New Fry Alert: Brown's Diner

There have been very few times in my life that I have been disappointed by a restaurant with the name "diner" in the title. A couple of weeks ago, however, was one of them. Brown's Diner, which I was told had some of the best fries in Nashville, doesn't really look like a diner. It does, however, appear to be a hole-in-the-wall kind of place. While I wasn't immediately impressed with the atmosphere once I stepped inside, I still sat down ready to try out their food. The menu seemed to have a good selection, and rather reasonable prices for this town. When it came time to order drinks, however, the diner earned its first serious mark: they do not sell sweet tea. Now, I'm not really a sweet tea drinker myself (I actually can't stand the stuff) but I've lived in the south long enough now to require its presence at any dining establishment... especially a local, non-franchised one. Even bad sweet tea seems slightly more forgivable than NO sweet tea.

Still, I was already there, and so decided to try it out. I ordered my usual burger and fries, while my buddy ordered chili. The burger and fries were okay. Not great, but not terrible. Unfortunately, however, they were still a far cry from the best fries in town. The chili, I was told, was awful, and that it tasted like bleach. This makes a pretty heavy strike two. Inedible food is inexcusable, especially with something as simple as chili. Strike three came in the wait service. It wasn't bad by any means, but it was the kind of experience where you felt like you were being waited on by an older version of a Stepford wife. She was sweet, but too sweet. The kind of sweet that seemed so fake that you would almost rather the person cursed at you than say anything else nice. All in all, it was not a successful dining experience. Made even more painful by the fact that I felt I wasted what little disposable income I have on a negative meal. Needless to say, I will not be heading back to that place in the future.

Today's Wit: What kind of ship does Dracula use? A blood vessel!

Broke, Bored, but Entertained

It's been awhile since I've updated. This is largely because I'm so broke. Not the kind of broke where you say you're broke, even though you're not. Where what you really mean is, "I know this is unwise spending. I shouldn't do it, but I'm going to anyway." I mean the kind of broke where I literally have $10 to spend on food a week. total. That's it. And that needs to include things like toiletries, dish soap, and the like. This also means that I no longer have cable, or the ability to go hang out in bars, coffee shops, or shows of any form.

I'm still rather happy. More so than I've been in years. And in all honesty, I don't miss television as much as I thought I would. My current financial predicament does occasionally lead to large bouts of boredom, though, especially when most everything these days costs a pretty penny.

So tonight, my amazing roommate/best friend and I decided to find a way to entertain ourselves. We hopped online and found creative writing exercises to not only feel creative (we're nerdy), but to also get to know one another better, and have a new experience to share (did I mention we're nerdy?). What follows is my response to one of the exercises that we did. I share this with you not because I think it is good (it's not), but because I had such a blast doing it, and I want you to do it, too. It was free entertainment that allowed us to be creative, and to also share our creations with one another. The exercise comes from here. We did the random stimulation exercise. In ten minutes, and two random words (mine were "tire" and "type-setting"), this is what I wrote (complete with spelling errors and all):

Ugh. Here I am again. Stuck  in this stupid, thankless copy-editing job. No matter what I do, the type-setting is never correct. Too much margin space. Too many spaces between paragraphs. Do not, under any circustances, use Comic Sans as a font. Make sure the page is the correct color. Did you remember to check the grammar? Like I have nothing better to do than deal with nit-picky formatting issues. Granted, this is what I’m getting paid for, but I swear, nobody is reading these piece of shit bulletins for the Society for Emotionally Distraught Animals anyway. At least not enough to care what font I use. People like Comic Sans. I’m not sure why my boss is so against it. He claims it’s “unprofessional.” Yet, somehow, spending thousands of dollars on an organization devoted to a cause that neither saves lives in any form (human or not), nor pays its employees hire than minimum way, is completely okay. If I didn’t need this job so desperately, I’d quit. It’s such a shame that this is the only job I can get. I have a Master of Fine Arts degree in dramatic writing, and this is the only employment I can find. The only joy, the only solace I have during my days, are doing the petty, passive-aggressive antics to annoy my boss. Is this immature? Yes. Does it prevent me from suicide? Also yes. This, incidentally, means that what I do during the day actually saves a human life. More than I can say for SEDA. My favorite “prank”, if you can even call it that, was the bulletin I designed for last-years Traffic and Safety Awareness campaign. The whole ordeal, apparently, is to make people aware that driving too close to the edge of the road when an animal, such as a squirrel, is nearby, causes the squirrel undue stress. So, despite the fact that no laws are being broken, the task of the day was to ask drivers to drive closer to the center line if they happened to see an animal on the edge, to prevent animal stress. Due to a lapse in judgment by my boss, I was put in charge of the first draft of the bulletin. I decided to create an image of a giant tire. The kind of tire found on monster trucks. And place it near the edge of the road near the cutest bunny I could find. And I had the bunny’s eyes bugging out of its head, with a tagline that read “Driving to close to the edge can cause strain, even if it doesn’t cause a stain” with another pic, of the exact same bunny, only smashed with the tire stained red. Priceless.

