Friday, May 25, 2018

Scattered, Covered, Smothered, Chunked, Capped, Peppered, Topped, Old, and Alone

The best part of any trip to Kansas City!

  I took my first day off since starting my 6-month contract in Urbandale last Friday to go with Kathy to Kansas City for my niece Lauren’s wedding. I am not eager to take many long trips and am not much of a wedding person either but I was happy to make an exception for my niece since she is OK in my book, I get along with her parents quite well, and besides Kathy promised we could eat at one of the many area Waffle Houses while we were in Kansas City.

  I spend the week leading up to Friday distracted by the prospects of my first Waffle House meal since last September when we went to Gaffney, South Carolina to attend my father-in-law’s retirement dinner. There are no Waffle Houses in Iowa or my native New Jersey. I had to wait until I was 26 and living in Florida to fall in love with Waffle House staples like T-Bone and eggs and hash browns scattered (on the grill), smothered (in onions) and covered (in cheese). Since then the Waffle House has expanded their menu, now offering hash browns chunked (with ham), capped (with mushrooms), diced (with tomatoes), peppered (with jalapeno peppers), topped (with chili) and country (covered in country gravy) in addition to scattered, smothered, and covered.


After dropping off Ringo the mourning dove to his rescue center, we stopped for gas at the Cameron, Missouri Valero - home of $2.59 gas and 99 cent 16 oz. Cokes. With gas in Iowa at $2.89 and 16 oz. Coke cans $1.19 I wonder why Missouri is so cheap?

  Finally, Friday morning came. Kathy and I walked Daisy and Baxter on a mile and half round trip walk to the Casey’s for me to get a coffee and give the beagles a beef stick treat. When we got home we hung out until 9am and took another walk with the beagles before taking them and our suitcases to the car for a ride. Daisy and Baxter were thrilled to be in the car until we stopped at the Happy Tails doggie day care where they were to be boarded until Sunday afternoon. After a little coaxing the beagles made their way into the back of the kennel and we were on our way to Kansas City.

  There was a side trip to Des Moines with our temporary guest Ringo the mourning dove. Kathy found Ringo unable to fly a week before and put him in an old birdcage in the garage. The Saturday before we let Ringo loose and he flew away but a few hours later we found him in the driveway with a cut on his head like he flew into a window. Kathy put him in the garage again and found a bird rescue person in Des Moines to take Ringo in. After the side trip we were on our way to Kansas City.

  The original plan was to have Sunday breakfast at the Waffle House on our way back home but we were making such good time we didn’t stop for lunch. There was no argument from me when Kathy say a Waffle House sign in Liberty and suggested we stop there to eat. In 2015 I also ate at the Waffle House in Liberty but after looking at the Waffle House store locator there doesn’t seem to be a Liberty, Missouri location so I must have been in a different town altogether. I didn’t recognize this Waffle House as being the same one as last time which was a welcome surprise because it was way cleaner. The grill, pans, and waffle irons were sparkling and there was no food covered tables like my last visit.

  We sat at the counter and our server came over to greet us and ask us what we wanted to drink. I asked for a coffee and Kathy a glass of water. Kathy then ordered scrambled eggs with toast while I had hash browns ‘all the way’ except for peppers and country gravy. The server gave our order to the cook who proceeded to expertly place the hash browns and all the toppings on the grill while frying Kathy’s eggs and laying down the toast. The server then started talking to the cook about how he was mad at his mother for disrespecting his friends when they came to his house to play video games in the basement. Then the server told the cook that he told his mother that he was going to move out now that he had this job at the Waffle House and that she was going to die “old and alone and feeding cats”. The cook had that look of someone who had heard this story once or twice and went to the back room, returning a few seconds later with four cases of eggs (15 dozen eggs in a case) which he proceeded to place in metal racks while keeping an eye on our food.

  The server apparently wanted the cook’s undivided attention and wasn’t getting it so he went to a booth on the other side of the Waffle House (there was only two other diners in the restaurant) and got on his phone where he told the person on the other end of the conversation that his f@#$% mother had disrespected his friends and that he was f#$%^ sick of her disrespecting his friends and now that he had this F%^&( job at the Waffle house he was going to move out and his mother was going to f^&*)* die old and alone and feeding cats. He then went into the restaurant’s back room where I could see him waving his arms like a bird while he was yelling behind the thankfully soundproof door.

The cook put 720 eggs in baskets for the next day's breakfast while creating my hash brown masterpiece!

