Tag: Texas

Fast Food

Fast Food

I’ve had an interesting week – one bookended by a couple of fast food tales. On one end, there was a question about Cincinnati Chili, on the other, I was doing drugs in a Whataburger drive-through line.

It’s not quite as bad as it sounds. Allow me to explain.

Monday morning, my alarm clock rang at the gawdawful hour of 4:19 to allow me enough time to walk the dog, shower, get dressed, and headed to the hospital for a bit of surgery. Had to be there at 6:00 to be put under at 7:30.

I met the surgeon three weeks earlier. We discussed what he intended to do to me (remove a small, suspicious growth from my liver), how he was going to do it (laparoscopic surgery), and where we would be doing it (at the hospital ten miles from my little corner of the DFW Metromess). Before I met the man, I noted from the CV he provided on the internet that he had spent time in Cincinnati.

I wanted to ask him Gold Star, or Skyline.

As a point of information for the uninitiated, Gold Star and Skyline are a couple of chain chili parlors doing business mostly in Cincinnati and Hamilton County Ohio selling “Cincinnati-Style” chili to the masses. (For more information about Cincinnati Chili, look here.

Well, I didn’t get to ask the good doctor about his favorite Cincinnati Chili on my initial visit, so, I determined to ask when I saw him just prior to surgery.

Well, here I was getting prepped for surgery and the nurse asked if I had any questions. She answered most of them already, so I told her that since the doctor spent time in Cincinnati, I was wondering…

“Which do you prefer? Gold Star or Skyline?” The nurse came out of left field to ask the question I was about to ask. She told me that she was from Northern Kentucky and her preference was Skyline! Her interruption broke a bit of ice and put me in a better mood.

And yes, when the doctor came in for his last visit with me before I went under, I asked the question. “Skyline!” We talked a moment or two about the Queen City before he left and I was given some happy medicine to put me under the knife.

I woke up about 3 hours later (or was it four?) not a bit hungry despite having been fasting since nine the previous evening.

Pain? There was plenty. Tylenol, some other pill I had no idea what it was was fed to me over the next 24 hours while I was itching to get back home.

When I was discharged just after lunchtime Tuesday, the doctor prescribed a nausea medicine to go along with something called Oxycodone for me to pick up at the local CVS. Well, not me, but my wife. There was no way I was going to drive for at least a week… even if a doctor had put no restrictions on me. Married to a nurse, I know exactly what I didn’t need to be doing.

After getting home and getting settled, my wife drove to the CVS here in our little burg since my phone told me that the prescriptions were ready to be picked up.

One little hiccup.

The message sent by CVS said that the nausea medicine was ready, but that the Oxycodone was “On Special Order”, meaning they didn’t have it. When my wife returned, she explained the situation. I thought it wise to go ahead and wait. After all, I wasn’t too anxious to be taking a narcotic, despite the pain.

That was Tuesday.

I managed to control my pain with double doses of Tylenol interspersed with double doses of Ibuprofen.

It worked, despite the fact that I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.

My only problem was a cough, caused in part by difficulty in getting fluids out of my chest. For a few days, I was chugging down cough drops almost as quickly as I could unwrap the things. Tired of that, I decided that the best thing I could do would be to go to Wally World, to get a bottle of cough syrup.

Since it was Saturday, and since I was feeling good, I convinced my wife to drive me to Wally-World to get cough syrup, suggesting getting sandwiches at Whataburger on the way back to the house. I went into WW, came out with the cough syrup, and struggled to open the bottle while my wife drove us to Whataburger for our sandwiches.

I finally got the bottle opened after we placed our order – dosing myself while we waited to get to the drive-up window. It was then that I observed that I was doing drugs in the Whataburger drive-through lane!

See? It wasn’t all that bad, now was it?

Our order arrived.

While I was securing our sandwiches for the ride home, my phone buzzed with the news from CVS that my Oxycodone had arrived.

Four days later.

I have other thoughts about CVS, but I’m not here to gripe, I’m here to exude happy thoughts.

Be Seeing You!

A Fishy Little Tail

A Fishy Little Tail

I ran across an interesting little piece of trivia a few whiles back regarding Woodstock, Captain D’s Seafood restaurants, and Long John Silver’s restaurants. It seems that the first Captain D’s opened on August 15, 1969… the same day as the start of the famous Woodstock Music Festival held in upstate New York. The Festival’s last day was on August 18, 1969… the same day that the first Long John Silver’s launched.

