58 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 5-10-18”

  4. Morning!! I almost left out my forgetting the onions yesterday in deference to Chas’ dislike of them …but I did forget to purchase them once again! How can one eat a hamburger without an onion??!!! 🍔
    There was a Canadian goose honking out on our property this morning….at 4AM…we could not see it but it sure was making a racket!

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  5. Nancy Jill, any time I get a burger at a fast-food joint, I ask, “Does that come with onions?” McDonald’s has them “standard” (though some are reconstituted onion flakes and some are sliced onions), so at McDonald’s I simply say as a standard order, “No onion, extra pickle.” Once I got home and noticed the wrap said, “No pickle, extra onion.” I don’t know if I made the mistake or if they did, but my husband got an extra burger that day, and I found myself something else to eat. Another day he forgot the “no onion” when ordering me a Big Mac, and I took a knife and scraped it all off. That meant I pretty much had a plain burger, not a Big Mac. (You can’t really separate out the sauce, lettuce, onions, and melted cheese, if you are trying to get all the onion.) Even without the onion, that was not a good burger!

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  6. The main problem you have there, Cheryl, is eating anything from McDonalds. Yuck. I am down to Wendy’s in a crunch, if I am so hungry I may hurt someone and Chik Fil A. Yesterday, I ended up eating at a “greasy spoon”. I ate a patty melt and fries. I felt like I had a brick in my stomach for the rest of the day.

    Today is RED Day. http://www.kw.com/kw/redday.html#.WvQ4sIgvxPY

    We will be helping two places today. At one we will be delivering a truck with $900 worth of food to help the Pastor feed the homeless of the town. That’s where I will be. Working in the kitchen.
    The other is a children’s home. We will be doing yard work, replacing interior doors, painting and general maintenance.

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  7. Do you know the US is one of the few places that does large volunteer efforts like Kim’s?

    Hillary, who is getting ready right now to fly home from Sicily for her biannual furlough, works hard on a new program in Europe called Serve the City– a one-day volunteer outreach. Her missionary society, Communitas, encourages its missionaries to put Serve the City days into effect in their communities as a Christian outreach.

    Last year’s in Catania was the first ever in Sicily. A one day event, almost all the volunteers were Americans. Sicilians had never heard of such a thing– the government is supposed to pick up the trash, etc.

    If they don’t do their job, trash just lies there– no one else goes out of their way to do “someone else’s job.”

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  8. I am in Hickory, North Carolina at the Southeastern District Convention of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It was a beautiful, 8-hour drive down yesterday.

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  9. Hickory appears to be a nice little town at the foot of the mountains.
    It used to be the furniture capitol. But the Chinese have taken most of the business now.
    I’ve been through hickory dozens of times but the only place we’ve been there is the cafeteria on I-40 and the mall.

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  10. Another beautiful day in the neighborhood. Fog rolling through. Another day of rain expected, a bit more, and then sunshine again. Interesting days.

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  11. Beautiful day in Atlanta, too. We’ve had a string of them. I am still at home and have not seen son yet. I believe he is making the most of his vacation by catching up on lost sleep.

    We went over to Downwind last night for dinner. It is a restaurant in a building at the Peachtree Dekalb airport. They have a deck with seating that overlooks the runways. They also are known for some of the best hamburgers in Atlanta. I had onions and Swiss cheese on my burger along with a side of brocolli (the veggie of the night). Art and Wesley had fries with their burgers. The weather was perfect for the setting. And I got to mention about when my father worked at the site when it was Atlanta’s Naval Air Station. After leaving there, Wesley wanted to go to Bruester’s for icecream. I had a giant waffle cone with three scoops of chocolate turtle. We had a coupon so I did not realize the quantity I would get! I threw away the last portion since it was beginning to melt. I think I had enough icecream to last for the rest of my life!!!

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  12. It is beautiful here today—at least looking through the window. It was just above freezing with a breeze, so I am sure it doesn’t feel beautiful out there. 😉

    No onions on my burger. No pickles either, but if served on the side I will get them for my husband.

