Five long weeks

My Fatburger has been closed for five long weeks now.

How sad!

I drove by my Fatburger on my way to school on Friday. The outside has been painted. I looked through an open door and the insides were still a great mess. I don’t think it will be finished by 4^th of July.

The owner was out in front talking with the one customer as they stood next to the Fatburger food truck. I didn’t have time to roll in and ask when the construction work would be finished. The food truck was gone by the time I drove by after my class was over.

I wonder what has happened to the staff.

Will they return when the Fatburger reopens?

Have they left forever or at least a very long time?

Will the food cost more to pay for the renovations?

I was channel surfing yesterday when I ran across a McDonalds’ commercial. They were advertising a buy one Big Mac and get a second one for free with purchases after 9:00 PM. I should give the Golden Arches a try. I don’t get out of school usually until almost ten so I have relatively little to lose by trying the offer.

Be well and stay happy.  

Who approved this idea?

Southern California, where I live, is at the edge of a desert. We haven’t had a hurricane hit in recorded history. I’m fairly certain we haven’t had a tsunami hit either. Yes, we do have earthquakes, brush fires, and landslides when it rains after a brush fire.

I think most would agree that our weather is nice. We have no snow in the Winter. Technically, we do get snow in the Winter but the snow has stayed in the mountains except for the Winter of 1949 when we had snow in Los Angeles that lasted for less than a day. It gets hot in the Summer but we tend to have low humidity.

All of this brings me to the question of the day for me.

Why do two co-owned television stations in Los Angeles need a storm chasing SUV?

I’m not making this up.

The stations share ownership of a truly tarted up Toyota SUV. It has an emergency vehicle type light bar, brush bars, oversized tires, and a microsized weather station in the back. I’ve only seen it out in the “dangerous, stormy weather” a couple of times in maybe two years.

Anyone who is reading this by now must be thinking we are all crazy here.

Weather seems to take on a life of its own.

Our television weather news readers practically pee in their pants at the thought we might get a half inch of rain from storm. Time for a reality check, Southern California is in the third year of a drought.  

The mere thought of an approaching storm takes on the characteristics of a flood of Biblical proportions. The weather newsreaders seem to be looking for the boarding ramp to the Ark.

Our local television stations go on “storm watch.”

What is that?

I can watch a storm perfectly well from my balcony if I want to.

This all strikes me as a waste of money. The SUV would be perfect in a place like Oklahoma City where tornados are common or Miami Beach with its hurricanes but not in the desert of Southern California.

Is the person who approved this boondoggle of an SUV still working at the stations?

I hope not.

Be well and stay happy.

In n Out let me down

I went to the nearest In n Out hamburger last week because one of my students works for In n Out. She has been telling me for the last two quarters how much better In n Out is compared to my favorite Fatburger.

In n Out let me down badly.

I ordered a three by three with onions and fries.

A three by three is three patties of beef and three slices of cheese with lettuce and tomato on a two slice bun. Onions are something you ask for. This was a to-go meal since I was tired and wanted to eat at home, about three miles away.

When I got home and opened the bag and pulled out my hamburger, I discovered it had no lettuce or tomato and the fries were soggy and limp.

Every other fast food hamburger place I have been to, Fatburger, McDonald’s, Burger King, Jack-in-the-Box, Five Guys, Smashburger, and Arby’s all have crisp fries. The Counter is my favorite upscale hamburger place has crisp fries. Morton’s the Steakhouse has crisp fries.

Raymond’s Tacos, formerly known as Albertacos, even has crisp fries

Yes, I know I could have gone back and had my order made correctly. I stayed home because I didn’t want to waste another half hour fiddly farting around with the In n Out staff.

Really, how hard is it to cook crisp French fries?

Empty stomachs want to know.

Be well and stay happy.

The Counter

My Friday lunch was a Father’s Day treat from me to me. Doug and I had celebrated Father’s day a week early and the Princess lives in Atlanta.

I got to The Counter in Torrance around 1:30. I thought it wouldn’t be crowded. Not being a soccer fan, I had forgotten about the World Cup. It was noisy and crowded.

I didn’t watch the match on the television screens. I could have done that much at home; I came to eat.

My burger wasn’t very special. It was a third of a pound patty with Swiss cheese, a tomato slice, an onion slice, some pickles, and some lettuce on a bun. I ordered some French fries with my burger and drank a bottle of Kona Brewing Company’s Longboard Lager.

The Counter does a great job with the individual orders of fries. They come in a metal cup which has been heated so the fries stay hot and slowly cool off to warm. Nothing ruins a meal like this one faster than cold fries.   

Dena M did a superb job as my server. I hope to have her as my server when I go to The Counter again.

Be well and stay happy.

Teaching

The new school quarter begins on Monday. My teaching schedule changed four times between when it was put together during last quarter and last Friday when it changed again. On balance, it is a good one for me.

I will be teaching four classes which is one more than what the normal adjunct instructors teach. We had another instructor in the Business faculty decide to not teach this quarter at the last moment. The school didn’t have time to find a replacement so I got to pick up an extra class.

On Friday, I was having a late lunch at The Counter, the home of the custom built burger, when the school called. Another instructor had some health issues.

Would I consider a course change in my Friday course to accommodate the ill instructor?

I’ve always been a team player so I agreed to teach a different course on Friday night.

The school threw in a sort of bonus. I was asked if I wanted to be a paid tutor with a regular schedule. I agreed because there was no added burden for me. I arrive early for class and somedays I have to sit around and wait until the class begins. Now, I can sit and get paid to sit, Hopefully, I will get a chance to help some students with their classes.

This quarter, I will teach Accounting II, Project Management Tools & Techniques, Project Management Communication and Documentation, and Macroeconomics.

Be well and stay happy.

Primary Election Day

Today is the primary election day in California and I am so happy that it’s finally arrived.

Elections in general are a bad, true annoyance coming from my mailbox being stuffed with political mailings that are obscene wastes of paper to an unending series of robo-dialer calls supporting one candidate or another.

This past Saturday I received twelve ginormous postcards that measured twelve inches by eighteen inches. Yesterday I received ten more.

I had six political messages on my answering machine when I got home from school last night. That’s more than I get in some months or even a couple of months.

Things didn’t use to be this bad.

But, we Californians, never ones to rethink outcomes of our votes, decided to have open primaries where the top two candidates in the primary election will appear on the ballot for the general election. That means candidates will mail to everyone, regardless of political party affiliation.

This resulted in mass mailings in open or contested elections.

I live in the 33^rd Congressional District. Our representative is retiring from office. That triggered a field of eighteen candidates for his office. I think I’ve received mailers from each one but I could be wrong. I don’t want to count them up.

My state senate district has eight candidates running for the open office. One of the candidates in addition to the oversized postcard mailing had a postcard sized stuffer in my newspaper at least once a week for the last month. They could have been there longer.

I love living in a democracy.

I just wish our democracy was a just tiny bit neater, had a really healthy dose of honesty, could find a way to reduce the influence of special interests, and was less annoying. I hate seeing on television or reading postcards where a candidate makes promises that he or she can’t keep or have nothing to do with the office. We have a candidate for county supervisor promising to fight job flight or loss in the entertainment industry. There is very little that he can do but it sounds really nice if you work in the industry or have friends in the industry.

Every candidate promises to cut waste in government spending. This has been going on for as long as I can remember. I’m still waiting to see it happen.

Why is it wrong for individuals and corporations to finance measures they support and is right for liberal groups to do the same?

Be well and stay happy.