  While we were waiting for our food I struck a conversation with the cook. Since he was putting his four cases of eggs into baskets I asked him how many eggs this Waffle House sold on a Saturday morning. He pointed to the four cases and told me that in a typical Saturday morning from 6 to 8 he would use four cases of 15 dozen eggs which works out to 720 eggs in a couple of hours! At that point the cook excused himself and got the server from the back room to give us our food. You would never guess that the server had spent the last ten or so minutes cursing at his mother by how pleasantly he served our food. He was so busy with his personal matter he had forgotten to get my coffee and Kathy’s water so I asked him how my wife’s water was coming along. I thought he was going to curse at me but he said he was sorry, got us our drinks, and disappeared in the back room to resume his phone conversation.

  The scattered, covered, smothered, topped, chunked, diced, and capped has browns were awesome and well worth the trip. Kathy liked her eggs and toast as well but not as much as I enjoyed my hash browns which is my personal highlight of 2018. The other two diners were ready to leave but the server was still in the back room so the hard-working cook took over the register. The other diners used a credit card and the server had the pen so the cook had to get the server out of the back room again. The server came out and helped the two diners and gave me our check while he was at it. We were about done so I waited for the serve to start for the back room before I got up to pay. I told the cook I thought his hash browns were awesome and didn’t give the server any tip at all but I did ask him for a paper receipt after he gave me my change and closed the cash drawer in a futile attempt to get him to curse at me. I suppose I’m not the motherly type.

  The next day and a half was full of food in addition to my niece’s wedding. There was barbecued brisket, ribs, beef, sausage, and chicken at the rehearsal dinner. After that we ate ice cream at the fantastic Betty Rae’s Ice Cream where I had a plum chocolate chip parfait with berries. The next morning at the wedding brunch I had a hot ham and cheese sandwich. After the wedding there was another dinner with salmon, pasta, and tacos. All this food and ice cream was great but paled in comparison to the hash browns I had on Friday afternoon at the Waffle House.

Great ice cream and great weddings are incredible but ultimately everything pales next to an incredible plate of Waffle House food!

  The wedding was super and I enjoyed hanging out with my in-laws but by Sunday morning I was ready to get back to the Waffle House for a farewell to Kansas City breakfast. The problem was that torrential rains in the Kansas City area and the tendency of the area to have flooding made us decided to skip the Waffle House and get away from the storm as soon as possible. It was a good plan that seemed like a great plan when we drove through two flooded sections of road but was undone when we were one of at least four cars to have a flat tire in a two mile stretch after the second flooded section. We changed the tire in the downpour and made our way out of Missouri and into Iowa where the skies cleared to reveal a sunny day after all. We were home by 2pm and picked up a very happy pair of beagles from the Happy Tails kennel a couple of hours later.

  It was an eventful trip to say the least with the best event being the awesome hash browns at the Waffle House in Kansas City. I was a little upset when I realized I didn’t get a picture of our Waffle House server at first but soon came to the conclusion that he needs his job more than I needed to print his picture and if the server lost his job the biggest victim would be his mother (who probably can’t wait to die old and alone and feeding cats).

Friday, May 18, 2018

A Rabbit's Tale

Oreo (2007-2018)

  I never had a rabbit until I got married. One Easter Kathy said, “Come on. We’re going to get a rabbit.” We headed to a pet store in Scotch Plains and got a dwarf Polish rabbit we named Buster. Buster was all black and had a cage he stayed in but was smart enough to use a litter box and had the run of our apartment in back of Phil's barbershop in Hillside New Jersey. Buster nearly came to a bad end one evening when I came home from having my wisdom teeth taken out to find Buster had chewed through all the power cords on my computer. I eventually calmed down and Buster moved with us from New Jersey to Iowa. He was a friendly sort but when we got Queenie the beagle he was scared of her and would stay in his cage whenever she was around. One day we woke up and Buster was dead. There was no warning and we assumed he had a heart attack in the middle of the night.

  Our next rabbit was a big brown and white Dutch rabbit named Pogo. Our neighbors had gotten him from the high school and were moving so we took him in. Pogo was never scared of the dogs and had the run of the kitchen where he would hang out with the boots in the boot tray in the winter and sneak around to steal pieces of Queenie’s dog food (Queenie was a notoriously slow eater that would eat a little of her food every hour or so). One day in 2007 we woke up and Pogo was dead just like Buster.

  Within a week Kathy got a black and white Dutch rabbit from the local Earl May store. The new rabbit was named Oreo and was slightly bigger than Buster. While Buster was a homebody that was scared of the dogs and stayed in his cage and Pogo was content to hang around in the boot tray, Oreo was a rascally type that would roam all around the kitchen and beyond. Our house has a stairway that leads upstairs from the kitchen. If the door was left open, Oreo would scamper upstairs and hide in a bedroom under a bed. He rarely chewed on wires and had an affinity for staying under the bed just out of reach. I always had to get a baseball bat or a cane and chase him from under the bed, after which Oreo would hop at top speed down the hall and back downstairs to his kitchen area.

