Of styrofoam and swap meets

Model Airplane swap meet in a strange town means lunch at a new Chinese restaurant!


So after I had seen everything I wanted at the swap meet (I deliberately hung around until lunch) I went out on the town in search of a Chinese place. I had eaten at a really good one in this town before (Murfreesboro, TN) but doubted I would find it again since I was coming in from another part of town and it’s pretty large at that. My criteria was simply that I would stop at the first place I could find. I was in the “uptown” section and had to wander several miles till I hit the seedy part of town and swung in abruptly towards my target. It was right at lunchtime and I wandered in to realize I was the only one there except for the guys who worked there. Didn’t take long to realize that the kid behind the counter didn’t want to be there either. He was punching the computer screen while taking my order like he wanted to kill that thing. I sat down and started taking in the ambiance around me.



It was hot in there, smoky, dingy, and somewhat dirty. There were huge old calendars hung on the walls with pictures of Asian girls on them. The window shades were dirty and the table was greasy. I began to suspect I could have chosen a little more wisely but you never know about these places. The best ones are those hole in the walls that look like they should have been shut down by the board of health. My ace in the hole was the guy doing the cooking. He was the real thing. The typical Chinese restaurant has 1 Chinese woman running the cash register and a herd of Mexicans doing everything else, including the cooking. I don’t like that. And those are the places that have a huge buffet complete with pizza, tacos, and French fries. Not me.

So after a lengthy wait, my soup arrived. Funny that the guy who was doing the cooking brought it to me instead of the kid at the cash register. Maybe the kid got disgusted and went home. Soup wasn’t bad but nothing to write home about. When the rest of lunch finally showed up the cook brought it out himself again. Only my tea wasn’t there.

I asked the cook to please bring me my tea. He said, “Ohhhh, you order tea?!!!!” “Youwah sweet tea”?!!!!!! He was really loud and his accent was right off the boat. I told him I would rather have unsweet tea. He then said, “youwah hot tea”?!!!! Oh yes! Hot tea would be excellent. The guy then brings me a Styrofoam cup of tea with a lid on it that was two sizes too large and tells me to keep lid on.

The meal was pretty good. I had broccoli with hot sauce, an egg roll, and rice. The egg roll was really fresh and the rice was the pork fried variety. I typically don’t go in for fried rice but this was great! It had lots of bits and pieces off all kinds of stuff in it. The broccoli was pretty good but a little too greasy for me.

The kicker was the tea. After I was finished eating, I took the lid off the cup and looked down into it. I drive Kathy nuts when we go out to eat Chinese because I always finish my meal with tea and make her sit there forever while I enjoy it. Anyway, Instead of finding the typical Lipton tea bag (yuck) I was shocked to find a few tea leaves in the bottom. It was really good too.

I waved and said good bye to the cook and walked out of there with my tea and a big smile on my face.

What? I didn't know you could even eat that stuff!

So we went to the mountain top flea market yesterday. They ought to call it the "hillside" flea market because it is on a steep hillside. You walk up or down, then once you hit a row, it's easy going to the opposite end. A good way to have a good time, buy someone elses crap, and get some exercise to boot. Marshall doesn't do very well at these things and there isn't anyone to dump him on so we pack him with us. I just wheel him around in his wheelchair. I don't mind because it also serves as a carrier for all of our junk. If you can't find what you want at the flea market, chances are it never existed anyway. It's cheap entertainment at the least, with a red-neck petting zoo for the kiddies to boot. Yesterday we saw some sort of large parrot that was making enough noise to wake the dead. I don't know what his problem was but he wasn't selling with that kind of behaviour. Kathy loves to see all the cute puppies. I'm glad they're so expensive. The last one of ours was free, these go for over $300 a copy. No thanks. I even saw a turkey that was packed in a 50# onion bag. He was trying to get out in earnest too. Sucks to be him.

This flea market is located towards the Eastern end of the state and is in the middle of nowhere. When we had seen it all and were about wore out it was time for some lunch. I chickened out on the flea market fare. The Mexican "roach coach" looked good and had a large crowd but I wanted something a little more substantial. On the way back we decided to head out of our way for 15 miles or so and try our luck in another town. There are only 2 restaurants between our house and this flea market:  Jacks or McDonalds. I figured we would roll the dice and also have a little adventure on the way. We made a right turn and headed out towards Albertville.

Kathy got out her new GPS after a while to see if we could find directions to a restaurant. She found a place right off called "Grumpys" and declared that's where we were headed. The directions to Grumpys had us going from the middle of nowhere to the land of the lost. But that GPS got us right to Grumpy's front door just the same. Only problem was that Grumpy's was closed. We were on the edge of a town that wasn't Albertville and wandered around for a little while looking for somewhere to eat (okay, I was looking for Chinese). Mexican was also up for grabs as a fail safe. We ended up at a tiny Mexican place called "La Autentica" or something. The menu didn't look like typical Mexican stuff so I asked the waitress for suggestions. We wound up with some mighty fine eats. There was one item on the huge platter of beef, pork, chicken, and shrimp we shared that I had never had though. It was cactus. She said it was very good for you especially if you were a diabetic. Also mentioned that it tasted like okra and quietly it might be slimy. I told her I didn't realize that cactus was edible. She said they ate it all the time. The waitress had Kathy pretty excited about the pork tacos  too so she also got one of those to try. I got a bite and it was the best taco I'd ever had. Pork, pico de gallo, flour tortilla, and a fresh lime wedge was an instant hit. The refried beans were very spicy as well.

The waitress really did right by us and we left a huge tip. Too bad that place is so far away. We found it by accident too. Maybe we'll head over there again. I'm gonna eat a big plate of shrimp tacos with cactus.

The lunch dare

There are many food shows on TV these days. The hosts travel all over the place to wow their viewers with tales of exotic and wild dishes in the oddest of settings. One show I enjoyed highlighted a lunch wagon (also known as a "Roach coach") in Sanfrancisco that served fancy Chinese dim sum with a flair. I watched transfixed to the screen as they created these exotic little wonders for the gathering crowd to ooh and ahh over. I told the wife that if we are ever lucky enough to get back there I wanted to find that place. Then I had a thought:  maybe there's some kind of funky wild exotic place right here in our neck of the woods we could try. Why travel 1,000 miles when the excitement is right here in your own backyard? Then I had another thought (I was on a roll);  what if there's some kind of funky wild exotic place right here in our neck of the woods and one of those overpriced TV hosts finds it before we do? We can't let that happen. We don't need no Hollywood tinseltown moviestar so and so telling us about our well kept secrets right?

Well, we have several. But we have one in particular. We call it "the bus". We've gone past this bus many times on our way to the Chinese place for lunch. And we've talked about trying it out. It started out as a joke because if you take one look at this thing and the area they park it you check the car door locks pretty quickly. The area is somewhat less than hospitable. There is a hootchie cootchie club just down the road and driving in this area after dark is not for the faint of heart. I've heard horror stories about the activities across the street and in the housing projects too. By the way, the bus serves Mexican food. We do like Mexican every now and then. Rumor mill said they had the best in the State. Really? We started having serious thoughts.

So a good bit of research was done. Try as we might, we couldn't find one single dissenting word about "the bus". There hadn't been any homicides in the 'hood that week so the next day off we went. Most of the usual lunch crew (from work) bailed on us so we did some outside recruiting.  Armed with an unsuspecting Husband and a couple of cute little kids we slid right in there. Who's gonna bother you if you have little kids? The ordering and eating procedure at this place is a little unconventional and if you hadn't already guessed, you better know just a little bit of Mexican. You have to walk inside to place your order and there is not much room. There are only about 8 chairs lined up along the walls with a skinny counter and the kitchen takes up nearly half of the space. Thankfully, the food choices had pictures and numbers, so you just pick out a number from 1 to 30 and let 'er rip. This place is known for super authentic Mexican dishes, and that generally translates the same way in any language:  a little weird. Authentic in Mexican is beef cheek (I didn't know you could even eat that part), tripe (guts), and tongue. Being the adventurous type,  I went with chicken, got a "chata" to drink (yes the drinks are authentic too) and smiled to myself that I had actually pulled this off and was about to enjoy a fine meal. Then things got just slightly worriesome when the guy in the kitchen started calling out who's order was ready. I couldn't understand a thing. I concentrated and realized he was calling out the orders in Mexican by the ticket number they give you. A quick rattle of my brains back to High School Spanish class got me where I thought I needed to be to get my order. Lucky for me, they were beyond the teens because I never could remember them, even back in school. Well, when my order came up he called it out in English;  I guess Gringos get special consideration. There was another guy there who was a cherry just like us and he was asking someone what/how to do. This is one of those places where you need to step back and watch what goes on in order to get the full good out of it. There is one long picnic table outside to sit at so we all plopped down there after trucking everything off the bus only to find out that the kitchen guy will hand it outside to you through the window. He's about 10' off the ground so you have to reach up over your head to get it and pray it doesn't fall on your head.  I never did understand one thing he said to the other customers either. In High School they teach Spanish, at the bus you have to speak Mexican.

