Florida Without Old Is Only Fair

Nothing like a trip to Florida to provide a little blog fodder.

Waiting for the plane to board, an old guy sat a couple seats down from me. There were also some other people further down the row. When they started calling rows, an old couple came down the row and said, "Excuse me," to the old guy nearby. I turned and looked.

The wife repeated, "Excuse me!" Then, "Can we get by?" This was pretty loud. The guy nearby did not move. I tried to watch his chest to see if he was breathing. Frankly, the guy appeared dead.

Until the wife tapped him, restarting his heart, saving his life and getting him to stop blocking the aisle--all in one move.

We had a full plane. The last few people were loading and among them was a woman and her three young children (4, 6 and 8 years old, I'd guess). They did not have their seats together. One middle seat here, a window seat there and a window/middle pair right in front of me. The woman instructed what appeared to be the oldest to go sit in the lone middle seat and the middle child to take the single window. Now she was ready to sit with her youngest ahead of me. There was an old guy sitting in the aisle seat.

She pointed at the open seats and said that those were her seats. The guy did not move.

She again explained that those were her seats and could he please let them in.

After a pause he shouted, "That's my wife up there!" pointing several rows ahead. "Can you switch so I can sit with her?"

"I'm sorry, I need to sit with my four year old," was the reply.

"Can you switch so I can sit with her?" he repeated. Meanwhile, the aisle is blocked. The few people that need to sit are this woman and her kid and a couple of people stuck behind her.

I'm thinking two things. First is an explicative. Second is "What is this guy deaf and blind? Let her sit with her kid you self-centered jackass."

He pointed again at his wife. This time using a folded white cane with a red tip. The guy sitting next to his wife offered to switch and after a lengthy delay, the old guy got up. When he did I could see his hearing aids.

But just because he was actually deaf and blind doesn't mean he wasn't a jackass, too.

Next to me was an old Italian couple. When the meal service came by they both got their little plastic tray/bowls with a micro-turkey sandwich, Fritos and Heresy Bar (it's heresy to call that "chocolate"). The woman moved her meal to her husband's tray-table, closed her own and then retrieved her giant handbag from under the seat.

She then took both meals and crammed them into her bag, muttering something in Italian.

As we were landing, the woman held her giant anti-vampire cross, murmured a bit (I assume in prayer) and then applauded when we landed. I looked over at her and she showed me the cross and pointed upward. I thought, "Are you saying that God let the plane land safely so you could eat the food hidden in your handbag?"

Today we played golf in 90 degree, 90+% humidity weather and then went to dinner at 5:20. The hostess asked if we had a reservation. I thought, "At 5:20?!" Lucky for us, they squeezed us in.

Now, it's 10pm and my mom has been asleep for 2 hours. I feel like I have jet-lag and I haven't even switched time zones.

Mother Truckers

Here's another hypermiling update. (Original story and first update.)

In addition to my normal driving I did some highway driving recently. According to Google Maps, the trip was about 112 miles each way, almost all highway. During this highway trip I tried to follow big semis, generally keeping back about 2 seconds. Speeds varied from low 60's to low 70's. On the return part of the trip, on downhill sections, I put my transmission into neutral.

I just filled up. 9.86 gallons for 348 miles which is in 35 mpg range.

224 (112*2) miles was highway, leaving 348-224=124 for my regular driving. Assuming I still got about 25.3 mpg for that then I used 124/25.3=4.9 gallons for my usual driving. That leaves 9.86-4.9=4.94 gallons for the 224 mile trip.

That's 224/4.94 = 45 mpg! Are you kidding me? Can someone have their 5th grader check my math?

BRB LOL WTF?

I drove into the city yesterday. I took the GWB to the CBE to the HRD to the FDR to the UES.

There's some major construction going on on 2nd Avenue (for the new subway line) and there are 2 or 3 lanes closed in a few spots. I was driving through one of these spots, directly behind a Post Office truck. We were in the left most lane that was open, right against the construction barriers.

Ahead, there was a forklift moving some construction material around. As the P.O. truck was going by him, he backed out of the construction zone. BAM! He smashed right into the side of the truck. The trucked then stopped in the middle of 2nd Ave. with me stuck behind him.

