Category: Random exchanges at work
Answer: You’re Snapple Fact weird
Question: What my co-worker says to me when I randomly say “Happy Birthday!” Frosty the Snowman style, and then note that its the first thing he says when he comes to life in the cartoon.
This sounds even more random than when it happened. I’m really glad the week is over.
The most recent song to get really heavy repeat play on my CD player.
Carbon Leaf is a band from Richmond, VA that has attained some pretty significant regional success, but has only made it to #136 on the Billboard charts. Nonetheless their 2004 release Indian Summer has been one of my favorite albums since I got it last year. I hadn’t listened to it for a little while and I had forgotten how catchy and addicting this track is for me. One of the things I like the most is the lyric phrasing and alliteration throughout the song. A bonus is that its a pretty simple song to play on the guitar and its one of the few that I’ve sort of learned so far.
Hope you enjoy.
I hate the grocery store. No special reason besides I hate going there.
I hate it more when I go in and the weather is nice, but when I come out its pouring and I left my umbrella in the car.
I hate it more when I run to the car, but my trunk won’t open because I’m not holding the trunk release button long enough.
I hate it more when I get in the car, soaking wet, turn the key and my car is so dead that the CD player spits my CD out at me and everything electrical starts resetting.
The remedy for this…
Thankfully, Cris has AAA and they came and hooked me up, and Chick-fil-a was nearby.
Is it possible for me to nominate Truett Cathy for sainthood when he passes?
Okay, I was trying to stay away from this because I admittedly haven’t been following it as much as some other topics in the past, but things that I’ve been hearing lately have been bothering me.
First off, I don’t really think you’re going to find many people that would disagree that the cost of health care is becoming an increasing burden on a significant portion of the population. I know personally, the increases in my insurance premiums have been outstripping the yearly increases in my salary. So in terms of the work to fix health care in the country, here are some problems I have with the current situation.
I’m generally in favor of a free market for the exchange of goods and services, but I am concerned that we currently rely on such a system for the provision of health care. Basically, health care providers are primarily concerned with making money, not providing quality health care. The same goes for insurance companies, who make it more and more difficult for health care providers to not worry so much about money, but providing good health care. The problem, as I see it, is that there’s no natural downward pressure on health care prices, which is how a free market would ideally regulate itself. There’s no natural downward pressure because the demand for health care is never ending, and people will only do without it as a last resort.
Okay, that title sounds worse than it should, but its true. I don’t drink beer all that often, and when I drink it I usually only have one, maybe two. Cris and I were watching a travel show earlier about Dublin, Ireland and the travel hostess went to the Guiness Brewery and had a complimentary pint after her tour. Watching the show, I realized that I had the same affection for a pint of Guinness as the guy pouring at the Guinness brewery.
While I’m far from a connoisseur, and I don’t have the words of a critic, I thought I’d share some of my favorites to possibly spread the word about some truly great beers that some may not have come across.
Boddington’s Pub Ale – Its hard to declare one singular beer my favorite, but this is the current title holder. For me, this English ale is the summer version of Guinness. Described by one person as a vanilla Guinness, it has the same smooth texture as Guinness, but a bit lighter flavor. I’ve had this both on tap and from their pint cans and its excellent both ways. Just make sure you or the bartender poor correctly and let it settle.
Corsendonk Abbey Brown Ale – A Belgian ale that’s much darker than Boddington’s with a fuller, heavier flavor. Finishes with a nice spice flavor. I’m a big fan of this one during fall and winter.
The USMNT just finished the group stages of the Gold Cup last night with a draw against Haiti. Just coming off a busy schedule with the Confederations Cup, we brought in a batch of players that hadn’t been playing with the full senior team lately. Given the number of players with little to no experience at the senior level, I decided I wasn’t going to do a review after each game. I wanted to see how things panned out a little before I formed any real opinions.
Now that the first three games are over, I feel like I’ve seen enough play to form some opinions on how we looked and performances from individual players. This is what I saw from the first three games.
Freddy Adu has a fair distance to go before I’m convinced he belongs on the field. He’s obviously rusty from not playing, but this was supposed to be his chance to show that he deserved to be considered for regular time with the full team anyway. Its understandable that his touch is going to be rusty and hit fitness wouldn’t be great, but he just lost possession of the ball way too easily way too many times. I’m starting to get the feeling that he was overhyped, or he’s just not reaching his full potential. Bottom line, right now we have too many other options that are much better than him in the midfield.
Hey look, a post that’s not soccer related.
As previously noted, I’m a huge fan of the Great American Restaurant Company offerings. Sometime over the last year they opened up their newest culinary outpost in Reston named Jackson’s.
Upon entering, there’s no doubt your in another GARC establishment. The decor is pretty similar to the others; their booths with coat hooks at the end of each a telltale marker. This one had more of a mid-century loungey feel to it with a nice mural of the L’il Rascals on the wall adding a nice touch.
I have to be honest and say I had a couple of small disappointments when I first looked at the menu. There wasn’t anything that really grabbed me that was much different than the other GARs, and they don’t have a micro brew on site which was a little disappointing as that is one of my favorite things about Sweetwater.
That’s where the disappointment ended. The Lucky Lager was one of the best restaurant beers I’ve had in a really long time. Great flavor and it drank really smoothly.
My dinner was excellent. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of what I had and I couldn’t find it on their website when I tried to get the name. What I do remember is that it is a chicken dish and it was accompanied by a wild rice “salad.” The chicken was incredibly moist and had a great flavor to it. The wild rice salad is sort of a waldorf salad with wild rice in it. Its a bit hard to explain, but was really great.
The service was good, as expected, and I would definitely recommend checking it out if you find yourself in Reston Town Center looking for a place for dinner.
Random side note: I’m second on the search results if you Google “Great American Restaurant Company,” which has to make me cool in some way.
So I took the holiday today to finally do some editing on some pictures I took while I was in Montana for work a little while back. Actually, I think it was like two months ago so I’m just about right on schedule for me for getting pics posted.
Keep in mind that this is the first time I really did anything with photos I took in the RAW format and really tried to do any “digital darkroom” work on them. Hopefully, they didn’t turn out too bad.
Go here to see the pics.