I posted that little piece of trivia on my Facebook page the other day with some interesting responses, including from a woman claiming to be from Dayton Ohio who wanted me to add her to my friends list. She persisted, even though I indirectly accused her of “Catfishing.” Long story short, she is blocked from seeing what I do on Facebook.

Anyhoo, I had my first encounter with Captain D’s while on my way to Savannah this past June. To that point, I had been a semi-regular of Long John Silver’s for quite some time. For the most part, I liked what they offered, but one can do only so much with fish and chips, battered and deep-fried. In the absence of Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips, and the ever more elusive Alfie’s Fish and Chips (There’s only one, now, in Lompoc California), LJS was pretty much a safe bet… and they were pretty much everywhere. The better half and I stopped at Captain D’s in Fort Valley Georgia. I appreciated the fact that they offered different kinds of fish served in ways other than being battered and deep-fried. Besides, the staff was friendly. If I lived there, I would likely be a regular and know at least one of the staff by name.

(As an aside, I was a regular at Alfie’s Fish and Chips in Chillicothe Ohio and one of the staff was a classmate of mine – Sue Costoff. I’m mentioning this because Sue passed recently. She was an interesting person in her own right and she will be missed by many.)

Back to the tale.

Something I noticed on the trip to Georgia was the numerous Catfish Farms going through Alabama. They were almost as prolific as the Solar Farms on the same stretch of road. While a lot of people love farm-bred catfish, I’m not so fond of it. While I was working offshore, I could count on there being catfish on the menu every Friday for at least one of the meals. One of the summers I worked on the rigs, the rig I was on was towed up to New England, off Nantucket. I looked forward to there perhaps being some variety on the Friday night menu, but I ended up being disappointed. The catering crew would go to the trouble of having farm-fed catfish every Friday. The southern boys I worked with had a latent distrust of us “Yankees” and our fancy New England seafood. I deliberately delayed a flight back to Houston so I could revel in real seafood at a real seafood restaurant in Boston.

I don’t limit my seafood preferences to ocean creatures. The better half has, on more than one occasion, told of living in Colorado. Her parents would go trout fishing in the early morning to catch trout for breakfast. I love trout when I can get it. When the better half recounts those stories, I find my mouth watering at the prospect of going somewhere for some broiled trout.

There was a “Farmer’s Market” held at the Tractor Supply parking lot this morning and one of the vendors was selling fishing gear. I spoke with him because of his hat, indicating that he was a fan of West Virginia University. The gear he had on display was purchased in West Virginia on what he called an annual trip back east. He would clean up and restore the gear before selling it at various flea markets in my little corner of the DFW Metromess. No doubt that he makes back the money spent on the trip and a little more to boot. Nice to have some extra money to spend here and there.

Enough fish.

There is one other piece of trivia I’ve encountered, having to do with excess money. A gentleman by the name of Godfrey Hounsfield had an idea on how to take multiple X-Ray photographs of the human body as a diagnostic tool. He took his idea to a British company that had a surplus of money thanks to a successful deal with a “Guitar Band” of note. Hounsfield’s invention, the CAT scan, was introduced to the world in 1972 thanks to the people at EMI labs. Their surplus of money came from deals they had with The Beatles!

The woman usually at the reception desk at Texas Oncology (where I go to have CAT scans) is a Beatlemaniac. Somehow I think she is secretly pleased.

Enough rambling on a Saturday Afternoon.

Be Seeing You!

Round Two

Round Two

Sorry.

I’ve been away from my desk for most of the last month due to a battery of medical visits and a row with the insurance company. Well, yes, I had some other concerns as well. More on that later.

July is one of those months when I need to visit at least two doctors and go get a test for the third.

I went in for labs for the first doctor’s visit (my primary care physician) a week before seeing him. I could call him a right, jolly elf because of his stature and his demeanor, but that would be unkind of me. Over the past several years, I have come to respect him. He’s a good man who gave me a clean bill of health.

Two days after going in for labs for my PCP, I had labs in anticipation of a CAT scan that happened a couple of hours after seeing my PCP. I had an appointment to see the Doctor who had ordered the CAT scan a week after having it done. The day after the appointment to see my PCP and to have the CAT scan, I had an MRI for the third doctor – the surgeon who did a quick resection of part of my rectum because of a small bit of localized cancer found when I had a colonoscopy two years ago. All three doctors have been keeping an eye on me – promising that they would do so for five years after the initial discovery of the mass on my rectum.

