Hot Fudge Sunday

This past weekend, me and the wife got a hankering for something bad. We both tend to eat pretty healthy, and as you all can attest, healthy=boring. With that in mind, we decided on complete decadence -- grilled ham and cheese on fresh Italian bread, with hot fudge sundaes for dessert. Since we had nothing to create these banana spits of our imagination, we stopped at a convenience store near the house.

Normally when I go into this place, I end up in line behind a half dozen truckers buying coffee and some lady who wants two hundred dollars worth of Lotto tickets. This time for some unknown reason, the place wasn't that busy.

I wandered over and picked up what I needed. Ice cream, of course, then hot fudge, crushed peanuts, bananas, pineapple and whipped cream. I carefully carried my stash up to the register and deposited it on the counter. The guy working the register was one of those cheerful cashiers who never shuts up, and obviously still lives in the basement at his mom's house.

The first thing he says is, "You know what would go perfect with this? A couple of our fresh-off-the-grill, all-beef hot dogs. They're 2 for $1.49. I shook my head and said, "No thanks. Just this." Hot dogs and ice cream really didn't sound like a great combination to me.

He rang my items up, chatting all the while. As he's bagging the sundae ingredients, he laughs heartily and says, "With all this stuff, I'll bet I know what you're having after dinner tonight!"

"Yeah," I replied. "Sex."

Apparently, he was easily embarrassed, because he turned a deep, tomato-red, and handed me my change without a word.

As I took the coins, I couldn't resist a parting shot. I leaned forward conspiratorally and added, "We use a LOT of food."

I think he cursed me though, because even with all those goodies, it didn't happen.

Now all I can think about is going back in there and buying a giant box of slim jims, some rope and a quart of motor oil just to see the look on his face.

Nothing to report.

I took a mental health day yesterday. It was a beautiful day, and I woke up a little later than normal, and decided to do something completely unrelated to my current work situation. So that entails being outside, and doing something other than staring at a computer screen like I am right now.

Because it was a perfect day, I decided I'd hike one of my favorite local mountains. It's not too difficult -- it's about 3 miles long and takes you to a little over 2,000 ft. It's got some nice views of Lake George once you get to the summit.

I took my camera with me, and while I didn't get too much that was very interesting, here's a few shots for you.

Sitting at a traffic light along the way, this bumper sticker made me laugh:

I agree wholeheartedly.

This is an old shack I saw:

From the top:

This snake and I played a game where he would stick out his damn tongue the second I took my eye from the viewfinder. As long as I was looking through the camera, he was tongue-less.



I was a little far away from this guy, but he was pretty neat.

That's all I have right now. I'll be back with something funny later this week.

If anything funny happens. If not, I'll just make something up like I normally do.

Man, I hate Lowe's.

I was wandering around in Lowe's today, and I stumbled on these modern marvels:

They were on sale for about a grand each, and I was beside myself with excitement. I immediately called the salesperson over, because I happen to be in the market and that's not a bad price. He started to tell me about all the cool features, but got annoyed when I kept interrupting his sales pitch. Not to brag, but I happen to know a little something about these bad boys, and all I wanted him to do was cut to the chase and show me the initiation sequence.

I was short on time, and I just wanted to see something go from Pod A to Pod B. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently so, because he insisted on rattling off a litany of features I didn't give a shit about. I told him I didn't really care if my transporter has 4 different "delicates" cycles. Granted, the whole laundry thing is a nice feature, and I wouldn't complain about not having to move wet clothes from the washer to the dryer, but really...when it comes down to it, that's just gravy. All that really concerned me was whether or not it could send drinks from the kitchen to the patio without effing them up. If it could do that, I told him, I'd buy the set on the spot.

After he told me he couldn't demo it because they weren't plugged in and there was no plumbing, I got a little skeptical. As a test, I asked him if he thought it would transport live animals. I even offered to go to the pound and get a kitten so we could try it, but he just got pissed at me and walked away shaking his head. He clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

I hate shopping at Lowe's. Nobody who works there knows dick about anything. In my book, they shouldn't even sell those things if they don't know how to operate them. You'd think that for eight to ten bucks an hour they would be able to find someone who could demo a simple transporter for god's sake.

Morons.

Good advice.

In an amazing coincidence, the local firehouse sign exactly mimics the troubleshooting instructions that ship with cheap chinese vibrators.

I've finally opened Pandora's sweet, sweet box.

A while back, John turned me on to something called the music genome project over at Pandora.com. You give it a band you like as a "seed band," and it'll go out and play a song by that band, and then it'll find a bunch of stuff from other bands that are similar in sound and play those songs. You have the ability to give each a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and over time this will tweak your station more to your liking.

Unfortunately, I didn't have an internet connection capable of doing anything with that information at the time. Now that I have DSL, I've recently rediscovered the Pandora website, and I'm seriously thinking of buying this thing.

I got a tip on a fantastic group from Sarah over at OK Seriously, and used Jack's Mannequin as the seed band to create my radio station. So far I've discovered the following outstanding bands that are new to me:

Fielding, The GoStation, Josh Fix, The Stereo, Robbers On High Street, Ronan Keating, The Supernaturals, Wakefield, Evan And Jaron, The Skies Of America Move, The Whitlams, The Get Up Kids, Jonas Brothers, Voxtrot, The Apples, The Tickets and Golden Smog.

This thing is fantastic. Go try it for yourself. And if you like great pop music, go listen to Jack's Mannequin.