  Oreo was never afraid of Queenie and Tuffy and shared the kitchen with them happily. He did have a beef with the kitchen broom and would attack it whenever it got too close to him. For such a gentle fellow Oreo was surprisingly fierce when confronted by the kitchen broom. One day Kathy was substitute teaching and took Oreo with her for the kids to play with. Oreo was a big hit but never went back to school because Kathy found the kids couldn’t concentrate with a bunny nearby.

  A couple of years after we got Oreo, Queenie and Tuffy passed away within weeks of each other and I was suddenly dogless. I was depressed and spent a few minutes each day putting Oreo on my lap and petting him until he would get bored and start scampering around. Oreo was a good substitute dog and just the friend I needed. Oreo got along good with Daisy and Baxter when we got the beagle puppies a few weeks later but the little beagles were so rambunctious we were afraid they would stampede Oreo so we split the kitchen in half with a three foot fence and reduced Oreo's running area in half but he didn't seem to mind at all.

  Oreo had a diet of rabbit pellets and hay and plenty of treats. One of Oreo’s favorite parts of the day was when I made my sandwich to take to work each day. As soon as I went to the kitchen to make the sandwich, the beagles and Oreo would start running over to me. I would give Oreo some bread and lettuce, the beagles some bologna, and everyone would get some cheese. Kathy would always have a packet of cranberries to give Oreo as treats. I like grapes and so did Oreo. When I had grapes to pack for lunch I’d make sure to give Oreo a grape as a treat. He liked them so much that I’d give him a grape or two at night and if I used all the grapes for Friday’s lunch on my way back home from work I would stop at the store to get some more so I would be able to give Oreo his treat.

  At Matt’s high school graduation party one of the parents saw Oreo and told me how he had a pet rabbit who lived in a hutch outside that just loved twigs from apple trees. I started mentioning how Oreo got grapes, cheese, lettuce, etc.… when the parent saw our apple tree outside. We went outside and picked out the perfect twig from the apple tree, cut it to the perfect size, and brought it in to give to Oreo. Oreo took a look at the twig, sniffed it once, and treated the twig with the disdain a food critic might display towards a Whopper.

  We knew Oreo was a pretty old bunny but he was as active as ever (except for not sneaking upstairs through the back steps). I picked him up on most days to give him a few pets and could tell he was getting a little bony and losing his body mass. Earlier this year I found Oreo laying on his side more than a few times having what looked like convulsions which he would recover from once I gave him some pets.

  Last Monday, Oreo didn’t come out of his cage for sandwich time and had that raggedy look that I’ve seen all too often when an animal is near death. I was hoping I was wrong but I wasn’t. When I came home from work Oreo was laying on his side in his cage. I didn’t know if he would be alive the next morning but he was still laying on his side. He didn’t come out for sandwich time but when I gathered my sandwich and grapes and fruit for lunch there was Oreo hanging out by the refrigerator. I gave him a grape but he didn’t eat it. When I came home Oreo was hanging out by a window with his head on a little shelf and not moving very much and not eating. On Wednesday Oreo didn’t come out of his cage but Kathy took him into the backyard for some fresh air and it seemed to perk him up a bit.

  Oreo stayed in his cage on Thursday morning and passed away that day in Kathy’s lap. We buried him in the backyard. His eyes were still open as we put the dirt over him. I was really close to Oreo. He was with me through some big moments like leaving every job I've had in Iowa, the deaths of Queenie and Tuffy, and the arrival of Daisy and Baxter. I cleaned out his cage this past weekend and it still sits under a shelf in the kitchen. I see it every time I go in that room and think of my friend. We took down the divider fence that separated Oreo’s part of the kitchen and I think about him when I involuntary get ready to hurdle the fence when I realize it is no longer there. Oreo was a great bunny and an even better friend. I miss him now and will miss him for a long time to come.

This video from 2010 is the only one I have of Oreo to go along with the hundreds of pictures.

Friday, May 11, 2018

Unplugged

  My favorite toy is without question my iPod. I use it to answer emails, listen to music or podcasts, trade stocks, play and study chess, and more. I am never very far away from this device which connects, entertains, and informs whenever I am in need of connection, information, or entertainment. At least I wasn’t very far away from my iPod until four Saturdays ago when it was in my jacket pocket while I took Daisy and Baxter on our 9am walk while Kathy was playing in a pickle ball tournament in Ankeny. When we started on our walk the early morning rains had subsided but a half block into the walk there was a slight mist which tuned into a drizzle after two more blocks and a torrential downpour as we reached the halfway point of our walk.

