Fast Food Reunion

Over the past few weeks, I don't I've ever eaten so much fast food. I know it's not healthy, but when you're busy, you just want something fast and filling. As a result, my blood probably has the consistency of a strawberry milkshake. But nothing a good night of drinking won't fix! If there's any truth to the old cliche "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", I should change my name to Hercules!

Hey, I know could do the smart thing and order a salad. But I always thought of eating a salad in a burger joint akin to drinking Pepsi in a bar. So, I will continue to fall in line with the portly masses.

As a result of my recent burger binge, I'm now going through an impromptu detox, which among other things, includes mega doses of Metamucil. For those who don't know about Metamucil, just think of it as a liquid pry-bar that goes through your digestive system with wreckless abandon. But enough of the biology lesson. Let me tell you about some of my recent fast food experiences.....

First off, let me say that Chick-fil-A still beats all fast food joints, hands down. This is amazing to me considering that there's not even one burger item on the menu. And let me add that their shakes are top notch too. The biggest problem that I have with Chick-fil-A is that are only two restaurants in the whole Glen Burnie/Pasadena area. Some guys dream about owning a bar. I dream about having my own Chick-fil-A one day.

Now, I don't really care so much for McDonald's. But in a pinch, it will do. When I stopped off at the Sun Valley Mickey D"s recently, I immediately had the pleasure of witnessing a five year old having a Chicken McNugget temper tantrum (I wonder if Dr. Phil has a diagnosis for this). The kid was jumping up and down, screaming, "Nuggets! I want Chicken Nuggets! Waaaaaa!" The mother, who was obviously conditioned for this type of outburst, just carried on her conversation as little Lucifer continued to annoy the rest of the patrons. Before long, the rest of us wanted the kid to have the McNuggets more than he did!

Anyway, the thing that attracted me to the McDonald's in the first place was one word: Angus. There's just something magical about this word. For me, it automatically triggers an impulse to hunt down something with beef in it. So, I step up and order an Angus snack wrap and a Strawberry-Banana smoothie from the non-English speaking counter person. She hands me my food and I head up the door. I soon realized that she gave me one of those new frozen Strawberry-Lemonades by mistake. Maybe the fact that we spoke two different languages had something to do with the mix-up. But I didn't worry about it. It was a hot day and the icy drink actually sounded pretty good.

After tearing into my Angus wrap, I took a generous drink of the cold, fruity beverage. And that's where the fun started. The brain freeze rocked me like an overhand right! I dropped what was left of my wrap and stumbled across the parking lot towards my car. A group of nearby landscapers gave me a concerned look as I staggered past them. It took several minutes to fell normal again. Once I got into my car, still a little confused, I gave myself one of those quick "how many fingers am I holding up" tests. Then, tempting fate, I  took a couple of more "mini-hits" of the frozen drink to test the waters. It hurt my teeth a little, but the pain in my head seemed to be at least manageable now. When they say don't drink and drive, I'm thinking that they might want to include frozen Lemonade to the list!

Another day, I dropped by a local Burger King. I approached the heavily tattooed employee behind the counter. He just looked at me. Actually, it was more like he was looking through me. There was none of the usual "Can I help you" banter. He just continued to stare. I almost did the double hand-wave thing to snap him out of it. During this uncomfortable encounter, I noticed what appeared to be the word "Thug" tattooed across the side of his neck. I couldn't be sure, but I thought I remembered seeing this guy on an episode of Gangland. Needless to say, I didn't wave my hands in his face.

Fearing an imminent shanking, I simply said, "I'll take a number one with a sweet tea." I instantly regretted using the word "sweet" in front of Penitentiary Face. With the faintest hint of a smirk, he relayed my order to the assembly crew. I sensed that he viewed the sweet tea as a sign of weakness. Hey, give me a break. I would have ordered a beer but it wasn't on the menu! When tattoo guy handed me my order, he finally spoke to me with a warm "Thanks, Cuz". Hell, if I had known that we were related, I wouldn't have been so nervous!

Now that things are finally settling down, I'm trying my best to steer clear of the fast food joints. As long as they don't tempt me with the word "Angus", I think I'll be ok.........

kw

Dropping By Walmart

With everything going on with my recent move, I needed to pick up a few items over the weekend. So yet again, I tempted fate and stopped off at Walmart. I know I've told several Walmart stories before, but you have to admit, this stuff never gets old.

