Salt Lick

Out behind our plant in a wooded spot, co-worker Mark has a trail camera where he captures photos of the wily white tails that live out there. Tired of capturing just one or two deer per photo he started to seed the ground in front of the lens with something called Deer Crack to create an irresistible mineral lick. Within a day or so he was capturing 5 or 6 deer in each frame.

Last night was the monthly MMC Dinner Meeting over in North Augusta at a Ryan’s Buffet. It was lightly sprinkling when we left the house and by the time we got to US1/78 (AKA: The Aiken-Augusta Hwy) it was raining pretty hard. And for the entire second half of the trip it was coming down in buckets, so much so that 40MPH seemed like a dangerously high rate of travel. I wish we\’d taken the hint and turned around.

We had the worst meal we have ever had, as far as we can remember. My salad was fine (although the kitchen help should learn to slice the onions and bell peppers instead of whacking them to bits with a cleaver), but it went downhill from there. The green beans were cooked to complete water loggedness and the corn had no discernible flavor whatsoever. The piece of steak I got off the grill, when cut into, looked medium-rare, which is fine when it is a nice cut of meat, but this must have been cooking over the low temperature side the grill for several hours as it had the taste and texture of, pardon the cliché, shoe leather.

Donna’s meal was no better; she stopped eating her soup after a couple of spoonfuls, with the piece of white fish she tried getting dumped in that bowl shortly afterwards. And after listening to me grumble about my meal, she tried to help by sharing some of her skinless chicken breast with me. Which after one bite I learned was a clever ploy to rid herself of this, so dry it was crunchy, bit of poultry. We both agreed that if there was a predominant flavor that did show through, it was sodium chloride, salt.

Even dessert couldn’t save it, as her cake, although covered in soft serve ice cream, still was almost too dry to eat. My chocolate chip cookie was stale and somehow they managed to remove the every bit of flavor from a crumbled Oreo cookie and Cool Whip mixture.

The meeting itself was a nearly typical MMC meeting in which the Treasurer announces our bank balance, we briefly discuss past events and then quickly go over the upcoming events, what set it apart were the elections of new officers. The current President has held the post for several years now and has wanted to find someone else to take the reins for at least the last two years, but no one wants to take the job. This year when he asked for nominations there was the usual silence and looking at the floor, just when it looked like he was ready to sigh and reluctantly accept the office for yet another year, his wife nominated someone else. It was quickly seconded and the nominee had the choice of being a schmuck or accepting the job. He took the job, but only under the condition that we actually get someone to fill the VP spot (for the last few years Sarah Palin has held the position in absentia.) One of the newer members stepped up and agreed to fill the #2 spot on the ticket.

The meeting broke up and as we left the “party room” heading for the door I noticed that the restaurant was pretty full and there were families in line at the cash register to get in. With the food tasting so crappy and it not really being cheap (for the two of us it almost $30) the only explanation I can come up with is that this place acts as a human salt lick.