  The rain got even worse as we made our way back home. I was listening to music from my iPod’s Napster app while my two beagles and I got our waterlogged selves home. I took off my coat, dried off Daisy and Baxter, and emptied my pockets as I got out of my wet clothes. My wallet was soaked. I took out all my cash and cards to dry and went to turn off my iPod but it wouldn’t turn off. Even though I have a waterproof cover for my iPod it had gotten soaked from being in my coat pocket and was stuck and unresponsive to the on-off switch, touch screen, or the volume and home buttons.

  I put the iPod in a Ziploc bag of rice like I have seen and heard others do. Kathy soon arrived home and we took our normal Saturday morning trips to the local thrift stores for additions to her Christmas candle collection. I figured my iPod would be dry soon enough so I took it with me along with its bag of rice home. About a half hour in I noticed the iPod had seemingly turned off so I reached into the bag of rice and pressed the home button to see if it was responsive. The iPod lit up but would not respond to the ‘slide’ command so I could enter my password and worse seemed like it was getting really hot. I closed the Ziploc bag but after another 24 hours in the rice bag the iPod would no longer turn on.

  If you are thinking I was too hasty in turning my iPod on I would agree with you. Luckily, when I purchased this iPod (my 4th) from the Wal-Mart I bought the extended warranty so on the Sunday after my soaking I went to the Wal-Mart's Asurion website and started an on-line chat with a service representative. The rep efficiently diagnosed my problem and sent me an email containing all the information I needed to bring the iPod to any UPS store and the device would be packed and shipped for repair at no charge. I left the iPod with Kathy on Monday and I went to work for the first time in years without my iPod.

  The drive in to work wasn’t so bad. I listened to sports radio instead of podcasts. At work was a different story. I have a work computer I used to check emails but there was no music or podcasts unless I wanted to try to set up my apps on my work computer which I was not going to do. I was much more distracted than normal without any music or podcast to provide background noise for me. The drive back home wasn’t much better with the sports radio stations providing regurgitation of the morning sports talk discussions.

  When I got home from work I walked the dogs with Kathy and didn’t miss my iPod until I got back home. If I wanted to do some chess puzzles or check on the scores I had to be in front of my computer because I had no iPod. At night I was having a hard time getting to sleep because I’m used to listening to music or white noise on my iPod which I no longer had.

  I hadn’t realized how dependent I was on this little device. The next morning I get my old iPod out of storage. I had replaced it because it wouldn’t charge unless I held the cable just so but to my relief I found that the Apple cable from my latest iPod would charge the old iPod just fine except for having to reseat the cable every so often. I took my iPod to work and was able to listen to podcasts and music once again in my car and at my desk. This iPod is three years old and very slow compared to my new iPod but functional nonetheless. I could listen to podcasts and music and check email but the apps for getting scores and trading stocks kept on crashing. I expect this was due to the apps being obsolete and the underlying web services not compatible with the older operating system on this iPod. I had been doing some chess puzzles on my Chessimo app every day but the old iPod didn’t have any record of my progress over the past year so I decided to wait until I got my repaired iPod back so I could restore my data. I was frustrated at the limitations of the old iPod but happy I had it to give me music and podcasts to listen to at work and the commute.

  I finally got my repaired iPod back from Wal-Mart on Wednesday which was 26 days after it got soaked. I restored my data and am now back enjoying my new iPod’s blistering speed and am even back to doing my daily regimen of Chessimo puzzles. One thing I haven’t done is use my iPod to listen to music to help me get to sleep. After a week I started sleeping better without the music and got in the habit of leaving my iPod downstairs at night. It took some time to resist the temptation to check the sports scores and email in the middle of the night but I am now in the habit of not using my iPod at night and have no desire to resume my old ways. The month without my new iPod has me thinking it had become more of a necessity than a toy and I want to make sure that it stays a toy to be enjoyed instead of a device I have to have ready at all times.

Friday, May 4, 2018

Movie Review - Avengers : Infinity War

   WARNING : AVENGERS : INFINITY WAR SPOILERS BELOW!!!

Avengers : Infinity War is Marvel Studios newest record breaking hit...

  I went with Kathy to see the Avengers : Infinity War in our local movie theatre for the Saturday afternoon matinee. Most of the opening weekend matinees I’ve attended have had attendance in the single digits but Infinity Wars played to a packed house which leads me to think this movie is on pace to the biggest super hero movie gross of all time.

