PT

It's been, lemme see, well, I can't affix a day and date but better'n eighteen years anyway since I've had a part-time job. Worked at the Turkey Hill convenience store nights between my defection from higher learning and my landscaping gig. My school pals would come and read the magazines and hang out while I played the radio too loudly and mopped the floors and kept the coffee on the boil and stocked the dairy case. As a happening young dude I was too cool to wear the paper hat and with all that work it was too warm to zip up the logo vest they asked me to wear and it seemed a shame to waste the out of date milk and sandwiches and I was in the middle of one of each when the manager made a midnight visit. After my buds scattered like roaches under a kitchen light and I stuttered some lame excuses which cut no ice whatsoever in the face of her red-faced recitation of the numerous company statutes I was ignoring, she promptly sent me packing and asked me not to return. Aaaahhh, memories...

Anyway, I start tomorrow at the local toy outlet(I won't mention the name here in case company representatives should somehow stumble upon this forum and read the foregoing...)with a half day of what I expect will be leisurely fun and games amidst the, uh, fun and games they sell.

And I wanted to mention: I've made public a handful of photos in some of my family albums which heretofore were hidden from view because I uploaded them and neglected to check the appropriate box so anybody who had a mind to could look them over. Includes some charming pics of my youthful self. At the risk of repeating myself: Aaaahh, memories...

Now what...

...was I gonna write? Oh, I know, since I missed the milestone of the second anniversary of this exercise in futility- the end of April if memory serves(which it does not as a rule) -I'm trying to make up for the lack of fanfare on that inauspicious occasion by writing more this week.

Which is no mean task because there ain't much in the way of earth-shaking developments.

I can report, however, that my bright idea for revolutionizing the fast food burger experience has had its initial test. I posited an uber-burger of sorts to my ol' pal, Jim, during one of our jaunts northward to band practice a while back when we would make a weekly stop at a Burger King en route: The Whopper, King of all fast food burgers, topped with- get this now -a grilled chicken breast. Mmm-mmm! Are we talkin' serious drool-fest or what?!?

And the name?: 'The Chopper'! Get it? CH-icken + wh-OPPER, 'The Chopper'! Vroom, vroom! It's absolutely brilliant, if I do say so myself!

I had the chance to try it at a burger stop last week where I ordered my own Whopper and mi esposa the salad topped with grilled chicken. Distracting her with a surprised gasp, a pointing finger and a cry of 'Is that Brad Pitt over there?', I swooped off with several marinated chunks of chicken flesh and added them atop my sloppy beef wafer sandwich.

Suffice to say, the 'maximum meat' experience was a taste-tempting treat without parallel in the mundane world of drive-thru delicacies. I'm slavering on the keyboard just thinking back on it... Really, I am...

Given the explosive popularity of custom bikes, that show on cable TV, OCC logos adorning everything from eggshells to underwear, it would be a super profitable promotion for all parties involved to offer the unsuspecting public the original Whopper loaded up with a hunk o' fowl, all the usual fixins plus some honey mustard. Oh, bestill my beating heart...

For an even healthier treat it could be served with bacon even and called the 'Super Hog Chopper'! Excellent! The flesh of three, count 'em, three different creatures on one bun...!

Remember, you read it here first! Burger King, OCC... I'm waiting for your call, Mikey! No outrageous percentages, just pay me a reasonable consultancy fee- commensurate with the genius required to concoct such a swell, mega-selling treat -and it's all yours, guys.

Lull in the action

Yeah, besides the lawn mowing season coming on, always diverting, kinda slow lately.

Last week the big news was a coupla days spent organizing the garden shed. It was a 'stuff avalanche', things falling out while forcing new stuff in on top every time the door was cautiously cracked open. So with fair weather there was opportunity at last to make it a useful space. Took the better part of two days to sort what was needful from what was just taking up space, made a little work for the trashmen come Monday morning plus four or five big Rubbermaid bins of bats and balls and gift-ish doodads and so on to cart off to Mom's yard sale this weekend. End result, I can actually find hand tools now as they're needed, bikes can be hung up rather than dropped on the porch and, should the notion arise, one could actually sleep comfortably with a fan, a shop light and radio. Yay!

Working in some sculpting and landscaping both this week. While I redux my Adam West sculpture for absolutely the last time- I really mean it! -Mummy planned to redux her two-tiered koi pond and I dreaded it. Finally she decided to recall the contractor who installed it in the first place, good idea. So we busied ourselves instead with some small jobs; transposing some shrubs and flowers, spreading mulch, laying a few stepping stones and creating a little tile patio for an ornamental table and chairs in one corner of the garden. A quite pleasant day including a few minutes to hand wash the Crash Magnet. Nice.

That's about it. Well, I know I'm forgetting something... I'll come back I guess if something momentous occurs to my addled memory...