Meet Virginia

This is most interesting. Around seven years ago, our last outdoor cat passed. In the last few weeks, another cat has shown up in our neighborhood, and, not having seen her in around seven years, she looks almost exactly the same!!! I suppose it's completely possible that this one of her descendants. My younger boy did the same move we'd done with the original, gave her some food. She's been back a few times. She's a little spooky, but kind of a people cat once you get up to her. Entirely possible that she's someone's pet, and thus far she's eluded the coyotes. The original we'd named Shenandoah, and for the last six months or so, the John Denver classic, "Country Road" has been on the boy's list, on account of Fallout 76. Since Shenandoah Valley is mentioned in the song, he thought the new one should have some name also from the song. I suggested "Ridge", short for Blue Ridge mountains, also unique and monosyllabic. That didn't stick. He dubbed her Virginia.

2018: The Year in Food

Welcome to the end of the year!!! It's been a pretty good one, and at this time, there's always a bunch of lists and retrospectives, so here's another!!! A look back at some of the stuff I ate!!!

To start off, I'm always looking for a good Chicago deep dish pizza. There's a few places that are purported to to serve it up, but the only new to me one I tried was a place called Dough Box. It's pretty decent, but not quite as good as the one I had in Chicago.

Next up is a creation of my own. The Woody Show had a segment on the ultimate stoner foods, and one was a grilled bacon cheese peanut butter & jelly sandwich. I think Menace may have cooked some up. Probably on 4-20. I love me a grilled PB&J, it's a meal and dessert in one, so I tried out the embellishments, and it was pretty good. Added in some grilled onions, and if I remember, I had some fancy kind of cheese. When I went to make it, though, there was only one slice each of two different kinds of bread, so it was a real mash up.

I've been going to the Aldi by my work for some time now. they have some of the best prices on most stuffs. One time while I was there, they had Jeno's East Chicago deep dish pizzas for around $6. Had to get one, and while, once again, not as good as Chicago, it was still quite plausible, for a fraction of the price. I think I got one more before they sold out, and they came back later and I got 2 or 3 more.

Next up, Oinkster had their Burger Week again. I skipped last year, but this year they were bringing back a few of my favorites, so I made it a quest again. I think the winner for my favorite was the Thrilla from Manilla. Pork patty with shrimp & mushrooms in a lumpia wrapper, green papaya relish, pork belly, and sweet sweet Thai sauce.

I was looking most forward to the Pantera burger, with grilled mac & cheese, pulled pork, bacon and garlic aioli. Sounded awesome, but for some reason I was underwhelmed.

One of my favorites from my first time was the Bet it All on Black Garlic burger, with a lot of garlic stuff on it, too. When we got there for this one, they told us they were out of the black buns, so it'd be on just a regular bun, but when I got it home, it was black!!! Didn't seem as garlicy as the first one I'd had.

They also had several of their "tribute" burgers, starting with the Big Max, then the Sourdough Josh, and the week ended with the McRibster, which makes the original seem like the ribwich from the gas station!!!

Habit Burger never disappoints, and I made it by for the limited time guacamole crunch burger, and it was well worth it. Later on in the year they had a French Onion burger that was also quite good!!!

Here's one I happened on. For National Donut Day, Burger King came up with the Whopper Donut!!! Only five locations in the country were going to have them, and one was close to where I was going to be, so I was able to get in on it!!!

Really nothing that special, just a Whopper with the middle punched out. Comes with a "mini Whopper slider", which is just the punched out center. Whopper is a pretty good mass-production burger, so I enjoyed it.

As briefly mentioned, we went to the Orange County Fair this year. Always fair food to be had, and here's a few!!! We got some of the Australian Battered Potatoes, which were quite good.

Of course, deep fried stuff had to be consumed. I got some deep fried cheesecake, the younger boy got some deep fried Oreos.

Mom got the deep fried Nutella. Looked bad, tastes good. She also got some pizza on a stick later on.

Of course, they had the Christmas party for my work this year. Seemed like a lot of people weren't going when you'd talk to them, but once we got there, every place you look you see someone. I'm always tempted to get the fish, but I got the filet mignon, and it was good!!! Mine was kind of thin, but that made it nicely cooked throughout. Dessert was these little cakes.

Just the other day I went to Taco Bell and had them try and make a re-creation of Woody's deep dish Mexican pizza!!! He'd gone to their test kitchen and stacked it to where it'd just barely fit in their oven. I basically just had 'em double up everything, and it looks like it could have gone taller, but it was honestly more than enough!!!

Finally, back at the end of August, noted crackpot California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman was calling for a boycott of In-N-Out Burger. All that made me do is want an In-N-Out Burger. The next night, I went by and got one. The boycott doesn't seem to have done them any harm. It occurred to me just the other day, I can't recall the last time I've had an In-N-Out Burger that wasn't prepared animal style!!!

I took this picture and posted it on Twitter. I think it may have been the most liked and retweeted post I've ever done. For the text, I just did three words.

God bless America.

Flat

It has been a while, yet again. I'd wanted to get more blogging in this year, and may have been somewhat successful. Anyway, last month my wife and I went up to northern California for a anniversary weekend. It was pretty fun.

We flew out of Long Beach, which is always a far superior experience than Los Angeles. The options of the flight were early morning or late evening. To keep from blowing the whole day (and as the day wears on, it seems more likely for a flight delay) we elected the morning flight. Of course, this means arriving well before check in time at our lodging. We got our rental car, one of the style I like where they just point you to the class of car you've rented and tell you to take your pick. I like the hatch style of the Hyundai Accent, so we took that and just started cruising about at random. First city areas, then farmlands, then we were in a forest area.

When I pulled off to take a few pictures, I noticed that the Hyundai is a 512'er!!! Pretty cool. Got to catch the end of The Woody Show on KFOG, and then discovered that our rental had satellite radio, and listened to that some. It was getting towards that time, so we started looking for someplace to eat. Rolling down the freeway, and suddenly the tire pressure light comes on!!! It began making a noise of a flat, and there was an exit coming up, so I kept going along to get off the freeway. The road we exited onto had no shoulder, so I continued to the next cross street and turned onto it, then pulled off to the side.

Yeah, it was flat all right. I moved our luggage out of the trunk into the back seat to get at the spare. Surprise, no spare!!! Just a compressor and a can of sealant. I have heard the sealant can foul the tire pressure sensors, so before I tried it, I called the rental company. They said to give it a try, so I went ahead. Connect the sealant to the line and compressor and let it run for 3 minutes. I did that, and it was as flat as ever. I noticed that there were three of one brand of tire, and a fourth was different, and the one that had gone flat had some cupping on the edge. I suspect that there has been some kind of suspension damage that causes one tire to wear quickly.

Called the rental company back, and they said they would send a truck. Could be an hour and 15 minutes, but it was only about the 15 minute. Back to the rental place, where the tow truck couldn't get into the garage because of the height, so he dropped us outside the structure. Went back, and they said to get another of my choosing, and suggested a Kia Rio S that was almost new, less than 1,000 miles. Also got phenomenal mileage.

Where we'd pulled off the road, there was a dead mouse laying there. Not a great sign, but the rest of the weekend was fine. At first I was thinking that this was the first time I'd had such a problem with a rental, but then I remembered the Mazda that had a window come off it's tracks. Was also thinking it's the first flat I've had in a while, but there was the shanking of Jade from earlier this year, as well as tires on Scruffy that would get low on air. So, this was the first time I've had an automotive incident where I've been stuck on the side of the road since the couple of times where AAA Screwed me over!!!