So how was it? I thought it was great. I got a plate of enchilladas with beans and rice. There were some pickled carrots on my plate and some sort of wierd long pepper thing. Not like anything else I've ever had in the usual Mexican places. The "chata" was good too. I think it was made with rice milk and cinnamon. After 20 minutes or so that place was filling up fast. A bunch of geeky Engineers (you have to be one to be able to spot them) arrived and looked sort of worried/annoyed about how and where they were going to sit. Engineers are not known for their social skills and I chuckled to myself knowing that they were facing quite a dilemma at the thought of sitting at the same picnic table with a bunch of strangers. A few of them at the other end were even (gasp) Mexican. We overheard some of the conversation suggesting they drop the tailgate of somebody's truck. The picnic table would have easily accomodated another dozen people. I figure they took our spot the second we got up. I snapped a picture of the bus on the way home and a few guys inside waved at us while I took it.

Well I'm going back. I saw a guy getting some sort of sauce to put on his stuff and I'm curious about it. I'll have to brush up on my Mexican first though.

Mechanical mysteries of the Universe explained

The service manager stood there with a serious look on his face and told me that only the very senior mechanics did that type of work. They operated in the back of the shop where it was quiet and the rest of the place was told to leave them alone while they performed their magic. He further explained that it took years to learn how to do that kind of work and occasionally, a bright young man with a promising future and very high scores on his SAT exams would be allowed to apprentice with this senior craftsman/swami until his death when the torch would be passed along in high ceremony and 3 days of public mourning approved by the Governor himself. I bought this academy award winning performance hook, line, and sinker and decided I had best leave well enough alone or pony up the bucks and let the “technician” do it for me. I suppose at this point it would be sporting to let you know exactly what flavor of service I’m talking about. Today’s technical mystery of the universe is automotive instrument panels. What’s behind the dashboard, anyway?

Before I tell “the rest of the story” let’s hit a tangent and talk tires for a moment. I got the same “you can’t do that” story from the guy who worked on my motorcycle. Tires, it seemed, were only able to be changed and balanced by the professional who had invested $100,000 in tooling and knew just how to do it. And I was assured that even if I could change the tire, there was no way on God’s green Earth that I was going to be able to balance it. A couple of years ago I paid $800 to get two new tires and have my wheel bearings serviced. This lit a fire under my happy ass to find a way to do it myself and save some money in the process. I’m world renowned as a cheapskate and futhermore I was sick and tired of being held over a barrel by somebody who was really enjoying it. I bought my bike due to it’s reputation as being easy to work on and here we are with the “you can’t do that” from the very guy who recommended it to me. The little grin on his face didn’t help either. Well, in order to not turn this paragraph into chapter 5 of “War and Peace” I did my research, bought the necessary equipment (less than $400) and now I change all my tires myself. It’s already paid for itself and I not only save the labor cost, tires are about $40 less apiece when I buy them direct from a mail order place. So there.

Now, back to instrument panels. I was already determined that going to the dealership and having them tell me to turn around and bend over when the bill got there was out of the question. The instrument panel lights were all out on my son’s car. A check of the fuse panel revealed a burnt 5A fuse so I replaced it with a spare that was in the box cover. Still no soap with the new fuse. I faintly remembered the wife telling me that when this was her car, some of the lights weren’t working and could I look at it. Obviously, that was the point where I had the conversation with the dealership and decided it was easier to just tell her that it would cost more than it was worth (she got a new car shortly afterwards anyway). This time I decided I was going in, come heck or high water. Armed with resolute determination and a Haynes service manual, I proceeded to rip that dashboard apart into 1,000 easy pieces. I laid all the parts out neatly on a towel. The hardware was carefully organized into piles according to size and type. I nearly choked when the directions said to disconnect the speedometer cable at the transaxle but I found that dude and took care of business. When I got the panel down to it’s short and curlies, I had a heck of a time getting it pulled out from it’s lair but after further checks with the service manual and a couple of extra steps, it was in my sweaty palms. I turned it over and there they were, all exposed and vulnerable;  about 20 tiny light bulbs asleep in their ¼ turn housings. Each one was methodically inspected and tested with a voltmeter. I thought it kind of strange that out of all those bulbs, only 1 was bad. I put everything back together with a surgeons precision and care, even taking the effort to use glue to piece together some plastic parts that had broke during the extraction. This car is 17 years old and I expected to have a few casualties so the glue was pretty much factored into the repair as necessary.

After it was all together (6 hours later) I gave it a try and still we had a dark panel. I thought that perhaps there was another fuse that I had missed so I proceeded to check every single one of them, in orderly fashion of course. When I got to the new one that I put in that morning, it was bad. Uh oh. My spare had let me down. I managed to turn a 2 minute job into 6 grueling hours of brain surgery. Nevertheless, I felt vindicated that I had beat the dashboard, the car dealership, and my own fears of the monsters that lurk behind the speedometer cable. I think I’ll drive by there in the morning and thumb my nose at that service manager.  

Thanksgiving 2011

The cooking started at 2:30 am. Not because that's what I intended; I just happened to wake up and thought I might as well get the turkey going. By 3:00 am that dude was in the oven on his way to becoming the centerpiece of our Turkey Day feast. Allow me to digress a bit. This years festivities will best go down in history as the impromtu celebration. We were supposed to go to Tennessee for the day but due to several very last minute logistics problems and a slightly sick kid we had to cancel and I was pressed into service to come up with something at least mildly better than Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving dinner of popcorn and toast. Coming out of the shoot I had two made-from-scratch sweet potato pies up my sleeve. That was all I had planned to make since the relatives were providing everything else. I had bought nearly everything needed earlier in the week, intending to make a small version of Turkey day just for my family over the weekend. After sizing up my situation I threw my frozen turkey in some cold water and headed out to join the grocery store malay on Turkey day eve. The crowds weren't really all that bad. I picked up a few things I needed and had a chuckle with someone when we spotted another shopper leaving the store without their turkey. They had left it in the bagging area. The grocery store employees laughed and sent one of their own chasing after the bonehead with a big turkey in tow. People are so stupid.

Besides the turkey I made a batch of fried apples, fancy glazed carrots in grape juice and honey, stuffing, broccoli, peas and cranberry sauce (of course). We wouldn't want to forget the cranberry sauce now would we?. I keep several cans in my well-stocked pantry year-round for just such an emergency.

I do my turkeys sort of like barbeque in that I slow cook them. 225 degrees until the insides are at least 160 deg. By 9:00 am it was done and with 1 hour to rest the meat so the juices wouldn't run out I was only an hour and a half early to show time. I don't cook a whole turkey very often so I tend to err way on the side of caution so we won't be waiting on it. It was done in about 6 hours and while carving it really just fell apart. Juicy and tender to boot. I have to confess that I spilled WAY too much spice on that poor bird but it turned out to be pretty tasty in the end. Whatever it was, it was green and I'm lucky the Turkey came out of the oven brown and not green. I would have had trouble coming up with a valid reason for eating green turkey.

The carrots and apples were made from fresh ingredients and were really good. A suggestion was made to combine them into one dish and I think that is a good one. There is something really good about fried apples in the fall. It must be the slight nip in the air and the smell of dried leaves that does it. Add to that the pumpkin pie spice and fresh lemon juice and you just can't miss.

The sweet potato pie was tasty. Easy made, it is little more than boiling a few potatoes and then mixing them up with a bunch of junk and pouring it all into a shell. Those shells are courtesy of the grocery store, by the way. I don't do homemade shells. It's not in my contract. I copped out on the other desserts. I really wanted to make everyone feel like they were having a big meal so I bought two other pies. Mrs. Smith provided a berry and a chocolate pie. Nothing to it, just thaw the chocolate one and cook the berry pie in the toaster oven.

All in all I was satisfied with the results and I didn't hear any complaints from the peanut gallery. They took about 10 minutes to wolf it all down and it was all over. I've been cleaning dishes in stages so it doesn't seem like so much to do. The refrigerator is so stuffed with leftovers I don't think I'll be cooking for the rest of the weekend. That's not a bad thing either.

Marshall made the turkey in the picture. We kept it on the table while we ate and giggled about it the whole time. It was good enough to take a picture.

After the feast I managed to connive my wife to snuggle on the couch with me (not easily done). I fell asleep and when I woke up she was complaining that I had drooled all over her hair. Poor girl, that'll learn her to marry me.

Tomorrow is black Friday and I'm keeping my happy ass at the house. It'll be turkey for breakfast, turkey for lunch, and turkey for supper. I should really just send out for Chinese.