    I don’t get fast food burgers, but my husband likes McDonalds. Two of my daughters worked there when starting out working officially. They were well trained there. I did learn that if you want fresh fries to order them without salt.

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  13. Because I do not consider it healthy for a child to be banished to her room or to isolate herself in her oddness, I am listening to the second hour of sixteen year old telling me how awful I am and she wants to be a Catholic and go to public school. A non stop monologue. The others cleaned the house around her and then set to their school work. It must be challenging.

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  14. Kathaleena, McDonald’s was my first job, too, more than a year of working there. At the time, the corporation-wide turnover had employees there an average of one year; at ours, they lasted three months. We had the busiest McDonald’s in Arizona, and a manager who had a reputation all over town for her fierceness. I was definitely not “well trained” there. Mom had already taught us kids that if we were working and we started talking, we were to keep working while we talked. That McDonald’s didn’t let employees talk while they worked, even if we were out of earshot of customers or other employees (like working the back sink). Know how hard it is at 18 to be scrubbing pans with your sister but not be allowed to talk to her? It was an arbitrary, silly rule. We also had to ask permission to go to the bathroom (usually denied–I learned to go before my shift and “hold it” during, which might be six hours before I got a break) and to get a drink of water (a really quick drink from a Dixie cup–and trust me, three ounces of water doesn’t do much when one has been working around hot food in Phoenix for several hours, but they resented the few seconds that they allowed every few hours with special permission–we had to duck out of sight of customers, so one couldn’t even refill the cup). I frequently saw an employee at the back sink crying after being publicly yelled at by our store manager; she also yelled at managers and even customers. Every job I have had since I have compared favorably to that one.

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  15. It’s foggy here and I’m having a really hard time waking up. Seems like I was in a really deep sleep just before I had to get up, now I’m stumbling around half conscious. I have a 10 a.m. interview out at the fishing slip with a 99-year-old tuna fisherman who’s retiring. He’s going to sell the boat he’s had since 1958 but it’s still there for now so we may get the tour. A bit of a rust bucket, from some photos I’ve seen. Our former photo editor, one of the many who left with one of the last massive staff cuts late last year, is meeting me down there to take the photos, he now does freelance for us, so it’ll be good to see him. He lives in town and was probably one of the few photographers left working for us who knew how to find the fishing slip.

    I wish I’d brought my work computer home last night so I could maybe work from home all day. But I should probably head in for the afternoon anyway, at least it might feel like a short day assuming this interview will go for 1-2 hours. I’ve been dragging all week for some reason. I’m still feeling just half asleep even after a shower.

    The cat is staring out the window through the sheer curtains over at the neighbor’s house (where their dog sometimes gets out and runs around on the driveway for her secret entertainment). It’s one of her favorite morning activities.

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  16. Only fast food places where I was growing up were the burger shacks (the one on the beach was the best) and later Jack-in-the-Box and Pup ‘n Taco which had decent burritos.

    I don’t think I went to a McDonald’s until I was out of high school or even college for some reason.

    I worked at the local Sears through college and wound up most of the time working in the Snack Bar. We didn’t have burgers or fries, only hot dogs and an array of malts, shakes, ice cream, sodas, freezes and chili — for chili dogs, of course. Chili cheese dogs required that we keep tubs of fresh-grated cheese ready, another job we had to do. The worst job was cleaning the rotating hot dog grill with steel wool pads after closing. But we talked non-stop, we were usually unsupervised on those night shifts.

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  17. When we got an order of no-salt French fries, unless we ourselves filled the order, the customer usually got French fries with salt. That is because you would put down a fresh batch of fries to make them no-salt, but the cooking time (I think) was seven minutes. In that seven minutes, almost invariably a manager would come along, look at your screen to see what you were waiting on, assume you must have been waiting for something to finish cooking, and grab a hamburger and fries and put them on the tray. The customer would assume they got their no-salt fries, the manager wouldn’t know they were supposed to be no-salt fries (even if you had told one manager, another might come along), and the customer would be unhappy–especially if they went through drive-thru. Ordering no-salt fries through drive-thru was a near-certain guarantee of getting salted fries, because we were one of the early restaurants to get two-booth drive-thrus (being such a busy store, we were a good place to test it out), and the employee who got the money was not the employee who filled the order. There was ONE effective way to make sure that a customer got no-salt french fries, but our store manager forbade us to use it, and so we only did it when she wasn’t around, and in fear and trembling even then lest she come to the store during that order or lest another manager yell at us.

