It’s only the middle of December and I’ve already had two white-knuckle rides because of the snow. Last Saturday Toney and I were out ‘n’ about and it started coming down. According to some weather app (who the hell knows?) it wasn’t supposed to amount to anything, so I suggested we have lunch at Cracker Barrel. I’m always angling to go to Cracker Barrel. I say it as a joke, but it’s not far from the truth: I could eat every one of my meals for the rest of my life there. It ranks high on the ‘Sue Me, I Like It’ list. If you’d like to share some items from your list, please do so in the comments.
Anyway, it went from nothing to slick in short order. I had to brake on a bridge in Scranton, and my wheels were no longer turning but my car continued moving forward at an unabated speed. It was unnerving. And when we got on I-81 it was a complete mess. It looked like some brand of Armageddon was underway on the northbound side, and southbound was just creeping along. It was also icy. Toney suggested we abandon our mission and return home, but the notion of chicken ‘n’ dumplings had already been activated. And once the activation of a notion is underway, there’s no way to reverse it.
We survived, needless to say, and our lunch was fantastic. But it was a little stressful. Nothing major, but there was definitely some intermittent puckering.
And last night’s ride home from work sucked, as well. Both times I was driving in the worst of it. Neither “snow event” added up to much, I just happened to catch them both when they were at the height of their powers. Interstate 81 was covered, and the left lane was full-on slick. So, you had these assholes driving at 25 mph with their flashers on, and when you went around… you had to venture into no man’s land. Over there it sounds different, and feels different, and I’m not really a fan. It took me an hour to get home, and I could feel the tension in my shoulders. Tension loves a shoulder.
So, this is the way it’s going to be, huh? All winter long? Well, that’s simply fantastic.
This morning I was dragging our trash cans to the curb, ’cause Thursday is trash day, and fell in the driveway. Yes, I was wearing flip-flops in the snow. What of it? I landed on my left knee, and it’s all skinned up and achy. As I tried to get up I slipped again, and did a secondary wallow. It was far from satisfactory.
I hate the heat and humidity of August and September, but don’t care for this crap either. Everybody thinks you have to pick one or the other. But I have room in my heart to hate both.
On Sunday I was looking for some fingernail clippers. I have my own, and keep them in a specific spot inside the bunker. But they disappear all the time, and it makes me crazy. I ask the kids about it, and they claim to know nothing. That’s boolshit, of course. It’s a little dance o’ the tards we do here at Chez Kay.
So, I went to Rite-Aid to buy more. I know exactly where they are, because this is not the first time I’ve had to do this. However… they apparently did some remodeling since the last time I was there. Everything was in a different spot, including the checkout counter. What in the high-pitched hell?? I had to scour every square inch of that horrible place to find the nail clippers. And I saw these things hanging everywhere: magnifying glasses on retractable lines. Have you seen this? I guess they’re for the seasoned citizens who can’t see very well? It’s a new one to me.
Eventually I found the clippers, and they had roughly 25 to choose from. Everything is super-complicated now. Whenever I buy toothpaste, for instance, my brain nearly shorts-out because of the giant wall of Crest. I zeroed in on the regular normal-people clippers which were three for $2, with your Plenti card. Or $1 each without it.
I had no idea what a Plenti card was, but figured it wouldn’t take too long to sign up. Right? I asked the guy at the counter about it, and he sighed theatrically. Clearly, he didn’t want to sign me up. So, that decided it: I’m signing up. And now I have yet another card that I’ll put in my wallet, never use, and eventually throw in a drawer because it’s getting too crowded in Cardville. I have lots and lots of “discount” cards, and use two of them: Sheetz and Weis (a grocery store). I have a Panera card and a Subway card. It’s ludicrous. I’m starting to develop a bad case of Costanza-wallet. It’s almost time for another culling.