  The movie follows three separate plots of ‘mini-teams’ that are trying to thwart the quest of Thanos to collect the six infinity stones and become the ruler of all reality. Thor and a part of the Guardians of the Galaxy are on a quest to create a weapon worthy of killing Thanos, the rest of the Guardians team with Iron Man, Dr. Strange, and Spiderman to fight Thanos on his home planet of Titan, while Captain America leads the rest of the heroes to battle Thanos’s army in Wakanda to protect Vision and his ‘Mind Stone’. The first third of the movie sets up the teams in their locations and provides some funny character interactions. The rest of the movie is devoted to the battle and the star of the movie, Thanos.

  Make no mistake, Thanos is the star of the movie. We hear him repeatedly explain that the reason he needs the infinity stones is because he is the only being that has the will to bring balance to the universe by killing half the life in it. In the comics Thanos is in love with the personification of death and wants to kill every living being as an offering of his love. I have to say I like the half-measured Thanos better. Thanos tells Tony Stark how his homeworld had more people than resources but his calls to eliminate half the population went unheeded and everyone (except Thanos of course) died but the worlds where he eliminated half the populations are flourishing. The movie even gives a flashback to how he adopted his daughter Gamora while having his troops bring ‘balance’ to her world by killing half the population which includes her mother.

  Josh Brolin and the Marvel CGI team combine to make a fine Thanos. He was menacing and powerful enough to beat the Hulk in combat but was relatable enough to show his relationship with his daughter Gamora. At a point in the movie he has to prove his love for his daughter (in a twisted Thanos type of way) and is able to show it in a way that made me believe that he really believes killing half the universe is the only way to save it. In this way he is no different than other Marvel galactic beings like Ego, Galactus, and Eternity who have the proverbial 10,000 feet view of all things celestial.

  The CGI for the Marvel films just gets better and better. Spiderman’s new suit with mechanical extendable arachnid legs was especially cool. Tony Stark’s new nanotech embedded Iron Man armor that can generate any number of weapons and shapes made him believable as someone who could go toe to toe with Thanos. After taking a beating from Thanos, the Hulk doesn’t want to take over for Bruce Banner anymore which led to a number of ‘almost-Hulk’ transformations. Doctor Strange was another beneficiary of the improved CGI. His mystic powers are very dependent on CGI and the Crimson Bands of Cytorrak seemed to crackle in his hands.

  The actions scenes were also great. The battle featuring Thanos’s ‘war dog’ army against Wakanda was the lengthiest battle. It was fierce enough to rivet me to the screen but didn’t distract me with cutting back and forth in each mini-battle like ‘Transformers’ movies tend to do. Even the non-battle scene of Thor restarting the planetary forge in order to create his Thanos-killing weapon was exciting. As if that wasn’t enough the interactions between Tony Stark, Dr. Strange, and Spiderman along with Rocket Racoon and Thor were hilarious without being the sort of out of character interactions looking for laughs that creep into many Marvel films.

  There was nothing techinal about Avengers:Infinity War’s acting, special effects, of film-making that I didn’t like and yet I left the theater disappointed. Why? Lots of characters die the extremely unsatisfying death of turning to ash with a bare minimum allowed to utter a few last words. The first few deaths were shocking but after awhile I was pretty numb to it all and it is obvious that not many if any of these deaths will carry through past the next Avengers Movie scheduled for next year since lots of the newly dead actors and characters are scheduled for future movies. The death scale was so rapture-like with cars and helicopters crashing in New York as half the world’s population turns to dust that the only solution will have to be either an ‘alternate-reality switch’ or a ‘changing of the past to wipe out the entire Infinity War future so it never happened’ plot device.

  Avengers: infinity War is a great film but spending 2 and a half hours watching with no resolution and more questions than answers makes me think it a mediocre movie despite all the great components.As a youngster I always preferred DC comics to Marvel comics for this very reason – a DC comic ened with a conclusion while a Marvel comic always made me feel like I was missing out if I didn’t read the last issue or I would never find the resolution if I didn’t have a quarter to spare the next month. I’m Ok with leaving our characters in the wind like Captain America and his crew at the end of ‘Civil War’ or the Hulk after ‘Avengers : Age of Ultron’ but a year long cliffhanger with such a down ending is too much for me. I’m sure the Marvel universe show runners have it all figured out and the next Avengers will likely break all the records that Infinity Wars set but I would rather have had an extra half hour added to the film to make it a three hour movie and resolved the Thanos conflict once and for all or perhaps even ending this movie before Thanos kills half the universe and start part two with it. This ending seems very much like ‘the Walking Dead's’ much maligned fake ‘Glenn’ death and I could have done without it.