    If a customer ordered “Hamburger, no onion,” that was what was called a “grill” order. We punched it into the cash register, and a register tape came up in the grill area telling of the special order. In addition, the “grill” item showed on our screen in flashing letters so that the manager knew not to simply throw any burger on the tray, but to wait for the “grill” one. Those of us who had worked there a while had learned that the only way to guarantee that a customer actually got “no salt” french fries was to send them as a grill order and then run to the grill and grab the register tape before a manager or a person working the grill could think it was a burger special order. Our store manager yelled at us if she caught us doing that, but NOT doing it meant there was a better than 50% chance the customer would get salted fries, and probably a 90% chance in drive-thru.

    One day I was in the back booth of drive-thru, and our store manager (G) wasn’t in the store. I got a no-salt french fry order. Being in a playful mood, I sent it through as “large french fries, no salt, no onion, no catsup, no pickle, no mustard, no tartar sauce, no cheese, no special sauce.” A minute later, back walks G with my grill slip in her hand and a large smile on her face. It was my lucky day that she happened to be amused by my order!!

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  18. When someone ordered a hot dog, our line was “Mustard, relish and onions?”

    “Ketchup,” some would reply (some seriously, some just being wise guys — we had no ketchup).

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  19. Michelle,

    My daughter has been involved with an event similar to Serve the City fora couple years now. They do one day and 3 day weekend events yearly. It’s thru Habitat for Humanity, but as you said, has been embraced by local churches as a Christian outreach. 🙂

    It’s a blessing to all the folks they help, and to those serving. She really enjoys it too.

    http://www.hopeinthehillsofwarren.org/index.html

    https://www.warrenhabitat.org/programs/hope-hills-warren/

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  20. A bad manager is a bad manager and any business can have them. Sounds like you definitely had one Cheryl.

    As far as asking permission to go to the bathroom, I never would have done that in any job, unless it were a real emergency. That was left for break time. The same for drinking anything. That was the norm when I was first working. We would never have thought of chatting either unless we really had the time and no one else around. I can understand why it would seem fine to do at time, especially when washing dishes. I also see how it can make some people work more slowly.

    The good thing about a bad job or manager is that it can move you on to move on to better educate yourself for better choices.

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  21. No fast food jobs for me. My first real job in high school days was working all weekend at the giant IRS building in my town where all returns were processed for the SE. Actually, we could probably see part of the building from where we sat on the deck for dinner. It is on the road that parallels the runways on the far side of the airport. What can I say? I have deep roots in a small area of a really big city!

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  22. Beware! Once a person works in taxes, they can never get untangled from the red tape in a lifetime! There are many good escapes from fast food work. Perhaps that has to do with the greasy floors. People slide right out.

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  24. Kathaleena, any job I have had except McDonald’s, I was free to go to the bathroom if I needed to and job duties allowed. For instance, when I worked at a drugstore and I was on the cash register, if I needed to go I’d wait till the line was down to one person, put my “closed” sign up, and go to the bathroom before I headed out to the floor to do my regular duties. If the line never did go down, I’d call another cashier. (I was never the main cashier.) Likewise with getting a drink; in most jobs I have had a workspace, and in those where I didn’t, I could at least stow a cup in the back room.

