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Order Up.

It’s a little embarrassing that I’ve called in so many to-go orders at the same restaurant there are people on the staff there who recognize me when they hear me. On the other hand it’s good to know that it’s a nice enough place to work that there’s not a lot of turnover. One summer I worked at a now defunct Shoney’s for just under three months and I outlasted at least half a dozen other people, including one manager.

Also I like picking up to-go orders. Every experience is slightly different. A lot of places now have a special section where you can park and even text your spot number to the restaurant and someone will bring it right out to you. I prefer to go in, especially now that we’re into winter and most of the staff wear short sleeves. I’m not going to make someone come out in the cold just to hand me some sushi. Most of the same places that have a special parking section also have a small alcove next to the kitchen. Sometimes someone else will be there and we’ll chat a bit. One night a guy who was also waiting asked me, “Is the food good here?” He worked for a delivery service and was picking up someone else’s order and thought he might get something for himself.

The delivery service mishaps and misses I’ve seen are also why I pick up my own to-go orders. One night while I was waiting for my burritos three different drivers came in and asked for an order that had been picked up by someone else twenty minutes earlier.

The other night I picked up a to-go order as a break from holiday leftovers. There was another guy there when I came in and a woman who worked in the kitchen came out and asked him who he was picking up for.

“Ghengis Khan,” he said, and laughed. She didn’t bat an eye—just said, “Oh, yeah, I think yours is ready.” Then she turned to me and I said, “Oh, yeah, I’m picking up for Spunky The Wonder Squid.”

“You sure?” she said. “Because you look like Chris.”

Source: Power Rangers Wiki

Light ‘Em Up.

A few weeks ago I saw signs around the neighborhood advertising professional holiday light hanging and installation. Before I could get a picture they were replaced by signs for professional gutter cleaning which seems like a bit of a letdown.

Part of me thinks that at least part of the point of having holiday lights on your house, and also part of the fun, is putting them up yourself. Then again that may not be everyone’s idea of fun. When I was a kid I begged my parents to decorate our house with lights because I loved riding around seeing other houses that were brightly lit. Finally my father got a few strings of candy-colored lights he draped around the holly bushes at either end of our house after Thanksgiving and I realized having holiday lights outside your house isn’t that exciting when you’re inside and can’t see them. Also we lived on a cul-de-sac so the only people who’d see our lights were our neighbors and people who’d taken a really wrong turn. Also they were one more thing that had to be put into storage at the end of the holiday season and, unlike the decorations inside the house, required going out in the cold. Strings of holiday lights also get bored during the almost eleven months they’re packed away so they spend the time wrapping themselves around each other which is why they always have to be untangled when it’s time to bring them out again.

That’s one reason I’m not going to criticize people who hire professional holiday light installers. The other reason is, according to their website, their introductory price starts at $699.00, and anyone who’s paying that much just to get holiday lights installed for, at most, two months, can afford not to care what I think.

Also really do I like the idea of giving people who want to put up lights but who, for whatever reason, can’t do it themselves a professional option, and it makes me appreciate those who do it themselves—there’s one house I drive by on my way to work that always has an inflatable Santa and an inflatable Hanukkah Bear. At least one night in December my wife and I will also make a couple of mugs of hot chocolate and drive around looking at different decorations. The professional ones may look a bit more polished—every string perfectly placed around the eaves with nothing dangling or irregularly draped around an untrimmed bush—but every one will still be slightly different.

Thanks For Being A Year, 2023.

This is one of my annual traditions, celebrating a time when turkeys aren’t the only thing that gets stuffed. Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate it, and a very special belated happy Thanksgiving to Canadians who celebrate it before Halloween.

It has been celebrated as a federal holiday every year since 1863, when, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of “Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November.
–Wikipedia

November 25th, 1864

It was even worse than last year. I know every time my family gets together we fall into certain patterns, but that never makes it easier. This time it was even worse because just getting to my parents’ house was such a pain. I thought I’d carriagepool with my younger brother and his wife, but they went up early so that fell through. Then I thought I’d beat the traffic by setting out at dawn, which was such a great idea everybody else in Richmond had it at the same time and the horses were nose to tail, stop and trot, for miles. Finally I got there a little after ten in the morning and my older sister came out already holding a glass of blackberry wine and when she hugged me I could tell it wasn’t her first one. She asked me how things were going and then didn’t wait for an answer and ran back into the house to tell everyone I was there.

