Faturday

9 Replies

Yep, I’m going to throw all caution (and diet restrictions) to the wind tonight at my feast. Fun is the destination, and calories will be along for the ride. I’ll deal with the fallout tomorrow, if there is any. All I know is I am going to enjoy the menu I requested (everyone gets their choice of dinner for their birthday in our family): Chili/chips/cheese, corn bread, five-cup salad, and chock-lick cake. Yummy.

Now I suppose I could have done worse (refer to my “comfort food” reference from yesterday). Lots worse, to wit:

Behold the “Worst Food in America,” according to Men’s Health magazine. The Baskin-Robbins Oreo Shake. According to the Boston Globe report on it, this 2600-calorie monster contains “more calories than 49 Oreo cookies, more sugar than 20 bowls of Froot Loops cereal and the saturated fat equivalent of 59 strips of bacon.”

[In their defense, and probably because of massive negative press, they’re now hawking a reduced fat version on their website.]

Nice calorie/fat count there. But there are awesome runners-up.

How about a 7-lb. burrito at Jack-n-Grill? Clicky:

~

Or a 72-ounce steak at the Big Texan Steak Ranch? Only 5,760 calories and 480 grams of fat. And free, if you can choke down all four-and-a-half pounds of it.

Then there’s the pièce de résistance in my book for eye appeal. Click on the photo for the full effect. Maybe I should have asked for Peach Glazed Pig Cheeks from the Minnesota State Fair for my feast tonight. Mmm, now them’s good eats.

Happy Faturday, fiends!

GastroFink

Crabby.

15 Replies

I admit, I am off my feed today. I don’t know why. Usually, I’m pretty much an “up” type person. Always something nice to say, you know? So why so serious? I mean, it’s Finkday, fuh cryin out loud. My birthday feast is tomorrow. All things in my life are good (except for that 71-page reading assignment). Hmmm. Let’s see here. What’s bugging me this morning?

  • My high school singers are successfully plowing their way through Mozart and (Michael) Haydn, while struggling hopelessly with 8 measures of a standard SATB arrangement of “O Christmas Tree.” Somebody explain this to me.
  • Last night, I read a tragic, heartbreaking story about a former hero of mine: Bernie Kosar.
  • This cold is making me mad — like my being mad about it is going to make it go away. As if.
  • BFF Kay is leaving in a week. She’ll be gone till November.
  • When I’ve got a cold, I crave comfort food. I have visions of macaroni & cheese, pancakes, cinnamon toast, cheesy scrambled eggs, fettucine Alfredo, and warm chocolate cake with extra, extra frosting, all dancing in my head. Rats.

But hey, look at the bright side.

  • My high school choir loves to sing Mozart and Haydn. I’ll take that over “Tannenbaum” any day.
  • Bernie says he will pull through this, like thousands of other people who go through hard times. I think he’ll do it.
  • BFF Kay will be back in November — just in time for opening night of Bye Bye Birdie.
  • I will go to bed tonight knowing I’ll feel better tomorrow having not eaten fettucine Alfredo.

And, Bando got me this for my birthday. Oh, yeah.

:-)

Happy weekend!

FussyFink

And so it begins – and ends.

20 Replies

Yep. This is it. It’s over.

Today I begin the last post-graduate class I will ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever take.

Ever.

Fourteen weeks from now, I will be done. Expect a hue and cry heard round the world. Come January, it will be the first time in three years that I will begin Dinner Theatre rehearsals without having to go home afterward and work for two hours. I won’t know how to handle myself.

I will be winding down just as the Thriller starts up. Nice to just proofread research papers instead of compose them. Huzzah. Can’t wait.

Here are some other things I can’t wait for. Notice how we always say, “I can’t wait.” Why is that? We have no choice but to wait. “I can’t wait for tomorrow!” Well, you have to. But I still like to say “I can’t wait” for stuff.

The “Can’t Wait” List


I can’t wait for:

  • this class to be over
  • BoomR’s visit in October (W0000ty hoo)
  • my cast members to learn their music (sidelong glance at Samuel & Meg)
  • today at 3:30 when Bando comes to visit
  • Saturday, when I will see the entire family for my birthday feast (yippity!)
  • this cold to get overwith — ick
  • my Saturday morning cluck with Mavis
  • my two vacations next summer: one to Florida and the other to Texas with the Thriller
  • this Sunday morning, when I will sleep in and generally act lazy

Everyone has a “can’t wait” list. What’s on yours? As always, I covet your….

Fink OUT the door

One Adam-12, see the woman…

12 Replies

Here we go, fiends. I’m runnin’ like a fink on fire. The Great Race begins today and ends (temporarily) on 16 December. That’s the next time I will breathe.

Mark me, though. Weekends are reserved for family and fun stuff with friends. OK, most weekends will be reserved for those things. But the schedule doesn’t look bad for September. October, however — well….

