one and only hope.
That was no way to end 2016 or start off the New Year!
Illegal drugs can be found almost anywhere, but … but … I want my kolaches! What do I have to do to get some kolaches? It’s a long drive to both Texas or to the Czech Republic, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do!
OK, OK, OK! I will admit it. This old blog post from 2017 is considered by some people to be of questionable taste. They are entitled to their opinion. They’re wrong.
I’m also entitled to my opinion. I think it’s funny.
So there!
THERE AIN’T NUTHIN’ LIKE A GOOD BURGER. It doesn’t have to be fancy (and probably shouldn’t be). It doesn’t have to be expensive. It sure doesn’t have to be in some high class restaurant. But it has to be prepared with gluttony in mind.
About a five minute drive or twenty minute crawl from home is a small neighborhood joint (that’s the only appropriate word) that does a burger right.
This particular watering hole has been around for about two million years. It is on its third or fourth owners now and doing well. It is probably also on the Hit List of the American Heart Association.
Over the years it has grown from a serious drinker’s bar, into a Punch Palace where the main attraction was drunken brawls, into a neighborhood friendly gathering spot. With each reincarnation the food menu has grown and improved. Today it has become a place for Breakfast as well as for Lunch and Dinner –with no brawling allowed.
It is more of a “Sports Bar” now. That means that there are multiple big screen TVs mounted 
high on the walls. They are generally ignored in favor of the food.
The Star of the Show – foodwise – is the “Tweety Burger.” It has nothing to do with a small yellow canary and Sylvester the Cat. “Tweety” was the name of one of the original owners back in the Dark Ages.
The current owner is a young (30ish) gent who is trying to turn the place from a “Joint” into something more socially acceptable – a place where you could take a date for a nosh without having to worry about a fist fight breaking out. The new Boss is also expanding the definition of the “Tweety Burger.” For the longest time it was just a very tasty ½ pound burger with fries – yumilicious to be sure. But now, the sky is the limit.
Every month now there is new version of the “Tweety” on the menu. Last month’s burger had Ghost Pepper Chiles and Creamy Marshmallow between the buns. I passed on that one, although it did sell well. I like spicy, but I don’t think that food should hurt.
This month the Special is the “All-American Tweety” – a burger that goes where no cardiologist has ever gone before.
Read the description for yourself.
I was in there last night and my wife, the lovely and ever tasteful, Dawn, suggested that each “All-American Tweety” should come with the business card of a good heart specialist. That is being taken under advisement.
I asked our waitress, Susie, who has worked there for years, if many people are ordering that monster of a burger. She shook her head and said, “More than you would believe.” She had a 
look of concern on her face. I think she was going to be expected to administer CPR if one of her customers keels over mid-burger.
The owner is counting on some seriously hungry (or deranged) people who will down that full pound famine-buster – and then want dessert. That is when Susie will trot out the “Fresh, Hot Donuts,” drizzled with hot chocolate sauce and powdered sugar.
Just what the Anesthesiologist ordered!
I think I’ll stick to my usual order – the Tweety Junior, which is more than enough for me. When it shows up at the table I tell Susie, “I thank you, My Doctor thanks you, and my Aorta thanks you. Pass the ketchup.”
Everything is up to date in Indiana. If there is a Trend, Fad, or Fashion floating around it will eventually bob to the surface of the Wabash River in Terre Haute. It may take awhile to get there, but it will. The latest example of this is – Fanfare Please – A Vegan Restaurant.
The only reason that most people in this town might look into a Vegan Restaurant is to see if the diners are using utensils or are they just grazing? I wish the owners of this new eatery success, but let’s be honest, Terre Haute is “Carnivore Country.”
And I am a Carnivore. Thank you. Thank you very much.
It was just recently, in the middle of all of this stay home and don’t even think of going anywhere business, that my wife, the lovely Texas Carnivore, Dawn, discovered “The Boulevard of Beef, The Highway of Heifers, and The Supernova of Steak.” Sitting in our mailbox was an ad trumpeting the glories of The butchers at Omaha Steaks.
We had seen ads for Omaha Steaks for years, decades even, touting really expensive meat. Their prices were so high that it would have been cheaper to buy a cow, keep it in the backyard, and slaughter it in the garage. Then a couple of months ago things changed when we got that Virus Season advertising brochure. Included in the ad was a hefty coupon that lowered the prices into a range that wouldn’t make our wallets explode.
We ordered. We ate. We smiled. We decided that we wanted more. One thing that those folks in Omaha knew how to do was to lure us into becoming repeat customers. Offer us a lot of really good Carnivore Candy – Sirloins, Strip Steaks, Filets, and everything but the hoofs, and you have our attention.