With a clean bill of health from my PCP and nothing said by the surgeon ordering the MRI, I presumed that my visit with the Oncologist would be the third part of a trifecta of good news from the medical establishment.

As Maxwell Smart would say, “Missed it by that much!”

Apparently, the Oncologist and the radiologist she used for the CAT scan found something suspicious on my liver.

So, apparently, I’m off to round two.

The Oncologist has ordered a new MRI, followed a week later with a visit with a different surgeon, followed by… well, I guess I’ll have to see what the surgeon has to say, first. The Oncologist and I are optimistic that this particular little bump in the road will be easily taken care of and that I will likely die at the age of 102 at the hand of a jealous lover.

There are a couple of things that I am/am not looking forward to. For one, I will likely have one more scar to add to my surgical scar collection. (Five so far, three in places where I’d rather not show – not including where I was circumcised.)

The other has to do with my hair.

Will treatment for the second round lead to the loss of hair on my head (so I can cosplay Lex Luthor), and if it does, will I lose hair on other parts of my body (so I can fit in better with folks at a naturist resort)?

Another consideration – if I am going to lose the hair on my head, should I get a haircut first?

So many questions. I’ll catch up on the possibilities later.

As far as the other stuff I mentioned at the top of the page, well, I won.

The insurance claim I had from the windstorm on the first of March has finally been resolved.

I finally had the last word with the company that sold me the solar panels on my roof.

And the dog Filbrix is in good health according to the vet.

The only outstanding problem has to do with hundred-degree temperatures. Thankfully, the air conditioner still works. Otherwise, no problems.

Be Seeing You!

Snow Day!

Snow Day!

We here in my little corner of the DFW Metromess are having a snow day. Some sort of winter storm has descended on our little burg, closing schools, governments, and businesses so that we can sit at home (hopefully not in the dark) and not be out freezing our little keisters and/or being terribly inconvenienced by the freezing weather.

We’re taking advantage of it. Sort of.

The better half’s boss messaged us early this morning to say that she didn’t think that it was worth the risk to drive the five or so miles to work. We concurred. The only problem is that the better half can’t work from home – meaning that she will miss a few hours’ worth of salary because of the weather. A minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things. It does give her a chance to work on renewing her nursing license – something she has been working towards on her last couple of days off.

Those of us in our household who are semi-retired or the dog Filbrix have anticipated the coming storm and have prepared for the onslaught. We have plenty of bread, plenty of toilet paper and plenty of milk, so I imagine that we will weather this storm. There’s no need to go out except for potty breaks for the dog Filbrix. So far, she has been inactive, negating the need for any such breaks. When it’s time, I suppose I’ll get into some appropriate outdoor clothing and go out with her to keep her company while she does her business. Maybe I can convince the better half to take out the dog – she’s already sitting and studying in her sweats, while I’m in naught but my bathrobe.

Yesterday, I prepared soup. Five quarts of soup. It required a trip to Wally World, and wouldn’t you know it, once I got the missing ingredients for my concoction, I found that I had to stand in line to be able to stand in line for the checkout. Wally World can be a busy place when there’s bad weather anticipated. But I made it home. And I made Chicken Corn Chowder – enough for both humans and enough to put in jars for later consumption.

Mmmmm! Tasty!

Now, let’s be mindful of a thing or two. Here in the DFW Metromess, just a little bit of snow and ice are enough to bring most outdoor activity to a standstill.

That’s most.

We’re not one of those snowbelt states which gets whalloped every winter with winter weather. I have friends in Cleveland, Erie, and Buffalo who would look at what we get here and shake their heads, wondering why we make such a fuss about just a tiny bit of snow. They’ll post pictures on the usual social media pages of them out shoveling several feet of snow out of their driveways to get to work to reenforce the Puritan work ethic ingrained in them from an early age. As for us here in this part of the Lone Star State, well, an inch or two spells catastrophe.

When things are at a standstill, though, there are some advantages. But for the occasional cycling of the furnace and the noise I make running my fingers over the keyboard of the laptop, it’s mostly quiet. No traffic noise. Nothing. Yes, there’s the occasional bark of a neighbor’s dog wanting to be let in after doing their business, but other than that, not much of anything. (While writing that last sentence, I caught the noise of the neighborhood kids going outside to experience the weather – and the dog Filbrix is whining – a sign that it’s time for her to go outside to relieve herself. So much for quiet.)

