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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Your Whitehouse Report - Part 3

Earlier in the day yesterday, we passed by the first place I ever had a job, Sautter's grocery store.  

One day that place will get a post of its own, but for now, it was a good place for me to start my working life.  Maybe it's different in other parts of the country, but where I live, you don't see too many small, family-owned grocery stores any more.  I'll never forget when minimum wage went up to $2.65... I thought I was really raking it in!


We went to Jake's baseball game last night and unfortunately, it was one of those games where it was just walk after walk after walk, with an occasional strikeout thrown in.  The first 2 innings took an hour to play, and there were maybe 4 occasions on which someone actually made contact with a pitch.
Jake fouls one off, before walking.


"Sorry I can't stay, kid, but American Idol is about to start."


We made a break for it about an hour and a half in, so that we could get home in time for American Idol.  Well, so that Rik could watch American Idol, which he could not DVR, he said, because he was already DVRing NCIS.


This is where I got to earn my keep, by telling Rik how he could actually DVR 2 shows at once, as long as he wasn't watching something else.  Sadly, I didn't know this was even an issue until we were 10 minutes away from the house, on the way to the game.


John met us over at Rik's place, which had just undergone Spring Planting.  It's hard to imagine that the guy on the right in this pic:

is the same guy that planted this:

So the 3 of us had a pizza delivered while Idol was on.  As the delivery guy left, John wondered if Pizza Guy was wondering what kind of house this was, with 3 big bald gorillas sitting around watching American Idol.


Later on, during a Fox promo, I clarified... "I'm sure he didn't think we were gay because we were watching Idol.  Now if were watching 'Glee'..."


After Idol, and the DVR'ed NCIS, we went out to Shawn's Irish Pub again and worked on some beers until 11, when they closed.  Next stop was the "other" bar in Waterville, Mad Anthony's."

We had a few more beers there, shot the shit, told a bunch of stories, and got home about 1.  Actually, "re-told" is probably more accurate.  I don't think any of us have anything new to cover that we haven't covered a hundred times by now.


There's not a lot on the "schedule" for today.  John and I went out to pick up his car at the shop back in Haskins.  It was a bit too early to stop again at Herbie's Train Depot, which is the name of the place we were at yesterday, that had the model train running and whose name I could not remember when I wrote the last post (and has since been corrected.)


How can you not like a bar called "Herbies", anyway?

I tweaked my back getting up from a chair this morning.  Now it's like I have a shiv stuck in just to the right of my middle vertebrae.  Fuck.  It sucks getting old.  I wonder if a steady diet of beer and Jack Daniel's will help?


John's out doing some yard work this afternoon.  As I was poking around the cupboards looking for something "lunch-like", I came across a delicacy from my post-college years, and found that John was apparently holding out on me.
Look!  Now with no Trans Fats!  So it's all "good for you", right?


I became acquainted with Ramen Noodle Soup one day while I was living in an off-campus apartment in Bowling Green, with my fiance and a mutual (hot) friend.  I was sick one morning and Fiance was at school, so Hot Friend made me a bowl of Ramen Noodle Soup.  Now having lived at home throughout college, I was unfamiliar with this stuff.  But it was so novel and good to me at the time, I guess I associated Ramen Noodle Soup with mornings and from then on, it became my new daily breakfast, a habit I maintained for a good 15 years.


I loved when I could find a store that had new flavors, but I usually stuck to the basics... chicken, beef, pork and Oriental.  I was never quite sure why it was called "Oriental"... was it supposed to taste like a Chinaman?  I never learned for sure.


I would arrange my soups in the cabinet in a flavor rotation, so I could just take one off the top and I would always have maximum distance from the last time I had that flavor.


What?  I am NOT OCD!  I'm just really good with "systems".


Anyway, Ramen Noodle Soup was the one constant through my earliest years as a so-called adult, in other words, The Broke Years.  At like 15 cents per package, it helped stretch my meager dollars. It wasn't always for breakfast, but it was a pretty regular lunch.


I don't think I stopped buying it until a couple years after I moved to Baltimore.  But seeing it in John's cupboard, I knew that my buddies weren't going to be the only old friend from the past I'd be spending time with this week.


Tomorrow we are still scheduled to go see Bluz Sister in Cincinnati, with a return stop on Saturday at World Famous Myles Pizza in Bowling Green.  You'll have to see this pizza to believe it.  I guarantee you that I'll be the only one on Southwest Airlines on Sunday, flying with a carryon filled with cold pizza.

23 comments:

  1. Lovely fleurs, Rik.
    I never shopped at Sauter's, too pricey. How much for a packet of Ramen noodles? Probably about $4.99, the week's whole food budget.

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  2. The Ramens are around a quarter a pack, but you can get them cheaper in bulk. (which is how I should have bought them way back when.)

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  3. True story: I love Ramen noodles. Still. I won't let the kid eat them because HOLY SODIUM, BATMAN! but I sneak them once in a while. LOOOVE them.

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  4. Thanks Mrs. N you should see my veggie garden but you know ANTHONY he won't eat many veggies guess that goes for taking pics too !!!

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  5. Burgh Baby,
    Oh, the deprivation of that poor girl! A little sodium won't hurt anything... they look at me! I'm normal!

    OK, forget that example.

    Rik (or Anonymous)
    Don't MAKE me have to whip out my Rules of Vegetables on you...

    Another problem with veggies... they're not photogenic.

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  6. 10 for a dollar when on sale! or was that 1991?

    dude, what's wrong with Glee??? Rachael is hawt!

