Cheeseburger in . . . Limbo?

Tonight after work, Tegan and I decided to take the girls out to a restaurant. And so we decided to go to a place that we had not been before--Cheeseburger in Paradise.

Yeah, shut up, okay? I am well aware about how some of you feel about these sorts of restaurants. I didn't ask you to go.

The food, well, it was what you expect.

Lots of drink options . . . or so it seems (more on that later), several varieties of cheeseburger, other grilly, restauranty fare. My burger was well cooked and suitably sloppy. The fries were tasty and not badly done. Tegan got a chicken quesadilla that she deemed "quite good."

I had decided to order a mohito with my meal. (I saw Emeril make one once.) But it never came. At least I didn't get charged for it.

We pointed it out to our "islander" when she brought us the bill mostly so she might learn from her mistake, but I doubt she will. It seems like she was working to get us out of there, since we arrived in the last moments of Happy Hour and right before the serious dinner rush began. She naturally wanted to try and maximize her opportunity for tips by cycling us out of the way. But really, she never filled up our water glasses (important considering we were not given our other drink options), she only came by one time other than when she dropped off the check. We sort of seemed to be an inconvenience.

She never acted that way towards us, but it was mostly neglect . . . and she really didn't act very apologetic when we pointed out her mistake. She sort of mumbled an apology while taking away plates and when she dropped off the bill with my credit card she started to say sorry behind my back, but I kid you not, it just sort of tapered . . . off . . . into . . . nothing.

Oh well . . .

Whoa . . . I'm closer than I thought, but still only a wanna-be

I am 27% Hippie.

I need to step away from the tie-dye. I smell too good to be a hippie and my dad is probably a cop. Being a hippie is not a fashion craze, man. It was a way of life, in the 60’s, man.

Take the
Hippie Test
@ FualiDotCom

Some caution, some advice

Sometimes I blog on my hit count, like I did in the post just below.

You might think that I am obsessed with such meaningless numbers or caught up in some sort of race. That isn't REALLY true.

I watch my numbers occasionally, but I don't think about them every day.

I guess I am just wondering if anything I do will cause my numbers to grow. I don't really have illusions that my blog will become famous or well-known. The odds against that are just so high. (But yes, I still check Newsweek every week, secretly wondering if some technology editor will take pity on me.) The reason I think about it, I guess, is that I habitually read other blogs by people that have been doing it for five or six years and, through some sort of alchemy or extreme networking, found a way to build an audience of critical mass.

So, I wonder how to do that . . .

But then I read stuff like this from one of the BusinessWeek bloggers: "I've put a huge amount of work into my FIVE blogs and gotten next to nothing in return. Sure, I've made a few good contacts, but I was doing that with email and my five web sites before I even started blogging. . . . I won't say that it's been a complete waste of time, but I can confidently say that it has not been a productive use of my time."

Pretty harsh, right?

But still I persevere.

Others on the BusinessWeek blog suggest that I post on Apple, as a way to drive up my hits. So, okay--have you seen the new Apple Mouse? It is completely the coolest mouse ever.

Unfortunately, I have a already very cool trackball mouse for my work computer and the new Apple mouse, no matter how cool it is . . . it isn't cordless, so I'm not gonna use it with my iBook. I guess I'll just have to wait for the cordless, Bluetooth version.

So, there you go . . . I'm linking to successful blogs; I'm writing about Apple. Anybody want to discuss Harry Potter some more?

The awful truth

So Dr. Actually, Flipper, and I got into a discussion of blogs this afternoon and Dr. A wondered how my hit traffic was coming along.

So, I dutifully checked. Here is the awful truth:

The two HUGE (for me, anyway) spikes corresponded with the beginning of July, right after Ruth's birthday; the second was right after Ariel's birthday.

So, this proves that people don't read UNLESS I am discussing my kids. They are driving my traffic!

(You know, I should find out how things were going when I was obsessing about the air conditioner . . .)

Entry that is apropos of nothing

I feel like crap today--have a cold since yesterday and probably running a small fever (or maybe that is just the 95+ temperature and the humidity.

Anyway . . . why can't I relax? On the surface it looks like my work project is rolling along and everything seems to be on schedule.

But I can't trust the dates and the papers that I look at every day, trying to discern if I am missing something. I have convinced myself that I will miss something and soon . . . VERY soon, it will all become clear to me and everything will crack and crash down on top of me.

(deep breath)

Seriously, what is wrong with me?

I used to habitually worry about stuff like this a lot. So much so that my parents had me talk to a counselor/psychiatrist when I was in high school. He was a very genial sort of guy and we spend our weekly sessions just talking about my week. I don't for the life of me remember what we did to make me better. No breathing techniques or meditative postures or anything.

And while I worry, so many people do, right? It's not exactly uncommon in our stressful, job-centric culture. But why can't I just let go and take the day as it comes?

*****

Happy birthday to Jack Thunder. We had a nice lunch with him at semi-local Middle Eastern eatery. Every time I go there, I say to myself "I should eat here more often . . . or this food more often." But it would be hard to convince Ariel and Ruth to try the Shawarma, and Tegan and I don't go out on dates NEARLY enough.

So, back to work. Gotta keep an eye out for that creeping disaster. I am sure it is just around that corner over there.