    When you have set hours with regular breaks or the ability to decide when to take a break, it is indeed possible to time drinks and bathroom time for break time, most of the time. However, when you are working a five-hour shift (and you’re supposed to get a break if you work at least four hours, but your job doesn’t give you one unless you work more than five hours) and they keep you an extra 90 minutes after you are supposed to be off, that can be a long time to go without a potty break. And it’s way too long to go without water in Phoenix, where summer temperatures nearly always reach at least 100 degrees and it’s dry, and when you add working close to oil that’s 335 degrees or so, water is not really a luxury, and one quickly gulped three-ounce glass in a six-hour shift is nowhere near enough. (Working drive-thru isn’t all that much different from working outside if the weather is extreme.)

    We definitely couldn’t have chatted at the front counter at McDonald’s–though I have been surprised to overhear conversations between employees these days, including recently when a manager was telling a teenage employee that her (the girl’s) boyfriend wasn’t the person she should marry. Who has such conversations within hearing of customers? But when you are moving boxes together, or washing dishes together, or stocking shelves, or even mopping together when the customers have all left after a busy lunch rush, there is no good reason not to talk a bit as long as it doesn’t keep you from working.

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  25. There were no fast food restaurants when I was growing up.
    They had drive-in’s in the fifties, but I seldom went to them.
    You can tell restaurants that started as drive-in’s by the parking lot designs.
    You couldn’t go into a McDonalds to eat in 1962. Elvera and Chuck ate hot dogs in the car.
    I have never ordered anything from a drive in window. I have been in a car in which such an order was made once.
    Two of my granddaughters worked at Chick-fil-A through HS. Jenn worked during breaks at college.
    They love Chick-fil-A. They go out of their way to dine there.

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  26. I am slap worn out. I was the first person to get there. All the food came from Publix. There was much more than $900 worth of food waiting. There were 10 or 12 boxes of meat, then cereal, crackers, produces, etc. I made the decision that people couldn’t come up and fill a box. We made up boxes. Every box had pork, beef, and chicken (some turkey) in it along with a bag of salad, fruit, potatoes, cucumbers, cereal, bread, and whatever else we had.
    It was sad to see some people try to come through the line 2 or more times. Finally we decided they had to be in their car and it was one box per car. They also had hot meals to give out. We had a couple of cases of toilet paper we could give out. That was the hot item. People really wanted a box with toilet paper in it.
    All of us are blessed.

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  30. My nephews had a wonderful opportunity to work their way up through McD’s. Glad it was there for them. They are good hard working young men with wonderful families.

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  31. “Ketchup,” some would reply (some seriously, some just being wise guys — we had no ketchup).

    WHAT????? I only eat hot dogs with mustard AND ketchsup. Add onions and sometime bell pepper and it’s a great “sandwich”.

    If you don’t like onions, don’t ever eat at a White Castle, no matter what someone from St. Louis says. They are the worst hamburgers I’ve ever had. I like onions, but they put onions in the meat and smother the burger with onions on the bun. I ordered it without onion once and it still had a strong onion flavor. Onions are supposed to add flavor, not dominate the other flavors.

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  32. Peter, that’s the reason I don’t go to Taco Bell. I once asked for one without onions. He said he couldn’t , onions are part of the concoction that makes the taco. I understand, but I don’t go there.
    I also don’t go to Hardees.

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  33. I went to Five Guys in Missoula on my way to Mumsee’s. The menu and how they do things was so different that it took me a while to figure out. I certainly liked all of the choices and had a mushroom burger.

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  34. Mmmm, hot dogs and hamburgers and tacos with onions (not all at the same time). I don’t know why we didn’t offer ketchup, but we didn’t. Seems strange now, although mustard is the more traditional hot dog dressing.

    I may go buy some hot dogs (all beef) at the grocery store tonight.

    I’m amazed that Chas hasn’t ordered from a drive-through.

    So I interviewed the 99-year-old fisherman and his 75-year-old son, quite the characters. We stood out by the fishing slip for 2 hours talking, leaning on the dad’s car (yes, he still drives and doesn’t need glasses) when we felt tired.

    Got some colorful stories in that long conversation — he was a year behind Zamperini in high school (at the same school) and kinda knew him as they both ran track. Toward the end of the conversation the dad curiously says “So I suppose you want to know if we’re atheists or what.”