I should have known I’d be walking into an argument in the foyer, the way my family is. It’s just what it was about that threw me. My kid brother had this crazy idea for a new way to cook a turkey, leaving the feathers still on and roasting it in the coals of a fire. Well, it sounded pretty stupid to me, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that the neighbors tried the same thing last year and burned down their stable. But I didn’t want to side with my father either. So I said it had been a long trip and I needed to visit the outhouse and slipped out. Well, there was a line at the outhouse: two of my nieces, three cousins, all four of my brothers, and my sister was already in there getting rid of some of that blackberry wine. So I went back inside to see what was going on.

In the parlor my mother was putting together some kind of monstrosity with dead leaves and dried berries that she said she was going to put in the middle of the table.

“Where’s the food going to go?” I asked.

“Well, we’ll move it before we eat.”

I was going to ask why she’d bother to put it in the middle of the table if she was just going to move it again but decided against having that discussion, so instead I sat down and leafed through a broadsheet that was handy.

“The other men are organizing a game,” she said. “It’s some new sport called foot-ball. You should go and join them.”

Well, she knows I’ve never been athletic, but when I protested she got put out with me and said, “It’s your Uncle Wilkes’s idea. You know you’ve always been his favorite. You really should go and do it just to please him.”

FINE.

Well, when I came back in my sister just cackled and toasted me with another glass of blackberry wine. All my mother could say was “Don’t get any blood on the carpet,” and my older brother kept telling me to stop being a sissy and just put some salve on it. Then Aunt Gerda said pinch the back of my neck and tilt my head forward and Uncle Wilkes said no, put pressure between the eyes and lean back, and then my cousins got into it so there had to be a family brawl about that. A day later and I’m still bleeding. So much for the salve. I’ll have to make an appointment with Dr. Samuel Mudd when I get back.

 Then Uncle Aloysius had to start in Daniel about supporting the Whigs and Elizabeth about Suffragettes, just trying to start an argument. Fortunately they didn’t rise to the bait.

Then I tried to head off another argument about who’d have to chaperone the kids’ table by volunteering, but my father cut that off.

“No, no, I want John seated here on my left. After I sent him to that fancy and very expensive school so he could waste his time studying the dramatic arts and oratory he should be well-equipped to deliver the traditional Booth family prayer of thanks.”

Traditional since last year, he means. Then my kid brother who was sitting over there grinning at me kicked me in the shins which I know was his way of saying “Don’t start anything”. I kicked him twice as hard in the shins which was my way of saying, “I wasn’t going to,” and then kicked him again to say, “Hurts, don’t it?”

All this might have been a little more bearable if my sister had let me have some of the blackberry wine.

I swear I’m going to get that Lincoln for making us do this.

Copilot.

When I got out of the car at the grocery store I had the feeling I was being watched. I looked over and, yes, I was being watched. Very carefully. The dog didn’t bark but kept a close eye on me, especially after I waved and said, “Hello!”

Dogs should never be left alone in parked cars during the day. I shouldn’t have to say that but I will anyway. I was on a college campus one spring and walked by a dog in a car with the windows rolled up. It wasn’t a hot day but that didn’t matter. The temperature inside a closed car can go up and a dog’s temperature with it. This was before cell phones so I ran into the nearest building, grabbed a phone, and called security. Then I went back outside. A guard showed up pretty quickly because it was a small campus and also I think they could tell I was about to start breaking windows. The car turned out to be unlocked and the guard held the dog until the owner got back. The owner got a citation, though I think the dog should have been taken away and given to someone smarter.

Anyway the dog in the grocery car parking lot seemed to be okay. It was night and cool and the car was running. I assume the heat was on, or maybe the air conditioning, and maybe the radio too so the dog had something to listen to. And could also sit up front and watch people come and go. 

When our dogs travel with us they stay in kennels in the back. Some people think that’s sad but two or three full-size Dalmatians loose in a van doesn’t always make it easy to drive. They get excited when they get to go somewhere and bounce around and also get really demanding about what radio station they want to listen to.

I was in the store for only about ten minutes and when I came back out the dog was still there. I figured the car’s owner must not be too far behind and I was just glad the dog was still all right.

Who Made This?