So, for the last month or two we have been eating well and enjoying every bite. I grant that looking forward to a Friday Night Meat Feast is not everybody’s idea of Heaven but they didn’t have a barrel of A-1 beside them like I did. Dawn and I were enjoying every bite.
One thing we learned very quickly was that once we placed an order for a bunch of stuff it was like we had erected a billboard with our mailing address on it. We have been getting ads from every meat maven in the country offering us steaks often at ridiculously low prices. Some are such apparently good deals that I have my doubts about their origin. Did this Sirloin come from a cow or some other miscellaneous creature? I don’t want a steak with tire tread marks on it or a burger that died a natural death.
Like I said, we are happy and enjoying this Carnivore Carnival. If it isn’t your thing and you are someone who thinks “Meat is Murder” then go ahead and drop into Terre Haute’s new Vegan restaurant and have an Eggplant Burger with a side of French Fennel Fries.
Oh, Man! Am I getting tired of this – or what? It’s not the omnipresent virus and all of the foofuraw surrounding it that I’m talking about here. I’ve already done too much of that. There is nothing new for me to say about it or for you to read about.
No.
What I’m talking about is COFFEE.
You know- that golden nectar that every day brings millions of people back to life? That liquid DNA that transforms us from mere meat with shoes on into a planet filled with creative men and women – some of whom know the difference between coffee and …anything else you might pour down your throat in the morning.
I started drinking coffee when I was in high school. I wanted to look “grown up” and coffee seemed to be my best way to look older and more worldly. Of course I put enough sugar in my grownup looking coffee cup to trigger a Diabetic Episode and three cavities, but I looked “Mature.”
All through college, a long and tortuous journey, I stayed with coffee. By that time I was hooked on the need for the caffeine but the mass amount of sugar faded until it was gone the way of bicycle training wheels and that ridiculously futile crush on Jayne Mansfield.
The sugar was gone which left me with a cup filled with black coffee. I didn’t like black coffee and I still don’t. I don’t hate it. I’ll drink it in a pinch or an emergency. For instance, if some alien species from another world landed here on earth and fell in love with our bovines and cownapped them all back to their home galaxy there would be a crisis in a cup. If that happens I will be forced to drink my coffee black. And don’t even talk to me about “Non-Dairy Coffee Creamers.” Paint belongs on the walls not in my mug.
As time passed my coffee needs did not really change, except perhaps in the quantity consumed, but Coffee Technology was in the fast lane. I went from a metal percolator to the first generation of Mr. Coffee drip brewers, Italian espresso in those tiny cups that were never enough. There was a brief romance with a French Press (It never would have lasted there was just too much pressure.). Then came the explosion known as Starbucks. They were everywhere. Where I lived in the city of San Francisco there were five Starbucks within walking distance for me…and if you know me at all you know that “walking distance” for me is “Drunken stupor crawling on all fours” for most other people.
I liked Starbucks coffee from the beginning. They brew it strong and I like my coffee to be able to fight back if it ever finds itself being poured in a dark alley. I have been a loyal slurper in Starbucks all over the country and even overseas. I have no complaints. But now a pretender to the Throne of the Golden Bean is in my kitchen.
Keurig!
I was first introduced to these devilish little machines a couple of years ago. It was Love at First Sip. Here was something that would let me brew myself a cup of coffee – toss it down my pie hole – and then, almost immediately make another, but a totally different flavor. I could do that all afternoon. And Morning. And Evening.
In deciding to write about this I knew that some people might disagree with me and my thoughts. Well, frankly, I’m not bothered by that. I might offer to share a cup with them and if they don’t see the error of their ways, may they spend the rest of their life drinking Airline coffee. I’m an easy going guy…at least until my tenth cup of the day kicks in.
I LIKE TO EAT. I DO IT EVERY DAY. There are times when I do it too often and too much. My most dangerous times are the Holidays. I don’t mean just Christmas and Thanksgiving – those are holidays that have become celebrations of Gluttony. I’m talking about other holidays. I can do some serious eating during the festivities around Groundhog Day and the Commemoration of the Founding of the National League.
I don’t need much of an excuse.
One of the things that I really like (and in some cases dislike) are those special dishes that are only ever prepared for a specific holiday. I like Turkey and dressing in November. I do not like it in July. In July I like Hotdogs and Bratwursts. I do not want them at Christmas. I do not enjoy that quivering jellied mass of cranberry sauce (Which is not a sauce!) at Thanksgiving. It is an abomination and should be dropped into the depths of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
Today is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States.
It is a day to be with Family and Friends.
Wherever you are – enjoy this day and we will see you tomorrow.