My latest adventure begins out on the parking lot. As I turn into one of the parking aisles, the car in front of me slams on his brakes when he sees the brake lights illuminate from a parked car. Of course, there's a million other parking spaces, but the moron in front of me is adamant that he's going to wait for this particular one. I would have went around the guy, but he was right in the middle of the aisle where no one could get past him. And I would have backed up, but another bozo was directly behind me fumbling with his text messages. So there we sat for what seemed like an eternity. When it was obvious that the parked car wasn't going anywhere, the knucklehead in front of me finally gave up and pulled into a vacant spot about twenty feet away. Why didn't he do this in the first place??

When I eventually get into the store, I grab a shopping cart. I took about two steps and noticed that someone left a half eaten hotdog in the cart. I couldn't have this thing distracting me from the illustrious array of Walmart shoppers. So, I left it near the greeter and grabbed another cart. Although there was no food in this one, it did have a bad wheel. When I pushed it, it made this irritating "clumpity, clump, clump" banging noise. I couldn't deal with this. So, I left this one near the greeter as well. He gave me a funny look as I went out to retrieve cart number three. For some unknown reason, I felt the urge to moonwalk over to the new cart (but I didn't).

Once I finally got rolling into the store, the first thing I see is an obese woman wearing these tight pink sweatpants with the word "Guess" embroidered across the ass. I was thinking about 275. But, of course, that was just my guess. I hate to be cruel but this woman's ass had more nooks and crannies than a Thomas' English Muffin! It's anyone's "guess" why she would want to draw attention to that particular part of her body.

As I moved on, I saw a parent pushing what I assumed was his kid in a a shopping cart. The funny thing is that the kid looked like he could have been old enough to legally buy beer. I tell you, Walmart is very much like entering the Twilight Zone.

As I stroll past the electronics section, I overhear two knit-wits arguing over who's the biggest bad-ass: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson or Vin Diesel. I wanted to sneak into the adjacent aisle and yell, "Clint Eastwood would kick both of their candy asses!"

When I finally make my way towards the checkout line, a woman who resembled Weasie Jefferson nearly knocked me over. Her time was clearly more important than mine. I bit my tongue and waited patiently as she paid for her Doritos and other nutritious goods  with a government subsidized credit card. I felt that she should have at least offered to buy me a Milky Way considering it was my tax dollars paying for her non-essential merchandise.

I eventually pay for my items and head back out to the parking lot. To my delight, I see Weasie Jefferson getting into a late model BMW. Isn't this the same woman who just used a welfare card to pay for a cart load of junk food?

I will never try to understand the people of Walmart. But, if nothing else, they make a good story....

kw

Moving Ain't Easy

Yeah, yeah, I know it's been a while since I wrote anything. I really wanted to write something sooner but I've been busier than a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest! You see, we moved into our new house about a week and a half ago. And it's been non-stop activity ever since. This moving crap is for the birds!

First off, let me thank those who lent us their backs for the big moving day. I owe you guys big time! Getting a "can you help me move" request has the same chilling effect as one of those unexpected 2 am phone calls. They say friends will help you move, but real friends will help you move a body. But I honestly think it would have been much easier to move a body than our assortment of sofas, dressers, beds and televisions.

As a man, I really don't have any say in the furniture that comes into our house. But maybe it's time to re-think this. Case in point, Tina doesn't even look at a piece of furniture unless it's as heavy as Rosie O'Donnell after a all-you-can-eat meal. Humping this stuff between floors in our new home was absolutely excruciating! At one point, my brother-in-law asked, "Is there anything that weighs less than five hundred pounds??"

And moving this stuff up and down stairways is always an adventure to me. No matter how tight or impossible the situation, I always feel that if I push hard enough, something will eventually give. The end result is usually about $2000 worth of drywall damage. It's just collateral damage in my eyes. Hey, I never claimed to be professional mover....

Another thing I hate about moving is that I can't find anything. I know it's somewhere in the house, but I have I no idea where. It could be in any one of a hundred cardboard boxes. The result is multiple trips to the Home Depot to buy things that I know I already have. Then inevitably, Tina will ask, "Why did you buy that" You have one right here." I just mumble to myself and walk away.......

And finding your way around a new house can open up another can of worms. For instance, the other day I was getting ready to jump in the shower. As I raised my arms to take off my shirt, my fingers were nearly severed by an industrial strength ceiling fan. I'm not kidding you, the wooden blades hit my knuckles with a Rodney King-esqe crack. It was so loud that our two cats immediately bolted out of the room! The scariest part is that there are fans in every room! For me, this translates into an accident waiting to happen around every corner.

When the warm shower finally came, it was a welcome relief to a stressful day. However, once I got out of the shower, I was in for another surprise. You see, my new neighborhood has well water which requires a water conditioner. For those who don't know, this gives you the feeling of having soap all over your body. How was I supposed to know this? I gave myself third-degree towel burns trying to dry myself!

