Mall!

Hmm...where was I.  Wednesday last week.  Minneopa State Park.  Well, I can sum up Spring Break Thursday in one word MallOfAmericaAmusementPark.  I read my book, drank coffee, and tried to make up stories about the various strangers I saw, and Eryn ran around and enjoyed the rides for 8 hours.  It was slightly more than 8 hours, because we were out of the ticket line before 10 and she was on the rides past 6, but maybe I have to subtract Chipotle time, DQ time, and Teavana tea-restocking time (it was our not-a-big-out-of-state vacation, so a $40 canister of tea seemed acceptable as an alternative to plane tickets and a hotel)?  For my part, I read a few hundred pages out of a book of post-apocalyptic short stories and took a lot of short walks.  The Mall gives me a serious case of the blahs.  I hate consumerism.  And I say that as someone willing to walk around Target and just look at things without buying anything while my daughter is at guitar lessons.  Heck, the other day I bought a green garden gnome, stealthily hid him in the front yard garden where he's almost invisible, and named him Melvin.  I'm willing to enjoy consumerism with a generalized purpose, just not hundreds of specialty shops that make no sense to me. Although other folks probably say the same things when they see me buying a Deadpool graphic novel at the local shop for Eryn, or a board game at FFG. It didn't help that a trip through Games by James revealed they're selling the same game as FFG for a $20 markup, $28 if you had pre-ordered it for a discount using the FFG pre-order program.  I don't find it offensive.  I find it completely nonsensical.  How can anyone with a phone not look up what they're buying at the mall and decide, "I'm not f-ing buying that here."

As a bonus, while we were eating our DQ Blizzards, the stars of The Longest Ride made an appearance.  There were people in line for over four hours in their cowboy boots and hats to see them.  Brit Robertson is cute for someone born after I graduated from high school, but I can't imagine standing in line four hours to meet her (man, that would be sort of creepy, although there were women there my age who obviously were there to meet Scott Eastwood, barely born before I graduated high school) and I'd much rather meet her pimping Tomorrowland than The Longest Ride.

Regardless, we had fun.  Eryn was exhausted but happy, and I was full up on post-apocalypticism (nice! that's a good word, even if it doesn't really exist).

Four Acquisitions

I own some new things! Item one, Ming finally picked up our Randy's Pizza Challenge t-shirts that proclaim, "I can't believe I ALMOST ate the Whole Thing!" I can now show off that I'm a loser because a.) I took a huge pizza challenge and b.) because I couldn't complete it.


Ming brought me some coffee from Malaysia. Notice the word "mixture"? It scared me. I was worried it might be full of secondary civet food or something. But I looked up the words for the additives and they translated as margarine and sugar, and that seems safe enough. This morning I brewed up the first batch and it tasted pretty much like Folger's or Maxwell House, but a little bit better. Probably because of the margarine and sugar.


Also from Ming. Durian candy. I haven't been brave enough to try one yet. But here's a fun vignette.

Eryn: "Dad, do you have candy?"
Me: "Yes, honey. I do. Here!"
Eryn, pops it in mouth: "I don't know what this is. What is this? ... Oh. This is BAD."
Me: "At least it wasn't ranch dressing."


The bicycle chain snake my wife bought me at the Mall of America while She Says and hubby were in town for JACL and to visit us. Ssssss..... I think Eryn calls him "Wormy". Very cool use of old bicycle bits.

Drive by Ricing

I was at the Mall of America this last Sunday with the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment and his wife, enjoying a cold coffee drink in the food court. A flicker caught my eye, and with a plink, two pieces of squashed together fried rice fell from the sky and landed on my shirt, leaving a nice grease stain. There was no one walking by. No one at the next table with fried rice. No one within several tables with a plate of fried rice. Someone, somewhere, was so vigorously eating their fried rice that it managed to cover at least 40 feet of food court just to violate my shirt. Nasty.