She's A Nut

It was the Friday after Thanksgving. LSU was playing some people were predicting that Arkansas would stage an upset. Naturally the residents and day participants alike had to watch the game. By five o'clock the game was in the third quarter. LSU was leading 21 to 17 when Mr. Bobs family came to pick him up. He complained bitterly that they were taking him away from the game. I told him that he would be home soon and then he could finish the game. All movement in the hall stopped and everyone within ear shot turned to stare at me. Who was this unfeeling, uncultured philistine in their midst and how had she come to be there? I felt compelled to explain so I said; "My comment just goes to show how much I care about football which is really not at all." Their shock and silence deepened then one of the nursed began to laugh and she explained to everyone at large, "She is a nut but she is a nice nut."


RW

Have Your Duck and Eat it Too

Yesterday at work management appreciated the dietary department by taking them out to eat at Zea's. Happily for me, I was also invited since I am the bus driver. We were permitted to order whatever we wanted. As a general rule, I am an adventurous eater unless I am being particularly diet or budget conscious at the moment. Yesterday I considered a grilled chicken salad (diet conscious), the Thai ribs (they are delicious and I have had them before), and finally the Twice cooked duck (which I have never had.) As a matter of fact, I had never eaten duck before so the choice was obvious. I needed to try the duck. The atmosphere of the restaurant is pleasant and the company was boisterous. When I wasn't listening to my lunch companions, I was listening to the table next to us. They were a family of undertakers discussing business and a recent family reunion. Apparently one of the family had passed and they had some pretty definite opinions concerning Uncle Joe's final remains. I found the mixture of shop and family talk quite funny.

In the course of time, the duck arrived. It was crispy and juicy. The was a lightly sweet and fiery hot sauce served with it that really enhanced the flavor of the duck. It was not at all oily, gamy or greasy as I had been led to believe that duck would be. As a matter of fact, the pesto chicken with penne pasta that I would have been eating at work that day was much more oily. Today I reheated the other half of the duck for lunch and it was a bit dry but still delicious.

When I returned to work, my boss asked me to come to her office. After she had covered what she wanted to talk to me about, she asked me what I had ordered. I was unprepared for the level of horror she expressed when I told her. "You order DUCK? And you ATE it. Wasn't it HORRIBLE and GAMY? How COULD you?" This is the woman who goes to the wild game dinner at her church every year. I wonder what she eats. When I asked her what was served last year, she told me that they had had bear, goat, buffalo and nutria (I personally thought that eating nutria was pretty disgusting.) So I said that it hadn't been gamy but that gamy wasn't always a bad thing. I had tried deer, rattlesnake, rabbit, and armadillo before and enjoyed them(not as a constant diet mind.) My poor boss just about fainted. "ARMADILLO! You at armadillo? Oh, Oh. That is just disgusting! How did they get the shell off? Uhh! I have lost my appetite for the rest of the day. You can go now." I don't think that she is going to ask what I had for lunch anymore.

RW

Condominiumumums!

I work at a storage rental company. Specifically I am the custodian for the said storage units. I have been working there for a short time now and I have seen a lot of stuff that people store. Mostly though, I see the things they leave behind after they leave. It is my job to clean out the units so that it will be clean for the next customer who comes along. Some of the stuff is funny, some of it is interesting, and occassionally the things I find are just nasty but all of it tells me something about the people that rented the unit.

Usually cleaning up the unit isn't all that hard. It's just a matter of sweeping it out and slapping a lock on the door with the date that I cleaned and inspected it. Occasionally though, I come across a really big job and then I try to bribe some of the guys to help me out by letting them pick though and keep anything they find interesting. I found a unit like that a while back and Ray helped me clean it out. For his trouble he was able to bring home an old air conditioning unit that he said he could fix and a nice pair of dress shoes for his wife. They looked like they had never been worn and he said they were just her size. Ray considerately asked me if I wanted them first but I declined. They were not my size, style, or color. One of them also had a dead mouse in it. I think Ray was a little surprised when I observed that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to tell his wife about the mouse but after some thought he agreed that maybe it would be better if she didn't know.

This week I found another unit and I went looking for Ray. I came with me to inspect the unit and right away he discovered a large shoe box filled with condoms. He pounced on it immediately with a joyful cry, "condominiumumums"! I started to tell him that a condominium was a place where you live or it might be an investment but what he had in his hands wasn't condominiums. Then I realized that for him this one area of his life was where he lived and that these were an investment to him. So instead I said that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to use them since they had been stored in a non climate controlled unit and had probably been weakened by the temperature extremes if they had been there very long. He just took the box and said these are enough to last me a year and happily left with his treasure. It took me most of two days to clean that unit. Next time I see a box of condominiumumumus, I will save them until after the work is done!

RW