Things that may or may not interest you
This is one of the most hysterical clips I have ever seen. It’s from Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.
STOP IT. STOP IT. STOP IT. Janice I’m falling! Janice I’m falling! AHHH This HURTS THIS HURTS THIS HURTS THIS HURTS THIS HURTS ARRRRR!!!
My favorite part is at :38 when Janice tells him “You’re going to die!!!!!” I’m guessing he won’t be going on this ever again.
I was searching around YouTube today looking for music videos from Utada Hikaru, especially “First Love”. It’s one of my favorite songs, even though most of it is in Japanese. If you haven’t heard of Utada Hikaru, I strongly suggest checking her out.
While searching YouTube, I stumbled upon a fascinating video of this woman from Paris, Noella, doing a cover of “First Love”. I almost like Noella’s version better than Utada’s.
Noella also has several videos of her covering different songs and even one on how to play “First Love” on the guitar. Very entertaining and interesting.
Last week Sayra and I were shopping at the York Galleria. We were shopping for a swimsuit for me to take to Miami, but as usual, we spent most of our time shopping for women’s clothes for Sayra from PacSun and Victoria’s Secret.
Eventually our search for the swimsuit took us to the Men’s department of JC Penney. It was there that I stumbled upon a brand new line of clothing. It’s called American Living. This line is exclusive to only JC Penney. They have both a men’s and women’s line, but we only shopped in the men’s department.
The shirts are really cool looking. The logo for the clothes is a bald eagle holding an American flag. I like this logo a lot better than some stupid moose or a polo player on a horse. They also have both jeans and khakis. Both of these also have the eagle logo.
After much debate, Sayra put her foot down and would not let me buy any of the clothes. The shirts went for about $40 a piece and the jeans were about $50 each. Her point was that for the same price I could get a much higher quality and more recognizable name brand like Polo or Nautica. I think it was because she didn’t like the eagle logo. I used to have an American flag rugby shirt and she donated it behind my back.
So I had finally come to terms with not getting any American Living clothes when, guess what I saw during Idol on Tuesday night …….. a commercial for American Living. Now I want it more than ever. I just know that this is going to be the new “it” thing and I want to be in on the ground floor. I think I’ll go back to the mall without Sayra and buy a shirt or two. How do you think I ended up getting my Heeleys?
I can not stop thinking about Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken. Let me explain.
About two weeks ago Sayra and I spent the day with my parents shopping at the Outlets in Leesburg, VA. That night heading home, we had dinner at Carrabba’s Italian Grill. I was very tempted to order the seafood pasta, but Sayra had ordered it and I knew that she would let me try hers.
I ended up playing it safe and ordering the Pasta Carrabba which is basically Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken. Carrabba’s usually puts mushrooms and peas in theirs, but I ordered it plain.
The overall experience at Carrabba’s gets two huge thumbs up, but this dish especially scored a huge A++. Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken has always been one of my favorite italian meals, but this was remarkably good. It wasn’t watery like some alfredos are. It was rich and creamy and had a very generous portion of chicken.
The portion sizes here were so big that everyone ended up taking some of their food home except my Dad. He literally licked his plate.
Fast forward to this past Sunday. My parents were up in York visiting and we decided to go out for dinner. I was the one driving, so I got to choose where we went. Carrabba’s was too far away, so I choose the Olive Garden.
I wouldn’t have thought that we could have matched the experience we had in Leesburg, but we actually topped it. I can’t rave enough about how much I enjoyed this dinner. Everything from our table, to our server, to the food quality was top notch. Rainforest Cafe – I hope your reading this.
Of course, I ordered the Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken and surprisingly it actually surpassed Carrabba’s. It was wonderful, especially accompanied with the warm soft breadsticks that Olive Garden gives you. I also ended up taking part of it home and eating it after work on Monday night.
Now it’s Thursday afternoon and I’m off of work and all I can think about is wanting Fettuccine Alfredo with Chicken for lunch. Maybe I’ll place a togo order with Olive Garden and go pick it up.
With the combination of my home theater system and the fact that movies now come out on DVD and Blu-Ray within only a few months of their theatrical release, I haven’t actually seen a movie in theaters in over two years. The last movie I saw in theaters was Episode III Revenge of the Sith.
I think I just may have to break that streak on May 22nd with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I don’t think I’ll be able to wait the few months for it to come out on disc.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is one of my all-time favorite movies and this one looks to be just as good. Sean Connery will not be returning as Henry Jones, Sr., but Karen Allen will be reprising her role as Marion Ravenwood from Raiders of the Lost Ark. This movie is going to be awesome. I’ve already got the date marked in my calender.
Here is something funny that Justyna sent me.
This table was for sale on eBay. How can you tell it is being sold by a man? Can you solve this little riddle? First look and guess.
You will find the answer below, but don’t cheat!
Know the answer? OK, Look in the mirror.
Remember, if you are posting a picture on the world wide web, WEAR CLOTHES when taking the picture.
I want to first put up a disclaimer before I start this restaurant review. I was in the hospitality industry for several years. I was a restaurant manager with both Outback and Applebee’s, so I’m usually a lot more lenient and understanding when I go out to eat because I know how hard restaurant jobs can sometimes be. That being said, if I’m complaining or criticizing a restaurant, then it must really be bad.
Tuesday afternoon, Sayra and I found ourselves shopping in Towson Town Center for a dress for her to take to Miami. It was around 3:00 and we were getting kind of hungry, so we decided to grab lunch at the mall. The selections at the TTC (Towson Town Center, not the Ticket and Transportation center) are the Rainforest Cafe, TGI Fridays, Bahama Breeze, and the food court. We had decided to give the Rainforest Cafe a shot. I have eaten at the one in the MGM Grand and remembered it being OK.
When this place first opened in Towson years ago, you couldn’t get in. It wouldn’t be uncommon to be quoted a 3-4 hour wait. When we went on Tuesday, there were only 3 tables sat in the entire restaurant. That should have been our first sign that things had gone down hill. We were given pretty much our choice of any table in the place, so we chose a big circular booth by the waterfall.
This is where I’m going to start my little rant. Rainforest Cafe is a major chain, not some small mom & pop establishment. There is no excuse for ripped booths, broken tables, and general disrepair issues. It’s not a matter of budget, but a matter of apathy amongst that site’s management team.I found this restaurant to be absolutely filthy.
I can overlook poor service or mediocre food, but there is no excuse for a dirty restaurant. If you were to run your hand along the side of the table, you would feel grime and build up that’s probably been there for weeks. The table we sat at was huge, for about 6-8 people, and the entire table all the way around had this grime. Like I mentioned before, the booth was coming apart, so I reached behind the cushion to pull it forward and felt all kind of dirt and build up back there as well.
Sayra would be really upset if I made a scene or asked for a manager, so I just bit my tongue and didn’t say anything. If a manager had come around and visited our table, I would have pointed these things out. Of course, no manager was ever spotted anytime during our entire visit. One thing I would refuse to do was to use any of their flatware. If they can’t clean their tables, I’m sure not going to trust that they can wash their silverware correctly. I asked our waitress for “togo” cutlery and used that to eat our entire meal.
I can’t even remember the name of our server. I can’t say anything good or bad about her. The service was just adequate, nothing great but nothing special.
Sayra wanted to get an appetizer. I really didn’t care what we got, so I let her pick it out. She ordered the Awesome Appetizer Adventure. It consisted of crab dip, calamari, chicken fingers, and “chimi-cha-chas”. I’ll quickly review each item individually. The crab dip was nasty (especially considering this is in MD). It had a horrible onion aftertaste. Both the calamari and chicken fingers were the normal “frozen then fried” items that you can find in any grocery store. I didn’t even try the “chimis”, but they also appear have been a frozen then fried item.
The thing about the app that really irritated me was that the honey mustard was hot. Not spicy hot, but temperature hot. After stirring it, the bottom was still cold. If I were to guess, this ramekin of honey mustard probably sat in the hot window for 10 minutes while the appetizer was being prepared. There were only 3 tables in the entire restaurant and they couldn’t even pour a ramekin of honey mustard to order. This appetizer cost $13.99. Not very “Awesome”.
For my entree, I order the Pastalaya. I’m kinda embarrassed to say this, but I actually enjoyed it. It was shrimp, sauteed chicken breast, bell peppers, onions and Andouille sausage tossed in a hot and spicy Cajun sauce and served over linguine.
The menu stated that it was spicy and our server also warned me that it was spicy. They were both right, but I still enjoyed it. I found the portion to be very big and the proteins to be very plentiful. I ended up taking some of this home and eating it the next day.
Sayra ordered the Rainforest Paella. It consisted of hearty portions of bacon, Andouille sausage, chicken, fish, shrimp, mussels, calamari, red and green peppers, and onions all sauteed and simmered with saffron rice in a seafood sauce. To put it mildly, she HATED it. She said it just had an “off” flavor and left a horrible taste in her mouth.
Sayra is Spanish, so she knows what paella should taste like and this was practically inedible. This dish was so overloaded with onions and peppers that she took most of them off and they filled up an entire app plate. She took it home for Fernando and he wouldn’t even eat it, that’s how bad it was.
By this point, neither of us wanted any desert, just to get out of there. Our waitress brought us our check which came to $59 and change. What a ripoff!!! After tip, I spent $70 for less than mediocre food in a dirty restaurant. I will NEVER return here.
For the past several months, I’ve noticed that the pit where my sump pump is has had water visibly inside it. Sometimes when it rained, water would actually overflow out. I’d had the sump pump replaced about 2 years ago, when I first moved in, so I just figured that the sewers were slow or something stupid like that. Obviuosly I don’t know very much about plumbing.
Fast forward to Tuesday night. Southern PA got hit with a really bad storm. It down-poured for hours and hours. Wednesday morning, Sayra and I left the house early to go shopping for her dress for Miami. The plan was to go to my parents house, then from there go to the outlets in Leesburg, Va. We made it about a mile down the Susquehanna Trail, when we noticed that the stream along the road was totally flooded out. This house’s whole backyard was actually one big pond.
That’s when I suddenly remembered the basement. Sayra called Fernando, who hadn’t left for school yet, and asked him to check it for us. He said that there was a lot of water and that we should turn around.
We returned home about 5 minutes later to a fully flooded basement. There was water wall-to-wall about 2 inches deep.
Luckily most of the stuff in the basement is in plastic bins, which are waterproof. There is a lot of other stuff though which got soaked. There were several suitcases, our Christmas tree, a vacuum cleaner, and some furniture which all got trashed.
I immediately called Gemcraft and they gave me a number of a plumber that they work with in the area: Groff’s Plumbing. Of course, the house is 2.5 years old now and is out of warranty, so I would have to pay out of pocket for the service.
I called Groff’s and they had a plumber out to the house within a few hours. Mike was the plumber that Groff’s had sent out and I couldn’t say enough good things about him. He was very friendly and he really took the time to explain everything to us about what had happened and what we should do in the future. If anyone from Groff’s reads this, please give a shout-out to Mike. He was awesome.
Mike had to replace the sump pump. The old one was completely shot. It had totally blown out. Once Mike had the new sump pump in and we were able to get most of the water out of the basement, we discovered what had happened.
It turns out that when the house was built, neither the construction crew (Gemcraft) nor the installation plumber (John Walker) had cleaned out the sump pit. There was a ton of construction debris in the pit, such as clamps, wood, nails, and a big plastic bag of washers and joints. This debris got stuck under the float of the old pump and caused it to keep running dry and eventually burn itself out. My pump had probably burned out months ago because it ran for 8 hours after installation. There was that much water under my house.
Mike said that he sees this a lot, although usually not as bad as mine. There is always a controversy over whose responsibility it is to clean out the pit, the builder or the plumber. The plumber doesn’t want to do it because a lot of time the construction guys are throwing trash in the pit or literally pissing down there. According to Mike, it is the responsibility of the builder to clean it out.
The bill from Groff’s was $413.00. That included $298 for the pump and installation, $65 to run and get a pump (Mike didn’t have one on his truck), and $50 for a trip charge. I begrudgingly paid the bill, with every intention to contact Gemcraft in the morning.
I called Gemcraft Thursday morning and the operator kept dumping me into Pat Moxley’s VM. Pat was the person whom I had talked to on Wednesday, but I didn’t want to leave a VM. I wanted a live person that I could talk to. I called Sayra and she looked up the name of the service manager in the binder we got when we bought the house.
I called back, entered the extension of the service manager, and was able to speak live with Brian Davis. He was nice enough I guess. I explained the situation to him. Of course, he blamed the plumber, John Walker. I saw that one coming from a mile away. He claims that it is the responsibilty of the plumber to clean and seal the pit.
He asked if there was anything written on the invoice from Groff’s that specifically mentioned construction debris. Luckily, Mike had covered all our bases and he had written clear as day that the problem was 100% the fault of the builder.
Brian asked me to fax the invoice from Groff’s over to him and he would get with his supervisor to see if they could reimburse me the $413. That was 8 hours ago and I never heard back from them!!! I’ll give you one guess who I’m calling first thing tomorrow morning. Hopefully I can get this resolved without having to take legal action, but I am not getting stuck with this bill when another company was clearly negligent.
| Adj. | 1. | cheesed off – greatly annoyed; out of patience; browned off, exasperated, displeased – not pleased; experiencing or manifesting displeasure (of Brittish origin) |
According to Dipika, saying “cheesed off” is currently all the rage in London, so of course, I’ve been using it every chance I can get. See if you can use it at least 3x today.
