The Name of the Place

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

I think it’s still there. One of my brudders lives in Hogtown. I know, weird but it’s sorta an up and coming place as Etlanner creeps further south. BelZ the Big Bear met it’s maker cause of the Ingle’s and Piggly Wiggly opened up. Sometimes I go through that way either goin’ or comin’ from Etlanner just for fun. Course I make fairly frequent trips to the Big L to check on mom, my sis and all. Oh, and I have a niece who lives in Hogtown (just outside really) with her husband and two rugrats. The oldest rugrat made his Tball debut last Saturday. I heard about it in great detail from my mother yesterday afternoon over the telephone plus my niece emailed me to tell me all about that and other stuff. We send frequent chatty emails filled with the minutiae of each other’s lives back and forth. Actually I do that with all my nieces as well as my nephew, cept most of the emails come from his wife cause he’s an email slacker.

Oh, there are officially 112 boats registered for the big Bass Tournament. Since there are two fisherpersons per boat that’s a total of 224 so far with more to come. We expect that there will be somewhere around 140-150 boats registered by Saturday morning. Registration is open until first light Saturday morning which is when the fishing commences. I don’t have to be there til around 10ish, thank Og. I have since fielded another weird question about the tournament. This was a question concerning if there are any days this week when the lake is off limits prior to the tournament. The answer is no. Apparently in times past the lake was off limits to any contestants three days prior to the tournament but not now. How would anybody ever know if somebody was or wasn’t there on off limit days anyways, I wonder. It ain’t like we tag the fisherpersons or nuttin’, which might be kinda fun. A big red ear tag so they can be identified.

-swampbear (the upside is some of the fisherpesons are cute)

62

I live in Mechanicsville, MD. The guy in the cubicle next to me at work lives in Mechanicsville, VA. I discovered via Google that there’s a Mechanicsville, GA a mile south of Atlanta. Apparently, there are 2 in PA and another in IA. So except for mine, they’re all in states that end in a.

That makes me special.

Technically, Mechanicsville is just my mailing address. I actually live in Helen, MD, and there just happens to be a Helen, GA. No wonder I feel such a deep, spiritual connection with swampy! :wink:

63

Hogan’s Heros was the best resturant around for a long time. I really enjoyed their subs, and the fresh Jalepeno peppers they always had for me when I’d go in. I think they re-opened after being closed down back in 2000. There was an incident with the owner being busted for cooking up crystal meth in the kitchen of the resturant. Damned shame he had to get into stuff like that. That man made some great meals. I just hope the new owners/operators of the resturant can do nearly as well as the origional owners did.

My sister lives in LaGrange and works at the Wal*Mart distribution center that Swampy mentioned earlier. She has a munchkin that should be around the T-Ball age. I’ve been told he’s a nice looking young boy. I can’t say for sure myself because he tends to run screaming whenever I come into the room. Apparently, my sister has relayed some of the stories of growing up to her child already. I think I can get used to being the “evil uncle”. At least I’ll never have to worry about him coming to me for bad advise and stuff. :smiley:

-Belz

64

Uh oh. VunderBob’s on to me!

:eek:

65

I’ve been stung a few times by not paying attention and getting these two mixed up while playing US/North American railway games where both cities appear as major rail centres.

66

Guess we’d better make a run for it! Quick - scatter! Serpentine! Serpentine!

Susan
(and I did love the misquote - so appropriate!)

67

I don’t mind the kids coming to me for advice, it’s when they come to me for bail money that I find tedious.

Books, what game is that?

68

Empire Builder / North American Rails (NA Rails is EB with Mexico and more of Canada added). Empire Builder is the original *.Rail or “Crayon Rails” game, followed by British Rails, EuroRails, Nippon Rails, Australian Rails, India Rails, Iron Dragon (a fantasy variant), Russian Rails, and Lunar Rails.

69

So that was his secret ingredient! See, the food really was addictive. :smiley: BelZ is your sister in charge of the chicken nuggets. Cause if she is, she could feel us in on whether or not it’s just a coincidence that that’s a big chicken nuggets death house processing facility located strategically not real far away from a major distributor of chicken nuggets. This could be breaking news.

Have I mentioned that I’m going back to Chicago in about three weeks? Well, I am for my niece’s wedding. I cashed in me some skymiles and got me a free plane ticket and got a cheaper rate on a room in the hotel they’re gettin’ married in than they had cut a deal with the hotel for. I figure with all I’m saving I can rent a car and not use local transportation. Also, the gift certificate for a day at a day spa that I went in with several of the relations on has been sent. Cool gift, huh?