******

It’s now Wednesday. I gave up writing this entry to my blog when I got dressed to take the dog Filbrix out to relieve herself. At 4:00, nothing has really changed. More precipitation – this time, freezing rain. No school, no other activities, just like yesterday and just like tomorrow.

I had a bit of a panic Tuesday afternoon. I had to set up an appointment to renew my driver’s license at the DPS (Department of Public Safety. After being in a panic most of Tuesday afternoon, I finally went to the web site to find out that my appointment is NEXT Wednesday – Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel. This afternoon I wondered about my EFM class. I found out that it, too will be put off until next week.

So, we are in for another day of having to twiddle our thumbs and toes while the weather decides to ease off and give us a break. In the meantime, we have enough bread, milk and toilet paper to see us through a while longer. Just me, the better half, and the dog Filbrix waiting out the inconveniences brought about by the latest invasion of cold weather from the north.

Be Seeing You!

Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden

Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden

The other day was writing, I heard an unfamiliar sound, as if something had hit the house. I really didn’t think about it until the kid from across the street was out on the front sidewalk looking a little confused. After a minute or so, I went out and asked him if he was looking for something.

“Yes. A golf ball,” he told me.

Well, we looked for his golf ball, finding it on a corner of the property. He took it back to his place and all was well.

If we didn’t find it, I was willing to give up one of the golf balls I have in my garage. I have a small collection of the things, gathered years ago when I was living with the first wife and the kids in Allen. The high school student living across the street from us would go into his back yard which overlooked a former cotton field and smack golf balls into the field as practice for his high school golf team. After he hit a bunch of balls, he would go out into the field to gather as many of the balls as he could find so he could hit them out again.

He didn’t find all of them. I would regularly go into the same field with my son and/or our dog at the time and gather what the person hitting the balls couldn’t find. I told my son (who was four at the time) that the golf balls grew there naturally, calling it the “Golf Ball Field.”

I took the notion that since I was collecting the neighbor’s left-over golf balls, I wouldn’t mind having a club and smacking a few of them out into the field myself. I requested a club for Christmas. The wife complied, bought a club and showed it to our son.

Fast forward a week or two. It’s a Saturday morning, less than a week before Christmas, and there was a man at our door asking if I would be interested in joining the local Country Club as a Christmas gift to myself. I politely declined, saying that I wasn’t interested in joining as I did not golf.

As I was explaining my position to the gentleman, my son was right behind me, tugging at my trousers: “But Dad… But Dad…”

Now, I didn’t tell him directly that I knew about the club his mother bought for me as a Christmas present, but he did get the idea that one should not spoil a Christmas surprise.

For a few years after that, we would occasionally go out to the “Golf Ball Field,” hit a few balls, and usually find more balls than we hit.

I still have the club and a few of the balls I’ve collected.

Funny thing is, I had a physical education requirement in college – so, I took golf lessons at the college golf course. We learned technique, smacked balls around for a bit, and had loads of fun. Since I was never well funded, most of my golfing experience after college was at one of several local putting greens. A couple of my college classmates are still regular golfers to this day. They love the game. Me, well, I would likely be the guy who would get frustrated at every turn, eventually tossing my bag and all the clubs in it in some water hazard (after mangling a club or two on the way there).

I still have my club. I use it every once in a while to fish out the dog Filbrix’s tennis balls out from under the furniture. As for the golf balls in my collection, the kid across the street is welcome to them if and when he discovers I have them.

Be Seeing You!

When Will Enough Be Enough?

When Will Enough Be Enough?

A year or so ago, my son told me of an experience he had working as a volunteer first-responder. It seems he was riding an ambulance with a young woman who had overdosed. During that ride, the woman died. Boom! Just like that. It affected him to the point that he had counseling. She was about his age.

First responders face death on a daily basis. It can affect them in many ways, to the point where it can rub off on their families and friends. Add the trauma which falls on the living and you can see where this is going. Trauma isn’t linear, it’s exponential.

It’s bad enough for someone to be riding in an ambulance and having someone your own age die as you are watching. Now, imagine the nightmare of arriving at a school and finding not just one, but eighteen young, vibrant children shot dead by a teenaged gunman.

I cannot help but to think of how any one of the first responders will react to the situation they found in Uvalde on the afternoon of the 24th of May.