I can honestly say that trading stories with my friend is some of the most fun I've had in a while. So if you're bored and broke like me, but have some nerdy friends and some time, I'd recommend doing silly things like this. I'm gonna keep posting my own responses to various exercises that I do, and I would love for you to do them as well and post your responses in the comments. 

New Fry Alert: Hot Diggity Dog

I love it when serendipity turns a potentially boring day into an amazing one. Especially when it ends in delicious fries.

Last week, I tagged along with one of my favorite people to run some bureaucratic errands. Through the various points of waiting for things to happen (waiting in line, waiting for a phone call, etc. etc.), we picked up a local paper to browse through to pass the time. While there really wasn't anything particularly interesting to read in it, it at least allowed us to kill a few minutes. Once we finished perusing the pages, and realizing we had at least another 2 hours before we could take care of the next step in the bureaucratic process, we decided to find some food.

Having been craving a hot dog for about a week, we decided to head over to our favorite hot dog place on East Side, I Dream of Weenie, that exists inside a VW bus. Upon arriving, however, we discovered that the establishment changed owners and was moving a few blocks away, and would not re-open for quite some time. It seemed as if my hot dog craving would not be satisfied. But then my friend remembered seeing an ad in the paper we randomly picked up about a hot dog place nearby. Not having anywhere else to be, and now making finding a hot dog my mission, we took off for this new place.

The name of the place is Hot Diggity Dog, and believe me when I tell you that I was immediately excited when we arrived. This place had character. It's in a cute-looking house, very near to downtown, and smelled amazingly. When we walked in, I felt my excitement for what I knew would be an amazing hot dog grow. The menu claimed that they served Chicago-style hot dogs, and the best part, they also served fries. Hot dog and fries, in a place new to me, discovered on a beautiful day serendipitously with one of my favorite people, makes for an extremely awesome day. We placed our order and sat down at some stools to wait. On the wall there is a map of Chicago, that has a sign asking patrons from the Chicago area to put a pin on their area of town. Many places in the city were represented, and it claimed it was a way for all previous Chicago dwellers to connect. The individuals that came in before and after us spoke easily with the workers as well, and some even seemed to know the people personally. It was the kind of place that makes you feel that you will be remembered for having visited, and a way to develop a relationship with those providing the service.

Once our food was ready, we grabbed it and went to sit out at a picnic table in a pavillion attached to the establishment. We were joined by a bumble bee as we ate our meal and felt the cool breeze on our faces. And then we dug in. The hot dog and fries were absolutely delicious. It reminded me of the fries you can find at really good diners. They were crisp, not too greasy, and oh so tasty. I highly recommend this place to anyone that's in the mood for a quality hot dog joint that comes with amazing french fries. I personally cannot wait until I can get back there.

Today's Wit: A Zen Master walks up to a hot-dog seller and says: "Make me one with everything."

Female Playoff Beard?

Hockey is one of the great loves of my life. Tomorrow marks the start of this season's playoffs, and as always, I'm stoked for it to begin. I've been a Pittsburgh Penguins fan for as long as I can remember. Over the years I graduated from being a Pens fan, to being a hockey fan, meaning I know more players than just the Pens, and I also learned the rules of the game and the hand signals that the refs use for penalties. I even started paying attention to the overall standings, the plight of the sport as a whole, etc. etc. 

During all this time, I have participated in many fun, traditional hockey activities. I grew up with two older brothers who also loved hockey; one who threw shoes at me if I wasn't in the room for the start of the game. I've also been to numerous Pens games, both home and away, as well as during the good times and the bad.  I've also played the various video games, starting with the amazing Blades of Steel, with my all-time favorite game being NHL Hits. I even played a little hockey when my brothers would literally duct tape me into hockey goalie pads that were too big for me so that they could play a pick-up game down at the park. 

