that may be better written ‘air conditioner woahs!‘  so i went to atlanta last weekend for Catalyst conference – it was incredible, but the night before was interesting.  so i went with a friend and we checked into our room, everything is cool.  except that it was warm.  the air conditioner didn’t work!  so we picked up the phone, called the front desk and told them.  the response was ‘yes sir, i’ll send an engineer right up.’  and engineer?  i didn’t know it was that big of a deal.  so my mind prepares itself for a short-sleeved button up, pen wearing individual to walk through the door.  while we commence to unpacking and getting comfortable, a chubby hispanic man walks in the door wearing a work shirt and a toolbelt.  engineer.  he walks in, nods, and kneels by the air conditioner, takes off the cover, and scratches his head.  he picked up his tools and left the room while muttering something about being back soon.  the door shut.  i don’t remember what i was thinking when all the sudden BOOM!  yes, the air conditioner exploded.  i’m talking loud bang and a little sizzle followed by billowing black smoke.  as a haze began to fill the room and my lungs began to get tight, in walked our engineer.  he walked in to the room, paused by the TV because i think he finally smelled the aroma of burning plastic.  he just looked at us with an inquisitive face that looked as if he almost expected us to say, “it blew up.”  we tried to put into words the terror that we had just experienced and he simply walked over to the air conditioner, and screwed it back into the wall.  then he got up to leave!  the room was still hazy with smoke, but he was just going to leave!  we asked if we could have another room and he looked a tad confused as he decided that we could go could pack up and meet him at the front desk.  through a confusing set of circumstances we finally landed another room.  the air conditioner sounded like it was digesting casper the friendly ghost all night.  awesome.

last night i went and played ultimate frisbee.  i should really start reevaluating my techniques or something here, because things always happen.  maybe it’s because we play in the dark.  but last night, after playing ultimate frisbee, i thought my feet looked dirtier than they normally do.  so i walked over to the nearest streetlamp and looked at my feet.  green.  i guess they had fertilized the field or something day.  now my feet are fertilized.  and no, it did not come off in the shower last night.  awesome.

it finally happened.  a moment in South Africa that was awkward enough to motivate me to write a blog post about it.  i was in Pick ‘n’ Pay tonight – basically the South African Piggly Wiggly.  we went after dinner to get some candy..because we were deprived of our normal pudding dessert.  i walked to the back of the store in search of my favorite foreign candy: the prized KinderEgg.  i got to the familiar shelf to find it blank.  nothing.  thus began the hunt for some other acceptable source of sweetness.  i landed in the register line looking at chocolate bars.  in south africa there is a candy bar made by Cadbury that has different phrases on it.  these phrases consist of things like ‘you’re fine’ and ‘how ’bout a date?’  … i mean, this is really useful candy.  so i’m looking through all these phrases trying to find something worthy to be my dessert.  some of the phrases were in english, but some were in afrikaans.  so against my better judgement, i picked up a chocolate ps bar, that said “soen my”.  i had no clue what that meant.  so i looked around for the nearest south african, which happened to be this 40 year old white man in front of me in line.  he had a mustache.  i leaned over, showed him the candy bar and asked him what it meant.  in return, i received shifty eyes.  i raised my eyebrows and he replied, ‘kiss me.’  immediately i drew back and said, “woah man, that was not intended to be…”  i just left it hanging there.  i found out last week that there are more gay people in capetown, south africa than anywhere else on the continent of africa.  maybe for that guy, the moment wasn’t really that awkward.

i went to waffle house last night for a midnight treat.  of course, i ordered my waffle house favorite, cheese grits.  but last night, i decided to really reward myself with something extra: a biscuit.  after i ordered and the waffle house woman (?) left my table, i glanced at the menu and noticed that the biscuit i just ordered cost $1.00, but directly under that were the words “Sausage Biscuit – $1.00″.  so that’s free breakfast meat, right?  can’t pass that up.  if you’ve ever been to waffle house you know what a gamble my next move was.  i flagged down the waiter.  or was it waitress?  that’s irrelevant.  kind of.  but i asked her (?) if indeed the sausage biscuit was the same price as a biscuit…and turns out that waffle house does give out free breakfast meat!  so now my ordered had changed…which again is a dangerous action at waffle house.  but sure enough, i received my meal:

but the true mystery is this:  why is that pickle on my plate?

A nice celebration for post #50.

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A Thousand Miles – The Orange Jumpsuit Guys

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The Orange Jumpsuit Guys, an AirBand from Auburn University performs their second hit, A Thousand Miles, originally performed by Vanessa Carlton.

so on thursday of last week, my closet broke.  yep.  i heard a crash and ran into my room to find this:

everything fell.  there were bent metal braces and screws ripped out of the wall.  i just closed the door.  later, i did take the time to transport my closet to my kitchen.  i’m now waiting on the apartment maintenance guy to pay me a visit.  my new closet:

i was talking to some friends recently about how good flintstones vitamins taste.  i mean, they’re good!  when i was a little kid, my parents found me hiding under my desk one time eating as many as i could.  …and i had some recently – and it was no childhood fantasy!  they actually taste good!

what a mystery this is though – because as adults we all unfortunately find out that nothing in this world that is good for you taste good.  its all gross.  fact of life: healthy food tastes bad.  EXCEPT for flintstones vitamins!  how did they do that?  i think instead of asking how, we should be asking what.  what can we do with these amazing vitamins?

i think we could change the way that healthy food is perceived.  what if we simply crunched up flintstones vitamins and made spices out of them?  just imagine green beans: with a hint of strawberry flavoring.  they would be amazing – and the greatest thing is that you’re only adding more nutrients!  you could flavor anything, even ice cream could now in a sense be called ‘healthy’.  we could separate them into individual flavors, but also create an ‘allspice’  that was just an entire bottle of flintstones crushed up.  i think this would take the culinary world by storm.  healthy food would be tasty!  we would name the spice after the character we crushed up.  there would be ‘essence of dino’ and a ‘dash of bam-bam’.  think of the fun that Emeril Lagasse would have would that: “and BAM we just add a little BAMBAM! BAM!”

snow eagle