Naked girls and noodles

What do car wrecks, topless girls, Vietnamese restaurants, and sharks all have in common? The answer is pretty intuitive if you don’t dwell on it very long. They were all part of our Florida vacation, of course. Read on if you have a minute for all of the noodle slurping, death defying details. Pay attention as there might be a pop quiz at the end.
You remember of course my bellyaching about last year’s vacation. The 4th of July in Destin, Fl. amid hordes of tourists, foreigners, drunk partying college kids, and fat Canadian businessmen. I wanted quiet beaches, a few seagulls, and the occasional banner towing airplane. Naturally I endured the total opposite. Destin was crowded and locked down into a traffic jam the entire time. On our way to a flea market last year, we passed through a dumpy little outskirts town called Navarre. It was the sort of run down, destitute, poor Florida town I had been dreaming of. I mentioned to the wife that we ought to spend our next vacation there away from the upscale tinsel town that Destin has transformed into.
So in February I went to work planning our getaway. I picked out a nice hotel and booked it for 5 days several months in advance. In retrospect, this was an uncharacteristically smart move on my part. The rates went crazy in July and the hotel clerk told me he had to turn away 30 people one night. Apparently, every hotel on the beach was full. I missed out on an opportunity to heckle another hotel guest who was complaining about the high price of her stay to the clerk. Better luck next time.
We found the place easy enough and enjoyed the ride down below Montgomery (after lunch at “Chinatown”) since it was all 2 lane country roads. There was no plan for what to do other than enjoy the beach. That was a slight problem because our beach front hotel didn’t really have a beach to speak of. It was about 10’ wide and 400’ long and faced an inlet. There had to be something better. I asked Kathy to find out what the spit of land on the other side of the inlet was. It looked like another beach. She asked a 12 year old kid running a wave runner concession and the kid told her it was an air force base. We rode over there the next morning and found it to be the beach we had hoped for. Stupid kid. Anyway, the beach was nearly empty that morning so we settled down with our toes in the sand and enjoyed the quiet surf. And that is about all we really did the entire time except for hitting the flea market and eating out twice a day. But what about the car wrecks, topless girls, Vietnamese restaurants, and sharks? Be patient, I’m getting to it.

Topless girls!

Okay, not girls, but girl. MY girl. Kathy had a little wardrobe malfunction while we were out in the surf one day. The wave came crashing over us (the waves were very rough all week) we jumped up, but her bikini top didn’t. She’s standing there, wiping the salt water out of her eyes, and her top was hanging down around her belly. The funny thing was that she didn’t even notice. I finally told her that her tits were hanging out and she quickly put them up. No one else noticed but me and the 450 or so people on the beach she was facing. She’s prone to this sort of accident. Years ago when she took swimming lessons, the same thing happened only it was her little brother and the swimming instructor who were watching. Speaking of bikinis, the first one she tried on was way too skimpy. She was all ready to prance out the door with it on but I told her that unless she was planning on auditioning to be a stripper she might want to opt for something a little more demure.

Car wrecks!

On the last night of our visit, we decided to walk across a long bridge to get to the fishing pier. The bridge was very busy and also narrow. Some clown tried to make a U-turn right in the middle of it and ended up smacking a pizza delivery guy in the rear. After that all traffic came to a dead standstill except for the two of us trucking along in the pedestrian lane. We came up on the scene and Kathy checked out everyone to make sure they were ok (required of Nurses by law). While she was interviewing the victims, I made inquiries to the pizza delivery guy about purchasing a slightly used pizza for a sizable discount but unfortunately it had already been delivered. After we left the accident scene we were asked about what was going on up ahead by every 3rd car or so in line. It was only fun for a little while until I realized it would take forever to get to the fishing pier if we had to explain the situation to so many people. I do admit to having just a little fun telling several of them how screwed they were until both vehicles were towed away by the as yet un-arrived tow trucks.
There were quite a few people fishing on the pier and catching some small ones but nothing really sizable. Interesting that I saw so many foreigners. I suspected they were going to eat whatever they caught. On the way back across the bridge we stopped at a local open-air bar for beer and fish tacos (for me). Kathy had to have a girlie drink but didn’t have enough of them to become interested in the fish tacos.

Sharks!

I saw a shark. We were in the water. We got the heck out of there fast. No, I didn’t see a dolphin, a shadow, or a mirage either so if you are going to tell me it was probably something else just click your heels together 3 times and say to yourself: “it really was a shark”. I’d say it was about 3’ to 4’ long.

Vietnamese Restaurant

The one day we went to Destin for a little shopping we got caught up in a bad traffic jam which is rapidly becoming what Destin is most widely known for. After shopping the chance of getting something to eat without waiting outside in line for 3 hours was getting slim. Kathy picked out a place with a “Pho” in the name of it somewhere so in desperation we headed to it. As soon as we walked in I realized that we were the only two white people in there. Undaunted, we sat down and listened to the incomprehensible jabbering of the regulars while we waited for our food. It was surprisingly good, too. Pretty different from the standard Chinese stuff I’m used to. However; Eastern folks have a different set of standards when it comes to eating, particularly when you talk noodles. They love to slurp. I doubt there is an American alive who doesn’t flinch when he accidentally slurps his own noodle soup for fear that his Mom heard him and is about to slap him upside his head. Apparently, it’s a form of appreciation for a really good noodle in other parts of the world. For me, it’s simply a good way to turn my stomach. They backed us up to a table of 4 noodle slurping Vietnamese in order to ensure that we got the full dining experience. In spite of the ambiance and background noises, the tea was wonderful since it was loose and not the horrible bagged kind so I’m game for a return visit. Next time I’m going back to show those guys who can be more obnoxious when he eats. Maybe I’ll start by putting a chop stick in each nostril just to psych them out. That ought to level the playing field somewhat.

Well, there’s another vacation in the books. 5 days of sun, surf, and sand with a splash of naked girls and noodles.

Take a ride in Mr. Peabody's wayback machine

In a previous post, I talked about time and how much it has always fascinated me. I also mentioned that time can only move in one direction and that is forward. However; for the period from 2005-2025 time is indeed going in reverse. There is interest in doing things “the old way”. We are going back to our roots, reviving old, long forgotten techniques and skills that were afraid to have been lost in antiquity. I just saw a review on a retro website for a brand new Sony radio that is retro styled. It looks like it came right out of a 1960s yardsale, wood grained case and all. My wife and I went to “Mule Day” in Tennessee which is coincidentally everything mule. Amongst the vendors selling ticky tack, hot dogs, and balloons were a lady showing how yarn was spun and a man who made corn whisk brooms entirely by hand. One of my hobbies is woodworking. The online discussion group I belong to are constantly chatting about the “great handtool revival” and the increasing interest in selling off power tools to be replaced by 100+ year old hand tools. It’s showing up everywhere, even automobile manufacturers are reintroducing old cars that had their original hayday in the 60’s like the Dodge Charger. The TV channel, “TV land” regularly reruns shows from the same time period. I like it. It’s good to have a revival and throwback to the past. Enjoy it while you can because in February of 2025 we are all going to put our toys back in the closet where they belong. Of note during the same period of time is the interest in the Earth and conservation of all things “green”. It’s not just about saving the whales these days. Now it’s everything but Kudzu. I’ve seen more spins on the “green” thing than I can shake a stick at. Just watch advertising and you will see what I mean.

Saved by Cranberry sauce

Yesterday’s theme was food. Everything that happened to me centered around it. Some of it wasn’t too tasty, either.
I get to work and start unpacking my daily supply of provisions only to find out that my Tupperware jug of grapefruit juice had leaked all over the inside of my lunch box, right on top of my daily planner. The next 20 minutes were frantic, wet, and sticky. I got lucky and didn’t have to toss out any important documents. Breakfast went pretty smooth. I don’t know why I added breakfast except that I like to be thorough.
About mid morning I ran into an unexpected treat in the breakroom: an entire plate full of unmolested, homemade chocolate chip cookies. They must have just been placed there because they were still covered in wrap and were piled pretty high. I wasn’t hungry so I simply made a mental note to swing back by later and grab a few after lunch.
When lunch rolled around my ribs were sticking out. It looked pretty good in the cafeteria so I went through the line and got the baked chicken, mashed potatoes, and lima beans. When I looked down I was just a little miffed. The chicken breast was the smallest I had ever seen. It looked more like the breast of a pigeon than a chicken. I’ve seen a chicken breast or two in my tender years and I know they grow them bigger than that. The mashed potatoes were just barely there to represent their species as well. Jeez, the only thing I’ve got a decent helping of is the lima beans. Oh, the lima beans. They have this recipe for lima beans that will send you into orbit. They look plain but that is just a disguise because they are very spicy. I sometimes dream about them. When I paid for my lunch I made a comment about getting the smallest chicken breast I’ve ever seen which only returned a giggle from the cashier. Oh well. So I sit down, reassuring myself that at least they didn’t jip me on those wonderful beans, only to discover that they were both bland and cold. So there it was before me; skimpy, bland, and barely there. It didn’t take me 5 minutes to choke it all down while holding back just a few tears. After the carnage was over I was contemplating a second helping while whining to everyone within earshot of how little I had actually gotten. Theirs’ was as skimpy as mine as well. We all got quite a shock when we later noticed that the lunches rolling off the assembly line were piled high for everyone else! Big, heaping mounds of mashed potatoes, carrots falling off the plate! Chicken breasts with real meat on them! It wasn’t fair. We had been taken, robbed, swindled. After some discussion and further reconnaissance of the area we concluded that the cafeteria folks were afraid they would run out of food if they gave it all away during the first hour. Remember how you skimped on the candy for the first hour or two last Halloween then when it started getting late you were pouring the rest of the bowl into some kids plastic pumpkin, trying to get rid of it? Our situation was surely the same. We grumbled about it, my belly grumbled about it.