The next item of business is the yard. I guess I should be grateful, but this yard is much more than I anticipated. Cutting the grass with a traditional push mower wasn't going to be an option. So, I had no choice but to go out shopping for a lawn tractor. I have to admit, the shopping part was kind of cool. In the end I narrowed my choices down to Troy-Bilt, Craftsman and John Deere. I almost bit on the John Deere model because they were throwing in a free JD ball cap with the purchase of a tractor. I visualized myself rolling across my front lawn on my John Deere lawn tractor with my matching ball cap belting out Kenny Chesney's "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy!" What a welcome addition I would be to the neighborhood!

Don't worry, when reality finally set in, I wound up buying the Craftsman model. Sears didn't give me ball cap but they did give me free delivery....

Something else that my new neighborhood has is an abundance of deer. I was coming home from work last Friday, seeing a large figure in the distance, I instinctively yelled, "Look at the size of that f*cking dog!" Of course, as I got closer, I realized that it was actually a young deer. I'm going to have to get used to this...

I'm sure there will be many more stories. We've only just begun..........

kw

Heating Up In Maryland

Over the past week or so, it's been hotter than balls on the east coast, especially where I live, here in Maryland. Although the hot, humid weather might have come a little early this year, I don't understand why everyone overreacts.

Maybe people just act this way in Maryland? I mean, in the winter, when the weatherman predicts snow, everyone around here makes a frantic run for bread, milk and toilet paper as if the end of the world is looming. And when the hot weather eventually rolls around, the same people act as if they're going to melt into butter.

As the mercury climbs towards the triple digit mark, the first sign of panic sets in when you start to hear about the various school closings. Hey, if the schools have no air conditioning, I really have no problem sending the kids home.  But why are we closing all of the county schools? If the kids are in a comfortable climate controlled school room, what difference does it make if it's 100 degrees outside? Is the mere thought of the outside heat detrimental to the learning process of today's youth? I don't know, maybe I'm just a hard-ass......

I attended elementary school back in the 70's at old Baltimore City PS #203. And as you probably guessed, there was no air conditioning. So, on those blistering days in early September and mid-June, we simply had to deal with it. To keep things as comfortable as possible, teachers would often turn the lights off and plug in an oscillating fan. Basically, it would just circulate hot air around the room but it was better than nothing.

When I got into junior high school, it was a similar situation. However, there was a bit of relief found in a group of makeshift buildings behind the main school. For lack of a better word, these were known as the "relocatables". If you were fortunate enough to have a class in one of these buildings, you were blessed with air conditioning. There was always a distinct jealousy between the sweaty students in the old building and the odor-free kids in the relocatables. Personally, I had always wondered how they determined which teachers would get that coveted gig in the relocatables.

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A few days ago, I was helping a buddy (Rip) move some furniture. Right out of the gate, we had two major challenges: it was 100 degrees and we were moving the stuff between two Baltimore City row houses. For those of you who aren't familiar with these older homes, let me just say that getting large pieces of furniture from one floor to the next isn't so easy. We had to actually push these things through the upstairs windows and lower them to the sidewalk with ropes. It's a wonder one of us didn't get flattened by an airborne dresser!    One of the neighbors was watching us with a little too much interest. I think he was hanging out just so he didn't miss the opportunity to see one of us get squashed.

Once we finally got into the new house, we discovered that taking the windows out wasn't going to be an option. So we attempted, several times, to twist and maneuver these heavy items until somehow, someway, we were able to make the turn from the narrow staircase into the upstairs bedroom. By the time it was over, we were sweating like a couple of pregnant nuns! Keep in mind, that Rip and I are in are mid-40's. And, at least speaking for myself, I'm not in the best shape anymore (unless you consider round a shape). Thank God my son (who is actually in training for an upcoming fight) came along to join the fun. I figured that if Rip & I went into cardiac arrest, at least Ken Jr. would be in good enough shape to call 911.

We headed back to our borrowed pick-up truck with less-than-adequate air conditioning. As Rip and I got into the truck, I was pretty sure that one of us was about to suffer a heat stroke or, at the very least, a mild seizure. We were both sweating like cats in a Chinese restaurant. To make matters worse, I started to hallucinate about a giant bottle of Kiwi-Strawberry Gatorade. To take our minds off of our uncertain fate, we just sat  there and complained about the brutality of the heat and humidity. Rip was pretty drained, so he just resorted to incoherent mumbling while I stuck with my predicable rant of, "It's not even summer yet! This hot weather is bullshit!"

Then, Ken Jr. (who served a year in Iraq) just smiled and said, "Man, this is nothing. Try running around the dessert with body armor in 120 degree heat!"

I guess the Maryland weather isn't so bad after all...........:-)

kw