As we all got older, they began to participate in the playoff beard tradition. I, being a non-hairy, fair-skinned female, cannot grow a beard, and therefore cannot participate in this tradition. Every year I feel left out in that I can only live vicariously through my male friends as they grow their beards. And every year I ask for suggestions on what I can do to participate. I always get the same one: don't shave my legs. But, seriously? Gross. Nobody wants to see that. A Google search provided a few options from other folks, such as the Wangs fans who wear bracelets. Wikipedia says that there is a movement for female fans to not shave their arm pits, but again, gross. The writers over at Chicks Who Give a Puck recommend dying strands of hair, or painting finger nails. I am dissatisfied with all of these options. The jewelry option does not seem to have the level of permanence that the essence of the beard has. I refuse to have hairy legs or pits, as it is uncomfortable and would make me feel gross. And while I agree with the chicks who give who puck that the female version should be something natural, dying hair or painting nails does add an expense that the beard does not. However, with the playoffs starting tomorrow, and having no better idea of what to do myself, I think I will do both the hair (if I can find cheap dye) as well as bracelets, as that would show wins and losses. And perhaps by next year, I'll have found the perfect solution. 

Go Pens!

Today's Wit: "McGrath: Good crowd out there tonight, boys, let's really try to win this one.

Ned Braden: You have to hand it to the old bastard, he's highly original.

Jim Ahern: That man traveled 15 hours by bus to sat that?!" - Slap Shot

Dove Off the Deep End

There comes a time in life when you need to ask yourself "what do I want?" Up to this point, I have not really asked myself that question, nor spent any time reflecting on what an answer to that question might be. I have always had inklings though; hints as to what would NOT make me happy, even if I didn't know what would. After a series of unfortunate events in the recent weeks, I finally snapped and started asking myself what I want. Unfortunately, I don't feel very far into my answer. And the one thing I know I want, I can't have.

I have been learning about things I don't want, though. For instance, I don't want to be in a job that sucks the life out of me. I want to seize the day, live each moment to the fullest, and be happy in whatever way I can. And if I can't be in a job that I love, then I at least want that job to allow me the time and resources to spend my free time enjoying life. But not just enjoying it, breathing it into others as well. This task is difficult, though. In the movies, they always make it seem so easy; just give everything up and go for what you want. A cool job is right around the corner, along with the man of your dreams, and everything falls magically into place. In reality, the picture is rather different.

For starters, I quit my job without any savings to tide me over or another job waiting for me. I am unemployed and have about 3 weeks to come up with next month's rent. And the future is terrifying. On my old path, the one laid out for me by everyone that wasn't me, I knew where I was going next. I also never needed to ask myself where I wanted to go, because I would just go where the next job was. Now, however, I feel as if I'm facing a large abyss of possibilities. It's the paradox of choice: I have the entire world now open to me, and I cannot decide where I want to go. Of course, the picture isn't so black and white, as there are other mitigating factors influencing my decision, such as friends and family. Essentially, though, I can go anywhere. And despite the terror that I feel with the unknown, there is also something freeing in it. And even if I spend my mornings depressed and searching for jobs, I refuse to not live out my new philosophy of sucking the life out of everything, instead of everything sucking the life out of me. So I spend my afternoons doing things I've been dreaming of doing for quite some time now. I practice my bass, I spend some time practicing/learning French, I draw/sketch, and I spend time outside. I've also been watching a ton of amazing movies, and enjoying quality time with my friends. Yes, I am broke, and there are lots of other facets to life that I need to sort out, but at the end of the day, I feel freer now then ever before. And it is only now that I can really, truly explore the question of "what do I want?"

Today's Wit: "They're not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? -- Carpe -- hear it? -- Carpe, carpe diem, sieze the day boys, make your lives extraordinary." Keating, from Dead Poets Society

St. Pat's Day

Many people around town have begun their preparations for the second greatest holiday of the year, St. Patrick's Day (the best holiday being 4th of July). Bar owners are advertising their specials (like the ever-popular kegs and eggs), shamrocks and other decorations are being placed in windows and work places, and even Angry Birds has come out with a St. Patrick's version for their Seasons app. Today, I came across this report on CNN Travel on quirky places to be on this lovely holiday. And while I will not be able to travel to any of them this year, I think a trip to New Dublin is in my near future.

Today's Wit: Only Irish coffee provides all main essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat.