Classic Dishes...



Mainly On The Plain

It’s the rainy season here in Seattle. Now, I like rain (hell, I wouldn’t have moved here if I didn’t), but this particular set of rainstorms has been annoying, because I get to stand in it.

I haven’t really had to before. My parking space at my apartment complex is covered, and stays covered until I’m inside, so most of my experience with rain here has been running between the drops to and from my car when I go someplace. And really, for as much crap as Seattle takes over the whole rain thing, most of the time it’s just a light drizzle, it never really comes down that hard. Most folks just ignore it.

However, with my new job, I have now become a bus rider, because I don’t feel like paying out the ass to park in the garage at the building I work in downtown. It’s actually worked out pretty well; I found a nice quiet little Park & Ride lot a mile from my place. It’s a church parking lot, which they make available for commuter parking during the week…really kinda smart of them to take the check from the King County Transit people to use their lot during a time when the majority of it isn’t being used anyhow. And the bus I catch goes straight to my building, pretty much, so no transfers to worry about. Not bad at all.

But now it’s raining, and the bus stop isn’t one of those ones with the little shelter at it so you can stay out of the rain. So for the last week or so, when it HAS been coming down hard enough that you notice it, I’ve been standing there in the morning, getting drenched, thinking “Wow, this sucks.”

But no more, my friends, for the rainy season is about to end. I am not a meteorologist and I hold no NWA certifications whatsoever (feel free to insert a Dr. Dre joke here), but I can tell you with confidence that there will at the VERY least be no rain between the hours of 7:30A and 9:00A, and between 5:00P and 6:30P or so, for the remainder of the winter.

Last night, you see, I bought an umbrella. I think of it as rain insurance. Fifteen bucks for the guarantee of dry mornings? Sold American.

So to all of you outdoorsy types, and my fellow commuters, all of y’all who have been suffering because of the wet weather, I say to you: you’re welcome.

(Oh, by the way, I forgot it leaving the house this morning. So it will come down torrentially tonight. Sorry about that.)

None Of The Work, All Of The Credit

While I don’t consider myself a HUGE football fan, I’m at least tangentially interested enough to follow the local Seattle Seahawks from week to week, and I’ll usually watch the playoffs and the Super Bowl. I don’t stay glued to the set all day Sunday, but I’ll play the hell out of a football videogame. I’m that kind of fan.

One of the interesting things about the game is, because of the one-game-a-week nature of the season, if a team does well enough over the course of the year, the last game or two becomes completely and totally meaningless, and you don’t get to see any of the big stars play because they’re being rested for games that matter more. Such is how it’s playing out for the Seahawks this year, who by virtue of a 13-2 record have won their division and are guaranteed to have home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs. As a result, sometime in the fourth quarter of the game against the Colts last week, when it was pretty obvious we were going to win, all of the first-string players were pulled out and the benchwarmers got to mop up in garbage time.

The point of all of this backstory? Well, one of the big stories of the Seahawks this season has been running back Shawn Alexander chasing the record for most touchdowns in a season, which was set by Priest Holmes of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2003. Holmes found the end zone 27 times that year. And up to that exact moment in the game, Alexander had 26.

So the ‘Hawks recover a fumble and the scrubs drive all the way down the field to the Colts’ 1-yard line. And Alexander, who has been sitting on the sidelines for this entire drive drinking Gatorade, gets a slap on the butt and is sent into the game to run the ball in for Record-Tying Touchdown #27, at which point he returns to the bench and picks up his Gatorade again.

And this Sunday, in a COMPLETELY meaningless game against Green Bay, a game that Alexander will likely otherwise not even play in, I’m guessing that if the same situation comes up, he’ll be sent out to run the ball Yet Another Yard to break the record, and everyone will celebrate him like it’s some vast achievement.

So let’s recap this: Someone ELSE does the work for 99 yards, and then this guy gets put in to move the ball three feet? _I_ could move the ball three feet.

What good is keeping track of this record if it’s so easily hacked like this? Why not keep some guy on the bench whose LONE JOB it is to run the ball in every time they are on the 1-yard line?

Football specializes everything else; every team has a guy whose only job it is to snap the ball to the punter. No other time, just when it needs to be snapped a long way ‘cuz the punter stands back some. Why not this? I would be more than happy to be the Seahawks’ designated Three Feet Guy, and for a whole damn lot less than most of these guys pull down.

Un-Fair Warning

Tonight I made a frozen lasagna I picked up at the store last night for dinner, because I’ve spent much of the rest of the day doing my holiday candymaking and didn’t want to have to worry about making something more complicated.

A few minutes ago, I was packing up the leftovers (the other advantage to frozen lasagna is that it leaves behind plenty of leftovers to take to work for lunch during the week), and as I finished transferring the final piece to Tupperware, I noticed the following, imprinted dead-center in the bottom of the pan:

ALWAYS SUPPORT THE BOTTOM

While I appreciate their concern, and their desire to keep me from spilling lasagna all over my kitchen floor as a result of picking up a flimsy foil pan, I feel it necessary to point something out here:

When the pan is EMPTY, and you are able to read this message, there is no need to support it.

When the pan is FULL, and therefore requires some extra support, the cook will never see this warning. BECAUSE THERE IS LASAGNA IN THE WAY.

I’m not sure what appalls me more: that someone came up with this idiotic idea, or that someone ELSE approved it.