What’s your relationship with discount cards? Which ones do you actually use? And what’s the ratio of the ones you NEVER use to the ones you do use? It’s gotta be 10 to 1 in my case. Maybe higher.
And by the way, those three new fingernail clippers might last me six months. They’ll begin disappearing any moment now, into the sucking black abyss that is our kids’ bedrooms. Many things enter, and nothing exits. Including coffee mugs… goddamn dinner plates… cutlery of all description… I continuously operate on the cusp of a nervous breakdown. In fact, like Gladys Kravitz, I have a sick-headache right now.
Before I call it a day here, I’d like to get your thoughts on this year’s Rock n Roll Hall of Fame inductees, announced yesterday. I don’t really understand the criteria they use to decide these things. It’s all very baffling, and seemingly random. I like the Cars, have no opinion about the Moody Blues, am not a fan of Bon Jovi, and don’t think Dire Straits is worthy. Nina Simone is legendary, but I’m no expert. That’s my read on it. Hey, whatever. Husker Du and the Replacements and the Smiths and the Jam, etc. etc. are not in. But Dire Straits is? It seems bizarre to me, but it’s not like I really give a shit one way or the other.
Oh, and one more quick thing. My brain nearly melted-down a few nights ago while watching the final episode of the new season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Check out this scene, and note the six people Larry cites while trying to bullshit his way out of yet another delicate situation he created. What the?! That one truly caught me by surprise.
I need to go to work now. I hope you guys have a great day. Please remember to buy loads of expensive items immediately after clicking through one of our Amazon links. It’s much appreciated!
See you again on Monday.
Now playing in the bunker
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That’s a big caganer.
OK, I had to look that one up. I assumed it had something to do with football or meat pies that had been corrupted into the working class lexicon to mean shit. Sometimes — to be honest, more and more as I become an old man — I begin to believe that I’M the one from West Virginia.
love with regret,
John
“Working class”? Well thanks for that.
We’re off to Blighty in 2 days for the rest of the year, and there will be plenty of meat pies and scotch eggs and ales. If you want some domestic meat pies you can do a lot worse than Parker’s in Buffalo, I buy from them. Recommended.
I’ll be damned if I can figure out how those islands off the coast of France work. I guess you’re suggesting that those who attend public school and Oxford or Cambridge don’t have access to the working class lexicon because you walk down different streets and piss in cleaner gutters. I keep forgetting that a highly flawed democracy is more heterogeneous than any oligarchy, even when you throw in the Stones and the Bluesbreakers.
Have a fine holiday.
John
Thanks, Limey. That’s a truly excellent word to have in one’s possession. I need to use it this month. And have an extra Scotch egg for me. If you would, please.
Learned something new today.
Thanks.
What, no Cesar Geronimo?
I think he left out Dan Driessen, too!
Perhaps those magnifiers are all over the store so the seasoned citizens can read all the warning labels on the medicine bottles!
I don’t even think I have one discount card, unless Giant Eagle counts. But it really only brings their prices down to the same level as everyone else’s normal prices, so that’s not really a discount, is it?
Curb Your Enthusiasm clip–maybe that’s what made the “Big Red Machine” so effective! Who knows?
Rite-Aid’s Plenti card — I got one about a year ago, and the ink had worn off within 2 months. So now whenever I shop in Rite-Aid, I just punch my phone number into the credit card reader when I’m checking out. So feel free to toss out the Plenti card.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame might as well be the Plumbers Hall of Fame for all the good it does: at least some of the plumbers go to work sober. But if you’re gonna have one, why not include Dire Straits? If they’d put out one album with one side as blank as George Bush’s subtlety, and recorded Sultans of Swing, Romeo and Juliet and Brothers in Arms on the other side, I’d put them in the damn Hall. Either hall.
All that matters is that finally, fifty years late and millions of dollars short, Sister Rosetta Tharpe is being included as an early influencer, or whatever the fuck they call it. Doesn’t matter. Sister Rosetta should be in every damn Hall there is . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOrhjgt-_Qc
.
