Mild Amusement

Whenever someone starts talking about their horror stories in the kitchen, I am always reminded of my buddy who managed to screw up pasta.  Pasta is one of those meals that's supposed to be easy to make, even with limited cooking ability.  In its most basic form, it's easy to prepare: boil some water, throw the pasta/noodles in the water until they cook, take the noodles out, throw pre-made sauce on it, and enjoy.  In theory, it should be almost impossible to mess this up. Well, let's hypothesize a situation where one is a college kid who wants to play some video games while he waits for the water to boil.  Let's further postulate that the video game console is in an adjoining room, rather than in the living room.  Given this hypothetical situation, it's theoretically possible for said college kid to forget all about the pot of water on the stove.  After enough time, the water would completely evaporate, but the stove would still be on.  And if the st...

As I have mentioned once before , I have had more wedding adventures lately.  The last wedding I attended was particularly awesome, because it was surprisingly profitable for me.  Yes, I know that sounds a little odd, if not shady, so let me explain. For this wedding, we had to travel to Winnipeg.  As it turns out, my friend's boyfriend passed through Winnipeg once long ago, and he made a stop at a local casino.  Out of sheer nostalgia, we decided to pass through and check it out.  Normally, I'm not much of a gambler, but the groom told me, "look, I can't go, but somebody should gamble a little bit.  At least one bet, that's all I ask for." Well, orders are orders, I suppose.  I threw down 20 bucks at the roulette table, fully expecting to lose it.  Oddly enough, I didn't, so I hung out for a while.  People were waiting for me, though, so I eventually got impatient and doubled on what I had left.  The end result was that I walked out...

I've attended several weddings recently, because apparently at I'm at an age where this is what people do.  Not me, mind you.  But lately, it's not uncommon for friends of mine to tie the knot.  Regardless, this means that I've had more wedding-related adventures lately. Start with my friend's wedding a few months back.  I've known the guy since middle school, and we have a bunch of mutual friends.  So, they figured since we were all in town, everyone minus the groom would get together for brunch before the wedding.  That was fine, only we discovered during the course of said brunch that one of them (a girl) wanted to go shopping for a different outfit.  Now, the rest of my party happened to be composed entirely of females, so they agreed to help her shop.  Seeing as how we had carpooled and one of them was my ride, I agreed to also tag along. Now, I've been shopping with girls before, but it's not like I'm a connoisseur of female fashion. ...

As I've mentioned before, I try to eat veggie meals twice a week.  And when left to my own devices, I often resort to the same thing .  Well, I figure I should eventually do something about this, and I had the perfect opportunity to do so a couple of weeks ago. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I had already knocked off one veggie meal.  I was left to my own devices for lunch, so I figured I'd make myself a veggie meal to finish off my weekly requirement.  Rather than grabbing eggs (incidentally, we happened to be out of eggs), I boiled water to cook frozen veggies.  I threw some rice in the rice cooker as I did that, to get that going at the same time.  My plan was to sauté the veggies just a little bit, and throw a little bit of sauce on top.  It wasn't going to be life-altering or anything, but it would've fed me and ensured I ate a veggie meal. It doesn't take very long for those frozen veggies to be ready, so I had to quickly grab a p...

At one point during the road trip, we ended up stopping in Valentine, Nebraska.  It's a fairly small town, and it doesn't really have any attractions other than the name.  Still, it happened to be on the way, and we were tired of driving that day, so that's where we stopped. Anyhow, after dinner, we figured we'd grab a drink somewhere.  There were a couple of bars near the hotel, so we just walked over to one and headed in.  Since we were in a town we didn't know, we more or less randomly picked one - this place called George's Corner Bar. The first thing we noticed was that it was pretty empty inside.  It happened to be a Monday night, though, so we figured that it wasn't unreasonable for the place to be a little empty.  Still, we both pulled up a stool and ordered a drink.  However, I look fairly young, so the bartender asked to see my ID, and commented, "you're a little young, aren't you, son?"  I do look young, but it's been a w...

At one point during my recent road trip, we stopped off in Sioux City, Iowa.  There wasn't anything we really wanted to see or do there, but it wasn't too far out of the way, and we figured we'd check it out.  We were more or less passing through from South Dakota to Nebraska, and we chose to go through this particular city to get there.  I suppose being hungry and wanting some lunch didn't hurt, either. It was almost a decision we came to regret.  We didn't really know the town, so we just drove through downtown and then a nearby area to find something to eat.  We finally settled on a Mexican place.  It wasn't really a restaurant, because you didn't go inside.  It was like a really big food stall, with some benches outside.  It was pretty deserted when we got there, but we ordered some food and sat down to eat. Now, there were a few other people around, but they weren't very chatty.  My friend doesn't exactly blend in at a Mexican restau...

I went on a road trip with a friend through many of the Midwest states recently.  Neither of us had been to Mt. Rushmore (South Dakota) before, so we figured we'd check it out.  And since we were in the neighborhood, we'd stop by as many nearby states & attractions a we could.  We finally settled on flying in to Minnesota, flying out of Montana, and figuring out the rest as it came up. It was a good trip, and I had fun.  During this trip, though, I came to respect the name " Xlerator ."  For those of you too lazy to click on the link, it's a normal-looking automatic hand dryer.  Let me assure you, however, that these things are most definitely not normal. I'm not even sure I remember where I first saw one of these devices (maybe my brain is just trying to block out the memory).  Regardless, I had just finished washing my hands, and I moseyed over to the hand dryer.  It turned on, and when it did, I thought that it seemed to be blowing air ...