Today in Town

Well, today's wolf encounter was very disappointing compared to last year.  The wolf was penned in behind fencing where he and his handler sat and talked to people hanging around the outside.  He's still not an adult wolf and is really only about a year into his role as ambassador.  So, I guess they're trying to make sure he feels secure.  Maybe last year was too much for him.  But the nature center that sponsored the event also had some other groups present with educational tables.  A Game and Fish guy was there.  I saw maps where various Mexican Grey Wolf packs hang out in our area.  I learned that the Mexican Greys are on the smaller side of wolf sizes. Turns out those two smallish wolf-looking canines I saw silently running about 20 yards from me and my two unleashed dogs early one morning about 8 years ago could very well have been wolves.  Wow!  And that shockingly large"dog" print in the snow many years ago could also have been a wolf track.  I had dismissed it at the time because a friend said that wolf tracks are about as wide as a woman's fist.  This one wasn't that large and I didn't know if had melted any, thus spreading it bigger than the paw that made it.  But today I saw track impressions that were smaller than the standard huge wolf print, so maybe it was.  Pretty exciting to think I saw two wolves right on our property.  I'm very glad my dogs didn't see them!

I ended up spending ALL day in town, though that was not the plan.  I had such exciting things to do as go to nearly every store here on the mountain including  K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Big Lots, (some of the finer establishments so well known to small towns!), Safeway, and Home Depot.  Not to mention stopping for an early lunch and later on stopping for dinner because I was STILL there, stopping by the quilt store to pick out my border fabric, and hitting the kettle corn stand in the Safeway parking lot.  (When we did our This-Is-A-Brilliant-Idea, But-Utterly-Failed Kettle Corn Adventure in Alaska in 2006 this local guy was the one that taught us the ropes....so I stopped by to say Hi....and got a free bag out of it! Nice guy.  Must still feel sorry for us.)

But the BIG event of my very long trip into town was that on a whim I stopped by The Movie Gallery, a rental place that's going out of business.  I stopped by about 5 weeks ago and things were discounted quite a bit but prices were still in the $7.50 range.  Today I thought that surely things had been marked down again and I'd check it out since I'd been forgetting every other time I'd been in town.  My first clue should have been that the parking lot was nearly full.  But, fried as I was from 8 hours of running around, I didn't catch on.  I walked in and though the shelves were nearly bare, there were these wonderful hot pink signs over 90% of the shelves that said: 50 cents.  50 CENTS!  Hey, for 50 cents, I'll try movies I've never heard of.  Apparently everyone else in the store was thinking the same thing.  People had STACKS of DVDs.  And, well, a certain blogger did, too.

 I bought some completely unknown movies to gamble on (hey, it's only 50 cents, right) and some interesting titles like Saint of 9/11 (the story of the priest who rushed to the scene of 9/11 to pray and serve and was killed when one of the towers collapsed),  The Ron Clark Story (an awesome true story about a teacher who believed the rebellious and failing students of an inner city school could actually excel in learning),  Sometimes in April (based on a true story of two brothers and the horrible conflict in Rwanda),  John Adams (an HBO mini-series about the second president...Oops!  I just looked closely at the DVD and it says 'Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.  Dang! Have to go back!)

 I bought Ambulance Girl, the story of a writer whose life is falling apart and decides to become an EMT - based on another real story.  And Shop Girl.   Shop Girl is a remake of the original movie The Shop Around the Corner starring Jimmy  Stewart and Margaret Sullivan.  If "Shop Girl" and "The Shop Around the Corner" make you think of the movie, You've Got Mail with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks...you're thinking rightly.  You've Got Mail was also a remake of the movie, The Shop Around the Corner.  In the original movie, the man and woman were pen-pals and actually worked in the same gift shop but didn't know the other was the pen-pal they were falling in love with.  In You've Got Mail, they meet in an online chat room.  Meg Ryan's character's handle is "Shop Girl" and she owns a bookstore named "The Shop Around the Corner."  It's one of my all-time favorite movies so I thought it would be fun to see how another rendition does it. [*Update: This movie was NOT a remake of the old Shop Around the Corner and You've Got Mail. It was something completely different, a story written-and starred in-by Steve Martin. It was a disappointment.]

I tried to grab a bunch of action/adventure titles for The Fisherman, but it was difficult.  To me, they all looked unappealing.  I did my best to follow what I know of his interests and, of course, his values, and steered clear of the highly thriller, victim, or evil predator type story lines.  Which didn't leave many on these picked over shelves.  But I went with some good and favorite actors like Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Val Kilmer.  I also found some movies that had a distinct Christian sound to them.  Good wholesome sounding films about people finding faith.  And then I bought a bunch of chick flicks!

Because I had to stand in line for over an hour, though I was behind a mere 5 people, I didn't get home till close to 9pm.  Had an almost immediate visit from one cute little raccoon on the front porch, and have been hanging out on Facebook, email, and now here.  Nearly midnight...so, goodnight all!

Lunch In A Very Small Town

(There's more Ethiopia photos coming but I felt the need to post today's very small town experience.)

I accompanied a friend to court today.  She was called to testify at a custody hearing and the courthouse is 50 miles away.  I went to keep her company and give her support in this unpleasant task that was forced upon her.