    They were both pretty staunch atheists, as it turned out, and the conversation turned off in that direction for a while, mostly with their saying how stupid and silly the Bible is and how people are finally coming around to a belief in science. Interesting. And chilling at the same time.

    I moved them off that topic to wind it all up and then was off to the bird rehab center that’s been getting a flood of sick brown pelicans in the past couple weeks, cause unknown.

    My mac laptop is giving me problems today, it keeps shutting down spontaneously (been able to work from home today since both assignments were close to home).

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  36. Daughter has decided to become a witch. I looked in my concordance and listed all the things on witchcraft, sorcery, etc. Then I started reading aloud, how God views these things. She is having second thoughts.

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  37. Speaking of fast food orders. . .Hubby was not fussy about what came on a burger or other sandwich, as he liked onions, pickles, mustard, ketchup, and anything else they might come with. So when he ordered and brought home a chicken sandwich from the local Burger King in the town we lived in before here, it wasn’t the presence of any of those condiments that was the problem. The problem was the lack of chicken! They put everything but the chicken on the sandwich! 😀

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  38. Kizzie, when he said something about how people in church still believe the sun revolves around the earth, I said, well, I go to church every week and don’t think there’s anyone who believes that. He said “Ask ’em! Ask ’em! Half of ’em do!”

    At any rate, he was operating obviously with some strong, negative stereotypes of Christians, nurtured through a very long lifetime. The son was an astronomy major and was on the same page, they were what you’d call “true believer” atheists.

    Outwardly, a stellar life from what I could glean — never drank or smoked, worked hard, succeeded at most everything, married to the same woman for 70 years (she died at 90), seemed upbeat, was good with his money, surely he’ll die way richer than I or most of us ever will. He’s in excellent physical health for his age, you’d never guess he was 99. Near perfect eyesight (has never worn glasses & he insisted on giving me a demonstration of this by reading some tiny print off a supermarket coupon he found in his car). Just yesterday he hoisted a boiler off his fishing boat and still beats most everyone who’s game at arm wrestling (he was a horseshoe champ in his day).

    But …

    There’s that shaking fist.

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  39. What was rather odd was he said he mentioned to his wife — after they’d been married 40 years — that he didn’t believe in God (he was a lifetime atheist apparently). She said she’d never have married him had she known that.

    So the subject never came up in all that time?

    Anyway, he said she confessed that she rather agreed with him in the end anyway. Sad.

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  40. DJ, his memory of it being 40 years before the subject came up seems quite likely to be faulty!

    Locally we have a friend of the family who is “only” 87 but who got into a car accident this week, hit two other cars. She was found unconscious at the wheel and apparently hit the gas instead of the brake. I told my husband that if you saw a car hit another (parked) car and then hit you head on, and then you found out that the driver of that other car was a little old lady (yes, “little old lady”; she’s well under five feet tall) and that she is now unconscious, you would go through a real range of emotions! She was only in the hospital overnight, which seems very quick to release someone her age who lives alone and was found unconscious after a car accident. But my mother-in-law and a bunch of other widows check on one another, so I’m sure she will be well looked after.

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  41. I agree, Cheryl, it must have come up at some point. He seemed to adore her, still carries several photos of her in his wallet. They met roller skating & were married about a year later when she was 19 and he was 22.

    The 75-year-old son was interesting, when I asked the dad if he had grandchildren, he said no and the son said he (the son) was just “too shy” — although he said he did meet a girl in junior college whom he thought might have liked him, but when she gave him her address she wrote it down wrong and he never could find her. Intentional, perhaps. ? That was it, sounded like he never dated or had the social skills to pursue relationships later.

    There’s a daughter, too, who lives in San Diego. One of the dad’s fishing boats was named after her.

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  42. DJ – I have a friend, a fellow believer, who shared on Facebook a Christian site that claims that the sun revolves around the earth. 😦

    But it is often those fringe elements, on the right or on the left, or the vocal minorities in any given group, who seem to get the most attention.

