Hype

On the television, there is a dorky news girl with a rain coat, standing at the beach, breathlessly carrying on about the impending doom of 'Tropical Storm Fay'. The unfortunate thing is that so many people have fallen for the hype. Schools are closed, tolls have been suspended on the turnpike, and people have descended on the Home Depot and grocery stores to stock up on supplies for the coming cataclysm. Meanwhile the reality of it is, we have a gentle rain, with occasional heavy rain, and a slight breeze of nine miles per hour, and this is the worst it is going to get. I will never understand why people buy into hyperbole designed to get you to do things that otherwise make no sense. It is no wonder these news shows are all sponsored by Home Depot and Publix grocery stores. They make a killing during storm threats, and want the news shows to keep up the good work.

Mark is one of those people who can be swayed by someone on television telling him that something is so wonderful he must try it. Every Saturday morning, Mark watches all the cooking shows on the local PBS station. The chefs on these shows are like superstars to Mark, and whenever we travel, if we are in the home town of one of them, we have to eat at their signature restaurant. In Savannah we tried to get into Paula Deans restaurant, but the four hour wait was way beyond my tolerance.

Last week in Chicago, after three previous attempts failed, we finally got into Rick Bayless' Frontera Grill. If you are not familiar with Rick Bayless, he does a show about gourmet Mexican cooking on PBS, and he makes refried beans look like caviar. At least it looks that way on television. The reality is different. After lining up in front of the restaurant like cattle, you are herded into the Frontera Bar where you get to spend ten dollars on a margarita. When we finally got seated to eat, I ordered the 'Enchiladas de Mole Poblano'. What I got, was an expensive, better presented version of the same crap that I can get for a fifth of the price at our favorite Mexican/Cuban restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. Basically it was beans, rice, plantains, and beef. Marks dinner wasn't much better. He got the brisket, and to demonstrate just how common tasting it was, Mark reproduced it at home, only better.

I'm glad I don't get swayed by hype and TV hucksters, but just to be sure, I am on my way out now to get a case of batteries and twenty gallons of water for the coming storm.

Remote Control

I can't stand that hillbilly shrink, Dr. Phil. Just the sound of his voice makes me want to puke.

Today Mark went on a drawer cleaning binge. It involved going through all the drawers and finding my 'fat' clothes, then separating them from my 'even fatter' clothes. The fat clothes would then be put into 'Space Bags' and stored away, while the even fatter clothes would be returned to my drawers for me to grow into. At some point during this process the television remote, that had been left on the bed, disappeared. It wasn't until I inquired as to why Dr. Phil was on the television, and not something more pleasant, like nails scratching on a blackboard, that Mark realized the remote was missing.

There are times that evoke terror, but none so horrible as losing the remote while Dr. Phil is on. After looking all around the bed, Mark figured that it had been packed up with my fat clothes, and so he pulled every vacuum packed bundle apart to no avail. Another possibility was that maybe I had scooped it up with the pile of socks with the limp elastic, and thrown it into the garbage. So there I was, like a homeless guy, swatting flies and digging through the garbage out back. It probably would have been better if I had put the old socks in a garbage bag, then I wouldn't have had to dig so deeply into the smelly trash. As it happened, there was no remote in the garbage either.

At this point you are probably asking, "Why don't you just reach over and turn the channel manually?", and the answer is that I am stubborn. I will not give in when I know that I can point the remote from across the room and silence Dr. Phil. I just need the damn remote, damn it. Luckily we have a large collection of remotes, so for thirty minutes I searched, swapping batteries, and entering codes until I finally found one that would work. I finally got to zap Dr. Phil, just as the closing credits were rolling.

Photo Friday

O'Hare Airport, Monday August 11, 2008, 4:15 PM

Trail of Tears

In 1832 the U.S. Government tried to remove the Seminole Indians from the Florida Territory as they had done to the Choctaw Indians the year before in the infamous 'Trail of Tears' march west.

My plan to use only public transportation while in Chicago did mostly work. That is, it worked when I planned everything out. When it didn't work, was when Mark decided to do something on the spur of the moment. Now, there is nothing wrong with being spontaneous, but if you don't know where you are going or you don't know how to get there, it can be a problem. It usually starts with Mark saying something like, "I want to go to that cute little store I saw on State Street.". The problem is that he didn't see it on State Street, and I know it isn't on State Street. It is in the opposite direction, yet he insists that we must walk just those two blocks so he can shop at the non-existent store.

