1. Does a restaurant still meet the Indoor Air law when the back door is always propped open and the staff stands with one foot in the door smoking?
2. Most people find it unappetizing when the table is covered in a perpetual film of syrup and butter.
3. The yellow and black Waffle House paper hats are not even remotely attractive.
4. Haven't you ever wondered why there are never any stray cats or even birds hanging out in the Waffle House parking lot?
5. If you can get three eggs, sausage, a biscuit and gravy for $3.29 you have to wonder how much the disgruntled employees are making. Is it enough to compel them not to spit in your food when you point out that it is dangerously undercooked and have it sent back to the kitchen?
6. GRITS. Any restaurant worth it's salt should serve hashbrowns. No one in their right mind actually likes grits.
7. Minnesota has Perkins.
8. Minnesota has Embers.
9. Minnesota has Denny's.
10. Minnesota has lots of other great family owned restaurants that serve breakfast... not like in the South where all you have are dirty, greasy family owned knockoffs of Waffle House with a breakfast buffet in the front entry.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
Friday, October 3, 2008
The worst trash day ever.
Today was trash day.
I put the trash and recycling out at the curb last night, all is well.
This morning I overslept by about 15 minutes (alarm volume got turned down) and had to rush to get my son ready for school. We were still about 5 minutes behind schedule when we got in the car to leave...I look down the street both ways and out the back, before putting the car in gear and backing down our short and VERY steep driveway. The driveway is so steep I cannot see the house across the street in my rearview mirror, all I see is blacktop. As I am cranking the wheel to complete pulling out of the driveway I hear a loud BANG and then crashing. I hit the DARN trash can with the front passenger side of the car.
Why did I hit the trashcan? Because they elected to leave it IN THE STREET AT THE END OF MY DRIVEWAY.
I leave the car parked in the middle of the street, get out and throw the trashcan into the yard while swearing up a storm. Get back in the car, and try to calmly drive my son to school without letting my anger affect him.
Got home, parked the car and finally got to inspect the damage. I put a 5 inch long "line-like" dent in the car... presumably I hit some squarish angle of the trashcan just right. MF! I am so angry...
Looking down the block, MY trashcan is the only one they left in the street. They could make the effort to put 99% of the trashcans on the curb, so why not mine?!! My grass is mowed, the area where I put the trashcan is perfectly flat (quite a contrast to the driveway)... just put the can back where you got it from.. is that so bleeping difficult?!
GRR. When I go to trade in or resell my car, these idiots will end up costing me several hundred dollars all in order to save themselves the 5 seconds it would have taken to put my trash barrel back in its place.
I was going to call them right away, but my husband could tell I was about 3 seconds away from getting in the car and chasing down the garbage truck with a softball bat... he stopped me and convinced me to let him call them later. I have a mousey voice and customer service people always treat me like I'm 13 years old...so hopefully he will have better results.
I put the trash and recycling out at the curb last night, all is well.
This morning I overslept by about 15 minutes (alarm volume got turned down) and had to rush to get my son ready for school. We were still about 5 minutes behind schedule when we got in the car to leave...I look down the street both ways and out the back, before putting the car in gear and backing down our short and VERY steep driveway. The driveway is so steep I cannot see the house across the street in my rearview mirror, all I see is blacktop. As I am cranking the wheel to complete pulling out of the driveway I hear a loud BANG and then crashing. I hit the DARN trash can with the front passenger side of the car.
Why did I hit the trashcan? Because they elected to leave it IN THE STREET AT THE END OF MY DRIVEWAY.
I leave the car parked in the middle of the street, get out and throw the trashcan into the yard while swearing up a storm. Get back in the car, and try to calmly drive my son to school without letting my anger affect him.
Got home, parked the car and finally got to inspect the damage. I put a 5 inch long "line-like" dent in the car... presumably I hit some squarish angle of the trashcan just right. MF! I am so angry...
Looking down the block, MY trashcan is the only one they left in the street. They could make the effort to put 99% of the trashcans on the curb, so why not mine?!! My grass is mowed, the area where I put the trashcan is perfectly flat (quite a contrast to the driveway)... just put the can back where you got it from.. is that so bleeping difficult?!
GRR. When I go to trade in or resell my car, these idiots will end up costing me several hundred dollars all in order to save themselves the 5 seconds it would have taken to put my trash barrel back in its place.
I was going to call them right away, but my husband could tell I was about 3 seconds away from getting in the car and chasing down the garbage truck with a softball bat... he stopped me and convinced me to let him call them later. I have a mousey voice and customer service people always treat me like I'm 13 years old...so hopefully he will have better results.
