Rants

Curry Shrimp

Donna’s mom has been our designated cook every since she moved in with us back in May of 2000. I like her cooking and Donna, well as we all do, loves her mom’s cooking. Not only because she grew up eating it, but it means she doesn’t have to do it. Mom is famous for picking a recipe and starting to cook it, before checking if all the ingredients are in the house. Most of the time she will find something that will substitute, but other times she just fakes it and adds anything. For tonight’s meal, when she came upon a missing ingredient, she just didn’t put anything in its place. As a result the meal came out a little bland; it is tough to make Curry Shrimp, without any curry power…

Here’s A Couple Of Them

They are fresh, not really new experiences. They mirror my previous experiences with these same places, so you would think I would have learned my lesson, but I am dense.

The first is Wal-Mart. We were in Hilton Head and needed one item and wanted another, figuring we could get them both at Wal-Mart we went there. Hoping that it would be different, but it was not. It must be corporate wide, because it was Saturday night, prime Wal-Mart shopping time, they only had 4 checkout lines running and there were at least 8 people in each line. We placed our purchases on an empty conveyor belt and walked out.

Second was at my old friend Popeye’s here in Aiken. We have had the worst luck at lunch time during the week, but we figured it was Sunday, might be different. What do you think? Right, same old song and dance. Both Donna and I love the food, but it is such a pain to get anything. They had a total of 3 employees handling the Sunday lunch rush, 1 counter person, 1 drive-up person and 1 cook! Not only that, but the cook was deep frying each person’s order separately or something because it was taking a long time to get each person’s order to them. So long that they asked you to sit down and they would bring it to you. This is smart, now the time that would be better spent making or taking orders was spent delivering food to customers. I vowed never to return. Who am I kidding, I’ll probably go back, I think it makes the food taste all that much better if I have to suffer for it.

What Would Jesus Do?

A friend at work has acquired a DVD of a movie that is still in theaters. He has gotten another fellow to make copies of it using a piece of pirated DVD copying software. Knowing that I had said I wouldn’t see this one in the theaters, but instead would probably rent it when it came out, they asked if I would like a copy of my own for viewing now. I said, “I’ll let you know.”

The movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”

Sad Songs Say So Much

Amazing what music evokes certain emotions in people. How a certain song reminds you of something from the past because it was playing in the background at the event. Why do some folks like a song and others dislike it?

Got my SAD CD Mix from Andrea yesterday. I popped it in the CD player in the car. At first I didn’t think it sounded sad at all, it was a nice mix of songs, but I didn’t get the emotion. I think this is the fault in the manner in which I listen to music. Most of the time the voice is treated like an instrument in my head, I don’t hear the words, I hear the tone. The songs on my mix to her sounded sad to me, I know a few of them are about being sad, but possibly not all have anything to do with sad. Because I have done a bit of driving today, I am about halfway through the 3rd listen. I’m starting to catch some of the lyrics and there are some sad tunes there. Nicely done Andrea.

1077 / 155

Cable guy got here at 3:00 and left at 6:30. 99% of that time was setting up the wiring. He had to go under the house in our (quite literally a) crawl space 3 separate times. Dirty work. So here is the results, minutes ago 1077 dn, 155 up compared to DSL’s 604/218 on Saturday. It does seem quicker, about like going from 33 to 56K was (only in hyperdrive.) But for nearly twice the speed I think I can manage to spent twenty bucks less a month. 🙂

I Got Framed

Went down to Michael’s to get the caricature framed. They keep better records than I do, because the clerk was able to pop up my order from a year ago when I framed the first CarArtz custom creation. Frame, check. Mat, check. Glass, check. Cha-ching.

I got an 11×17 print framed in a simple black rounded frame, about 3-1/2 inches of gray mat all around and a piece of non-glare glass, total cost $91. That was with the 1/2 off coupon. Do they double their prices for the weeks they run the coupons?

Quick Updates…

…in lieu of actual original thought post content.

I screwed the pooch when I made up the voting page for the Water Photo Contest. When I got the three last minute entries I copied and pasted the info from the then last photo. I changed the title, but neglected to change the number assigned each photo, oops. If anyone voted for any of the last 4 photos all the votes went to one. So when I got home from work I reset everything. If you voted yesterday or early today your chad got swept into the bit bucket, go vote again.

Cable guy comes Wednesday after work to hook up my cable internet.

No comment spam as of yet (not unusual though.)

Printed out the labels for the SAD CD, thank you Microsoft Clip Gallery Online. Goes in the mail tomorrow.

To buy said labels I had to go to Staples, just 5 days after swearing I’d never go back after last Wednesday’s incident. Not that I didn’t try to avoid it, I went to Wal-Mart looking first and I absolutely hate Wal-Mart.