Many times I have explained to Mark that I have fragile feet. If he doesn't help me conserve my feet, when he really wants me to walk somewhere important, they will be worn out. On Sunday, we walked a mile to breakfast and back. Then we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, by bus, and walked around there. So far I was fine, but I knew my limit was not far off. From Lincoln Park we walked to Armitage and Halsted, where we had an early dinner. It was after dinner that I decided we needed wine and snacks for my sisters, who were visiting us at our hotel later. I was happy with Seven-Eleven snacks and wine, after all I was standing right in front of the store. But no, not Mr. Gourmet. No, Mark needed to go upscale and he knew just where to go. We would go to the most pretentious grocery store chain in America, Whole Foods. "It was just around the corner."

Except that it wasn't just around the corner, and after a while pain started to fill my shoes. It didn't matter, the death march plodded on and on, with Mark promising, "It's just in the next block.". After a mile of walking it became obvious that Mark didn't know exactly where it was, and I quickly descended into a hateful wrath. I started berating Mark for not letting me get Seven-Eleven wine, for not letting me get a couple of bags of Cheetos and taking a cab back to the hotel. It was somewhere between Halsted and a blur in the distance, which Mark insisted was the store, that I realized what was happening. Mark's grandmother was a Seminole Indian, and she was obviously channeling though Mark. I was being punished for the sins of our European ancestors, and the trail of tears.

Chicago Vacation

We are back from our annual trek to Chicago, and the trip, for the most part, was great. Good weather, some good food, and a lot of quality time with my family. But you don't want to hear about the good stuff. You want to hear about me falling into a hole in the sidewalk or me getting screwed up at the airport. Very well.

When I first started traveling via airplane in the 1970's, air travel was good. You got a hot meal in flight, the seats were of sufficient width to hold your ass with room to spare, the rest of the passengers were civil, and they were not dressed like they just came from picking through a trash dumpster. these days there is not much difference between the airplane and the subway from O'Hare. From the first moment we checked in at the curb in Fort Lauderdale, until we left the gate in Chicago, the employees of the airline we had chosen were surly and acted as if we were an intrusion on their free time, and believe me they had a lot of free time. Since the airline was now charging two dollars for water and coffee, and seven dollars for a beer, not one passenger requested a drink thus allowing the flight attendants time to sit up front and have their own coffee klatch.Our airline, (who, to protect myself from a lawsuit I will not name, other than to say it flies in the US and the planes go up in the AIR) has decided to start charging for all baggage checked. The result is that you have people trying to schlep on to the plane the largest carry-on bag possible, plus a shopping bag full of crap, and for the ladies, a purse the size of a steamer trunk. I have always requested an aisle seat, but I am reconsidering that, after being slammed in the head twenty times by women's purses. Flying has gone from being a somewhat pleasant experience, to something more akin to going to the dentist for a root canal. From the over priced airport food to being treated like cattle, flying has become a horrible way to travel. Unfortunately it is the only way I can get to Chicago for my annual trip. I can't drive, and trains in the U.S. are a joke. One thing I know is that I can rectify one of the problems I have with flying. I can make the seats larger just by eating less.

Anniversary Day

Hooray!! It has been exactly one year since I started writing these stories. It started out as a way to relate my vacation stories from our trip to Georgia, and went on from there. I don't know if anyone finds these stories interesting at all. Maybe you find them kind of boring. What I do know is that I find it is a great way to waste a hour or so each day, while embarrassing some of my brothers and sisters. For most of the last year, Mark had not read any of my little stories. It was when one too many people came up to him and mentioned something about his cooking, or driving, or shopping, that he decided to start seeing what it was I was writing. Since then, I have had to tone down my reports of Marks driving and shopping. Rats!!

I have gone through all the easily remembered stories of my youth that are fit to print, and many times I walk around the house wondering what the hell is left to write about. Then something pops into my head, or something stupid happens around here, and boom, I have a story.

I am taking a week off to go to Chicago, and I am sure I'll return with a few stories. In the meantime I would love it if everyone would take the time to leave a comment, as a review of my stories. Do you love them? Do you hate them (why would you even click on my blog if you did)? Do you just visit this site out of courtesy? Please, just give me a little feedback. For the next week it will be all 'Photo Friday's', even if it's not Friday. See you next week.

Alan

Photo Friday

It was exactly one year ago that Mark and I went to Savannah, Georgia. Even though we live in the deepest of the U.S. South, we don't have any of that southern ambiance. In fact we live so far south, that we came out the other end and it is more like New Jersey. Anyway, in an effort to make it seem more like the old south, like 'Gone With the Wind', Mark and I snatched some Spanish Moss off of somebody's oak tree up in Savannah. Surprisingly it is flourishing, and we now have that old southern charm right here in lovely Wilton Manors.