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How to Be My New Best Friend

Yesterday, Mr. Dump, Junior and I took a field trip to Rockport MA, one of my favorite places in the universe. We went to just have a nice, no pressure day, just to walk around, maybe get some chowdah and an ice cream, and take a few photos.


sailing past a lighthouse, originally uploaded by Big DumpTruck.

I met a guy who is now my new best friend. We did the whole “check out the equipment to see if we’re Canon or Nikon (or whatever) people” and saw we both had Canon stuff. He had this magnificent lens on a tripod, and I was walking around with my 17-40, not the greatest lens for taking distance shots. It turns out his lens beat out my 40 10 fold…he had a 100-400mm lens. Niiiice. The cool thing was that he asked if I wanted to attach my camera to his lens to take a few shots. He showed me how his tripod worked (damn, I can’t even afford his tripod, never mind the rest of his equipment!) and let me take the photo you see above. I can honestly say I had no idea there was a lighthouse within eyeshot of the end of Bareskin Neck…I don’t think I had ever really spotted it before, and I certainly didn’t have the fire power to take a decent photo of it.

So thank you, kind stranger! If I’m ever in the same position as you, being the one with the really good lens when a fellow Canon-ite comes by, I will let them try out my cool lens so they can tell their friends how awesome I am.

p.s If you are in the Rockport area looking for a meal with a view, I HIGHLY recommend the Blacksmith Shop, which is a block or two up (to the right) of the parking lot (the one with the town offices). I don’t think a ton of people walk up that far, because the place was fairly empty, but we literally had one of the most amazing views I have ever had from a restaurant. I had a fantatic lobster/pasta dish, and the two boys both had caesar salads – Junior had his with shrimp, and Mr. Dump went with the chicken. All our meals were fantastic, but really, the meal was the amazing part. If you go to my flickr photostream (click the link on my name below the photo) you can see were we were sitting right on the edge of a deck. I will eventually upload the photo I took of the view with the iPhone. Fantastic.

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Corporate America 1, Jody 0

I lost another battle that I didn’t know I was in. You know the tune – Jody likes something, and the company that produces it decides to pull it from the market. We’ve talked about it here before, how food staples like Raspberry Kool-Aid and Primavera flavor Chicken Tonight simmer sauce left a hole in my heart that nothing can replace.

Last night we learned that Chili’s is not going to have the Caribbean Chicken Salad on the menu any more. Nor will they have Junior’s favorite dish, the basil pasta (which wasn’t on the menu under that name but you could order it as a vegetarian entree). The reason? They are cutting out menu items that require them to have an ingredient for just that one dish. (I’m probably explaining this wrong). So the salad is gone because they won’t be carrying mandarin oranges, pineapple chunks or honey-lime dressing (used only for that dish), and they are doing away with mozzarella sticks which means they won’t need to carry the marinara sauce, which is needed for the basil pasta. Oh, and the onion (blossom, or whatever they call it) will be gone too.

I know they offer pasta on the kids menu, so I’m having a hard time picturing them removing one of the few kid’s items, but someone made a decision somewhere. But how hard is it to keep a can/jar of sauce on hand for the kids? Or for the vegetarians, for that matter. Not much else on the menu that doesn’t involve meat.

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The Entertainment Portion of Your Day

Here is the part of the website where I try to entertain you by making up a story and trying to convince you it’s absolutely true. Well, I will place two true “truthiness nuggets” in the story, and your job will be to try to determine which those are.

I was eating lunch at Johnny Rockets at the Burlington Mall when I realized I’d left my wallet in the car. This was not cool because, well, Mrs. Rocket was staring at me with a bill in her hand and I couldn’t very well tell her that I did not have any money. I scanned the restaurant to see if I knew anybody, and was shocked and amazed to see Mike Lowell eating a #12 with his family. It turns out Mike is a big fan of the “red red sauce” that they put on the #12, and he often eats there four or five times a week. Now me, if I was a big famous sports star, I would ask if they could hook me up with a bottle of the stuff, but maybe he just enjoys spending quality time at the mall. You never know.
But you thought I was going to ask Mike if he could cover my bill for me, right? Wrong. I could not do that. But what I could do is ask Mike if he was interested in buying my watch from me. It’s a Timex Ironman Triathlon watch with Indiglo, so you can tell what time it is in the dark. I told him I’d sell it to him for $19.65, which covered my bill plus a hearty 10% tip. (Only 10% because Mrs. Rockets forgot to bring me my fries and she forced me to do the ketchup all by myself instead of doing the first pour for me. Beeatch.
Mike inspected the watch for wear and tear and told me he’d give me a full twenty for it, which was fantastic. I didn’t want to give Mrs. Rockets the extra 35 cents, but I felt it would be awkward to ask her for it. But then, Mike Lowell paid for the watch using giant handfuls of change. I’m not even sure how he got all that change into his pockets. He may have been carrying it in some sort of man bag. And you should totally not make fun of him for carrying a man bag because on him it would look very very cool, unless it had some kind of Hello Kitty design on it. I’m not saying he’s partial to Hello Kitty, but really, could you blame the man? It’s so damned cute!
So I handed Mrs. Rockets the twenty, and thanked her for a lovely meal. On the way out of the restaurant I noticed they had a giant gumball machine. I love gumballs, and couldn’t believe I’d just tossed away that extra thirty five cents. All I needed for a gumball was twenty five cents, you see. So I made eye contact with Mike Lowell again and nodded toward the gumball machine. He got up from his table and came over to me, and used his manly baseball muscles to push over the huge gumball machine like it was so many Q-Tips. The ball on top shattered, and hundreds of gumballs flooded the entryway to Johnny Rockets. I gave Mike Lowell and thankful nod and as I grabbed a handful of gumballs, careful to avoid the ones with glass in them, I whispered “until next time.”

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What Happens Under the Table Stays Under the Table

Had an interesting few moments at UNO last night for Junior’s birthday dinner. We were sitting in the bar area because Junior and I like to play the trivia game and Mr. Dump wanted to watch the San Diego football game.

For some reason, Step-Junior noticed something under the table that Mr. Dump confirmed was [ewwwww] thong underwear.

There was a thong on the floor under our table.

SO many thoughts on this, I almost had a complete mental shutdown. But in summary, I will stay on the innocent side: how spicy do the buffalo wings have to be that you find yourself removing your underwear to cool off?

And no, we didn’t tell anyone. I wanted the staff to assume they were mine.

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