" /> BRAINPAN LEAKAGE » hamburger
  • You Want Blonde Or Brunette On That?

      0 comments

    Continued from: I Thought 7:11 Was A Convenience Store…

    Part 3 of 4…

    Staring down the barrel of the unexpected flight delay, I began doing arithmetic in my head.

    flight_delay Now please understand, I didn’t embark upon this mental math exercise because I enjoy crunching numbers. Truth is, I’m not really a mathematics sort of
    guy, hence the reason I became a writer. You see, they pretty much promised me they’d keep the math to a minimum if I tossed words for a living. Judging from the size of my royalty checks, they’ve been keeping that promise, but that’s a different story.

    gate Actually, the math I was doing was the kind that involved food. You see, if we didn’t leave until 7:11, that would put us into Columbus at 8:15 or so. Wait for luggage, hoof it to the car, ride an hour to Newark, and by then it would be 9:30 or thereabouts. The 1/2 cup of raisin bran and rubber chicken sandwich I had consumed earlier in the day were already waning, so after adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and generally estimating, my conclusion was none other than 7:11 + travel time + wait time + drive time =Murv’s Stomach Will Be Growling.

    Easy enough to fix. I mean, after all, I now had all the time in the world to hurry up and wait. So, I checked out the area and a little before 6 PM I wandered over to the eating establishment situated immediately adjacent to my gate.

    Now, I have to be a little nostalgic here for a moment. Back when I met E K, and we were both in the computer repair biz, my dear and lovely had been fortunate enough to be sent to IBM Certification Training. This was where they “learned you how to work on a PC.” Well, obviously we already knew how to do this, but getting the training meant you received a “Tech ID Number.” This authorization allowed you to file warranty claims, and also looked good on a resume. So, why am I bringing this up? Believe me, there’s a very good reason. You see, back then The Evil Redhead often waxed poetic and drooling about a restaurant she visited while in Atlanta for the training. The oasis of food was called Fuddruckers, and apparently this place served one of the best hamburgers she’d ever eaten, and that happens to be a pretty mean feat given that she’s not really a hamburger sort of gal. Problem is, there wasn’t a Fuddruckers in Saint Louis, so she could never take me to one in order for me to experience the “carniverous pleasures of the cow flesh” so to speak…

    See where I am heading with this? Yeah, exactly…

    I’m sure you have all surmised that the eatery next to my departure gate was none other than a Fuddruckers. Having a halfway decent memory, I flashed on my semi drooling wife as she lauded praise upon the distant establishment where she had consumed the grandest of ground, seared cow on a bun. Suddenly my world brightened. I may be stuck in Detroit waiting for a long delayed flight, but what the hell, I was going to have the king of all burgers and that would certainly make everything better.

    I stood in the long, snakelike queue, my anticipation building as with each shuffling step I drew nearer to the counter. I perused the board hanging over the register and made my choice, changed my mind, made another choice, changed my mind again, and finally settled upon a burger and fry combo that boasted three kinds of cheese along with the beefy goodness. My order finally placed, I waited again as it was freshly cooked and assembled just for me. Violent twinges of the anticipation danced around in my stomach, ran down my leg, and climbed right up to the top of my head. I had to lean against the wall across from the pickup counter just to keep myself from doing something akin to the “happy happy excited pee-pee dance” dogs do when you arrive home late from work and they are dying to be let out. Finally, and not a moment too soon, my name was called. The Holy Grail of cheeseburgers was waiting for me. I needed only to pick it up and dress it from the “garden fresh” bar off to the side of the counter. Forcing myself not to dance across the room, I retrieved the beefy goodness on a bun and tossed a few maters and onions atop it. After a quick squirt of ketchup for my fries I ran gleefully back to my gate, parked myself in a corner, and prepared to be transported to dead cow nirvana.

    hairy burger
    One bite was all it took for me to decide my wife must have been on drugs during her trip to IBM Certification Training.