When it was over and we were on our way out of the small town that is our county seat, we saw a sign that said "24 Flavors of Soft Serve."  Wow!  24 different flavors of soft serve ice cream?  That's worth a stop.  We've never seen such a vast soft serve menu before.  We said, "This must be the Baskin Robbins of soft serve!" (BR is aka "31 Flavors".) We had to check it out. 

We turned around, pulled in and parked.  Immediately upon getting out of the car we both saw and smelled the bar-be-que cooking in a big outdoor smoker on one side of the building.  It smelled great!  I guess this little ice cream joint serves BBQ, too, I thought.

First order of business was a restroom stop.  Women's door said: "Out of Order."  No problem, we used the Men's.

Next, let's check out this soft serve and maybe think about having a BBQ lunch, as well.  24 flavors of soft serve...hmmmmm.  Wait, how come there's only one machine?  Turns out their big sign out front boasting 24 flavors actually meant, well, ONE flavor, but with the option of 23 "mix-ins".  Mixed in and churned around in their milk shake style mixer what they essentially had was 24 Blizzards like at Dairy Queen.  We decided we needed some lunch first and proceeded to become TOTALLY CONFUSED by the menu boards posted above our heads. 

One side of the menu said: 

BBQ

Tuesday and Friday Only

and listed all the BBQ options. 

The other side of the menu said:

Not Served >> Mexican Food<< After 8:00 PM

Monday                      Thursday    Saturday

Wait.  Does that mean Mexican food is not served on Monday, Thursday and Saturday? Does that mean Mexican food is not served after 8:00pm on Monday, Thursday and Saturday?

Today's Wednesday.  We should be able to get Mexican food, right? And, it's before 8:00 PM. anyway.

And we smelled that awesome BBQ outside.  What's up with that?  That's what we really wanted but it wasn't a Tuesday or Friday.  But hmmmm, they've got it outside....  We went ahead and asked.   "So...we CAN'T get BBQ today?"

"Oh, yeh.  You can get BBQ today.    Except you can't.    Because it's not ready."

It was 11:30 a.m.   Standard lunch realm if I'm not mistaken.

Ahhhh......small towns!

"OK, what about Mexican food? Can we get Mexican food?"

"No. No Mexican food today."  But it's not after 8:00 PM!  And Wednesday is not listed among the Not Served days. (Maybe "Wednesday" fell off from the gap between Monday and Thursday?)

So here we are on a Wednesday, trying to figure out what in the heck this restaurant serves and when.

What about Wednesday at this BBQ/Mexican Food/Ice Cream joint? 

Wednesday is simply not mentioned.  Tuesday, Friday (BBQ Only days, remember), Monday, Thursday and Saturday....  Huh?  What about Wednesday?  Today is WEDNESDAY people!  (And who KNOWS about Sunday?!  Maybe they're closed Sundays.) 

And yet, on this Wednesday that is not a Tuesday or Friday, we COULD get BBQ.   (Wait...I'm REALLY confused now.)

IF it was ready.  Which it wasn't. 

So, though we COULD have had BBQ on this nowhere mentioned Wednesday, we actually could NOT because, well, it wasn't ready yet, even though it was lunch time.  And we could NOT get Mexican food even though it was before 8:00 pm and the sign seemed to indicate Wednesday was a Mexican food day. 

These two options pretty much summed up the menu we were looking at.  Huh?  But it's Wednesday!  What about Wednesday?  At this point I began to wonder if Wednesday might be an ice cream only day.

Both of us totally confused and frustrated, I finally, with a surprising degree of presence of mind given our situation, asked, "If we wanted to eat lunch here today, WHAT COULD WE HAVE?

The girl behind the counter pointed to a menu behind her listing basic burgers and fried foods - a menu that we had no chance of even noticing before because,
1. it was below eye level,
2. she was pretty much standing in front of it, and
3. every inch of the walls seemed to be plastered with hand written signs, posters, and lists to such a point that you pretty much wrote off the whole behind-the-counter area as way too complicated for your brain to even gather any information from.

Brains fried, we decided to go somewhere else for lunch and then come back for ice cream. It was such a rapid-fire confusion that only in the typing of this have I figured out the Mexican food side of the menu SHOULD have read:

Mexican Food - Monday, Thursday, Saturday

Not served after 8:00 PM

Next we went to the other end of town (a whole 2 minutes away) and found a Mexican restaurant my friend had been to once before.  Laughing and talking about our previous fiasco we looked at the menu and made our selections.  I was going to have the Chicken Chimichanga and my friend was going to have a Chicken Tostada.  We got half way through our order, and were even asked a couple of questions about it, before the waitress interrupted with her sudden recollection:

"Oh!  I forgot!  We're out of chicken."

Are you serious?  How could a restaurant be out of chicken? 

How could a mexican restaurant be out of chicken? And it's only Wednesday, for crying out loud!  We quickly made other choices and settled in for another round of giggles and disbelief.

Back for our ice cream we went.  We were tempted to ask if the BBQ was ready yet.  When I received my Heath Bar "flavor" of soft serve ice cream I pulled the spoon out to take my first bite.  The pattern of ice cream left on the spoon looked to my friend like I'd been given a fork rather than a spoon.  We had another big laugh over how perfectly hilarious it would have been if it were indeed a fork and we'd been told, "We're out of spoons."

So there you have it.  My escapade at trying to have lunch in very small town.  On a Wednesday.