70

Swampy I don’t think my sister deals with the chicken nuggets. The last time I talked shop with her, she was doing Quality Control (basically, double checking the orders to make sure the right stuff gets loaded on the trucks). I should see her around Christmas this year. If I remember, I’ll try to get the straight dope on the chicken nugget mystery that you have brought up.

-Belz

71

That’s a damn shame. That was seriously good food. I knew folks who’d drive all the way from Kennesaw.

72

Mmmm, oatmeal. My maternal grandfather was Scottish*, and ate porridge every day for breakfast. But he liked it with milk and lots of salt. I used to sit in his lap and eat my porridge while he ate his. I still eat it with salt and milk occasionally.

*I missed commenting on that MMP and the one last week because I was switching assignments and supervisors and didn’t have a computer. So I’m going to mention it here, apropos of nothing. So there! :stuck_out_tongue:

73

For whoever asked what Milo is. It’s a nourishing chocolate product. This review compares it to YooHoo, but I have it mentally stored right next to Ovaltine. It’s sold pretty widely in Latin America and, apparently, down under as well.

And…there may be no location named Death in the U.S., but there is at least one Hell (Michigan).

Lots of Columbuses: Georgia and Indiana are the main competition. I think there are about 12, but I’m too lazy to look them up. There used to be a Miss Columbus contest on Columbus Day where representatives from all the Columbuses competed. We don’t have much of a celebration anymore, so that tradition has been lost. (Great loss, huh?)

Came across this cleaning up earlier today:

AVERT MISUNDERSTANDINGS BY CALM, POISE AND BALANCE.

Since we were pretty much in a <snerk>-free zone last week, I thought I’d provide an opportunity.

GT

74

Please don’t pick at the sore, you know it will never heal and might even leave a scar.

People are always confusing Palm Springs with Palm Beach. “Oh, how nice, you live in Florida”. Well, not yet but if the big earthquake hits we may have beachfront property, I guess. So everything here in the desert is required by law
(or maybe just genius on the part of city planners) to have the words “desert, springs, palm, sunshine and/or canyon” used in its name. I actually live on Sunshine Way. Now you could use terraserver to see my house from the sky, if you knew the address. Mr. Beckwall uses terraserver as a form of foreplay. He is a geo-geek and gets all riled up by terrain and such.

This has been the bestest MMP ever. People will speak of it for years to come. “Remember the time Rue dedicated a MMP to Beckwall?” It brings a tear to my eye. I’m touched, and apparently I’m cumin, too.

75

I think oatmeal tastes best with heavy cream and brown sugar, but I guess that doesn’t help, does it? And raisins. Raisins are good.

For some reason, ‘tastes’ doesn’t looked like it’s spelled right. I don’t know why.

‘Nourishing’ and ‘chocolate’ together are either redundant or an oxymoron. I’m not sure which.

How loud does an upstairs neighbour have to be before it’s okay to threaten them, or tell the superintendent? All the apartments have hardwood flooring. The idiots upstairs think it’s okay to clomp around in their shoes slamming doors. We’ve asked them to be a bit quieter, and apparently they think we’re being mean. I don’t think it’s a good idea to have Mr. Lissar and company kill them, because we don’t have a way of disposing of the bodies.

These are the ones who chase each other around their apartment, yelling, ‘I’m gonna catch you! I’m gonna catch you!’ and giggling. I think they’re about nineteen.

76

Ok, I can play now.

yes, um… someone. That’s Milo. But we have the added advantage of be able to buy it premixed hereabouts, so you don’t need to go and find milk and a glass to drink it in (although anyone in-the-know will know that it tastes just dandy straight off the spoon! Wifey spriung me just last week helping myself to a spoon straight from the can! ‘Tsk Tsk’ said she, as I greedily guzzled that powdery brown goodness).

I can’t beleive you 'murkins don’t have Milo! You’re soooooo missing out! And now that I’ve co-invented Miloke, or even Cocolo (the latter may not fly as a name, cos it’s also -apparently- the name of a young lady in Japan who works in um… ahemgrown-up movies that mummies and daddies watch sometimes, you know, when CSI:Pokeepsy (sp?) isn’t on), yes, now that I’ve co-invented it, if you lot can’t find Milo, or even premixed Milo, then how, how, HOW will you join the madness?!?!?!?

Brooklyn is a small riverside town on the way to my family farm. A very quiet place really. One thing of note, their petrol station (or gas station) got all burned-up during the big bushfires in '94 (the ones that cut of Sydney from everywhere except the Pacfici Ocean).

