Thursday night my wife and I decided to make the trip to lovely Viola, TN for a friend’s wedding.  At that point we also decided that we should go down Friday night to visit Lynchburg in the morning prior to the wedding  (besides its the BBQ cook-off weekend.)  Looking through the web wonderland we discovered a quaint little German restaurant we wanted to try out. 

The Gasthaus of Manchester, TN is absolutely wonderful, the food was by far superior to anything I have ever had in Manchester and the beer and the selection was phenomenal.  For directions, see the link.  So if you find yourself in Manchester and are in the mood for something unique definitely check this one out!

It’s 5AM and it’s cold.  I am sitting at the drive-thru of our local Del Taco – Pseudo Mexican Fast food for the uninitiated.  I’m getting some chicken soft tacos because I have a long day ahead and need the carbs/fat/goo.  It’s a pretty simple order – 2 tacos, a macho fries and a macho Cherry Coke.  Let’s stop right there and reminisce about that Cherry Coke for a second.  Mmmmmmmm.  Ok.

So I get to the office and as McDonalds is to Ketchup, Del Taco is to hot sauce – there isn’t any in the bag.  There are, however, a couple of Taco Bell sauces in the fridge, that I found in one of those great counter depth refrigerator reviews online.  Cool beans.

Uh-Oh.

As soon as I mixed the Del Taco with the sauce from Taco Bell, I knew something was wrong.  The chemical smell was as immediate as a Physical Memory Dump with the error being stored in the data.

It only took a few bites to really appreciate the obnoxiousness of the situation.   Individually, the two items were fine.  Combined, horrible.  While I had always thought that fast foods were engineered, I had no idea to what extent.  It is pretty amazing.  I even hear that McDonalds has their own formula of Coke designed to taste better with their brand of food.  If it is true, I’d have to agree that sometimes their coke (when not diluted) does taste better than some cans, but not bottles.

     “Mark, what’s wrong with you today?” (concerned)
     “Sorry, a little shaky.  Low blood sugar… I’ve been busting my ass here all day, and I need food… now…”
     “Man, I need this shit finished, then you can grab some food…” (annoyed)
     “I’m so hungry, I could eat a whore…”
     “You mean horse, right?” (laughing)
     “No, I’m really that hungry… and thinking how nice that’d be boiled in coconut milk, with shallots, garlic and green chili paste…”
     “Uhh, Mark, you’re disturbed, man.” (worried)
     “Ya know, you’re starting to look pretty tasty, yourself.”
     “Uhh, okay, umm…” (more worried)
     “Now you’re starting to sound like our new President, which is good.  I happen to like a mixture of dark and light meat in a curry…”
     “Yeah, okay, uhh… I mean… go grab something…” (fear)
     “I’ll be back soon.”
     “Nah, that’s okay… Just, uhh.. I mean… you can finish whenever…” (scared)

     It was amusing to hear the door locking as I walked out of his office…

     …and they call themselves “headhunters.” *rolls eyes*

What’s more damaging: a couple of asshats who don’t pay you, or someone attacking your reputation?

Today I had two asshats who didn’t pay me.  One of them was just being a typical asshat, with the same old boring excuses for being a deadbeat.  The other came up with an elaborate story about how they installed incompatible software four days after I was in the system, but because it broke the other software and they didn’t bother to notify me that it was broken, and there was nothing in the logs about it being broken, that I owed them a two hour fix for free with no explanation of the situation before I went into fixing it other than, “It’s broke.”

No, see, that stuff doesn’t bother me… I’m used to it, as pissed as it makes me.

It was a third one that really stuck in my craw because it’s unfathomable:

“He ran across your site and you had some stuff on there that made it sound like you were racist… said he wouldn’t give you a penny for a day’s work.”

WTF? Exqueeze me?

