It's 76 degrees out today. On January third. Now you know why there are no snow plows in Little Rock.
The "happy" fellow in the picture above is the guy who sits next to me at work. He's been working at the newspaper since 1956, or thereabout. Don't let this happen to you.
I tried to make the picture look like a comic book page, but I think I just succeeded in making it look like there was something wrong with the camera. Oh well.
Finally, I'm able to update this! Geez, I don't know if it was my computer or AOL, but I couldn't update the normal way, then all of a sudden it started working again.
So, my goal for the lovely new year is to get all my photos organized. This entails scanning in old photos for which I have no negatives, sanning old negs for which I have no photos, sorting through all the photos and negs I do have, and getting a grip on all my digital stuff. So far, I'm up to 1972. Ha!
The photo above is one of the ones I don't have a negative for, that I'm trying to restore. As you can see, the emulsion is turning yellow and disappearing, not to mention the cracks and specks. If you click over to photo number two, you can see what I've done so far. Which isn't much, I know. But I have the rest of the year to finish it, right? :)
So, did everyone eat their black-eyed peas for good luck today?
What? You don't know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, it's a southern thing. Something about confederate soldiers only having black-eyed peas to eat or something. Seeing how the war turned out for them, I don't exactly understand where the good luck part comes in. I've heard some people put a dime in the peas, and whomever is served the dime has extra-good luck. If he doesn't choke on it, that is.
Pass the hog-jowls, Jim-Bob, I'm hungry.
Thanksgiving photos above. Spent it at Felicia & Jim's. The first photo is of their son, Michael, who didn't feel good, so he's not in any more of the pictures!
Ate waaaaaay too much, but that's the point, right? The only thing I missed was the stuffing--they do cornbread dressing here, which is yummy, but not as yummy as good ol' regular-bread stuffing!
Chitlins were present, in the down-home Arkansas tradition, but Jim had them banished to the room we weren't eating in, and the cover had to stay on the casserole dish. I think only two people ate them, but I couldn't even watch, because I knew it would make me gag. Luckily, I only caught a whiff of them once or twice. To be fair, neither Felicia nor Jim eat them, but Felicia's mom cooked some, and they somehow talked Jim into allowing them to enter the house.
Other than that bit of scariness, everythin was dee-licious. Finger-lickin' good. And whatever other thing you can think of to mean "mmm."
Then, while Jim took a nap on the couch (see photo above), some of us played cards. Then he woke up and joined in. Eventually, I had to leave since I was only one of two people who actually had to get up and work in the morning (as in, today.) Drats.
I got up early this morning to take some pictures, but as you can see from the picture above, it was waaaay early, and too dark to get anything, unless I used a flash.
Now, on to the meat of the entry!
Arkansas is a big ol' meat-eatin' state. You should see the size of the meat sandwiches they eat. The restaurants brag about this-or-that kind of meat sandwich being "hubcap" size, and they're not lying! Who could eat that?
They even eat meat soup. But they call it chili. And don't put beans in it--a true Arkansas Chili Eater will not eat his meat soup if it so much as touches a bean.
Now that Thanksgiving is here, Arkansas falls into a frenzy over that special Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas gourmet delicacy, the turduckhen. It's a boneless hen stuffed in a boneless duck stuffed in a boneless turkey. I'm not making it up. Go ahead, click here, and you'll see.
Some people just can't get enough meat, I guess.
Sorry, no new pics, so you get an old one instead, of the Fishermen's Memorial in Gloucester. I woulda had some new ones, except for the brain problems lately. One day I got up really early and went out to get some fall photos...and forgot to put a diskette in the camera. And twice I rushed out the door to do something and just plain forgot the camera. Oops.
Now for today's Little Rock Story: For some reason, Arkansans just lo-o-o-ve mayonnaise. It ends up on everything. If you don't want mayo on something, you better say so, just in case. I've gotten mayo on a grilled cheese sandwich. Blech! Who would've thought you'd have to go to a lunch counter and say, "I'd like a grilled cheese, hold the mayo?" I think maybe it's in the apple pie, too, but I can't be certain.
I dont even LIKE mayo. And don't get me started on Miracle Whip--that's just a bad joke made worse.
I once ordered a BLT from Coupe De Grille, a greasy spoon that was located down the street form where I work. Now, I realize that BLTs have mayo. But anything that regularly comes with mayo in the normal world comes with EXTRA mayo in the Little Rock world. Knowing this, I thought I had better just go ahead and order it with NO MAYO. I called the order in, and said, very clearly, "NO MAYO."
I went to the diner, picked up my sandwich, came back to work, opened it up, and it was dripping with gobs and gobs of mayo. I looked at the ticket that was stapled to the bag, and on it was handwritten, "No mayo."
All I can think is, the short order cook saw the ticket, and his mind couldn't fathom that a person might actually want a BLT with no mayo, so he assumed the ticked instead read "Mo' mayo" and he just slathered it on good and thick.
Thankfully, I was able to wipe most of it off with napkins.
Went bowling today, with Felicia and her kids, as you can see above. No, no pictures of me. I stink at bowling, by the way. This is regular bowling, nobody does candlepin bowling here. My wrist is going to hurt tomorrow, from hurling that heavy ball around for a couple hours!
Now, I know you were all waiting with bated breath to know what happened to Wayne Dumond. Well, he was convicted Wednesday of first degree murder. Hopefully, Missouri will be a little better at keeping him in prison than Arkansas was.