But the petrol station didn’t go
!!!KERBLOOEY!!!
or nuttin’, it just went sizzle, burn

and for confusion’s sake, there’s a Tanah Merah here in S’pore, near where I work, and a Tanah Merah up there in Malaysia. It means ‘Red Soil’, so it’s a common place name. There’s a Bukit Merah down in town, and Red Hill right next to it. Mind you, it’s only amusing if you realise Bukit Merah means Red Hill! So there’s two suburbs next to each other with the same name!!! (although it’s in different languages, so it’s different, but only kinda sorta).

There’s also a Bukit Gombak (and several other Bukits, and a Chua Chu Kang as well as a Yio Chu Kang, and lots more wonderfully confusing places. But there’s only one Tampines, and that’s pronounced ‘Tampinees’ (I think they do that to make the tourists look like idiots, but really, I think it’s just dicking with people, like spelling it ‘Paris’ and pronouncing it 'Paree. I mean, who are they trying to mess with? Really?).

77

oooh, that’s how I do it! But we can’t get heavy cream here, just light cream, cos heavy cream makes the baby Kwan Yin cry. Or something.

I miss me some heavy cream.

78

I was born in Paris … Paris County Wisconsin. I am currently living in a city that shares a name with a city on Russia.
I’ve made some lentil stew for dinner. Well, it was supposed to be soup but I think I overcooked the lentils a bit. Oh well, it’s good stick to your ribs food. Although I don’t know why you’d want food to stick to your ribs because that would mean that you probably have a perforation in your esophagus and your food is floating around in your chest cavity. I think that would be a bad thing and if that happens you’d probably rather eat something that doesn’t stick to the ribs as much and might be easier for the surgeons to flush out, like a clear broth. But if you don’t have a perforated esophagus and you just want a good hearty bowl of soup/stew lentil is good for that. Did you know a lot of people don’t even know about lentils? I hadn’t heard of them until my early twenties. It’s an often overlooked legume. It’s not the lentils fault though, probably just bad PR. The stew would be even better with some nice fresh crusty bread but I don’t have any which is really unfortunate. I decided I should make a nice hearty soup for dinner because a couple people at work are carrying some sort of plague and I can’t really get sick this week because I have a ton of stuff I have to move around at work to prepare for the remodel and I also have a neice’s wedding to attend on Saturday. So of course I am feeling headachey tonight and have been sneezing, hopefully it’s just sinus problems and my usual allergies. Crosses fingers but then finds it’s too hard to type so uncrosses them again It rained all last week, finally cleared up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday and then it rained again today. They say it’s supposed to rain all week again, which sucks and usually gives me sinus headaches. Hopefully it will stop by Saturday at least because my neice is getting married on a boat and I wouldn’t want to be out at sea on a boat with the plague and have it raining too. I saw Titanic and I wouldn’t want that to happen. Okay, so it was an iceberg, not rain and Leonardo DiCaprio, not plague but it’s pretty damn close.

79

There is a sign on a Mexican eatery in my town (which shares its name with one in Texas and one in Scotland (the town, not the Mexican eatery)) that says “The Tastetiest Mexican Food In Town.”

I can’t tell you how long I looked perplexedly at that sign. I knew something was wrong with it, but it took me a couple read-throughs to figure out what.

And speaking of Mexican food, I made chili tonight, but I made it my way, which means it has noodles and corn and cheese in it. The WryGuy loves it, even if it isn’t “real” chili.

And I’m still stripping wallpaper. Some yahoo who used to live here put some of the wallpaper on nicely primed walls, and some of the wallpaper on BARE SHEETROCK. Which means some of the wall came off too. Bah!! Despite that, I have not given up. Nosirreebob, not me. I am sticking to this job like … well, like the wallpaper is sticking to the BARE SHEETROCK. I will not give up!

80

I grew up near Chester CT, which was mentioned somewhere on the first page and I’m too lazy to go look it up. I also lived near Burlington in CT then in Burlington VT, which is also near Jamaica and Moscow. I lived in Portland ME, and I got a job offer a while back to work as the Master Electrician at a theatre in Portland Oregon. Get it? ‘M’ ‘E’? 'Cause the job title is the same as the state abbreviation … Ok, I guess I’m trying too hard.

And what the heck is up with states using “Middlesex” for a county name? CT has one, MA has one, NJ has one, VA has one, heck, even Canada has one. Oh, and England seems to have one, but they were probably first.