Brother johnthebasket
Sister Rosetta had some skills.
I wonder it those magnifiers on a rope have side effects from being displayed next to the ALLI. Just sayin…
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is to music what The National Enquirer is to in-depth journalism.
I have a Plenti card on my key chain. We don’t have the credit card sized ones anymore. Which is nice on your wallet but a pain in the ass on your key chain. I took about 6 of those stupid things off last month.
I now have to look out for those magnifiers. Didn’t see them last night when I was in Rite Aid!
Those magnifiers seem to me to be an excellent way to transmit serious amounts of germs. I hate going to the drug store because most of the people are hacking up a lung, have an appendage falling off, or some other serious malady, and I sure as heck don’t want to catch whatever they have. Wonder how their employees don’t die within the first 60 days of working there.
And how could Larry forget these two:
“Now batting for Pedro Borbon, Manny Mota….”
The greatest food I have ever had is the original flour taco from Tasty Tacos in
Des Moines, Iowa. Grew up on them and it’s still the first place I hit when I visit.
To hell with my family and friends. They can wait when it comes to those succulent
Sirens. I’ve been known to load my cooler with them for home. For the 9 hour drive,
my car smells delicious.
I love Disco.
Ain’t no shame in my game for disco, either! People can think what they want, but the 1970’s was an incredibly creative and innovative time period for music in my opinion.
Much like movies of today, modern music is merely a regurgitation and cheap imitation of great music of the past!
The ex was a big fan of loyalty clubs. I have nine cards that I know of – actually I have the keyring tags, not the wallet cards. I use the Wegmans one only if I get something that’s on “sale.” Two of them are for supermarket chains whose nearest store is at least a six-hour drive from here (Stop ‘n’ Shop and Big Y). A few are for stores I rarely or never visit. One is the old-fashioned pre-Plenti Rite Aid card; I guess I should call it the Enuff card.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame adds pretty much no value to my life.
Had you gotten divorced in a community property state, you might only be packing half the cards, and probably wouldn’t be required to continue sharing loyalty accounts with your ex, which somehow seems like a kind of divorce quantum entanglement, not that any of that is my business. I am also required to state that I am neither an attorney nor a physicist, which strikes me as self-evident.
jtb
When we die someone will find 2 or 3 hundred ink pens lost in our “estate”.
All with names of companies out of business long ago.
I’m indifferent to Halls of Fame, but if there’s going to be one for music, Dire Straits should probably be in it on the strength of Mark Knopfler’s songwriting and guitar skills.
…all I do is kiss you
Through the bars of a rhyme
Knopfler once said Romeo and Juliet was the closest thing to a love song the other band members would let him write. It’s not Leonard Cohen, but it’s very good.
Limey, I endorse your pie-and-a-pint themed holiday plans. (But you can keep the Scotch eggs.)
Had I the gift of syntax, my comments would be like yours in form and content. All I do is keep the beat, and bad company.
John
Guys just download the keyring app on your phone. just take a pic of the card and throw it away and if you need a card just hit the app pick the store and youre good to go, no more cards in wallet or on keyring. oh also it sometimes gives ya pretty good coupons like 5 bucks off your order at food lion or w/e
Not sure why an app is necessary. You could achieve the same result with the, um, what do they call it… yeah, the camera.
I have a Giant Eagle Card that I got when they first started the card deal. Sometime in the mid-90s I think. The thing still works.
Another Cracker Barrel fan here, wife too. She likes chicken and dumplings, I go back and forth between Chicken fried steak and roast beef. Recently noticed that they made the roast beef portion smaller. Wish they would just raise the price a dollar instead.
Agree about the germy magnifiers. They should make the printing on the fucking box bigger so us old guys can see it.
Snowing here, hate it.
Proof that the R&RHOF is a joke is they once gave the heavy metal award to Jethro Tull over Metallica.