Source: Reddit

A friend sent me this chart of foods and we got into a pretty lengthy discussion about how some of them aren’t that surprising. I’ve heard the origin story of nachos several times: a guy nicknamed “Nacho” working as a cook at a club in Piedras Negras, Coahuila threw together some fried tortillas with shredded cheese and sliced jalapenos. General Tso’s chicken is another one that doesn’t surprise me. It’s so obviously an Americanized version of “Chinese” food I’m surprised it goes back as far as the 1970’s—although there’s a dispute over who actually invented it. The same is true of chicken tikka masala.

Others really do surprise me, though. Sticky toffee pudding only dates from the 1960’s? It seems like such a traditional English recipe I still believe it probably originated as a home-cooked dessert long before it made its way into the restaurant that claims to have “invented” it. That would be the Sharrow Bay Hotel on Ullswater, but, again, there’s a debate, with other parts of England and also Quebec claiming to be the point of origin.

And that gets me into what’s really confusing: how do you invent a food? Sure, you can invent a recipe, but this is the thing that I think must give most law students, and even a lot of lawyers, headaches when they start dealing with copyright issues. You can copyright the form that an idea takes but you can’t copyright an idea. With recipes that means you can copyright the exact wording of a recipe—and I know there have been some plagiarism fights over cookbooks—but you can’t copyright the idea. Nashville’s own hot chicken can trace its origins back to  Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, but the Prince family that still operates the place can’t copyright the idea of hot chicken which is why there are so many knockoff versions of it.

And that’s just talking about recipes whose origins are known. Nobody knows who invented most dishes. Whoever told me when I was a kid that Spaghetti was the name of a guy who traveled with Marco Polo and brought pasta from China to Italy was either seriously misinformed or outright lying.

All recipes are also just really combinations and recombinations of existing ingredients. With that in mind, and for your holiday entertaining if it sounds like something you’d like, here’s a recipe my mother invented she calls “garbage snacks”. It’s something she threw together for a party, combining stuff she just happened to have around, and, while the idea is hers, the wording here is mine:

Combine shredded cheese, finely chopped turkey or chicken lunch meat (thin-sliced works best), and diced black olives with mayonnaise. Exact amounts can vary as long as the end result is a fairly solid paste.
Spread on Triscuit crackers. Again the exact amount can vary but about a tablespoon is enough.
Bake at 350 degrees for fifteen minutes, or until the cheese melts and all the ingredients come together.

For such a simple recipe they have a very distinctive flavor that people seem to either love or hate. Personally I love ‘em but that’s true of all recipes. Tastes vary.

What We Leave.

When I was a kid I read a book of Cherokee legends. The story of the beginning of the world stayed with me because, according to it, all animals, plants, and trees were tested by having to stay awake for seven days and nights. Some animals—rabbits, mice, even deer—fell asleep. They became prey for the ones who stayed awake: the mountain lion, the wolf, the owl. Some of the trees managed to stay awake too. These were the pine and cedar, so they would be evergreen. Other trees didn’t pass the test, and I still remember the line: “Unable to stay awake they would sleep part of each year, and lose their hair in winter.”

I’d never thought of leaves as tree hair before that, and not just because leaves grow back while most people I know who lose their hair lose it permanently, but I still liked the phrase. And yet it didn’t explain what, to me, was the biggest mystery of all: why so many people felt it necessary to rake and bag leaves in their yards. Most put the leaves in their garbage cans, as though the trees were purposely throwing trash around. It seems like an insult to the trees. It would be different if they were sneaking over to someone else’s yard and throwing down a bunch of leaves then running back in the middle of the night, like a bunch of kids having a toilet paper party. That is something I did once—a toilet paper party, I mean, not dropping a bunch of leaves, and even though I was a teenager at the time it still seemed like a stupid thing to do.

And at least leaves are bio-degradable. Technically toilet paper is too, but leaves land there naturally, and toilet paper tends to stand out against the landscape, at least as long as it’s fresh out of the package and hasn’t been used previously, but that’s another story.

Why clear away leaves? People love to see the changing colors: the reds and yellows of trees on hills in the all-too short, beautiful time before the fall to the ground, before they turn brown and papery and crackle underfoot. Once the leaves have been shed they blanket the ground providing insulation, protection, safe spaces for next year’s insects, and nesting material for squirrels and other animals. They’ll give back to the soil what they took from it, passing it on to the next generation. A clean yard is a terrible thing, the rake and leaf blower instruments of destruction.