Then the little man on my shoulder reminded me that there were homemade cookies upstairs! That’s right! Homemade chocolate chip. Those cookies would hit the spot and provide just enough sustenance to get me through the afternoon before I starved to death and had to be taken to the hospital before suppertime could save me. Without a word I slipped away from everyone on the way back from lunch to pinch a big handful. As luck would have it, a few other people saw those cookies and no one thought to save any for me. Oh the horror! The plate was even gone! Next time, I’ll squirrel those cookies away ahead of time. So now what am I going to do to keep from starving to death? I had to settle (out of court) for some peanut butter crackers.

My last chance to actually enjoy a meal was approaching at a turtle’s trot since I had to work late and the ride home was plagued with a wreck on the river bridge. It seems like there is a wreck every day on that stupid bridge. I haven’t conducted any studies but I believe that the chances of a wreck on the bridge will increase for me if I have the urge to pee on the way home. Murphy carpools with me.

Supper was looking grim. I hadn’t laid any meat out of the freezer and I didn’t expect to find much in the way of leftovers in the fridge due to the fact that there are two grown kids (vultures) living with me. I was determined that I would scare something up even if I had to kill it first. That or order Chinese takeout. As I walked in I was shocked and surprised to find a miniature Thanksgiving meal was just ready. My wife had cooked a whole chicken with stuffing, vegetables, gravy, rolls, and even had CRANBERRY SAUCE too! WOW! What a feast! I didn’t even bother to look around to see if I had the correct address or pinch myself as if in a dream. I just grabbed a plate and started scooping. We’ll see who wins the portion control game this time! I slobbed down a whole plate full of goodies and just for good measure, went back for seconds. That’ll learn ‘em to try and starve ME at lunch! That was one fine meal too. June Cleaver would have been proud of my wife that day. If she had served me in pearls, pumps, and an apron I would have known I was in Heaven because it couldn’t have gotten better than that.
I semi passed out in my easy chair that evening with the dog and life was good. Well, maybe except for a little indigestion from overeating.

Let me out! Let me out!

I just ran across this old picture on my computer. It's my oldest son Marshall sitting in front of one of his all-time favorite toys: the toy box. He and his little brother were in his room one day playing when I noticed that the noise level appeared to be quite a bit louder and more desperate than normal. I trotted down the hallway to see if they were really going to kill each other this time to find one of them sitting on top of it while the other was locked inside. Figuring that the little one was being held hostage and was most likely terrified of being trapped, I yelled at Marshall to let him out. Just then the wife walks by and says they do that all the time. Evidently, the way she explained how the game was played was for one to climb inside, the other then closed the lid and sat on it. They would both sit there and holler for about 10 minutes then switch places and start over. By now all 3 of them were looking at me as if they couldn't believe I hadn't ever heard of this game before. Sensing their impatience to get back to their claustrophobic fun, I just shook my head and wandered out to my workshop to the sound of blood chilling screams that would have even raised the hair on the back of Boris Karloff's neck.

