October 14, 2011
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1 I have got to stop eating sunflower seeds for dinner.
2 It’s just that when the weather gets hot and I get delayed at school, the last thing I want to do is to cook.
3 Don’t get me wrong; I love cooking.
4 Yesterday though, I had this sort of fun lunch at some small hole-in-the wall restaurant near the Chill.
5 It’s some seafood place near Kragen’s, across from the Walgreen’s if anyone is interested. Couldn’t tell you the name of the joint, and I don’t particularly want to pinpoint my every move on Facebook. If I remember, I’ll try to get the info to you on Monday.
6 AnywayZ…
7 No one cares.
8 But I’ll report it anyway, because the food and service rocked.
9 I had the Shrimp-With-Lobster-Sauce over some rice.
10 Their entire menu consisted of [Fill-in-the-Blank] over rice.
11 It was a bit funny, because whenever I go into a place that I’ve never gone into before, I check out the plates everyone else is eating the second I walk in.
12 It amused me that every single table, and every single plate had rice dishes and some sort of seafood, which to me seemed a bit worrisome.
13 But I took the gamble. The waitress seated me at this table that was more wobbly than a ferris wheel seat. Two guys had already asked to be moved, and just as she seated me, they said, “That table shakes too much!”
14 The waitress moved me to a more stable table.
15 First time I ever moved tables when seated at a shaky one. It never occurred to me to ask a waitress if I could do that. I usually would take a few sugar bags or napkins and would try to stabilize the situation. Never worked, and never will.
16 No one cares.
17 I get that.
18 But still, I found it amusing that I’ve lived my entire life suffering shaky tables and never once asked to be moved.
19 You learn so much just through simple observation.
20 AnywayZ…
21 The waitress brought ice water and tea instantly, along with a fork.
22 Sometimes I hate being a white guy.
23 I always enjoyed chopsticks when going to an Asian restaurant. Every time they assume I would want a fork, I get slightly offended.
24 I sometimes feel like scaring them by rudely yelling, “Why? ‘Cuz I’m white?”
25 But that is just to amuse myself. The older I get, the less fussy I get about stuff. If I want chopsticks, I’ll ask for them.
26 If I want an unshaky table…
27 Oh bother.
28 Anyway, I looked at the menu and went ahead and ordered the Shrimp-With-Lobster Sauce [over rice, which was unavoidable].
29 I drank some water because teaching dehydrates you on an hourly basis. I must drink a gallon of water a day.
30 I settled in to a small bowl of some sort of chicken soup and a simple cup of tea.
31 I pulled out my phone to check emails and business, and then goofed on Facebook, just to see how bored other people were.
32 Within seconds, my plate arrived in front of me with this incredible food steamingly and screamingly hot and tantalizing.
33 I decided then and there that a fork would work better than chopsticks. I can’t handle rice with chopsticks anyway. It’s okay until you mush some sort of stew into it, and then you look like an idiot trying to manage it.
34 It is scientifically impossible to eat gravyed rice with a chopstick. There’s a reason they serve sticky rice. Took me a bajillion years to realize that, but if I can save one white guy from making a fool out of himself, then my work here is done. I’m clearly a slow study.
35 AnywayZ, the food climbed right into my eyeballs and steamed out my ears.
36 It worked perfectly for a person who had worked late the night before, and whose eyeballs needed whitening.
37 The entire meal turned my entire existence around. I became one with the universe. Shrimp-With-Lobster-Sauce, hot as Hades.
38 I wanted to Google the recipe immediately, but still had one class left to teach, as well as eight billion other things to do before I would get home.
39 I never really did see how much the food was. When I went to the counter to pay, I expected a pretty large bill.
40 I took out my ATM card, and the guy at the counter said, “You had the shrimp and tea. That will be seven-fifty.”
41 I honestly thought it would be at least twelve bucks. I left a three-dollar tip and shot back up to the school.
42 I really didn’t have much of a lesson plan yesterday. I had a sort of arts-and-crafts day where I gave the students colorful folders and art supplies, and then returned all the papers I’ve been grading since day one. I put on a little Jack Johnson music, and most of them were pretty content.
43 I organized my entire infrastructure while they did that. The period flew by, but all those papers were now in fun, colorful folders. I spent the rest of the afternoon organizing things and planning for today.
44 In the back of my mind, I kept thinking of Googling the recipe for that wonderful meal.
43 When I finally arrived home, I hopped on the computer that had literally crashed two nights ago. It fell to the floor while I slept. I think.
44 No one cares.
45 It was my laptop, which I love. But it suddenly had some black version of a blue screen, you remember the famous Blue Screen of Death?
46 Looked exactly the same. I figured the thing was doomed, and that any sort of recipe was going down with it.
47 My first thoughts were that I wasn’t going to duplicate the recipe any time soon, so I took to my default jar of sunflower seeds.
48 It worked. Always does. After around a half-hour, my computer righted itself, but I was already full. I did look up a recipe. I think I could easily make it. The best part of the Shrimp-with-Lobster Sauce recipe I found was that it doesn’t call for anything remotely having to do with a lobster. So you can relax, Sebastian.
49
50 So it is now 3:30 a.m. and I’m fully rested. I’m a little hungry, but sunflower seeds don’t appeal to me.
51 I wonder if that place is open?
52 Nah.
53 I’ll just have a few more handfuls of sunflower seeds and call it a night.
54 Or a morning.
55 No one cares.
56 Have a great weekend.
57 Peace.
~H~
Oh! Barnhill’s Brass Band plays on Sunday at 3 in the EV Theater.
It’s worth the plug.
Peace.