Well, I do use them to keep the leaves away from the doors. Tracked in underfoot they won’t do anyone any good. We don’t need leaves in the house, where we sleep.

I’m Not Scared.

For some reason the phrase “Do one thing every day that scares you” came into my mind this morning as I was leaving the house. It’s not a phrase I remember hearing recently and it’s not one I’ve ever given much thought, although now that I have it seems pretty ridiculous. Do I really want to go looking for things that scare me? Do I want to take unnecessary risks? I could easily say just driving to work scares me but, in spite of all the risks, that’s setting the bar pretty low. Since Daylight Savings Time ended a week ago and I thought it would still be dark when I started out but, for now, the change and the shortening days hasn’t caught up to my usual departure time. It was bright enough that only about half the cars I passed still had their lights on.

Then I got to work and parked in my usual spot on the roof of the parking garage, something that’s also very low-level scary. It’s exposed and, as far as I know, I’m the only person who parks up there, although there’s a garbage can which is always overflowing with what appears to be new garbage every week which suggests a lot of people are passing through, or, possibly, a few people with a completely disproportionate amount of trash.

Also there was an elevator out of service. There are two elevators—one that I guessed was working since it wasn’t closed off—and I also could have taken the stairs. The stairwell is completely windowless, though, and narrow, and cold. It’s not a great way to start the morning.

I realize that just writing this is a spoiler that the alternate elevator was fine and, aside from a slight tremor on the way down, didn’t give me any trouble. Besides I still wasn’t fully awake. At least I’d been fully conscious on the drive in but once I’d parked I was so focused on other things, including just getting in to work, that I really didn’t even consider the possibility of anything going wrong with the elevator until I was in it.

That’s the other ridiculous aspect of “Do one thing every day that scares you”. The scariest thing I’ll probably do all day was not something I was even aware of.

In Memoriam.

Sometimes in the park or even around my neighborhood I’ve seen lost pet signs. I always stop and take down the contact information just in case, although I’ve never seen a loose dog running around our area. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to lose a pet like that and never know what happened to them. There was one time, not long after my wife and I were first married, that we accidentally left the gate open. We had three dogs. Two wandered out into the neighborhood. The third, the oldest, a tall skinny dog named Jacob who was also my wife’s first Dalmatian, stayed in the yard and barked to let us know what had happened. After we got Jacob inside we drove around the neighborhood and found the other two just one block over. They both seemed relieved to see us.

Of course losing any well-loved pet is hard, even if you’re with them at the end and get that chance to say goodbye. Because every pet is unique every loss is too, which is why they never get any easier. There are only two things I’ve found that help a little: time and being around others who know how it feels. Even years later talking to someone about a loss can help. It brings up the pain, but it brings up the love and the joy too.

I’ve never met Elizabeth but I hope sharing Buster helped her. I hope she knows it helped others.

Time For A Break.

I used to know someone who worked in an accounting department. Their department head allowed everyone to call in an occasional “mental health day”. Vacation time had to be approved well in advance, and it was usually assumed that anyone taking vacation would take several days. Anyone could call in sick if they woke up under the weather, of course, but if you were sick you were expected to stay home. Someone taking a mental health day could go to the gym, go to the park, go to a coffee shop. If the boss found out—and sometimes they did find out—it was copacetic. Someone who’d had a bad day, or a cluster of bad days, could call in and say, “I need a mental health day,” and do whatever they needed to decompress.

There were a few restrictions on this. The April tax season and the end of the fiscal year, which was the last day of June, were really busy times, and everyone was asked—though not required—to not take mental health days during those times unless it was really, really necessary. Important meetings couldn’t be skipped, and no more than one or two people at a time could take a mental health day. And obviously no one could take one every single week; three to four times a year was preferred.

It was a great idea, and it placed a lot of trust in the employees, which may be why no one abused the privilege. Whoever came up with the idea obviously knew the old saying about an ounce of prevention. And also that people will frequently do the right thing. I don’t think it’s just because they were all accountants either, though accountants are known for being sticklers when it comes to rules. A few of them might also have been actuaries, and you know what they say: actuaries are accountants who can’t take the excitement.

The one thing I never thought to ask was, how many people called in mental health days around the time the clocks had to be set forward or back for Daylight Savings Time? Because it doesn’t matter whether it’s losing or gaining an hour. The time change always throws me off mentally.