July 4th, 2010 in Destin Fl. for a mini vacation

Kathy asked me if I was going to write a journal of our trip to Destin, Fl. similar to what I did for our trip to Sanfrancisco. I’ll hit the highlights and points of interest (for me anyway), give my observations on the oil mess in the Gulf, and fill in the chinks with my usual catty remarks and sarcasm. It’s been a couple of weeks since we got back so I won’t attempt to put it all in order.
The ride down turned out to be really nice. Once we got off the interstate below Montgomery we turned off the beaten path and took the back roads all the way to Destin. It was all farm country on a two lane road. We passed thru several one-horse towns that looked as if they hadn’t changed in 50 years. Lucky for us that Kathy’s Toyota gets good gas mileage. We didn’t see a gas station for nearly the entire time. Some of the ones that we did see were shut down. If you weren’t a farmer in this part of the country, you were in big trouble. I don’t know what kind of work would be available other than farming. I even saw a sign on a trailer asking for work: “day laborer”, work needed. That guy must have been in serious money trouble. It started to rain on the way down and got worse the next day.
We were pelted with a steady downpour of rain the entire first day in Destin but we had a plan for it. Other than narrowly missing several drivers who appeared to be suicidal with their left turns immediately in front of us during the rain and testing the limits of our little buggy’s braking we spent the day shopping. We have been going to a lot of antique shops lately. I look for old woodworking planes and try not to buy tea pots and she looks for everything. I guess it’s a sign of getting slightly older when you see items you really don’t consider junk, just stuff you had 30-40 years or so ago and there is no way they could be considered antique. So we hit several antique stores and gathered a little information about an outdoor flea market that was upcoming on the weekend. Lunch found us nearly the only people occupying an out of the way Asian restaurant. I think it was Japanese and Chinese together. She had sushi and I had tofu. It was all excellent as I knew it would be, judging from my observations on the general hygiene of the place and tacky decorations on the walls. The best Chinese restaurants are to be found in the seedier parts of town and have to be really old and established before the food gets that down home flavor and they can be trusted. We also decided that sushi is the number one choice amongst the residents in that area because it was everywhere we went. I think we ate sushi nearly every day. At the little restaurant I bought her a pair of woven flip flops with some fancy needlework on them. She only has about 200 pairs of shoes in inventory and was worried that she was going to run out. I enjoy buying things for her and since they were smaller than a breadbox, watching her face light up is well worth the money.
Try as I might, I couldn’t find what I wanted in any of the antique stores and try as she might, Kathy couldn’t find anything she didn’t want. I had to talk her out of several items including some that were so large they wouldn’t even fit on top of the car, much less inside it.
The sun came out the next day and we didn’t see more than 5 minutes of rain for the remainder of our trip. We ran right for the beach and expected to be the only ones there because the media reported that everyone cancelled their vacations due to the oil spill in the Gulf. I guess the ones that were there already didn’t know how to listen because the beach was pretty packed. Beach real estate is pretty scarce and what little is available is shared by way too many people. We were given directions to our designated beach access by the hotel folks and told to keep a pass on the dashboard for the guards at the checkpoint. I told you that the beach is getting harder and harder to access and the guards and turnpike are a sure sign that access is being controlled tightly. We had a square of sandy beach that was about the length of the back of a sister hotel to ours with warning signs to stay the heck out of “their” beach on either side of the hotel next door. “No sunbathing or loitering” I pondered this a moment and decided that walking was neither of the two and took my chances and immigrated to the adjacent beaches. As I walked from hotel to hotel, the beach was much less crowded than ours. Beyond the hotels it was empty except for the FEMA crews who were patrolling looking for tar and oil.
The wife eventually decided she wanted to go out into the water. It was very rough due to the hurricane that was heading into Texas. I warned her not to go in above her knees as I figured she would get dragged out to sea by the rip tides and/or strong waves. She went out about 3’, lost her balance (and just about her bikini too), and was unable to get up. I was sitting there watching her flop around in the water wondering if she was ever going to be able to stand up again of if she would really get dragged out to sea when some guy walked over to her and fished her out. That was a close call.
Subsequent visits to the beach were pretty much the same except that one late afternoon on the July 4th weekend we were close to a bunch of college kids who were having way too much fun. Kathy stared and grinned at them the entire time. I figured that she wanted to go over there and hang out. If they would have so much as waved at her, she would probably still be down there with them. Maybe she was planning to conscript a few of the boys to rub suntan lotion on her. I wasn’t being too helpful in that dept. Probably would have been slightly more fun than sitting there listening to somebody bitch about how loud they were, I wish they would turn off that jungle music, when are they ever going to leave, just want some peace and quiet, etc. The kids ended their party by singing, “I’m proud to be an American” at the top of their drunken voices which ended with a round of applause by everybody within hearing distance. They stumbled off, leaving empty beer cans and beach chairs behind for others to clean up after them.
I did get to watch a pervert in action while he took a picture of a young girl in a bikini laying on the beach next to us. He walked past her in a straight line while his head turned around like it was caught in a tractor beam. Circling around behind her, he pulled out his cell phone then snapped the picture while pretending to make a call. He even held up the phone to his ear for a few seconds then walked off behind us. I don’t know if he got a shot of Kathy in her bikini or not since he walked behind me as well. I told her what happened and mentioned the possibility that he might have gotten her too and it freaked her out. Within minutes she knew that she was going to lose her nursing license and everyone from her work would recognize her on the website that this guy was going to put her picture on. She was laying on her belly so it would have had to been a shot of her behind. I had to ask her if she thought the people at work would recognize her rearend or not. She was sure that the pervert would have her on the internet in moments and we had to do something to stop it from happening. She wanted to shut down his website. I told her that it would be no problem as there couldn’t be more than a couple of websites with pictures of girls in bikinis on them. A little while later her ranting and general panic subsided.
She got a little oil on her suit at the beach and spend an hour back at the Hotel trying to get it out. I got a spot on my leg somehow. Other than that, there were a few chips of tar here and there but it wasn’t a big deal.
We ate a lot of seafood while there and paid a king’s ransom for it too. Lunch was nearly as expensive as supper. I paid $70 for a lunch of crab legs for her and grouper for me. We also got to wait for it for over an hour. As a matter of fact, the cost for a meal in the upscale places was even more horrible. I paid $100 for a couple of steaks and some drinks at a place called “Tommy Bahamas bar and grill”. We couldn’t get a table because more of those people who didn’t know about the oil crises were in there so they let us find a spot at the bar. Kathy wanted a Long Island Iced Tea so I got her one. Later I found out they were $11.25 each. She asked me for another so I got it and didn’t think too much about it until it was time to leave. She couldn’t finish her $35 steak so I told her to cut it up and we would take it home in a doggie bag. Watching her try to slice it up revealed that she might be impaired in some way. She was smearing that thing all over the plate and half of it was falling off onto the bar. I asked her if she was drunk but she assured me no problem, she was fine. We got out of there after having my wallet molested and I immediately confirmed my suspicion that she had one too many of those drinks. She was stumbling pretty bad and had bumped into me several times so I got her pointed in another direction and took her to the hotel. I was kind of thinking that the bartender sure did put a lot of alcohol in those drinks while I watched her make them and I also forgot that little miss muffet had trouble holding down even a half glass of wine without getting really silly. After the upscale fleecing, I went back to my usual lousy Chinese restaurants and found the food to be every bit as good, if not better, with pricing that even a cheapskate would smile at. Speaking of that, we were in Publix picking up some bagels and drinks and I also wanted to buy a small can of shaving cream. All they had were big cans which were more expensive than I was willing to shell out. I told Kathy there was no way I was going to pay $1.55 for a can of shaving cream when I knew I could get it at home for $.99. I told her I would just shave with soap and skip the shaving cream. About that time I thought I heard her muttering “cheapskate” under her breath. I turned around and asked her what that snarky comment was and she repeated it for me quite a bit louder. Anyway, I got to eat boiled shrimp that still had the heads on them at the Chinese place. Pretty cool. That and I had some of the hottest (spicy) chicken I had ever eaten. Those jalapeno peppers in there were enormous.
We found the flea market on Saturday morning but there was hardly anyone there. So we headed on down the highway to waste an hour or so in the hopes that more people would show up. Floridians aren’t much for getting up in the morning, that’s for sure. I even took Kathy to a yard sale to see if they were any different than the ones at home. After we got away from the tinsely, touristy part of Deston, it started to look more like the Florida I like. Local businesses, people, and the like. We didn’t see “Alvin’s Island”, the gift shop and junk emporium on every corner. No fancy outlet malls, shopping villages, or boutiques. The flea market turned out to be a lot of fun. They had a little bit of everything and it was obvious that nearly everyone there was a local. After lunch we started to head back to the hotel and got caught in a horrible traffic jam. It was the holiday weekend and I attributed it to tourists/vacationers but we later saw that there was a wicked wreck that slowed everything down. One car was on it’s roof and the other looked like it had been crushed in half. We found out the next day that there had been at least one death. I was bitching to Kathy about all of these tourists jamming everything up and that we were going to have to find another place to stay about the time we came upon the wreck. She didn’t care about the traffic and was simply happy to be there but indicated she was sick of all the complaining.
We looked around at the new trendy shopping villages and outlet malls but I hated every bit of it. There were signs in some of the clothing stores that they had exactly what the movie stars wore, the latest fashions, all priced accordingly. I didn’t find much that interested me. The hurricane that hit the area a few years ago, leveling it, ruined the entire town. Old Florida, with it’s beat up shell houses, old falling down restaurants and charm had been replaced with Hollywood wannabe designer outlets. One day I told her we would try and go inland a bit to find the old cracker Florida and we didn’t have to go too far. Another indoor flea market, some antique stores and my favorite; lousy Chinese restaurants, lifted my spirits.
At one antique store in the scary part of town, I found the holy grail of teapots; an English one that was made in Staffordshire, England. Exactly what I had been looking for and even on sale. I got it for around $16. In another one, I spied a pair of old Stanley woodworking planes laying on the floor halfway underneath some other things. I dragged them out and got down to some serious haggling with the owner. I got them both for $100. I didn’t need them but at that price I couldn’t resist. Those antique dealers are a pretty crafty bunch. The guy knew what they were worth. He told me that he asked someone he knew who was an expert and priced them on the high side for good measure. I told him my intention was to use them and not simply flip them for a profit. I think that’s why I got such a good deal.
On the way home we stopped at this tiny restaurant in the middle of nowhere. It had about 20 tables and was packed full. Everybody knew everybody. Our waitress was serving her Grandpa at the table next to us. The people waiting for a table were visiting with friends who were already seated. The food was incredible. We ate some real country cooking and the total was less than $20. During the meal Kathy had that interested smile on her face while she stared at the people across from us. When the waitress switched her plate and one of theirs, she saw her chance and jabbered with them for 15 minutes. I’ve got to get her out of the house more often.
I think I’m done with Destin. Next time we go to Florida I’m going to try and find a place that isn’t so developed. Navarre just might be the place; right next to the flea market. If I find somewhere fun, Kathy is likely to run off on me with a bunch of college kids or something.

Biscuit bodhisattva

Anybody who has known me for somewhat longer than 5 minutes knows that I like to cook. I have historically gone in for the strange and oriental pursuits and like to boast that I'm fairly good at it (I like to boast about anything I think I can get away with). It's been more than 15 years since the wife got me that hand hammered wok from the 30 minute infomercial we saw on TV and I'm still spending a large number of Sundays in the kitchen whipping up stir fry and dumplings for the family and occasional stray teenager. Any kid that shows up at my house becomes mine while they are here (usually with my son) and they will always be fed. I get a big kick out of sitting them down at the table and watching them eat. (I like to use them as guinea pigs to try out new things too). We once had a door-to-door salesman show up just as we were sitting down to eat a big Chinese feast. He was young and looked really hungry so I made him sit and eat with us and wouldn't talk business until we were all done. I didn't buy anything from him but he walked away with a full belly. So the other day it was getting close to suppertime and I was wondering what to fix. The idea of having supper at a cheap restaurant was looking good since I'm on vacation and there wasn't anyone here but me and the oldest son, Marsh. As I stood there in my pantry, waffling over the rather bleak selection of supper choices, in walks the other son and one of his friends. I had been hoping to catch him here for a few minutes since I always subcontract out all of my Christmas present wrapping to him and I had fixed his car this morning; so he owed me large, as far as I was concerned. I hit him up about the gifts I needed wrapped and he countered with the excuse that he couldn't because he had a friend over. Not to be outwitted, I immediately volunteered her as well and they were both conscripted into service as gift wrappers. There wasn't a press gang in the King's Navy that could have put those two to work quicker than me. She thought it was fun since she liked to wrap gifts anyway. I thought it was fun too since I wasn't going to have to do it. I like to buy gifts but I'll leave the wrapping for others. I loaded them up with all of my things and just for good measure I also gave them what the wife had left to wrap as well. "Being one of my kids" occasionally is a double edged sword in that you will do some chores.

My belly reminded me that I still hadn't solved the food problem yet and I quickly realized that I wasn't going to be able to bail out and eat somewhere else. I thought about take-out pizza but remembered that I was facing the jaws of 3 hungry kids plus myself and my wallet was already groaning from Christmas spending. No problem, I'll whip up a batch of spaghetti. Cheap, quick, easy. Big problem: no noodles. I swear I had two big boxes of spaghetti noodles and now they're gone. I looked around for other options and started to get a little nervous. Jeez, I needed to go grocery shopping. We were out of everything. All that was left was the chicken in the refrigerator that had been seasoned for the next day's supper. I was going to make Southern style pan-fried chicken. It was going to be a special meal for the wife. You see, all these years that I spent studying the mysteries of Chinese cooking had left a big void in my ability to cook traditional Southern foods. Recently I had been practicing but the results were not too good. I was hitting the biscuits pretty hard and had been interrogating the older women at work for their secrets to biscuit Nirvana. I would bake up a batch, try them, scrutinize them, then back to the drawing board for more questions and answers. I watched Alton Brown on the food network. I studied recipes for hours on the internet. I discussed protein content in the flour on biscuit forums. Some said it was the type of flour, others mentioned shortening instead of butter, perhaps it was my kneading technique. My boss at work even floored me with the statement that he just bought premade biscuits in the frozen food isle and baked those! Oh, the inhumanity of it all! Imagine it if you will, simply popping a few of those floured hockey pucks into the oven and calling them biscuits! I believe that is still a misdemeanor in some formerly Confederate states. I just can't go on about it. I summed up all of my choices and decided that the best thing to do, considering the circumstances, was to cook tomorrow's feast tonight. The wife would understand. She knows kids too and wouldn't want to see any of them starve to death if they missed one supper. (She also knew about my biscuits). So there it was laid out in front of me. I was going to go all-out, hog wild, and fix a traditional Southern supper. Pan-fried chicken, made from scratch biscuits, mac and cheese, and corn. Only logistical obstacle was that I needed to get that stuff cracking right now. I set to work like a wild man, using my years of experience as an Industrial Engineer performing stop watch time studies to prep and cook everything as efficiently as possible and with the least amount of effort.