No, seriously, that’s what kept me so worked up when I lived in Kentucky those three months… I couldn’t go five minutes without some asshat making up total horse pucky, and attempting to circumvent every single good thing I tried to do.  Everything became a damn conspiracy, and I was behind every bit of it!
So I pressed about HTF he could come up with I’m sounding “like a racist” …

“Well damn I voted wrong” … like it is some sexual reference to Kenyan women

O.  M.  F.  G.

So somebody claims I’m a racist, goes the extra mile to say they wouldn’t give me “a penny for a day’s work” because they’re too ignorant to know a couple of premium, dark coffee beans, instead turning it into a relationship that even an overly-sensitive, extremely jealous girlfriend — or ex-girlfriend, wife, stalker, nutjob next door — couldn’t twist it into if she tried?

Wow.

Let’s just say, just to even attempt to make any logic out of such a ridiculous assertion, that even if it had been a “sexual reference to Kenyan women,” how the Hell could that possibly make me a racist?

Unless he’s totally against racial mixing… thus making him…

A white trash cracker!

Oh, and there’s a meal I detest: a venison round steak (medium well), canned corn and canned green beans.

Apparently, that makes me a racist, too.

[ he says, as he laughs his way to the kitchen for seconds of injera, gored-gored and quince ]

We generally have friends over on Saturday nights. Not because we don’t dig going out, because we do. But going out all the time does tend to get old, plus you have to worry about the PO-PO pullin your ass over in the middle of the night.

Of course, I’m a spoiled, lucky girl. I have a designated driver at all times and I dig it. Regardless of that, it’s nice just to stay in, cook a smorgassboard of tasty good stuff and drink hot toddies or beer or wine or Jack….

Well, on tap for the past weekend’s buffet was pork tenderloin, rosemary potatoes, steamed snow peas and a variety of other crap.

I must say, I’ve never cooked a tenderloin before and I rocked the balls out of it. Baked it sloooooow in the oven, double wrapped in foil filled with every herb you can think of. After being on slow bake for 3 hours, I jerked that badboy out of the foil and slung it on the grill… G-R-U-B!!

Everybody ate way too damn much.

I, of course, was no exception. Quite the contrary. I started drinkin whilst cooking. The flavor of the day was Meridian Chardonnay, mighty good.

I asked Big T to open me the first bottle and it was on. Between me and Taucha, we polished off close to three bottles. A little much.

I paced myself, like a professional New Orleans drinker. Sipping all night long. It’s hard to tell how much wine one has consumed when one’s glass never quite gets empty before somebody happens by to freshen it.

So, it’s 1:00am, and everybody is leaving. I had been giving Big T the eye and making obscene gestures toward him all night. REOW… come here big daddy.

He was sitting on the couch in the love den, when I crawled up in his lap and made close up obscene gestures at him before departing with my clothes and heading toward the bed. I knew it was a matter of 1.8 seconds before he’d be following me that way.

Woooo! I was feeling my oats. I was gonna tear his ass up. I was gonna make him scream my name and write bad checks. I was gonna make him beg for mercy.
Let the makin out and major league cannoooodlin begin!

I kiss my way down into a desireable spot. Somehow, don’t ask me how… I passed out. His goodies right in front of me and I pass out. Of course at first, he thought I was thinking or taking a breather….

He taps me on the head. “Baby, are you ok? If you’re gonna go to sleep, release that and get on a pillow.”

“I’m not asleep. Swear I’m not.” As I sit up and leave a drool puddle on his belly. “Ok, so I might have been asleep.”

“That’s ok, baby. Go to sleep.”

So I did.

Well, I woke up to him staring at me. “Gotta hang over?”

My head was spinnin, “Hell ya. I’m dehydrated and my head’s spinnin.”

“Why don’t you go back to sleep?” He picked. “You do remember falling asleep last night, right?”

All day long, kids, I had to hear him slip in little comments about my inability to handle my alcohol and still be sexually fucntional. I mean, granted, it was all in fun, but how embarrassing is that?

“Sorry, baby. I swear I’ll never drink again.” Rolling my eyes. “Gimme some aspirin.”

“Yah. Yah.” He gets me aspirin, “You know you got yours and you were done, ready to go to sleep. Sometimes I think our roles in this marriage are jacked the hell up.”

“I know, huh? I spit, burp, and fart better than you.” Smiling at him like the cat that ate the canary.

Pick on me again some more.