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  44. Kizzie, yes, who knew there was much discussion about such things. He declared (to his wife, he said) that you either believe in science (truth) or ‘god’ (silliness and stupidity).

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  46. Mmmmmmm… Five Guys……

    Thanks a lot people. I’m fasting for blood work and you wanna talk food….. 😦

    I have to hold out until 8 am or so.

    I wonder what time Five Guys opens?…………

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  47. And by the way…..

    Cheeseburger with ketchup, A1, lettuce, tomato, grilled onions (sometimes on the o’s).

    Cheryl gets a little hamburger with A1 grilled onions and mushrooms.

    Liz gets a little hamburger, just ketchup.

    And a large fry to split, malt vinegar on the side for Cheryl.

    That’s our regular order once every couple of months or so. 🙂

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  48. AJ, I didn’t notice till the last time we were there that A1 is an option. (I think I noticed after we ordered, but I don’t really remember–I wasn’t very hungry that day.)

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  49. Ironic, isn’t it DJ, that someone who believes so strongly in “science” is really so ignorant? (About what we believe, that is, and the false dichotomy of science vs religion.) Let me guess – in his judgmental views about Christians, he probably thinks Christians are too judgmental?

    Another kind of ironic thing is that so many people who think those ways, which we can recognize so readily, having heard those arguments so many times, consider themselves as “freethinkers”.

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  50. Great…now I am hungry for a hot dog….. 🌭
    There continues to be some furniture companies in Hickory that make their furniture in the US…Bradington-Young makes really nice furniture as does the Hickory Furniture Company…we have a few pieces which we love. We love that area of NC…..the Blowing Rock/Boone area is probably our favorite in the mountains….

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  53. DJ, they are quite good, though rather pricy. My husband likes them more than I do (I’m not convinced they are worth the extra price), but they are quite good. One caution: a small french fry is more than enough unless you have several people sharing the order!

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  54. I like Five Guys, but the closest is an hour away. The music is too loud and rocky, too, so it is not one we go to often.

    My husband and his jam group played at a nursing home today. It was birthday day for all those who have a birthday in May. Cake and ice cream was serve complimentary of McDonalds.

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  55. Chas, it never occurred to me that Taco Bell’s beef might have onions in it. I like Taco Bell a lot. My husband and I both have it as our top favorite fast-food restaurant. And I nearly always eat at least one taco. (I used to have their taco salad occasionally, but they changed it so much–and it is so often stale–that I stopped ordering it a year or two ago. Since I was about 10, my basic Taco Bell order, the one I get 9/10 visits, was a crunchy taco and a tostada. But they have added tomatoes to the tostada (and their tomatoes are never ripe and never worth eating) and apparently they don’t make tostadas very often, since it is different each time I order it. (Sometimes it is piled really high with beans, almost inedibly so, and sometimes it has hardly any. Sometimes the beans are thin and almost runny, and sometimes they are too thick. Now they have tomatoes as a regular part of it, but for several years they occasionally put them on, not realizing they weren’t supposed to be on it. Sometimes the cheese is melted and sometimes it isn’t–it isn’t supposed to be melted, and it tastes better if it isn’t. Sometimes they are out of tostada shells, so they break a taco shell in half and use that. Sometimes the shell is stale. Sometimes they add beef, which isn’t supposed to be on the tostada. I always have to tell them no sauce, and occasionally they mess up and add it anyway, and I can’t eat taco sauce. If they would just make the tostada the way they made it from my childhood up until two or three years ago, I would keep ordering it, but minus the taco sauce. But I never know what I will get, and in the last year or two it has rarely tasted very good, so I have finally dropped it after 40 years of ordering it.)

    Having stopped ordering the tostada, I replace it with a different menu item (which one varies, but the crunch wrap is a good choice), but I nearly always get at least one crunchy taco.

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  56. Dj, let me know if you like Five Guys. I enjoyed it, but that was the only one that I saw on my trip. Perhaps Mumsee will head up there for a burger. I had lunch there and then dinner with her, so it is not too far! 🙂
    and I saved her 57

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