The Corn-bread Incident

Every fan of Calvin and Hobbes knows about the ominous references to the "Noodle Incident". Unfortunately, Bill Watterson never lets us in on the details of it, which of course is part of the splendor of the incident. I, myself, have a few incidents. My favorite one is the "Corn-bread Incident." Thus, I feel the need to take it upon myself to enlighten the world on the highlight of the winter of ott-five:

It was a chilly, dark Monday, February-ish, and the Fab Four was gathered around the table with the Chief and his spouse. I say the Fab Four because it was this team of siblings that, when assembled correctly and in the right phase of the moon, formed the most sarcastic, snide dinners in Hansen history, much to the Chief's chagrin. The Boy was a Cynical Senior, Heidi was at the top of her game, I was living out my last college year at home before I took off to Boston, so therefore always jolly and cheerful, and Leez-leez was always a great audience.

Anyway, it was Monday. And any Monday in February is Chili Day, which added more chagrinning for the Chief. In fact, the reason why the Cornbread Incident was so memorable was because of the Chief's chagrin, which kept climbing higher and higher.

So all was in place: Monday, Fab Four, chili, Chief Chagrin. Now everyone knows that chili means cornbread, which can't be served without the Chief telling the tired "cornbread r-squared" joke leading to the inevitable groans, which leads to the inevitable Kent-makes-fun-of-Dad joke, which leads to me inevitably laughing at my own joke, which leads to the inevitable Kent-laughs-at-his-own-jokes joke, all of this pretty routine at this point. I felt the team lacked the usual passion and effort, and, frankly, I was about to empty the bench and bring in some unfunny neighbors just to teach them a lesson. I mean, come on! They were really mailing it in, and something had to be done to spice things up a bit.

Meanwhile, someone had taken a singular piece from the corner of the square, glass Cornbread Pan (because Ma has never made anything else in that pan except maybe warm-up some leftover mush), and it was sitting in front of me, the spatula sitting under the next piece of cornbread, its handle resting on the side of the pan. I realized then that if I slammed my hand down on the handle, it would catapult the cornbread to who-knows-where-and-gosh-I'd-like-to-find-out. Well, this dinner was about as exciting as the dinner after we found out Brian died (What? He's not dead?), so I figured a Cornbread Catapulsion needed to be added to this dinner's fare.

Before I endeavored on this Journey of Delight, I wanted to make sure my siblings were watching, ready to applaud my hilarious actions. I asked the table if I should do it (I was going to regardless), to which I received gobs of encouragement from the Fab Four, whereas the Chief discouraged it and Ma didn't say anything, which of course means she secretly condoned it. I mean, at this point, who wouldn't want to see a piece of cornbread exploding out of the atmosphere? It was the only thing in my life worth living for!

After getting the necessary support, I made a fist and slammed the handle down to the table. The cornbread took flight, leaving a trail of crumbs in its flight path. The square, yellow projectile soared within an inch of the ceiling, narrowly missing the ceiling fan. We all sat in silence with jaws dropped, spoons full of chili dropped in disbelief as the cornbread seemed to fly in slow motion. They say that in moments like this your life flashes before your eyes. It's true.

The cornbread came back towards me but to my right by about 5 feet, so I had to make haste to preserve this delicious pastry. I dove over 2 chairs, stretched out like Eric Drage...reached out my hand, extended my fingers...CAUGHT!!! As soon as the stunt was completed, a roar of laughter came from the dinner attendees, including me, of course. I put the cornbread on my plate, honeyed it up, and put it down. Greatest moment of my life.

The Randomest of Randoms

Okay, the first sentence of Kent's last blog scared me. It scared me so much that since I first read it I've been trying to think of something I could blog about just to bump it down a bit...Unfortunately for all of you I was unable to come up with one awesome, blog-worthy topic, so I'm just writing about all the runners-up (or is it runner-ups?).

First, Kent just called me his "Pink Princess" and that disturbs me on a number of levels. Technically this is just an observation on his part because currently I am sitting here completely clothed in pink, this fact also disturbs me on a number of levels. For those of you who know me, I do not associate with pink. I just never have. My favorite color has always been blue, and pink always seems to be too "obviously" girly, whatever that may mean. I mean, obviously I'm a girl, but for some reason pink seemed to broadcast too strongly, or maybe it became trendy and that turned me off even more. Anyway, another level of disturbance stems from the "Princess" side. I apologize if this offends anyone (not really), but I think it's creepy when any female over the age of 8 refers to herself, and expects others to refer to her, as "Princess." Okay, sure, every girl wants to be treated like a princess (I prefer Queen-Bee), but there is no need to pretend you are of royal birth. It's just wrong...so stop it.