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  7. Fan,
    It could have been 1991... OK, so I'm out of touch!

    I'd rather troll for "hot" on a grownup show, like "Mercy" or "Lost."

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  8. Bluz, just when I think we couldn't possibly have one more thing in common, here you go and talk about Ramen. There are simply no words to describe my love and admiration for the Maruchan corporation.

    Now if you could just teach me about sports...

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  9. I would be happy to teach, young paduan.

    There's a lot to be said for simple pleasures in life.

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  10. 1. The first bar closes at 11? WTF?
    2. I have my ramen stacked next to each other so that I can grab whatever flavor I want without disrupting the stacks. (i.e. no rotation) It doesn't make you OCD. Well... that's what the guy who diagnosed me with OCD said at least.
    3. I'm sure the pizza guy didn't think y'all were gay. I mean... well. wait. There's flowers in the garden. Was there a female in sight?
    hmmm...

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  11. 1. Yeah... small town... week night... I can see it. And there's still the other bar a block away, that stays open for all the serious drunks.

    2. If I were inclined to pick a flavor of the day, I'd do it your way. But I always prefer to run a cycle.

    3. No female in sight... unless Rik has a Pit I didn't see... Dude probably thought we were the least stylish gay guys in NW Ohio.

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  12. You're right, getting old does suck sometimes, but we have all the wisdom we've gained to make up for it. Right??

    I love Ramen Noodles, but I don't make the soup. I dump out the water then season it and eat it over buttered toast. Weird, I know.

    Have a great time with Bluz sister!

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  13. Nice Creativity...Pinky Glad your are enjoying
    simple man kind of love. Nice to see your old haunts.

    Just so you know he is a great hugger too...

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  14. Raven,
    Ramen noodles are nothing, if not adaptable. To each, his own! That works with noodles, as well as life!

    Pinky,
    I'll forgive you for calling it "simple man love"... cuz I know what you mean. If you googled "simple man love", you'd probably bring up a bunch of websites you'd rather not see.

    All,
    Just got to Bluz Sister's house. Got a flat on I 75... what a CF. Will post the full story eventually. Not going to see Reds/Pirates game tonight, due to later arrival and rainy weather. Will instead see Reds/Astros game tomorrow night.

    All is well... time to play.

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  15. You do know that I dont care if it is right...it created a new feeling to the phrase,
    "Simple man kind of life", or whatever...you are simple and you have a lot of love....but very picky.
    Fortunatly, I do find this this charming. Like the Doc. on Mercy, (the one whose wife died.)
    Xo Pinky

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  16. Idol? REALLY? Wow.

    Yah, I'm pretty sure that the Pizza dude totally thought you guys were gay. Possibly transsexuals. The jury's still out on that one.

    My Grandpa used to own a grocery store. Obviously not anymore, but he did.

    So you ditched the kid's game for Idol? I don't think I'll see you the same ever again...

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  17. You know, Bluz, I would make three-course meals for my children after putting in a full day's work an there were many times they said they would rather have Ramen noodles. Really, I am a good cook, but they had a special way of cooking Ramen style. They would cook it up as soup, drain all the soup off and enjoy the flavored noodles.

    You arranged soup in order. Really? Do you work for the government? Those of us who have tend to be this way!

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  18. You can buy Ramen by the case at Costco for like...two bucks. Live it up, my friend!

    I always loved Ramen uncooked. heh

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  19. Cassie,
    Now, don't think ill of me... I didn't have a choice in the matter of leaving the game. His own father chose to leave the game to watch the Idol finale, and he was driving.

    Personally, I'd have DVR'd it and watched it later and zapped the commercials. IF I gave a shit about Idol. (Although, from a layman's perspective, Crystal got robbed.)

    But still, just you wait until YOU'RE forced to sit and watch ANOTHER little league game where absolutely nothing happens. It's like a time warp, when you're watching the clock for the end of a boring class and the hands just don't move.

    Cher,
    I know a number of others that bail on the water too and just eat the noodles, but I always loved the soup. I suspect it was that first early association.

    Vange,
    UNCOOKED? Wow. I never even considered that. What's that, like a ricecake? Did you at least sprinkle the flavor packet on it?

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  20. Cher, (again, because I forgot this tidbit)

    I've always been good at setting up "systems" to make life as simple as possible. Not government work, just my nature. Once I set the soup rotation, I don't have to pause or think about which one I want or which one I had last, I just have to take one off the top and eat. I believe in setting things up once, then just rolling afterwards... like pinning socks together.

    Another example from my music store days... we used to have to check in and reconcile hundreds of cassettes at once, on shipment days. I set up a big unused door as a table, and measured off some lines on it (that would = 5 tapes each), so that I could just line up the tapes by price point, and the lines would tell me how many I had, so I could reconcile them to the invoice. I never had to count to more than 5. I did a similar thing when counting out cash drawers by stacking coins.

    Using systems takes the work out of jobs! I should sell T-shirts that say that...

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  21. Bluz,
    You have so much wisdom hidden behind your witty comments. It is a unique trait which I greatly admire.

    Oh yes! Go for that T-shirt. :)

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  22. You know, I posted the other day about my friend who wrote a book about becoming a millionaire by his 30th birthday, and one of the ways he did it was to live on ramen. Now, of course, NYC is full of these high-end ramen joints that are supposedly worth the 200000000% mark-up, but I just don't know if I believe it.

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  23. I believe it. You KNOW the cost of ramen is not high. And once you price something high enough, trendy New Yorkers will flock to it.

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