As of the time I began writing this blog, there were eighteen children and two adults dead. God knows how many others were wounded, and God knows how many people will be affected by the act of a lone gunman in the last week of school.

Not linear. Exponential.

And what’s worse were some of the comments made on the bulletin board where I got the news, attempting to place the blame on “Open Borders,” “Obama,” “Democrats,” and “Joe Biden.” I quit reading those comments before someone would blame “Mexicans” or “The Jews.”

I believe I’ve mentioned before my dislike of people trying to fix the blame instead of fixing a problem. And I’m sure we’ll be seeing much more blame fixing when the NRA meets in Houston this coming weekend. The usual politicians who, today, are fervently pleading for “Thoughts and Prayers,” will be speaking at that convention.

So, the question becomes – “When will we reach the point where we say enough is enough?”

Unfortunately, more blood of the innocent will be spilled before the question is asked again. And again. And again.

Be Seeing You!

Bait Sandwiches and RV Parks

Bait Sandwiches and RV Parks

I finally took the time to stop at the Lucas Foods to take a photograph of the large sign on top of the building. Local legend is that the juxtaposition of the words “Bait” and “Sandwiches” was not noticed by the owner until after the sign was completed. Instead of insisting that the sign be changed, the owner decided to keep it as-is for the novelty value. In a story I have been working on, the owner of a similar store in another Texas town took the same attitude – even offering Shrimp Po Boys to anyone who came in and remarked in a negative way on the sign.

Don’t know if the fellow owning the Lucas Foods has done the same thing. Maybe he should. Might make him a small fortune.

Lucas is another of the numerous well-to-do little towns here in this little corner of the DFW Metromess. Less than a mile south of this sign is a neighborhood called Seis Lagos. It’s gated. You can’t go there unless you have business there and can prove it. To the east about two miles away, is Brockdale Estates – a collection of McMansions costing well north of half a million dollars when it was being built a few years back. Going east, there are more than a few homes with plenty of acreage, most of them with a horse barn with real horses in them.

And then there are the RV parks.

We’re not talking about nice little resorts where people will go and temporarily park their Winnebagos for a month or two. We’re talking about a place where people live. Full time. All year round.

When on my way from Lucas to my little corner of the DFW Metromess, a distance of around 5 miles, I counted at least a half-dozen of these little camps tucked away off the main road. And that’s just in a five-mile drive. While driving by myself and with the other half, I have noted that there is an explosion of these little RV encampments within, say, a twenty-mile radius of where we live. Not trailer parks. A trailer park would be a step up from these RV encampments.

On the other hand, the other half pointed out that at least the people living in the RV parks aren’t living out in the street somewhere. Lord knows that we have enough people living in the streets already.

Someone on one of my social media feeds pointed out that for less than half the money being spent to help arm Ukraine, the homeless problem could be solved. Chump change for the likes of Jeff Bezos. Maybe he could help out just a little bit.

Elon Musk reportedly once challenged the UN – Give him a budget and he would be willing to end world hunger. A budget of $5billion was submitted, but he didn’t pony up. Instead, he made headlines in the past few weeks by buying Twitter for an outrageous sum of money. Somewhere in the vicinity of $150billion. But he didn’t have the money to invest in ending world hunger. (Wasn’t he manning a soup kitchen in an episode of The Big Bang Theory?)

I can’t help but to think that if these high-falutin’ billionaires would put their heads together and work on real problems instead of seeing how much money they can stuff into their bank accounts, the world would be a much better place for everyone.

The solutions are out there. We just need to change a few attitudes.

Be Seeing You!

Texas Sweet Taxes

Texas Sweet Taxes

Everyone in my corner of the DFW Metromess has their bowels in an uproar this week, with the arrival of the estimated property tax bill sent out by the local tax collector.

Happens every year. The estimated tax bill is sent out and everyone has their bowels in an uproar about it. For the next month or so, there will be a rush to the tax office to protest whatever value the tax people put on their property in hopes of reducing the bill when it comes due next January.

The better half and I are lucky on two fronts. For one, we are both over sixty-five and for us, one of the taxes is frozen. I believe it will be the school tax. For the other, we have what’s called a “Homestead Exemption,” which limits the increase of the taxable value of our house to 10%. Considering a Real Estate listing I saw for a house identical to ours in our subdivision, 10% is quite reasonable.