Friday, September 19, 2008
The Garden of Eden
I will warn you in advance, that this turned into something of a rant turned essay.
I was raised Catholic, but have to say since moving out on my own that religion bears little influence on my life. I have always wondered how people can legitimize their "faith" and preach to others about morality when they spend one day a week at church, and the other six doing whatever they want regardless of its impacts on other people or the planet. This applies to people of many faiths, but Christians are particularly notorious for their zeal in preaching about their lofty morals to non-believers.
There are plenty of Christian businessmen and women who are making the policies that basically STEAL money from you little by little. Finance charges, overdraft fees, management fees, service fees. Where is the compassion in charging $34 when someone accidentally charges $3.15 more than they have in their bank account? I have experienced several bank errors, one that even locked up all the money in my main checking account for THREE weeks. If that was my only account I could have been in a very terrible position! Did this bank offer to give me some small part of my funds to get by? ... NO. When the error was finally recitified did I get paid a "Serious Banking Error Fee"? ...NO. The bank easily could have caused a landslide of other financial problems for me, and I barely even got an admission that they had made a mistake let alone an apology.
There are plenty of "fish" magnets on Escalades, Hummers, Armadas, etc... people getting 10 mpg, weaving through freeway traffic without their turn signals, going about 15 mph over the speed limit. Burning through fossil fuels like judgement day is just around the bend, and endangering the lives of others doesn't seem very representative of Christian ideals.
There are hundreds of thousands of devoutly religious parents who constantly smoke around their children... many are struggling to get by financially but always find the money for a pack of cigarettes every day. They are slowly poisoning their children and increasing their chances of a dozen health issues later in life.
How can you be pro-life without taking into account the quality of the life? When you bring children into the world who are not wanted by their parents and not properly provided for you exponentially increase a myriad of problems. Problems that affect everyone from the child, the parent, the family, the community, the state, the country, the planet. If the church wants to be pro-life, then logically they should also be pro- birth control. Enable people to make a responsible choice before the "magic" moment of conception! Unfortunately, logic and religion seem to have been unfairly pitted against eachother sometime in history and the battle persists even today.
Let's not forget the church's long history as a force to be reckoned with. Just as Big Business is now the government's bedfellow, the church held that place for centuries in much of Europe. The church has done its part throughout history to drive wars, inquisition, block the spread of knowledge and keep the masses complacent.
I don't know if I believe Jesus Christ is my personal lord and savior (I'm sure I'll take heat for that). When I consider God, I think of him as something of a scientist. He started this grand experiment of the universe, and has been watching the results for 13.7 billion years. If he was one to "judge", I personally don't think he would judge on our individual actions, but on the consequences of our actions as a whole group. How are we affecting all the other components of his grand experiment?
For me, this is the reason to live sustainably... to bring back balance so the experiment can continue to carry on, and hopefully be a success long into the future.
I think we should all consider the story of Adam and Eve, its a great parable for our times. Adam and Eve were given the Garden of Eden...everything they could have wanted was provided. But they were tempted by greed and took of the the fruit of knowledge (the forbidden fruit), thinking it was the one thing that kept them from being God's equal. As punishment, they were cast out of the Garden.
Now here we are on this beautiful planet that provides all we need to live a happy and plentiful life... but we have chosen to take of the fruit of knowledge. We foolishly think that in taking the fruit we are ourselves Gods who can master over every element of our planet. We endlessly exploit the garden and take that which is not ours (The wellbeing of the planet, and the resources of future generations).
Is it too late to repent? Or are we already well on the way to casting ourselves out of the garden once more?
I was raised Catholic, but have to say since moving out on my own that religion bears little influence on my life. I have always wondered how people can legitimize their "faith" and preach to others about morality when they spend one day a week at church, and the other six doing whatever they want regardless of its impacts on other people or the planet. This applies to people of many faiths, but Christians are particularly notorious for their zeal in preaching about their lofty morals to non-believers.
There are plenty of Christian businessmen and women who are making the policies that basically STEAL money from you little by little. Finance charges, overdraft fees, management fees, service fees. Where is the compassion in charging $34 when someone accidentally charges $3.15 more than they have in their bank account? I have experienced several bank errors, one that even locked up all the money in my main checking account for THREE weeks. If that was my only account I could have been in a very terrible position! Did this bank offer to give me some small part of my funds to get by? ... NO. When the error was finally recitified did I get paid a "Serious Banking Error Fee"? ...NO. The bank easily could have caused a landslide of other financial problems for me, and I barely even got an admission that they had made a mistake let alone an apology.