RNF for today: While making tea this morning, I found myself quietly singing the chorus to Beyoncé’s “Put a Ring On It,” which was played at the wedding on Saturday during the bride’s bouquet toss. I remember thinking that night, and again this morning: that tradition is probably ready for the wrecking ball. I mean, can you remember a wedding reception in the last 20 or so years where the “single ladies” made a mad dash for the dance floor in order to catch those flowers so they’ll be “next,” or where the DJ or bridesmaids weren’t out in the crowd, bodily dragging girls out of their chairs?

I played sporadically with a band years ago in a neighboring city. The leader, a loud-talking, bigger-than-life, lounge-lizard type in a cheesy tuxedo, would announce the bouquet toss with an infuriating “you know you want to do it” smirk in his voice. When the bride would throw the flowers, he’d shout, “Dive! Dive! Dive!” into the microphone. I always wanted to walk up behind him, take that mic stand, and…well, you know. It was humiliating to the girls on the floor. You could tell they hated it, but were taking one for the bride & groom.

So no wonder every single girl beats feet to the ladies’ room when she senses the impending bouquet cookie toss. Who wouldn’t want to avoid it? “OK,  ladies and gentlemen, we now feature the girls who can’t get husbands, or are still in middle school.” I have worked wedding receptions for 30 years and have never once seen a group of girls who enjoyed it, or at least didn’t stand with their arms behind their backs.

Now, a bride throwing her bouquet over a stairwell or in the parking lot just before leaving — that’s cute. Everyone is gathered around — we’re not hauling single women out to the center of the ring like the next round of cattle at the auction.

All right, I must fly, my darlings. My mind does wander.

FO

Lost weekend

7 Replies

Nah, not that kind of lost weekend. Rather, the weekend’s almost over and I don’t know where the time went. Haven’t stopped since school started on Friday morning. I mean, if I miss an RtB post, you know I’ve been out of it.

And this weekend once again drove home the undeniable truth that we have toddlers in our twenties for a reason.

Still, the time with Jake was spectaculous; fabular. He was a delight, and so was Justin. The wedding was beautiful, and the reception wore out Super J sooner than we would have liked. Grandma Jane took him home last night to her house. Although hooking him into his car seat caused quite the dramatic protest, I’ll bet he was asleep before she drove two miles.

All this got me thinking about time this morning. You know what I’m going to say next. Time positively rules our lives (most, anyway), and the US seems to be the leader of the pack, in that we’re a nation of overstressed, overhurried, overworried, overworked (and in many cases, underpaid) crazies. And we seemingly like it that way. Either that, or it’s become such a ubiquitous element of our cultural wiring, it’s all we know.

Years ago, a friend from Iran observed, “Americans are always in a hurry. In a hurry to do what? Die?” We laughed about it at the time, but he really had a point. Although there are exceptions (and maybe you are one of those), we just go 90 to nothin to get one task done and go on to the next — even though many of the tasks will be repeated tomorrow and tomorrow. Not that there’s anything wrong with repeated tasks; I mean, work has to be done. But the elevated stress about it, the frenzied, anxious attitudes with which we attack our work…it all suggests living too hard and dying too soon. That, and, you know, this:

In other countries, dinner time is an event. Two, maybe three hours are spent just relaxing, talking, eating and unwinding. What about dinner at your house? I’m sure there are exceptions, but I’d be willing to bet that on many nights, it’s everyone for themselves, or dinner is take-out or hastily thrown together, or eaten while working, watching the news, or even while driving to the next “thing.” The Thriller and I are guilty of this. I suppose it’s easier because we have no children in the house, but as I remember, when my boys were in high school, they were both so busy (as were their parents), we rarely had dinner together on the weeknights. It’s a shame.

If you had a mom like I did, you always reported to the table for dinner immediately when summoned, hands washed and ready to behave. It’s not that my parents were militant about table decorum, but dinner time was usually designed for Dad’s comfort. He wanted to unwind from his day at the office, and we were to facilitate that. So Mother saw that dinner was a relatively quiet event. I don’t remember a *whole* lot of sparkling conversation at dinner, other than the standard, “How was school today?” After the meal, Dad would get up and go into the living room to his recliner, read the newspaper and watch the news. We didn’t bug him; that was his time. After that, he was open for business. But his aim was to relax.

And that’s the thing: relaxing is rarely my aim. My goal is to get one job done so I can hurry up and get to the next one. That ain’t right. I mean, here it is, Sunday, and I have a mile-long list of stuff to get done. I might even have to go into school. Now what, I ask you, would happen to the universe if I didn’t tackle the list? If the 12 jobs went ignored? What if I didn’t look at each weekend as just another opportunity to do more stuff?

My family will back me up on that fact that I am always saying, “Life is too short,” meaning that we need to concentrate on the healthy and good things in life and let the minor mishaps pass. Hmm. Perhaps I should take my own sage advice.

Or maybe I just can’t accept the fact that the world has moved on.

But hey. All that is for another day. I have work to do.

FO

B & W photo credit: The Family Dinner: A Celebration of Love, Laughter and Leftovers, by Linda Sunshine and Mary Tiegreen.