The listing I saw (and showed to the better half) priced that identical house at $400,000 – more than double what we paid for ours. Given the way home prices are soaring in this general area, it would not surprise me if the seller gets every penny he’s asking for.

What’s nuts is that we are getting people calling/texting/emailing us on a regular basis, offering to buy our house for way more than we paid. The latest offer was between $300 and $350k in cash. What’s even nuttier is that if we accepted that offer, we would have to scramble to find similar accommodations and deal with the higher prices I’d have to pay for something similar – not to mention having to go to the trouble of moving. Again. I mean, since moving to north Texas, I have moved five times. By myself. Even with what help I got; I’m not getting any younger.

Besides, I like where I am. We have what we need. We can accommodate guests. When we don’t have guests, we have enough room for more stuff than we need, along with a separate room I use as a study. The other half has a study, too – when she’s not sharing mine.

As far as the house itself, well, it’s modest. Non-pretentious. The lot is a fair size, it presents somewhat well, and it fits in with the rest of the neighborhood. It is by no means a $400,000 house. Or even a $300,000 house. Even with the solar panels, it would be a stretch to say that the house is worth a quarter of a million dollars. To me, a quarter million is one hell of a lot of money. As a “Person of Lesser Means,” anything more than, say, $100,000 is a hell of a lot of money. So, where do I get off living in a house “worth” $400k?

Still trying to figure it out. In the meantime, I am happy, the better half is happy, and the dog Filbrix is happy with where we are. We can afford the payments and that’s all that counts for the time being.

Be Seeing You!

Fish

Fish

When last we heard from this intrepid author wanna-be, a blog about micromanagement would be the topic of his next blog. Instead, a word (or several hundred) about fish.

A friend of mine mentioned going to a restaurant the other day and enjoying catfish – while her husband enjoyed cod. His remark about catfish (according to his wife) is that catfish tastes like mud.

I agree. With one exception. I’ll get to that momentarily.

My friend defended catfish by saying that catfish is best prepared by dipping it in buttermilk prior to breading and cooking it. That may be how that one exception was prepared. The only catfish I’ve ever really liked was at a small strip restaurant just around the corner from where I lived in Allen, run by the son of one of the Tuskegee Airmen. It was delicious.

Perhaps my aversion to catfish came about some forty years ago when I was working on an offshore oil rig. I was the northerner on a steel island inhabited mostly by southerners – some of them raised Catholic, meaning that the tradition was that they would eat fish on Fridays. Being southern, the preferred piscatorial delight was catfish. Deep fried catfish in a cornmeal batter. It was… okay, I recall, but there was a mud-flavored overtone which didn’t really appeal to me.

I ate it, in hopes that someday, something better would come along.

The promise that something better would come along came around in the summer of ’82 when the rig I was on was towed from the Gulf of Mexico to a point in the Atlantic Ocean about a hundred miles off Martha’s Vinyard. It was reportedly a prime fishing area, home to a large variety of fish in large numbers – surely enough to supply a drilling rig with something other than southern catfish for a change. That promise was broken. The quartermaster ordered massive amounts of farm-bred catfish to be sent to Massachusetts for the consumption by the mostly southern crew for Friday dinners.

I did manage to treat myself at a decent restaurant in Boston before getting on an airplane to go back home to Houston.

Houston, and by extension, Galveston, was a great place to get decent fish other than catfish. I became particularly fond of Gaido’s in Galveston for the many ways they managed to prepare shrimp. Another favorite was just around the corner from my Aunt and Uncle’s home on the west side of Houston. It was there that I sampled and came to like escargot and Spanish paella.

After moving back to Ohio for a few years, the first wife and I became enamored of a couple of places to indulge in seafood – Mauger’s in Lancaster Ohio, and the Friday night seafood buffet at the Holiday Inn in Parkersburg West Virginia. On the first trip to the Holiday Inn, the first wife declared ahead of time that she would absolutely not eat snail. Period. End of discussion, until she had two or three pastries which she just loved. I told her the truth about the pastries when asked. Yes, they contained snail!

I have to go the next town over from my little corner of the DFW Metromess to get decent seafood (we have nearly two dozen places to purchase tacos here, making purchasing tacos from the outside somewhat illegal in my reckoning). Yes, catfish is still available, but never considered, at least by me, to be a viable alternative to almost any other seafood.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to prepare cod and chips for this afternoon’s lunch.

Be Seeing You!