Hard Times at the Cafeteria

Whenever I don't know what to write for today's blog, I go to a handy file entitled "List of Blog Topics" and peruse the many ideas I have written down. Today my eyes flit over such fascinating titles as Stoics, Music, Inefficiencies of Time, My Ideal Reader and alight on a single word: Cafeterias.

Photo taken by Yelp user Rob W.

This topic goes along with my general interest in nostalgic food tourism. I have loved these unique restaurants my whole life. Cafeterias used to be a lot more popular than they are now, and they were especially a big deal in the South, including Texas, my father's home state.

I have a lot of cafeteria memories. Certainly as kids, my Dad often took us to an outpost of Clifton's Cafeterias, a small Los Angeles chain. (Amazingly enough, they even still have one location open.) My most vivid memories of my Uncle Fred involve us eating fried okra together at an Amarillo cafeteria.

But I have continued my association with cafeterias into my adult life. My in-laws in Raleigh were always happy to go out to the cafeteria. In fact, we ate at one on our last visit there less than two weeks ago. The caterer at my aunt's 90th birthday party in Amarillo last summer was that same cafeteria where long ago I ate fried okra.

Unfortunately, times are not good for cafeterias. Every time we visited Raleigh there were fewer and fewer cafeteria options. The parent company of Furr's, that Texas chain, recently filed for bankruptcy. Luckily, they won't be closing any more locations. Apparently, the cafeteria industry has been hit hard by both the rise of fast food and fast casual restaurants, foodies writing bad reviews, and perhaps bad memories of school cafeterias.

However, I believe cafeterias fill a niche market. Alice, my mother-in-law liked them because it was easy to order a few vegetable dishes and make that your whole meal. Also, because there are no waiters, cafeterias can be quite inexpensive. And to me somehow, they're just kinda fun.

I'm only sorry that cafeterias aren't a Midwest thing. I could use more green jello in my diet.

A New Camera

It began in Florida in January. All of my indoor photos started looking like this:

It took me a while to figure out that my flash wasn't working. Once I deciphered what the problem was, I could fix it. Well, sometimes I could fix it, if I remembered to turn off the flash function. And, even then, it only works if there is enough light for the camera to snap the shot right away. Otherwise, the photo is quite blurry.

I bet it would help if I read my camera's manual. It's possible there could be some insight tucked inside. I wonder where that is in my mess of a house?

But, since this past weekend I bought tickets to Italy in April, I better either find the manual (unlikely), get my camera repaired (is that even possible in this day and age?), or buy a new one. I want to take a lot of photos, and I would like them to be good ones!

I know that most of the young 'uns today use their phones to take photos, but I don't have one of them smartie phones, and I'm not planning on getting one. So I'll go down to my almost obsolete camera store and talk to the almost obsolete camera salesperson, and see what they can do to help.

Look for improved photos on the blog in the near future. Or at the very least before Italy.

Stats

When I logged in to my blog yesterday, there on the stats page was the amazing figure of 10,035 page views.  I had noticed the day before that my blog was almost at five digits, but not quite yet.  Adding another digit to the number is cool and I feel I have accomplished something.  What, I don't know, but something.

It's unclear how many of these pageviews are by search bots or web crawlers, but I hope the majority of the views are by you, my loyal readers. Just in case you are interested, here are some more stats.

10,035 total page views
1,545 page views in January (monthly high)
1,000 page views in February (monthly low)
253 published posts
96 published comments
6 post drafts
2 followers
0 dollars earned

It's unlikely in the time remaining on my leave that I will hit a six-digit number of pageviews, but it's a goal to strive for!

Ping Pong Tourney

I'm not sure exactly why, but the newest CoCo office location has a ping pong table. (It also has a theater and a bar.)  Inevitably, someone decided that we should have a ping pong tournament.  I signed up immediately.  I have many fond memories of ping pong.

My family had a table when I was growing up.  It was probably bought at a garage sale, but it was good enough for us.  We played a lot of games on that table.  Because I was the youngest, I lost a lot of games on that table.

There was an annual ping pong tournament at the annual Easter party in the neighborhood. I remember the ping pong table set up in the side yard and the poster with all the brackets.  Again, as one of the youngest players, I doubt I made it very far.  But I always enjoyed playing.

My childhood ping pong table is probably warping slowly in my Mom's garage.  My honey's family's ping pong table was still in the basement being used for storage when we left North Carolina last week. I wish I had room in my house to bring one of them here.

