Mower

When I was in Jr High, I cut grass for people. I for the most part used our family mower and that involved pushing the mower a couple blocks to the customers’ houses. I’d go to their houses and return home with the mower after 90 minutes or so. I did this four or five times a week. There was a gas station on the corner at the end of the street. One day, as I was pushing the mower down the sidewalk, this woman yelled out to me from her porch: “Why don’t you buy a gas can so you don’t have to take your mower to the gas station every day?” Well, even in Jr High, I realized this woman probably had issues, so to speak. Did she:

• Really think my parents didn’t have a gas can?
• Think I was cutting my parents’ grass four or five times a week?
•  Drink? (People drank a lot back then.)

I’m sure I responded politely. Looking back, I probably should have said something like: “Yeah. Can I pick you up some malt liquor on my way back from the filling station?” Hindsight’s 20/20.   

Curling

I drove by a restaurant with an outdoor patio yesterday. I noticed the outside big screen TV’s were on, showing the Winter Olympics. It was 37 degrees outside and it was still February so this was unusual. I wondered if this was a Winter Olympics fad of some sort. Maybe a “get the feel of the Winter Olympics and sit outside and freeze at our restaurant while you watch skiing and skating and such.” Needless to say, nobody was out there. I thought about parking near the patio and see if I could get served in my car and watch the screens. I would have tried that if they were showing curling, ‘cause I like curling. But it wasn’t curling.

That got me in the mood for some curling so I went home and googled when curling was going to be on and it said that if I wanted to watch curling I needed to watch the Hair Channel.

Wedding Card

Kroger now has a same sex wedding card for sale. They even have a category called “Same Sex Wedding Cards”. The curious thing here is that there is only one card in the category. Yeah, the couple getting married is likely to receive a lot of copies of that card. So the question is: if you’re going to go ahead and establish the category, shouldn’t you have more than one card in that category? ‘Cause now it looks like it’s not much of an effort. It looks like somebody at headquarters said, “OK. You can create the category, but we’re only putting one card in it!” 

This decision could lead to other problems, like when a guy comes home with the groceries: “Herb, I told you to get a wedding card! This is a same sex wedding card.” Developing…   

(One Less Bell to Answer,) One Less Egg to Fry

I’ve pretty much always been intrigued with small town diners. You know, the ones along the two lane highways. Historically, those diners were a risky place to eat. You never knew what you were going to get, quality-wise.  Well, now we have online restaurant reviews to take away the risk. So yeah, we were traveling through this small town yesterday, and there was this mom and pop diner in the middle of town. We didn’t stop but I remembered the name and looked it up on the Yelp last night. The first review started, “Food arrived with egg missing”.  This could mean any of the following:

•          Fox in the hen house (or the kitchen)?
•          Ran out of Pam?
•          Cook has double vision?
•          Check the bottom of the other plates?

When I get time, I’m gonna read the other reviews and see if anybody got an extra egg.

Nothing Up My Sleeve

The cold and flu season is especially bad this year, isn’t it? Entire schools are closing, I’m told. I thought sneezing into our elbows instead of our hands was supposed to lessen the effect of the flu and colds. That sure hasn’t worked, has it? Regardless, I think we’re still supposed to sneeze into our elbows. But they never tell the rest of that equation which is the following: This elbow sneezing should affect what we wear when we have a cold. Black tops, jackets, shirts are out. (I’m not sure you can sneeze into your elbow at a funeral, for instance.) Navy is out. No dark grays. Same for Forrest Green (didn’t he manage the Phillies?). Bright reds are out (yes, I know it’s Valentine’s Day – Sorry!) Instead try to go with light blues, beige/tan, pastels maybe. A nice print. Something that won’t show the sneeze.   

Hey, it doesn’t take a genius to figure this stuff out.

Fence Post

Some people across town have the invisible fence in their back and front yards. I guess that’s better than no fence at all. So of course their dog is out in the front yard all day. Is that necessary? Do we really need dogs in our front yards? Isn’t this really a case of the home owner bragging about his invisible fence? “Hey, did you notice my dog’s in the front yard, man? Yeah. She can’t get out. It’s ‘cause we’ve got the Invisible Fence. Yeah.”  I’m sorry. I just don’t want to see dogs running around in front yards. I guess I would be more OK with the front yard thing if the dog could be trained to “go” in the back yard. Is it asking too much to have the dog do that out back? I don’t need to see that when I’m driving by…

I had my dog trained to "go" into a plastic bag. That cuts out that whole middle clean up step, you know. I guess now I'm the one bragging...