You're most likely wondering why I didn't make mention of gravy, that most puritanical object of Southern affection. They say it flows in the veins of all the sons and daughters of the Confederacy. I must admit that gravy is my Achilles heel. I just don't get it. When I make my confession about this shortcoming, I usually get grins and suggestions. "Oh it's so easy". "All you gotta do is..." I listen with a sheepish grin and think back to the day that 3 foot high flames were blazing out of the frying pan the last time I attempted gravy. My insurance agent has written a clause in my homeowner's policy that I am not to be making any gravy in that house or my fire insurance is cancelled.

I think I had it all on the table in about 35 minutes. As I was racing around trying to get it all coordinated and ready, I nearly forgot about the biscuits and pulled them out just in time. Brown but not burned, I was happy. The kids didn't say much, they were too busy stuffing themselves. But I did hear one comment: "These biscuits are so good, just like my Grandma makes". There you have it, the ultimate compliment, the purple heart of cooking, an Oscar: "just like Grandma's".

Tea for one

Tea for one

Tea is the second most popular drink in the world (water is first). Nothing to it; simply drop a few tea leaves into a pot, add hot water and enjoy. Or so it would seem. Actually, tea is sort of a Zen-like endeavour that can best be described as a journey with no end. The proper marriage of two simple ingredients has endless variations. Water is the first ingredient and thankfully the only variation is the temperature. The freaks will argue that the water must come from a running stream and cannot be bottled or (God fobid) come from a tap. I believe the most over-the-top example of water collection is the tea water that was gathered for an empress in China from the dew of plum blossoms in the mountains every morning (it's true). For the moment, I'll just get my water out of the tap, thank you very much. I can't taste the chlorine in it thanks to my filter. Maybe not good enough for the Empress of China but good enough for me. Tea water temp. can (and should) vary from boiled to just slightly warmer than tepid. It all depends on the next ingredient, the tea itself. The same tea will taste vastly different depending on the temperature of the water it is steeped in. I opened a package of "Sencha", a Japanese green tea and became a little worried when I saw it. The leaves were tiny. It smelled different that the other teas I had been drinking. When I tried it, I hated it. Tasted awful. Besides being tenacious, I am pretty cheap, so I wasn't about to throw it away or give up on it. Pretty good combination for a tea drinker. So I started experimenting with this stuff. The first thing I did was to heat the water less. In order to heat water anything less than boiling requires careful observation of the water as it heats in the kettle. I think that some kettles act different than others. I've got a cast iron kettle and it acts differently than my old tin one. Anyway; I had read in "The Tao of Tea", one of the great Tea classics, that tea water was to be heated to various degrees that were described by the size of the bubbles in the kettle. "When the bubbles are the size of shrimps eyes" is the temp. for white teas. "Bubbles the size of crab's eyes" is the setting for green teas. I think that "bubbles the size of fish eyes' is the setting for oolong and black teas but since I don't drink much of these, I don't pay attention to that one. Anybody out there ever seen a shrimp's eye? Or a crab's eye for that matter? Not lately, I'm sure. Well, it's a fun thing for me to tell others about anyway. Gives the whole experience a little bit of mystery to it. So, as I watched my water in the kettle for a crab's eye sighting, I noticed that the size of the bubbles does indeed change depending on the water temperature. Oh, I could get all technological on it and stick a digital thermometer in the water to indicate the ideal temperature but sometimes I prefer the old ways. Besides, who wants to stand there with a probe in their hand when all they have to do is look for the crab's eyes right? I started to pull the kettle off the stove earlier and earlier, noticing the behaviour of the bubbles and the water itself until I got the hang of this fish eye stuff. There is one other sign, which is most difficult and elusive to look for and that is "at the first breath of the water", meaning when you see just a faint wisp of steam from the pot. I don't usually catch that one. I believe it has more to do with the ambient temperature in the room anyway. So, as I progressed to catching crab's eyes, to shrimp's eyes, I noticed that the tea was starting to taste a little better. Tea should feel "silky" on your tongue. You will know what I mean if you get the temperature low enough. When everything comes together, the taste difference is dramatic. I've noticed that some teas are actually sweet, others have a wonderful woody taste, and others simply are hard to describe in words but they do taste good. It's possible to compare tea tasting in the same light as wine tasting. I had a tea in one of Sanfrancisco's Chinatown tea shops that was so good it didn't even taste like tea. It was fantastic. It was also $700/lb. yikes.

So I've determined that water temperature plays a big part in the preparation of tea. I think that this is of primary importance, the other variables are of lesser concern but merit discussion anyway. The amount of tea placed in the pot also determines taste but this runs in conjunction with the steeping time. Add too much tea and you better decrease the steeping time. Too little and let it sit longer. It's all about balance. I believe that the taste of the tea will be different depending on how much is in the pot. Take two pots of tea, side by side, one with too much tea and the other with not quite so much. Let them both steep, one for a little while longer than the other (the one with the lesser amount of tea in it) and they won't taste at all the same. I prefer to fix a pot of tea with the intention of only using the leaves once. Some like to throw the leaves in there and pour the water over them mulitple times, letting the tea steep longer after each pour.

So what's left? Why, the tea of course! Every tea has it's own method of preparation. The water temp/steeping time/quantity of tea leaves is different for each one. It took me nearly the entire jar of that Japanese Sencha tea to figure out how to correctly make it (at least to where I liked the taste). I went from hating it at the beginning, to loving it in the end. It really was wonderful stuff and taught me tea preparation. I need to dig around in my tea stash and see if there's another bag of that stuff hidden in there.

Man's best friend

So there I was, sitting in my easy chair, chatting with cupcake, quietly discussing our upcoming date on Friday. Scooter was on the couch sleeping and, after a fashion, woke up to jump in my lap for his daily visit and back massage . He had that friendly look in his eyes, as dog's do when everyone is home and they insist on being the center of attention. He usually won't come to me unless I call him so I was rather enjoying his uninvited company. I knew all he really wanted was his back scratched but I didn't mind being used. Petting a dog is very therapeutic and tends to make me forget my worries easily. 30 seconds into our little nightly visit and Scooter pukes all over my lap! K A T H Y!!! GET THIS LITTLE BLANKETY FRICKIN" SOB OUT OF HERE BEFORE I DROP KICK HIM INTO THE NEXT COUNTY!!!!! I guess we'll try it again tomorrow night.

Sanfrancisco day 7

Fisherman’s wharf

Our last full day in Sanfrancisco and all we had left to do was to take a tour of the bay. I was a little worried that we had run out of things to do. The guide book that I bought said to avoid the wharf because it was too touristy and did not capture the real feel of the city. At the end of the day I was in disagreement with the tour book about the wharf. It turned out that we had all kinds of things to do and see. We started out on the tour boat. It was a little hokey; what with our “tour guide” being Captain Nemo and some other silly characters. It was informative though, and the cruise around the bay was very nice. If I had another day I think we would have sailed across the bay to the tiny town of Salsilito. It was recommended by Captain Nemo as a fun place to spend the day shopping and looking around. We saw Alcatraz island. Pretty creepy even from just the boat. Here again, the tour book said it wasn’t worth going to but I think I would have liked to walked around on it anyway. We got to sail right underneath the golden gate bridge, then turned around and headed back. I think the whole tour was something less than 2 hours. I’ve left a few pics here of sights from the boat and one of Kathy in her scarf. She now looked just like the rest of the local Sanfrancisco hens. A good many of them were wearing scarfs. I bought that one for her in Chinatown, of course.

Back from the tour boat we walked along the waterfront and took in all the sights. The famous walruses on Pier 39 were there. I wasn’t impressed. I had more fun looking at all of the boats along the way. There were quite a few fishing boats there of all sizes and shapes. They were in varying degrees of seaworthiness too. A couple looked like they were about to sink right there at the pier. We came upon the very last of the Liberty ships from WWII that was on display. We didn’t go on it. There was a submarine from WWII there as well. I’ve been on a couple of these before so we didn’t take the tour. We did tour several boats that were moored along another pier though. There was a very large sailboat named the Balclutha that we spent a couple of hours on. Very neat ship. It was used to haul timber to Australia then used to haul salmon from Alaska. It was huge. There was also a large steam powered tugboat named Hercules that we walked thru. The tours were fun.

For lunch we stopped at a large bar with very lousy service but pretty good food. Then it was more sight seeing. There were all kinds of shops and street vendors selling mostly jewelry and portrait painting. The guide book said that the food along the waterfront was way overpriced. I disagreed again. I felt like it was way overpriced in the whole city. We never did get a bargain on any food.

At the opposite end of the wharf is what is known as the Ferry building. We looked around in it for awhile and what do you know, there was a tea shop there. Imperial Tea Court. (Okay, I knew about it already but I wasn’t letting on). We had tea in what I figured was the closest thing to an authentic Chinese tea house as could be had on the North American continent. The tea was served in gaiwans, which is a Chinese cup with a lid and a saucer, not the tea pot most are accustomed to. We enjoyed it as best we could but considering we were a little hot from the long walk, it would have been better to have something cold instead of hot tea. Oh well, I had to do everything and time was really running out on us. I picked up a tea decanter while we were there and actually restrained myself from buying any more tea. I had already shelled out over $150 for about ½ pound of the stuff in Chinatown a few days earlier.

The street car ride back to the hotel was interesting. We were packed in that thing like sardines. This was the same line that had passed us a day or two ago and left us to hoof it back thru North Beach.

We did some shopping and looking around in a huge mall when we got back to Union square. The mall must have had 10 floors. I gave up and gave out after about 5. We saw so much that we just couldn’t take it anymore. We even ran into another tea shop. It was about that time that I had had all I could take. A slick talking salesgirl tried to sell us some hand lotion or something that was supposed to be the fountain of youth but we managed to get out of there without buying any. She wasted about 45 minutes of our time too. I wasn’t too happy about that but she wouldn’t let us go and Kathy isn’t the type to just walk away like me. There was a leather shop that we wandered into that was having a fashion show. We were invited to stay for it and were even offered champaigne but when I saw the prices on that stuff, we beat a trail out of there. Way out of my price range. The girl that spoke to us looked like a plastic surgeon’s worst nightmare. She had every plastic surgery operation you could think of and they all turned out the same: terrible. She didn’t even look human but at least she was very friendly to us. This place had a couple of young girls at the entrance standing around looking pretty with next to nothing on too. The things they will do to separate you from your money. Unbelievable.

That evening finished our adventure. The next morning we packed and headed over to the bagel shop for breakfast and a packed lunch then it was time to wag all of those suitcases around until we got to the airport. I have never been so happy to be able to dump those things off. I humped them from the hotel to the train thru downtown Union Square, then thru the airport terminal to the tram, and finally to the ticket counter at the airline. I couldn’t believe that we managed to fit all of the junk we had bought into those suitcases. It’s a shame that you have to bring your own food onto the plane but air travel just isn’t the experience it used to be. It’s horrible and I doubt it will ever get any better.

Well, seven fun days of shopping and sight seeing complete! Our 25^th wedding anniversary gift to each other was little more than a dream fantasy two years ago when we first started talking about it and I’m glad that we saw it thru. We started planning for this about 9 or 10 months prior to leaving. I also never thought that we would actually go. When it was getting close to time to be making reservations I threw out the idea of Plan B to Florida instead but Kathy really wanted Sanfrancisco. A couple of days after getting back, I asked her if she would like to do it again and she said “Hell no!” I think I might have walked her too much. She was a trooper though, never complained a bit the entire time, even when I screwed up the streetcar schedule a few times.

Sanfrancisco day 6

The Sanfrancisco Zoo and the Hang Ah tea room.

Day 6 of our adventure saw us heading to the zoo. I had high hopes for it since SF is such a large city and the bigger cities usually have the better zoos. Well, it turned out to be less than stellar. It wasn’t really much better than any other zoo I had ever been to. I’ll post a few pictures just for fun anyway. On the way there, I started to get a little cocky with the transit system and nearly had us going in the opposite direction that we should have gone. Lucky for me, we were saved by yet another local resident who pointed us in the right direction. I just love those locals. They have got to be the friendliest people on the planet. The zoo is a long ride from where we were staying so we got to see quite a few sites on the way to it. Mostly, it was “how the other half lived”. We went thru a few areas that looked pretty grim. I was glad the train didn’t stop at any of the scary places.

As I said, there isn’t much to report about the zoo. The pictures tell the story well enough. When we got back to our room I wanted to take another crack at Chinatown and specifically, the Hang Ah tea room. I told Kathy I wanted to head over there to get some dim sum since the last time we were there all we had was tea. While there, another local mentioned to us that the Hang ah had the very best dim sum in all of Chinatown. A pretty big boast since there had to be at least 500 Chinese restaurants in the city but I had started to put a lot of trust in the locals and if he said it was the best, then that was good enough for me. We headed out with my assurance that we wouldn’t have to do a lot of walking since we were both tired from hoofing it around all day at the zoo. My perceived familiarality of the MUNI transit system was faulty again. The street I wanted to go up didn’t have the street car line I thought it did so I told her we would just have to walk a little bit to the next bus stop. Trouble was there wasn’t a next bus stop. We got to within eyesight of the Chinatown gate and I said we might just as well walk it in. The road was steep and we had already gone many blocks and Kathy was winded. Then something else hit me. Just where had I seen this place? I wasn’t sure. We walked around while I tried to find a landmark to get my bearings but it wasn’t happening. Further and further and no dim sum. It was very late on Sunday afternoon and I was getting worried that they would shut Chinatown down on us before we had a chance to eat. I was getting pretty worried about Kathy so I resorted to leaving her in one spot where she could rest while I ran up ahead and scouted around for our destination. I eventually found it and dragged her up one last steep hill before we got to the alley where it was located. In we went, panting and red-faced, for the prize at the end of the line.

The Hang Ah isn’t known for its décor. Inside it is all plastic dinnerware and colors. The white walls are trimmed in green and orange. By green and orange I mean bright, plastic green and bright, plastic orange. It is tiny. The dining room couldn’t have been much bigger than two typical bedrooms. We got the same waitress as last time and she was really happy to see us. A Chinese girl (imagine that in Chinatown), and had come over from China to get work. She was from Guangdong, I think. We chatted with her the entire time we were there. She had no concept of America from a geographical standpoint. She didn’t know where Alabama was and I don’t believe she had ever looked at an atlas of the country. I guess I am just more interested in geography than the average bear. I encountered the same thing with a guy I met on the wine tour who was from South Africa. He didn’t know anything geographic about the United States. He didn’t even know where Florida was and this guy was studying to get his PHD. Heck, at least a hick like me knows where Cape Town is.

Dim sum at the Hang Ah is a little different that what is considered traditional. You order what you want, and then they bring it to you instead of wheeling it up on a cart and tossing it out at you. Everything we tried was fantastic. The rabbit shaped dumplings were the best. They looked just like little bunnies right down to the ears and tiny eyes. Almost too good to eat. I had read that this place was the first dim sum house in Chinatown and had been in existence since the 20’s, I think. There were even pictures of Chinatown beauty pageants from years ago hung on the walls. I was disappointed in the tea. It was served in that all too familiar, stainless steel pot that is the epitome of Chinese restaurant tea. I have eaten in hundreds of Chinese places, from crummy, run-down hole in the walls, to really fancy ones and except for one place, they all have that same sad looking disgrace of a tea pot. Lucky for me that my favorite place back home serves me tea on a nice ceramic one like God and Buddha intended. We stuffed ourselves then said goodbye to the waitress. If I ever get back to Sanfrancisco, I believe this place will be my first stop.

For the ride home, we caught what appeared to be the last street car out of Chinatown. It was getting late and they were starting to roll up the sidewalks. I finally got my directions right and found the original car line I had wanted to use so the walk was quite short. It was barely 6:30 in the evening and Chinatown was getting very quite and dark. Kind of fitting to see it this way since we would not be coming back for the rest of our stay.

Sanfrancisco day 5

Japantown

Day 5 of our big vacation and today was destination Japantown. We headed out on the MUNI transit system and got off waaaay too soon. I must have misfigured our stop off point and we had to walk for a while to get there. This area was very nice. I found out later that Japantown is bordered by Pacific Heights which is one of the most upscale areas in Sanfrancisco. We hiked on in and I was taken back a bit with the area. It was pretty demure compared to Chinatown with all it’s glitz and tinsel. There were no throngs of tourists. No mobs of Japanese people going to the market to get the best deal on fish. It was pretty quiet. We poked around in a few places and didn’t see much until we came to the Soko hardware store. Oh my, this was my kind of place. They had tons of woodworking tools and many of them were Japanese tools. I picked over everything 3 times before going downstairs and getting overwhelmed all over again with all of the kitchen wares they had for sale. Nothing touristy about this place. They just had a lot of Japanese stuff. We looked around and I told Kathy we would come back to pick up some goodies I had my eye on.