There are plenty of "fish" magnets on Escalades, Hummers, Armadas, etc... people getting 10 mpg, weaving through freeway traffic without their turn signals, going about 15 mph over the speed limit. Burning through fossil fuels like judgement day is just around the bend, and endangering the lives of others doesn't seem very representative of Christian ideals.
There are hundreds of thousands of devoutly religious parents who constantly smoke around their children... many are struggling to get by financially but always find the money for a pack of cigarettes every day. They are slowly poisoning their children and increasing their chances of a dozen health issues later in life.
How can you be pro-life without taking into account the quality of the life? When you bring children into the world who are not wanted by their parents and not properly provided for you exponentially increase a myriad of problems. Problems that affect everyone from the child, the parent, the family, the community, the state, the country, the planet. If the church wants to be pro-life, then logically they should also be pro- birth control. Enable people to make a responsible choice before the "magic" moment of conception! Unfortunately, logic and religion seem to have been unfairly pitted against eachother sometime in history and the battle persists even today.
Let's not forget the church's long history as a force to be reckoned with. Just as Big Business is now the government's bedfellow, the church held that place for centuries in much of Europe. The church has done its part throughout history to drive wars, inquisition, block the spread of knowledge and keep the masses complacent.
I don't know if I believe Jesus Christ is my personal lord and savior (I'm sure I'll take heat for that). When I consider God, I think of him as something of a scientist. He started this grand experiment of the universe, and has been watching the results for 13.7 billion years. If he was one to "judge", I personally don't think he would judge on our individual actions, but on the consequences of our actions as a whole group. How are we affecting all the other components of his grand experiment?
For me, this is the reason to live sustainably... to bring back balance so the experiment can continue to carry on, and hopefully be a success long into the future.
I think we should all consider the story of Adam and Eve, its a great parable for our times. Adam and Eve were given the Garden of Eden...everything they could have wanted was provided. But they were tempted by greed and took of the the fruit of knowledge (the forbidden fruit), thinking it was the one thing that kept them from being God's equal. As punishment, they were cast out of the Garden.
Now here we are on this beautiful planet that provides all we need to live a happy and plentiful life... but we have chosen to take of the fruit of knowledge. We foolishly think that in taking the fruit we are ourselves Gods who can master over every element of our planet. We endlessly exploit the garden and take that which is not ours (The wellbeing of the planet, and the resources of future generations).
Is it too late to repent? Or are we already well on the way to casting ourselves out of the garden once more?
Monday, September 15, 2008
Don't recycle? You're throwing it all away...
Why don't we have a Nationwide Comprehensive Recycling program?
Everyone in the U.S. should be able to recycle paper, glass, plastics 1-7, tin, aluminum and steel at the curb or at the very least at a county recycling center. We should also have a national composting program and capture the methane for power generation. What about using everyone's grass trimmings to make ethanol?
That is the bare MINIMUM of what should be in place. Then, what about things like electronics, clothing (jeans for insulation), construction waste, and other products that are routinely ending up in landfills across the country.
Wouldn't it be easier and more cost effective to run programs that KEEP trash out of the landfill to begin with? I don't see the justification to just keep throwing things away when we know there are limited materials and resources to be had on this planet.
Our kids and their kids (etc.) are really going to think we are idiots, when their future economy and goods are all based on reclaiming resources we threw away because it was "convenient at the time".
Everyone in the U.S. should be able to recycle paper, glass, plastics 1-7, tin, aluminum and steel at the curb or at the very least at a county recycling center. We should also have a national composting program and capture the methane for power generation. What about using everyone's grass trimmings to make ethanol?
That is the bare MINIMUM of what should be in place. Then, what about things like electronics, clothing (jeans for insulation), construction waste, and other products that are routinely ending up in landfills across the country.
Wouldn't it be easier and more cost effective to run programs that KEEP trash out of the landfill to begin with? I don't see the justification to just keep throwing things away when we know there are limited materials and resources to be had on this planet.
Our kids and their kids (etc.) are really going to think we are idiots, when their future economy and goods are all based on reclaiming resources we threw away because it was "convenient at the time".
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Cause and Effect. Supply and Demand.
As you may know, we in Georgia have been in a drought for over two years now. For most of that time we have been under level 3 and 4 water restrictions. It took awhile for people to get on board with the measures, but in the end the Atlanta metro area has cut its monthly water use between 12 and 26%.
That's a good thing right?
Well, apparently all our water conservation has caused a projected budget deficit for the Water System authorities. To remedy this shortfall they plan on raising the water and sewer fees roughly 38% this fall!