WHAT IS WITH THESE PEOPLE? It is 5:45 in the morning. It is still dark and there is a line out to the door at St. Arbucks. Is it the End of Times? Has a fleet of UFOs begun to attack Earth? Has Godzilla been spotted coming out of the Wabash River?
Something is afoot at St. Arbucks my coffee and writing refuge.
Oh, I get it now! It is some sort of Holiday Season Promotion and they are giving away decorated reusable plastic cups with the purchase of some overpriced beverage creation.
Whatever.
I’M FEELING IN A MAGNANIMOUS MOOD TODAY.
I feel like reaching
out to my fellow bipeds and seeing if I can be of help. So, I have declared that today is officially:
FREE BAD ADVICE DAY!
For today – and today only – I will be dispensing free bad advice on a wide range of topics.
Let the games begin!
EVERYONE SEEMS TO BE IN SUCH A HURRY THESE DAYS – even me who is a retired geezer and has a minimum of deadlines and other important urgencies in my life. Saving that extra three minutes seems to be critical even when the time saving actions have a lowering of quality along with the few saved ticks and tocks.
I’m not saying that saving time is a bad thing. It is just one way to have more time available to, hopefully, enjoy doing something else.
Like breakfast.
When I get up in the morning one of the first things I do is put on a pot of tea for Dawn. After that I head out in search of coffee. Until I have my coffee my day has not officially begun. Before I pour that first cup or two down my gullet everything I do is strictly muscle memory.
Throwback Thursday From November 2016 – “Going Back For Seconds”
A CRISIS HAS ARISEN. For a number of years we have gone out for the traditional Thanksgiving Dinner. With just the three of us doing it all at home seemed to be more trouble than it was worth.
When we dined out we headed to a local hotel that put on a buffet worthy of the Roman Emperor’s Palace. There was enough of everything edible there that it would make the Front Line of the Chicago Bears faint dead away.
During the course of the day several hundred hungry Hautians (not Haitians) would show up and eat until they embarrassed themselves. I heard that the Chefs and Bakers were on the Weight Watchers hit list. (But that was just a rumor.)
I must admit that we did our part in this Festival of Gluttony. We gave thanks for all of the usual things, plus the fact that it came only once a year. Any more often and they could have just shifted it all to the nearest Emergency Room.
The hotel did put on a buffet for Easter, but it paled in comparison. It was like trying to compare two squirrels fighting over an acorn to World War Two. The hotel Thanksgiving buffet had become a family tradition.
But now…
The Hotel Corporate gods decided that our hotel needed renovation and expansion. Terre Haute (That’s French for, “Get me some carrot cake.) has a number of really fine hotels. The universities and larger businesses have a lot of people coming in and out of town all the time. In late May there is the Indianapolis 500 auto race and the Terre Haute hotels fill up with racing fans.
With the announcement of the coming hotel renovation our hearts began to flutter. How long will the hotel be closed? What about the buffet? It turned out that it was to be a two year long project. They pared the hotel down to the structural steel skeleton – no buffet.
Time to Panic!
Wherever shall we go? Whatever shall we do?
For our family the immediate solution was obvious – we got an invitation to dine with friends. That was last year. That invitation won’t be coming again this year. They are out of town, the clever devils.
What are we going to do? The local options are not up to snuff compared to The Buffet.
Some of the possible alternatives that have been discussed are:
So, you see our dilemma. I suppose we could put together a very nice Thanksgiving dinner at home. After all, we are bright, creative, and fully capable people, but it just wouldn’t be the same. After all, the hotel buffet has become our tradition.
I’m going to put on my Thinking Cap and investigate further.
If anyone has any ideas, short of going out and shooting a turkey, they would be appreciated. We do want to have our family dinner – and Marie Callender is not part of the family.
WE ARE NOW IN OUR FOURTH HOUSE AND OUR FOURTH AND FIFTH WEEKS IN IRELAND. After this week we will begin the process of closing the book on Ireland and begin to get our thoughts on heading home.
For the first three weeks we were tourists and tour guides. We were blessed to have our “Alaskan Cousins” with us. They had never been here before and we wanted them to see the parts of this island that has brought us back time and time again. We may have run them a bit ragged, but with us they saw more than those tourists who saw the country from inside a rolling tour bus.
Before we left Terre Haute (That’s French for, “Guinness does go well with chocolate.”) our itinerary would have had us on the go about 36 hours a day. We’ve done it before and we thought we could do it again. Reality threw a pie in our faces on that idea. The first time I came here I was 60 years old and Dawn was…a mere yute. This trip has defied my experiments with time travel and tore too many pages off our Calendar. When we all landed in Dublin the age range of our group went from 73 years down to 62. We were not being mistaken for Hostelling Students on Holiday.
Down the Hall on Your Left 