    I quickly ran back through the restaurant’s enormously appetizing description of the burger in my head. Even after scrolling through the mental listing several times I was unable to recall having seen any mention of hockey pucks or toupee’s on the ingredient list. Lucky me… Unfortunately, the line leading up to the counter of the restaurant was now longer than it had been when I had first joined it, so I resigned myself to consuming the less than stellar cuisine. It took me around ten minutes to shave it since all I had at hand was a plastic fork. Once satisfied that all of the hair was gone – at least the hair I could see – I sawed it into small enough bites that I could swallow it without choking to death, seeing as how too much chewing was likely to result in a broken tooth.

    One saving grace was that after a few bites it no longer mattered that the burger was devoid of any taste that remotely resembled seared cow, because I scalded my tongue with a molten french fry and my taste buds had retreated to an area deep inside my body somewhere near my pituitary gland. This was for the best given that burnt hockey puck is not on the top of my list where favorite flavors are concerned.

    I now have a new name for Fuddruckers. I call them Hairy FuddPuckers And The Inedible Stone.

    So, with my stomach now attempting to digest a furry brick, I sat back and waited. When our flight finally boarded I was ready for the odyssey to be done. A quick jaunt to Columbus and I would finally be able to relax. I plopped into my seat, buckled my seatbelt, and sat back to await takeoff. It was right about then I noticed that the interior of the airplane was inordinately warm.

    Sixty seconds later the pilot came on the speaker to inform us that the auxiliary power unit was malfunctioning, we had no air conditioning, and that instead of sending someone to Sears for a DieHard battery, he had bribed some guys in yellow vests and earmuffs to give us a jump, just as soon as they could find where they stashed the cables.

    I began to wonder if I was caught in one of those Groundhog Day time loops, but upon inspecting my surroundings it was obvious that I was not on the earlier DC-9, I was on a CRJ-700 regional jet.

    Yes… It was happening again, on a different plane at a different airport.

    This time, however, the guys took the pilot’s money and disappeared, probably to the local bar. Therefore, we spent an additional 35 sweltering and melty minutes sitting at the gate waiting for him to flag down another carload of yellow vests with jumper cables. At one point, trying to be helpful, I called out through the open door of the cockpit that if they wanted to put it in gear and hold in the clutch, I would get out and push.

    Jason, our flight attendant, didn’t find my idea particularly amusing. I guess that explains why once we were airborne I didn’t get my complimentary cookie or peanuts…

    More to come…

    Murv

    Next Installment: Fly The Friendly Skies?

  • Young And In Lust… I Mean, Love…

      0 comments

    Well, to some extent they go hand in hand. Love, lust, and all points in between. You start out in lust and as you get to know one another the lust becomes love, and if you are lucky, they blend together to become this Love/Lust amalgam that carries on throughout your relationship and/or marriage.

    But, before you get all excited or start calling me Doctor Phil, I should point out that I’m actually here to talk to you about dominos again. And, no, still not the pizza.

    You see, I’ve been married to EK now for Twen-koff-koff yea-koff…Okay…for real, 21+ years, and we “co-habitated” for a year prior to that. So, we’ve been ’round the block in the ol’ Radio Flyer a couple of times – always with me pulling as she beats me with a buggy whip and screams “faster, faster…watch out for that crack in the sidewalk…slow down…careful around that turn…faster, faster!” But, as usual, that’s one of those “other” blogs (actually, they probably wouldn’t even let me post it here…but I digress…)

    My point being, I’m no stranger to the relationship game, marriage game, whatever… Now, let’s be clear. I am in no way claiming to have all the answers. Hell, I don’t have ANY of the answers. I just pull the wagon and do what I’m told. I’m merely pointing out that I do have at least a passing familiarity with interpersonal relationships between two folks who make up a couple.

    Since the EK and I have been together for better than two decades, just like any other couple we have settled into some behavioral patterns. This is not to say that love and lust are gone. The love is there stronger than it was in the beginning, and growing daily. Lust…well…can’t really get into that here (LOL)… But, like I said, as with any couple, patterns will emerge. Ways of interacting. It’s just all part of life. Therefore, a half hour or so ago when I nonchalantly and jokingly said to my wife, “what are you making for dinner tonight?” her response came as no surprise, and the dominos began to teeter…

    I suppose you might need a bit of background first…You see, my wife almost never makes dinner. In fact, whenever I go on tour for a week or two at a time, I spend the week prior to my departure working in the kitchen – cooking, packaging, and freezing meals in reusable “freezer to microwave” containers so that I know she and my daughter will eat something other than crackers and yogurt. It’s not that she’s lazy. She’s about as far from lazy as you can get… Hell, I wish I had her energy… It is just that she really dislikes cooking. With a passion it seems. Me, on the other hand, having grown up in a family with diners and restaurants, I absolutely love to cook. So, this makes at least part of the division of labor in our home a no brainer. Put simply, the kitchen is my domain.