Now this is really hard for me to swallow, as we (my family) have basically cut our consumption rate in half from what it was four years ago. We are already paying $54 a month for 4,000 gallons... maybe this is cheap to some of you, but compared to our $12 water bill in Minnesota its already highway robbery!
The lowest pricing tier here covers consumption between 0 - 9,000 gallons, so basically we are paying the same rate as some people who uses TWICE as much water as we do.
Grr! It is so crummy to be penalized for doing the right thing!
*insert grumpy emoti-con here*
That's a good thing right?
Well, apparently all our water conservation has caused a projected budget deficit for the Water System authorities. To remedy this shortfall they plan on raising the water and sewer fees roughly 38% this fall!
Now this is really hard for me to swallow, as we (my family) have basically cut our consumption rate in half from what it was four years ago. We are already paying $54 a month for 4,000 gallons... maybe this is cheap to some of you, but compared to our $12 water bill in Minnesota its already highway robbery!
The lowest pricing tier here covers consumption between 0 - 9,000 gallons, so basically we are paying the same rate as some people who uses TWICE as much water as we do.
Grr! It is so crummy to be penalized for doing the right thing!
*insert grumpy emoti-con here*
Friday, August 22, 2008
Spider Karma?
I just wanted to tell you all a story...
It all starts with me being a lackadaisical child, who loved the outdoors. I loved to watch bugs... and if my mom found one in the house I would do my darndest to save it and return it outside before she smashed it.
Fast forward... now I have a son who thinks rounding up bugs and putting them back outside is the "normal" way of doing things. Once in first grade he was sent home because a classmate purposely squashed a moth on the playground and they could not console him at school.
So... last night I went out after dark to put the trash down at the curb and walked into a very thick spiderweb. Although I am a "bug buddhist" I do not actually care to have them crawling on me, so I immediately dropped everything and ran straight to the house. I turned on the nearest light and proceded to brush off my head and shoulders and try to make sure I didn't have a hitch-hiker.
Well, after *thinking* there were no spiders on me, I looked down and saw one of my cats chasing what appeared to be a small black widow across the floor. I did a bad thing... I grabbed a nearby shoe and smashed it. It was pure instinct. I saw that red on black and the danger of it and freaked out.
So... now I am feeling guilty. Did I ruin 20+ years of bug karma? Was I spared a bite because of my past good deeds? I don't know... it has been on my mind all day.
It all starts with me being a lackadaisical child, who loved the outdoors. I loved to watch bugs... and if my mom found one in the house I would do my darndest to save it and return it outside before she smashed it.
Fast forward... now I have a son who thinks rounding up bugs and putting them back outside is the "normal" way of doing things. Once in first grade he was sent home because a classmate purposely squashed a moth on the playground and they could not console him at school.
So... last night I went out after dark to put the trash down at the curb and walked into a very thick spiderweb. Although I am a "bug buddhist" I do not actually care to have them crawling on me, so I immediately dropped everything and ran straight to the house. I turned on the nearest light and proceded to brush off my head and shoulders and try to make sure I didn't have a hitch-hiker.
Well, after *thinking* there were no spiders on me, I looked down and saw one of my cats chasing what appeared to be a small black widow across the floor. I did a bad thing... I grabbed a nearby shoe and smashed it. It was pure instinct. I saw that red on black and the danger of it and freaked out.
So... now I am feeling guilty. Did I ruin 20+ years of bug karma? Was I spared a bite because of my past good deeds? I don't know... it has been on my mind all day.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
A quote which reminded me of my blog.
On page 246, "The Hostile Hospital" by Lemony Snicket:
"There are many things in this world I do not know. I do not know how butterflies get out of their cocoons without damaging their wings. I do not know why anyone would boil vegetables when roasting them is tastier. I do not know how to make olive oil, and I do not know why dogs bark before an earthquake, and I do not know why some people voluntarily choose to climb mountains where it is freezing and difficult to breathe, or live in the suburbs, where the coffee is watery and all the houses look alike."
My son and I have been reading the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books together, and I find them very enjoyable even though the run-on sentences make it quite a challenge to read aloud.
"There are many things in this world I do not know. I do not know how butterflies get out of their cocoons without damaging their wings. I do not know why anyone would boil vegetables when roasting them is tastier. I do not know how to make olive oil, and I do not know why dogs bark before an earthquake, and I do not know why some people voluntarily choose to climb mountains where it is freezing and difficult to breathe, or live in the suburbs, where the coffee is watery and all the houses look alike."
My son and I have been reading the "Series of Unfortunate Events" books together, and I find them very enjoyable even though the run-on sentences make it quite a challenge to read aloud.
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