We nosed around a little more, into a couple of small shops and a grocery store but we were mainly looking for the Japanese mall. When we found it, it wasn’t like what you would expect from a mall. There was not really any parking and it looked like it was tiny. Once we got inside, we found out that it was fairly good sized. Every store in this place was Japanese, right down to the Japanese dollar store. That place was hilarious. We looked thru furniture stores, antique stores, even a drug store. I started to blow off the drugstore as a waste of time but the more I looked, the more interested I became. There were literally tons of items in there for sale that you would never get in any regular drug store. The antiques were amazing, and the prices matched. I didn’t even know what half of that stuff was but it was expensive. In the tour guide I had bought there was a couple of sentences about a restaurant in Japantown that was one of the most authentic ones in all of Sanfrancisco. I didn’t have much faith that we would find it but we ran right into it. It was in the mall and had to be the smallest restaurant I have ever seen. It was more like a café and only had about a dozen tables, half of which were out in the walk area of the mall. I showed the small write-up about the place to the waitress and she took it back to the kitchen for them to see it as well. I asked her to have them sign my book but they refused, stating that they couldn’t duplicate the owner’s signature. I felt bad about that but I guess it was some sort of Japanese thing. While we were there an older gentleman struck up a conversation with us (the typical friendly as heck Sanfranciscan). He asked us why we were there and we told him we were celebrating our 25^th wedding anniversary. He was impressed and said that it was unusual to find anyone that had been married for that long anymore. He said that he and his husband had been married for 20 years themselves and …………….????? (insert loud record needle scratching across the entire album here). Well, we both smiled kind of sheepishly and said that was “great” that they had been together for that long and prayed there would be no more details on the “marriage”. He caught us totally off guard because he just talked and acted so normal. His “husband” came prancing over a while later and we knew who wore the pants in the family at that point. He had been haggling for a piece of expensive jewelry next door and was a giddy as a little school girl about it. It was only going to cost $1,000 and he had been working on the owner (a friend of his) for quite a while to get it to that price. The older guy said that he had all of his money tied up in jewelry since he was afraid to invest in anything else. Evidentally, the guy was quite wealthy. I’d be wealthy too if I never had any kids. Anyway, the conversation was pleasant and entertaining, especially watching the faggy one skip back and forth from the jewelry store. He wasn’t the least bit interested in eating his lunch and left his “husband” to fend for himself. Oh well. We left the little café, after having completely enjoyed our wonderful lunch, and spent a couple more hours exploring the mall. I stuck my head in a sushi restaurant where the food goes around a huge table in little boats. The smell nearly knocked me over but I would have tried it anyway. That mall turned out to be bigger than I could guess and we took in every bit of it. There were many Japanese restaurants. If I ever go back to Sanfrancisco, I just might stay in Japantown. It was really neat. Out of the mall and back to Soko hardware for my goodies. I bought two Japanese chisels and a Japanese saw. I also bought my souvinear tea pot. It was so different that I couldn’t resist. I had looked at easily over 500 tea pots and bought one from a hardware store, of all places. This one was unusual because of it’s texture and color. I like the shape too. Kind of small and really rough on the outside.

The guy we were talking to at the café told us to head over a few streets to Filmore because the shopping was supposed to be real good. We went the opposite of what I think he really suggested and ended up in a not so nice part of town. It felt like we were in the “hood” and we weren’t liking it so we went back. My plans to take a certain MUNI bus line were foiled when I found out that the street only went one way. I would have to find another route back. No matter, there was a little park just up the road that I wanted to see. The traveler’s guide said it was nice even though the guy at the restaurant said it wasn’t worth looking at and there wasn’t anything up there.

The walk up the street started out nicely. Lots of neat little stores to window shop in. Problem was, the street was getting steeper, and steeper, and even steeper. The farther we walked, the more strenuous it became. I knew where the park was, it just seemed to be more out of reach than I had anticipated. I was getting a little worried about my sidekick too. She was trucking along, not complaining a bit, but I knew she was running out of gas. We had to stop to rest many times before we got to this mountain park and I do believe the oxygen up there was a little thinner than down in Japantown. When the edge of the park was in sight, the hill was really steep, so much that I was a little concerned about our chances of making it. We troopered on like a couple of Mt. Everest sherpas and finally made our base camp at the edge of the park. Along the way we stopped and chatted with another local while we caught our breath. Friendly as always, she was pleasant and well spoken. Originally from Pennsylvania and quite happy to have that state in her rear view mirror to boot. At the park entrance, the steps were nearly straight up and looked to be about 2 stories high. This was beginning to get to be more trouble than it was worth but I was going all the way regardless. We trogged up the stairs and scaled our way to what I initially thought was the summit of this place. Turns out there was another area that was even higher but first we had a nice rest on a park bench.

In front of the park benches was a children’s playground. There was a small birthday party being held for a little girl. She looked to be about 5 or 6 years old, in a pretty dress that could have been a ball room gown, barefoot, with long blonde hair that was tangled from the wind. There were 4 or 5 of them in all, running around and laughing, taking a bite of cake that their mother was holding for them when they got the notion, then racing off for more fun. I watched them while I was still panting from our hiking ordeal, figuring that the steep streets didn’t even affect the locals, and amazed that these little kids had so much energy and joy. The whole scene didn’t look right to me. It was windy, a little cold, and the air was wet with a slight fog. Looking around it was obvious that we were on one of the highest points in the city. The view of Sanfrancisco bay was ours at a glance. And right in the middle of it there were these little munchkins, racing around barefoot in their fancy dresses, as the birthday party drew to a close. There was some cake left and I was wondering if they would offer any to us. We weren’t too close to the party but I wanted some cake and some more Sanfranciscan conversation. The little ones were rounded up while a couple of parents exchanged contact information. Everyone was thin. I couldn’t imagine being overweight in this part of town. In the city a car is not really necessary but even with a great public transportation system, there is going to be a vast amount of walking. The party faded off and we began to notice another curiosity in the park; there were several really nice looking dogs being walked by their owners. It was a dog show. Petigreed and neatly groomed, we watched all manner of fancy pets paraded thru the area. I wanted to make the final assault on this mountain park in order to reach the highest point, so after a 30 minute rest we continued on. It wasn’t too bad to the top. There was a small forest up there with some huge trees. We walked around and admired the view, a little curious about the young couple snuggled together on the ground all wrapped up in a blanket in a never ending embrace. After a while we decided to head out of the park but we kept hearing very funny noises from the trees. They sounded like monkeys, or at least something we had never heard before. After several minutes of puzzling, the mystery was solved when a dozen birds flew out of the trees. They were some sort of parrot or cockatiel that was native to the area, told to us by a lady we ran into down the path. There was a large hawk way up high in a tree that would just sit there and never fly off. The other birds were not happy with the situation and were squalking loudly. The lady told us that the hawk was part of a mated pair that had a nest and tried to raise babies. The babies died and one of the hawks flew away. The other one had been sitting in the very top of a tree, preening itself for days without flying. She was worried that it wasn’t eating and was going to die. She had been watching the hawks for a long time. We chatted with this lady for over 30 minutes before finally leaving the park. It was a steep downhill walk but certainly was easier than it was going up. My plan was to head to the waterfront and maybe check out the Ferry building before it got too late. We walked several blocks and admired the architecture along the way. There were some large, spectacular houses in this area. Halfway down the mountain we spotted a cable car and jumped on and rode it all the way to the end of the line. From there we looked around the waterfront and Ferry building a little and decided to get home since it was getting late. I was getting pretty cocky with the street car system by now so we headed to a stop and waited for one to pick us up. About the time we saw one coming, it was already passing us by! The stupid driver even waved at us. I couldn’t believe it. That line would have dropped us right off next to the hotel and here we were, stranded. I thought that maybe it only stopped at that place at certain times of the day so it was time to start hoofing it back. That was going to be quite a bit of hoofing too. We walked (uphill again) for several blocks to try and find another street car line that would take us home. I had a general idea of where we were but didn’t realize it was that far to the hotel. Before we knew it, we were right in the middle of the red light district. Hoochie coochie bars and adult night clubs everywhere. By shear luck, we also ran right into a restaurant that was supposed to have really good Italian food. It was called “A Tu Tu Qua”. The wine country tour guide had told us about this place a couple of days before. We went in and had supper. Two appetizers, a small pizza, and two glasses of wine for $70. Jeez. I felt like my wallet had been molested. Anyway, the food was very good and it was unique. The pizza didn’t even have sauce on it. I made a new plan for our trip back to the hotel and it looked like it was going to take us thru Chinatown again. I realized that we had landed in North Beach which borders Chinatown on the North side. Just outside the restaurant was an all Chinese band. They were playing Chinese instruments that had that funny kazoo/whiny sound. The band was pretty large with about 12 people in all. They weren’t half bad and drew a pretty decent crowd. Kathy got right up next to them and admired their weird looking instruments. Some of them only had 1 or 2 strings. A little farther along Chinatown and we managed to catch a street car back home. This was by far our most adventurous day and was my favorite. We slept good that night since I guessed we must have walked several miles in all that day.