The Tip Clock

Tonight a bunch of us are going out to dinner here in Philadelphia because it is restaurant week, a two week event where local expensive restaurants give prix fix menus for special prices. Poor people rejoice!

Lets stop here on this guided tour of a blog post while we examine something in a  little more depth: Restaurant WEEK… is a two week affair. Did you notice that?

When exactly did advertisements get the privilege to openly lie because it sounds better? Lets be fair… "Restaurant Weeks" does not sound very good, in fact it kinda sounds like a skin condition if you say it fast enough and run the two words together (go ahead, try it out) but it is flagrant false advertising!

Personally I like "Restaurant Fortnight", because that sounds exciting. Anything with "fort" in it adds an element of danger! But the Philadelphia chamber of commerce won't return my calls, especially after I bugged them about the tree watching last year.

Nomenclative disasters aside, thinking of restaurants has caused me to come up with an invention that both amazes and disgusts me, and I will present it to you today.

We've all been there. You're out at a restaurant and the service was fine and the food was good, whenever you needed your water refilled someone slid by and BAM, you had a full glass. But after the plates have been lifted and your stomach is groaning with too much deliciousness, you no longer really want to just laze around, it is time to go home.

But something is standing in your way.

The bill...

Why DO I hate everybody? (part 3) - Beautiful Fields of Death

It has been snowing a lot here lately.

Good for snowballs, bad for trying to get into your parking lot when the UPS truck driver decided it was a good idea to stop directly in front of the entrance, completely blocking it off, because he didn't want to risk pulling into said parking lot, then, when you ask him to move, he gets stuck with his wheels spinning for a solid five minutes before just jamming the truck into reverse and almost ramming into your girlfriend's car out like a giant, brown, deranged wildebeest full of undelivered packages…

Ahhh… winter!

With nothing to do but sit inside and avoid a UPS related death, it's all gotten my remembering juices flowing. When I was six we went on a summer backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada mountains. They're beautiful, as you can see:

But you can also see that, despite it being summer, there is still some snow in the mountains. That is important, but I need to give a little background:

Both of my parents are associated with medicine, and as a result would often discuss parts of their work at home. Therefore, as a kid I would hear my dad come home one day and talk about, say, brachiocephalic angina. In listening to him describe it, I would hear that it often manifested first with pain in the left arm.

Then, a month later, I would overhear my mom talking about meningitis and how it was associated with severe neck pain.

Now, the reason why adults are doctors and kids are not, (aside from the fact that kid doctors couldn't examine members of the opposite gender because they're YUCKY!!!) is that adults can distinguish between different diseases and their different symptoms.

I did not possess this ability.

Basically what I was hearing my parents talk about amounted to one giant super disease that was ever growing, constantly adding various crushing pains, bloody wounds and general pus-iness  to its arsenal, all the while zeroing in on nine year old boys named Owen.

Space Bowling Balls!!!!

All right!

We're back!

Now, I know, I know. "Owen," you're screaming at your computer screens. "You have been gone for OVER a MONTH! How dare you!?"

Well, that is true, I have been and for that I am truly sorry. But New Years happened, then other stuff happened.

By the way, have any of you heard of the Peekskill Meteor? Well, in 1992 a meteor brighter then the moon crashed into a car and completely destroyed it. Don't believe me, check out the site.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110123.html

Why am I bringing this up?

Because it makes you think. At any point, at any time, you could be going about your day, maybe mowing the lawn, maybe tossing your neighbor's pet cat up in the air to see if they really land on their feet, when BAM!  A fucking bowling ball from space could just take you out.

Could happen.

But, since it hasn't. Updates will come this week. And they will be goooooooooood.

(is it bad that, now that I've written this, I'm suddenly more wary of meteors?)