So you can see why I was excited to get the opportunity to play the tabletop sport again.  Add to that my natural competitiveness and I was more than a little psyched to finally play my first set of games.  Best two out of three games moves on, loser gets one more chance in the loser's bracket.

After weeks of not being able to meet up with my opponent and watching the scores of other games go up on the Challonge website, we finally played yesterday.  I wanted to win, but more importantly I wanted to not lose badly. That was my primary goal.

We started out gently, but the play soon got competitive.  I managed to hold on to an early lead to win the first game 21-18.  My opponent and I were fairly well matched, and he succeeded in beating me by the same score, 21-18 for the second game. By this time, I realized that I had met my aim of not losing badly.

So we started the last game even.  Playing ping pong was more of a workout than I remembered and by that time I was sweating. Instead of being tired, I got looser and more relaxed and was happy to win the final game 21-13. Victory was sweet!

From my uninspired commentary, it's clear that I have no aspirations to being any kind of sportswriter. However, I do look forward to going as far as I can in this "important business meeting".  (That's the title of the CoCo ping pong tourney!)

Oscar Night

Last night was Oscar night and I watched the awards ceremony even though I haven't watched many of the movies.  I'm not sure I really need to watch any of the films, as I am not yet an Academy member with a vote.  Any of my opinions, likes or dislikes are irrelevant for this particular election.

I don't pay any attention to the dresses, the jewels, or the red carpet stuff, but I do enjoy a good acceptance speech.  The best include humility, humor and something (anything!) unexpected.

The director of the short animated film Mr. Hublot was especially touching. He was so nervous that he read his thanks from a paper, which usually means a robotic reading.  However, the hand holding the paper shook during his entire speech.  Proof if it was needed how moving the moment must be.

One of my favorite moments from last night included the introduction from the writing awards, spoken by Robert DeNiro (and written by ?).  For those of you who missed it, here's what he said:

"The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing.  

Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, 

and consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing,
and soul-crushing inadequacy.  

And that's on a good day!"

So true, so true.

Kickstarter

So, as far as I know, Kickstarter is this website that helps people raise money for their projects.  I have read about it (but not really understood it).  I know that the Veronica Mars movie raised money on the site, and Ken Levine wrote a column that went viral, but I don't really remember what it was about.

But the craziest thing happened the other day.  I now actually know someone who is raising funds through kickstarter.  Who?  It's Chris the Bartender! He's trying to raise money for better cameras and microphones and other stuff (don't really know what) for his flair bartending videos. Check out his kickstarter site if you're curious.  It's got a fun video and lots of information that won't stay in my head.  So far Chris has 23 backers and has raised over $700.  Impressive.

To be honest, I have zero interest in flair bartending, but Chris is a super nice guy and it makes me feel cool to personally know someone who has a kickstarter page.  Yes, that's right.  I'm claiming coolness by association. Here's an example of one of his youtube videos.

This cool by association feeling I have reminds me about how I felt when I realized I personally knew someone that had a wikipedia page.  (That's my cousin Tom Henry, the mayor of Fort Wayne.)

Now I just need to kickstart my own campaign or get my own wikipedia page.  That would make me supercool!

February is a Short Month

It wasn't until I was scheduling yesterday's blog post late Thursday night that I realized that yesterday was the last day of February.  It snuck up on me, and it was late enough in the evening that I wanted to go to bed instead of creating a new post recapping February.  So here is the look back at February from the first day of March.

triscuitboo comments on my road trip that she HATES driving in the snow.  I hate it too, even though I should be getting better at it since this winter we've been getting LOTS of practice. I have to admit, though, that as a native Californian my initial reaction to any and all snow is joy. It doesn't seem to matter if I have to drive in it, shovel it or get to gaze at it from my cozy house.  My heart leaps at every snowflake.

tRa is mystified that we didn't use our skis or snowshoes for our hike into or out of our winter cabin weekend.  All I can say is that doing the herringbone uphill for over half a mile would be painful.

As far as snowshoes go, they're heavy and we were lazy and the road was mostly well-packed enough that we didn't need them.

My honey has used our bacon grease to condition our cast iron cookware. He gives it two thumbs up!

On a sad note, I was informed that Alice Herz-Sommer, the pianist who survived the Holocaust passed away on February 23rd.  She was 110 years old when she died. Her obituary in the New York Times reinforces the impression I got from the documentary that I reviewed.

She was a unique individual and an amazing woman.  I hope her documentary wins the Academy Award tomorrow night. It would be a nice tribute to staying positive in life up until the end.