Balancing out this horrible tragedy, I was able to find a parking spot on 76th Street.

Karma.

Going home, I left the UES via the FDR which I took to the HRD and on to the CBE across the GWB and yada, yada, yada.

Heat Post To 160 Degrees Before Reading

I would consider myself a healthy eater. However, everything in moderation.

And so, today, I bring you a story. A story about setting goals, taking risks, overcoming the naysayers. A story, friends, about looking death in the face and saying, "Is that all you got?"

Well, maybe that's overstating things a tad. It's really a story about eating the World's Cheapest Hot Dogs. How cheap? How about 7.375 cents each! And where does one get such hot diggity dogs? Aldi's House of Cheap Stuff (Most Of Which Can Pass For Food)!

Here's the receipt showing the price of $0.59 (newly reduced from an outrageous $0.65) for 8. You can also see that you need to be "bananas" to buy them.


Below is the package. Notice that these are not beef franks (those babies will run you $1.99 for 8, but they are 2 oz. franks). I'm not sure if the brand is B*Bar or Babar. If you feed these to a child, don't tell them that they are Babar wieners or they won't eat them (also they won't cry when Child Protective Services take you away for feeding them this crap).

You'll note that these dogs are "made with chicken, pork & beef". That wording is between "made from chicken pork & beef" and "made by chicken, pork & beef". Based on the rules of advertising, that means that these dogs at least have chicken, pork and beef nearby when they are made. It's like the other day. I had a friend over and made dinner with her. No part of her was actually eaten. {rim shot}


Note that the label trumpets that these furters are "Fully Cooked" and yet the must be heated thoroughly to 160 degrees. Normally, you heat stuff to that temperature to kill anything that might be living but what could live on these things?

Moving on. Here's the ironically named "Nutrition Facts" label. For every wiener you shove down your hole you can look forward to a rush of nearly 400mg of salt and the energy punch of 10g of fat; perfect post-marathon food.

The first ingredient is "mechanically separated chicken" Did you ever get a double yolk egg? Well, if that egg had been fertilized there's a good chance that Siamese chickens would have hatched from it. Farmers hate this because when they slaughter one chicken the other runs around with a chicken with its head cut off; the craziest site you've ever seen. So the farmers use a high precision mechanical separator called an "ax" to fix what God has eff'ed up.


Next is "meat ingredients" not to be confused with "meat". "Meat" is always some identifiable part like lips, hooves or eye lashes. "Meat ingredients" can not be identified by the finest veterinarians.

Then we have water (another great post-marathon ingredient!) and some other stuff until we reach "potassium lactate". There can't be very much of that though because it is very expensive (do you know how hard it is to milk a potassium?)

A bit further we find good old ascorbic acid which gives these dogs more Vitamin C than a glass of orange juice.

A very small glass.

So ends the preliminaries. Now to answer the big question: "Can you survive if you eat them?"

Obviously yes...but do you want to? I decided to heat mine in a skillet. I had two. One with just mustard then the other with what I thought it needed to taste good.

The mustard one was not very exciting. Somewhat similar to a warm but uncooked soft pretzel. Mushy, salty, nothing to write home about.

To fix things, my second (salty) dog had (salty) mustard, (salty) ketchup and (salty) cheese. This one was much better because, frankly, I put way too much cheese on it.

Get it? Frankly?

Overall, I think these would be great for a cookout for people you don't particularly like, relatives who have over-stayed their welcome and kids' birthday parties before they develop a more refined palate and insist on the 24.875 cent franks.

Also, Self-Cleaning Oven

After many months/years of looking for both, I find there are many parallels between what I look for in an apartment and what I look for in a woman. Let's go to the tale of the tape:

Apartment	Woman
Post-war but not new construction	not too old or too young
high floor	tall
1 bedroom	no kids
Outdoor space	likes outdoors
Walk to Central Park	fit
Separate fridge to keep wine at optimum temperature	not too whiny
low maintenance	low maintenance
nice view	nice to view
Blinds	sees
Brazilian hardwood	Brazilian wax
Plenty of space for my junk	Not too much space for my junk