Secondly, and I think this is a good segue from the "First," I think the date of Kent's birthday explains a lot. My little charmer was born on Valentine's Day, February 14th. Now, he offers me my own "Mellintine's Day" (thanks JoEllen) if you reference below, so we can solely celebrate his birthday once the 14th rolls around. However, he still gave me a Valentine on February 14th, and wanted to know why he only got a birthday card from me. I figured the heart-shaped pancakes I made him for breakfast would cover that...Anyway, he had typed, which implies pre-meditation, a list of his Top 32 things he loves about me. I'm not sure why he picked 32...maybe he was aiming for 50 and ran out of ideas. And this was a list of really good reasons, in fact, I almost teared-up reading it. The whole point of this paragraph is to voice this theory: I believe that because his birthday is disguised as a romantic holiday, he is forced to live his life as a romantic disguised as a burping-sports watching-poop talking-macho man. I say this because I think there are many of you who would be surprised by his romantic notions. For those of you who require further evidence you can refer back to the whole proposal scheme that he worked out entirely on his own. Think about it.

Thirdly, I hate mass hysteria, and not for the obvious reasons, but because I hate it when people freak out for no reason at all. Let me preface this with a reminder that I live in New England. New England, where the term nor'easter has a meaning. That said, people need to calm down about snow. It's just snow, we've seen it before, we'll see it again, so just prepare yourself for that reality. This comes up because on Friday the state of Massachusetts was on the verge of a state-of-emergency because we live in a world where no one wants to be held accountable for acts of God. I should probably interject a brief bit of history: In December there was a big snow storm forecasted to hit our area, but it wasn't supposed to start until 5ish. Long story short, the snow started earlier and harder than expected and people ended up in this:

So, this past Friday another big storm was expected and sure enough, what do you know, it started snowing! Granted, it was snowing pretty hard, but not anything unmanageable, in my opinion. However, the governor issued a statement that all "non-essential staff" should go home. First, what makes you "non-essential?" Way to make government workers feel less appreciated...Anyway, soon after Kent called me to tell me his office was closing at 2pm. Corporate offices were closing early!?! And then shortly after that we received news that the University was also issuing its "Emergency Closing Policy" in effect at 1pm. I stayed at work until 5:30pm, why, you ask? Because there was NO need for me to go home early. I got home in regular time, with no issues other than having to step through a bit of snow on my way from the train station to my apartment.

Here's the theory associated with this: If everyone was able to act normally in times of snow storms, it would really limit the chaos. More people drive into the city on days when snow is expected, which to me, makes absolutely no sense. When it snows (or rains for that matter) road conditions are worse, increasing the odds of delays, so why would you want to add to the number of cars creating all the traffic? Why not keep taking the public transportation like you do every other day? So, because more people are driving in, and all of these "Emergency Closing Policies" go into effect, it just pushes all of these people into their cars and onto the roads, all at the same time. Great plan. For the storm in December plows couldn't even clear the roads because of all the traffic, which then made road conditions even worse, creating more accidents, in turn adding to the delays. Do you see what I'm saying? If everyone had behaved as usual, no extra cars on the road, no leaving work early, the roads would have been plowed and maybe the drive home would have been a bit slower than usual. Seriously people, CALM DOWN.

Welcome to the randomness.

Don't let the first sentence scare you.

Have you ever been sitting in a stall in a public restroom and making quite a stink? Well, I have. Often. Mostly at work. During the particularly pungent ones I feel a little self-conscious, mostly because of the huge cracks in the stall walls, you know, the opening between the door and the corners and what-not. It drives me nuts how they can't build stalls that are more private! I know I've accidentally seen some poor sap as I've scanned for open stalls. I mean, how hard can it be to build stalls will flush corners and doors?

Which brings us to today's subject: technological innovations and the lack thereof.

20 years ago the only way to send your loved one a note was to put it in a stupid envelope, find a stamp, find their address, put it in your mailbox, put the flag up, and wait for the mailman. Now we can send IM's to each other, look up recipes on the Interwebs, etc. We have almost infinite information at our fingertips. It's great. You love it, I love it, your mom REALLY loves it.

So why are we still putting up with ancient things like the aforementioned stall? I work in a nice office building in downtown Boston, you'd think they would have decent stalls. But they don't, because NOBODY does. It's still the norm! I bet if you went back to the 50's you'd find stalls that were exactly the same. I look forward to the day when we say, "Remember the old stalls with huge cracks everybody could see through?"

Along the same lines, where are all the flying cars I was promised in all those movies like Back to the Future II? Our mode of transportation has been the same for almost a century. Horseless carriages have gotten nicer inside, but when it comes down to it, it's still 4 wheels on asphalt. When do we get to drive in the sky? When do I get to drive around in a Landspeeder like in Star Wars? We need to stop spending so much money on new roads and put it into R&D for flying cars. So let it be written.

You could say, "They're called PLANES, Kent, ya stoop!" Well, duh. But I'm talking more about the ability for everyone to quickly jump in their flying car, stomp on the gas, and be at work in 10 minutes, with plentiful parking in the air. How hard could it be?

And that's it for today's rant. Until next time!

I unheart Applebee's

You've all waited so patiently for our next post that I'm going to reward you with a post every day for the next week! But seriously, no. I'm a smidgereeno busy at work and that's when I typically write my blogs: smack-dab during the middle of the work day. I feel justified in this because I have a false sense of entitlement. If my boss is reading this: just kidding. I'm not too worried about my boss reading this because I'm a big believer in the separation of work and life. Whenever somebody at work asks me about my life, I tell them I live at 06016.2 (my cubical number) and sleep under my desk.