    But, like I said at the outset, there are dominos involved here, and again, I’m not talking about pizza…even though we are on the subject of food.

    To inspect this particular dot-covered game piece we have to turn back the clock to a time EARLY in our marriage. Back when, even though we had dated for some time, then cohabitated for an entire year, and then even been legally married in the eyes of the law for a couple more years, we were still in that state of semi-honeymoon. Not the face-sucking-sex-in-every-room-with-reckless-abandon phase, mind you. Just the hyperactive love-lust combination where you want to impress your partner because you love them so much – and again, I want to be clear on this impressing thing – I’m not talking about dressing up in a negligee and posing next to the bedroom door while batting eyelashes (come to think of it, that’s a pretty good domino too, but I probably wouldn’t fit in that negligee anymore…just kidding… I mean just kidding about the negilgee, not the fitting into it part… you know what I mean…dammit, I’ve never owned a negligee, so just stop it!)

    Back to the story… sheesh…ya’ bunch of weirdos…

    So, in this particular instance we are talking about dinner. You see, way back when, during the days of hyperlovelustwhatever, the evil redhead decided to make dinner. (They “make” dinner here in the north, as opposed to fixing dinner, like it’s supposed to be done) Now, not being a big fan of the kitchen she wasn’t about to get herself into a major project (I’d like to take a moment to point out that it isn’t that she can’t cook, because she can. It’s simply that she hates cooking.) But still, she intended to “make” dinner. And, so she did. Cheesy tuna and noodles Tuna HelperTM. Now, before you think I am about to complain, guess again. I happen to like tuna casserole, and mac n’ cheese, and yes, cheesy tuna and noodles. It was all good.

    So, my lovely bride served up a big, steaming dish of Tuna HelperTM, happy with herself and confident in the fact that she had done something nice for me that I would appreciate. And, I did. Harboring the same hyperlovelustwhatever as she, I sat at the table and shoveled in the Tuna HelperTM while smiling and telling her how wonderful it was, as well as how much I appreciated her fixing dinner. In fact, I was so overwhelmed with hyperlovelustwhatever that I didn’t even hint at the fact that there was something terribly, and fundamentally wrong with the meal. Not something that would make you ill, mind you, but something fundamentally wrong, nonetheless, given what it was supposed to be. The meal went on, the dishes were washed, and well, I can’t really remember what else happened that night, but I suspect that since we were working on remodeling the house at the time we were probably both exhaused and just went to bed then straight to sleep – none of the “not so blog safe” material to worry about this time.

    So, everything was good. I had done my duty and nothing need ever be said about the problem with the meal. The EK was happy, I was happy, and even the cats were as happy as cats can be.

    The next day, however, it became apparent that my plan to protect the evil redhead from personal embarrassment had gone terribly awry. At this point I cannot remember exactly what I was doing at the moment of realization. I do, however, have vivid recollection of EK walking into the room with an unopened can of tuna in her hand, which she had found sitting on the kitchen counter right where she had left it the night before. With a look of realization flooding her face, she stared at me and stated, as much as asked, complete with a matter-of-fact incredulity, “I forgot to put the tuna in the Tuna Helper last night, didn’t I?”

    I could not tell a lie, but I also didn’t want to add insult to injury. I simply replied, “No worries. It was really good macaroni and cheese.”

    The domino in this case? Well, it didn’t have to knock much over. You see, this afternoon when I jokingly asked my wife what she would be “making” for dinner, without missing a beat she replied, Hamburger Helper without the hamburger.”

    We’re older now, and while we still have that hyperlovelustwhatever thing going on, I’ve learned I don’t really have to suffer (unless I want to, that is, but again, different blog…)

    I think I’ll just go ahead and “make” dinner tonight.

    More to come…

    Murv