Because I've been so busy at work, I have been maximizing my leisure by doing absolutely nothing once I go home. I watch the tube, play some Civ and NBA Live, and sleep a lot. This leads to a sore rump after about 13 hours or so. Once the rump is sufficiently sore, I feel like I have maximized my leisure and it's time to get this ol' scrap heap moving.

This happened on Saturday. I got up early, at 6:30 am, excited for a full day of doing nothing. I got up earlier than I do on weekdays (8 am), just because I was planning on taking a ridiculously long nap that afternoon, and you can't do that if you sleep in. So I cranked up my comp and starting Civin' it up. (For those of you who don't know what Civ is, first of all: SHAME ON YOU, second of all: it's short for "Civilization", a highly-addictive computer game.)

After conquering my Aztec and Malinese rivals a few times and taking a 3 hour nap, my rump had acquired sufficient soreness to get off my duff. It was dinner time by now, around 7, so we cleaned up and headed over to this Mexican place in downtown Melrose that seemed to be popular, but we hadn't experienced it yet. Of course, 7 is NOT an ideal time to go to a popular restaurant on a Saturday night. Everybody knows you need to get there at 6 or else you're waitin'. All the tables were full and we were quoted a 25 minute wait. Since we got prime street parking right in front, we weren't about to go anywhere, so we sat in the car and waited for our pager to light up. About 25 minutes later, we checked to see how close we were, and the stupid host quoted us with ANOTHER 25 minute wait. How stupid is that? If he woulda said "50 minutes" then we would've left immediately.

So then we were stuck driving down Main Street looking for a non-pizza joint, which is next to impossible. I swear there are pizza joints out here like LDS chapels in Utah. No close restaurants seemed that tasty, so we decided to go over to Applebee's.

Now those faithful readers will remember my "Low Brow" post and they know that I like those corporate franchises because you know what you're getting into for about 10-12 bucks a plate. However, I have a disclaimer: I go to restaurants for specific dishes, not because every last one of their dishes is delicious. For example, I like Friday's because of their JD Steak and Shrimp. I like Chili's for the Molten Chocolate Cake. I like PF Chang's because of the Mongolian Beef. I like Applebee's because of the Fiesta Lime Chicken. Now some people will say that I'm not experiencing the other meals, but I find all of the aforementioned dishes exceedingly desirable. Why would you try something else when you only go to that restaurant every month or so? If you go there every week, that's different. But eating the same thing once a month is not what I call tedious.

The restaurants that I've never been to or that I didn't happen to pick a celestial meal of course are the exceptions. I go with an open mind and choose something that I think I would like. So it's not like I don't try new things, but once you've found perfection, why settle for mediocrity?

So now I need to tell you that everything else that I or Mellif has tried at Applebee's has been pretty nasty, 'cepting the molten choco dessert, which is always a hit at almost every place. So Mellif only goes there because she is such a loving wife and knows that I love the Fiesta Lime Chicken more than her.

Anyway.

So off we went to Applebee's, getting there around 8, pretty Starvelous Marvelous by now. The wait was short, only 10 minutes, so that was good. We sat down in a sizable booth and things were lookin' up. About 5 minutes went by, we were ready to order, both getting the appetizer/meal/dessert deal for 12 bucks or whatever. The waiter FINALLY shows up and he's got bloodshot eyes and he's shaking like a 5-year-old stuck outside in the snow and has to pee. We dismiss it to something that he can't help, like Parkinson's or whatever. He comes back with our drinks promptly.

Then we wait.

And wait.

And wait some more. No sign of the waiter. Where on earth was he? Some other server walked past and I stopped her, asking her where our appetizers were. She said the kitchen was way backed up and they were doing their best to catch up. Well, at least it wasn't the non-existent waiter's fault, and the moment our food comes out of the fryer it will be whisked away to our table, piping hot.

So we wait.

And wait.

And wait so more. FINALLY, somebody (not our waiter) brings our appetizers. I violently shoved a mozzarella stick in my mozzarella-stick-hole and took a bite. COLD! FREEZING! Mozzarella sticks are delicious ONLY when they are hot, cheesy, and stringy. Mel's Buffalo Strips were even colder! I ate one but they were no good. And still no waiter around to send them back to warm up. At this point, why wait for the entree? So finally I saw the waiter, flagged him down, told him how upset we were with the food and service, and told him we were going to leave without paying. He said, "Ok." He didn't try to get the manager involved or anything.

So we left in a huff, storming out of there while our neighboring tables looked at us in wonder. That's right, sister, I'm walking right out of here! Don't try to hold me back!

So we went to Burger King for some Whoppers and Fries. 5 bucks.

There was a time in my life where I was happy every time a restaurant screwed up, because that means free stuff. However, I have the earning power to afford appetizers, entrees, AND desserts at Applebee's (but only once a week). So when I go, I don't want to wait around for cold food just so I can get a free dessert. I want my food, and I want it hot, delicious, and NOW, by gum!

Anyway.