Why did the bird walk across the road?

So I saw a bird (a Starling I believe) walk across a road, 2 lanes. There were cars coming both ways so he was booking it to make it without getting crushed. It was highly amusing to see his little stick legs going so fast they were a blur. He made it across and all I could think of was 'You're a freaking bird! Why are you walking across the street when you have wings? All that I can think of was that he's been watching too many extreme sports and dodging cars was as close as he could come.

Remembrance: The Cheesy Bacon Tendercrisp

I wanted to take a moment, take off my hat and give a moment of silence to quite possibly the greatest fast-food sandwich ever. The cheesy bacon tendercrisp from Burger King. I'm struck today by what was lost because, in an effort to have it my way, I went to BK and got a #6, king size with cheese. And while the standard tendercrisp is quite delicious, it pales in comparison to the cheesy bacon tendercrisp of lore. For those of you who are unfortunate enough to have never gazed at the beauty and tasted the delictibalness of the CBT, I silently weep for you and yet envy your ignorance. To achieve CBT greatness, it takes 3, yes 3, kinds of cheese. American, peperjack and a delicious cheesy sauce. 3 slices of bacon (if memory serves) and then the normal tendercrisp fixin (lettuce, tomato, etc). It was so good that I would eat the lettuce that fell off the sandwich just beccuase it had cheesy sauce on it. Yeah, it's that good. Once, I ate 3 in one day. That was a glorious day. The great thing about it was that unlike most megaburgers, you didn't want to die after gorging. It was perfect. Oh well, better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.

There's a wiki, for those that are interested in the history of the tendercrisp: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TenderCrisp

There's also a petition to try to bring it back: http://www.petitiononline.com/a17648/petition.html

911?

If you work in an office where you have to dial '9' to get an outside line, to dial 911, do you really have to dial 9911?

Pacers piss me off!!!

You know who these people are. They drive in the fast lane, maybe a little above the speed limit. That is, until they come upon another car. Then, for reasons unknown to me, they freeze up. Perhaps they're reading a bumper sticker. Maybe she's cute. Could be that there's a kid in the back see that looks like he's going to through his happy meal out the window. Who knows. What matters is that the person will not pass. Oh no, they slow down so that they're going about the same speed while a line of cars builds up behind them. Sometimes they'll speed up, but only until they're even or a little ahead and then they'll slow down. These self-proclaimed traffic cops seem to have taken it upon themselves to protect us from getting anywhere quickly. It makes me want to go all gta4 and pit-maneuver them out of my way! I got stuck behind one this morning. 55mph, wide open highway in front. 3 cars wide. It made me wish I had a gobbler....

Wouldn't it be great to use those massive arms to grab the car and flip it over behind you like a pancake? Ahhh... the commuting fantasy...

Burgers so good that they hurt

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!

I love cheeseburgers. They're positively delicious. Especially with bacon. So good.... So, what could be better than a burger with an excessive amount of cheese and bacon?! Such was the rationale that led to adventure below.

It started as an idea, but then again, doesn't it always? I love bacon on my burger, but it always slides off so I get some bites with lots of bacon, some without any. It's frustrating. So, I thought that the best way to solve it would be to have the bacon infused throughout the burger. I haven't had the problem with cheese on burgers, but though, while infusing bacon, why not cheese too! Below are the steps to recreate the masterpiece. I've only done it once. It was incredible, but hurt a little bit.

Ingredients:
80/20 ground beef
1 box bacon - I use ready to serve because it's easy and still pretty good
1 block of Velveeta
Milk
Buns - I prefer Martin's potato rolls. If you haven't had them, you should. they're fantastic.

1 - The Meats
Some may object, but I don't really care. Burgers should be made with 80/20 or better meat. If you go for 93/7 or something 'healthy', you lose the flavor. Besides, if you're cooking on a grill or Foreman, most of the fat drips off anyways, leaving behind only delicious flavor.

The other meat that you'll need is the bacon. I went the easy way and got the ready-to-use bacon that you microwave. I cooked it a bit longer than usual so that it would be nice and crispy. You can make any kind of bacon and I'm preferential to maple. Once it's all cooked up, let it cool for a little bit and then break it up into little chunks and put it into a bowl.

2 - The joining of the meats
Combine your meats in the bowl making sure to thoroughly mix the bacon and ground beef so that it's relatively evenly mixed. Now, you are ready to make your patties. I grab a handful of meat/bacon and roll it into a ball. You can size them however you like, but because the 80/20 cooks down well, I err on the big side, probably making 1lb. burgers.

You're probably wondering why I make them into a ball instead of into a patty. The reason is simple, it's easy and you can size them similarly and quickly. Once you have the mix all rolled out, you need to split each one in half. Once you have them halved, make each half into a patty and press a little dimple into each side.

3 - Here comes the cheese!
Next slice off cubes of velveeta. They don't have to be terribly big, probably about the size of the end of your thumb. Place the cube into one of the little dimples and then flip the other half on top so that the cube is held in a little pocket between the two patties. Press around the edges to seal the two together and take your time. You want it to be well sealed so that your cheesy treasure doesn't escape.

4 - Cookin!
At this point, there are two things that need to be cooked. The first is the burgers and the second is a vat of molten cheese.

The burgers can be cooked just like any other burgers. Just keep an eye on them so that if cheese starts to come out, you can let it cool down for a bit or flip it as needed. You can cook them to taste, but I prefer it to be slightly pink in the middle so that you don't get that dried out taste.

The Velveeta is best attacked by cubing it up, the smaller the better, just so that it melts faster and more evenly. Put it in a bowl and splash some milk in. The more milk you put in, the runnier it will be so it's better to put a little in and add more later to taste. When microwaving Velveeta, it's best to go a little bit at a time. I nuke for 1 minute, stir, 1 minute, stir, add milk, stirr, nuke, etc until I'm happy with it.

5 - Eating
Now, you might be tempted to just devour your burgers, but then what was the point of the molten vat of Velveeta? This is the point that separates the men from the boys. Take a fork and impale your burger, then plunge it into your cheese vat. Make sure that it is well coated then lift and hold over the vat allowing the excess to drain off. Now, place it on your bun. If done properly, it looks like a cheese wheel. At this point, you can add your condiments of choice and go to down. A suggestion though. Eat one. If you can finish one and after about 10 minute you want another, go for it, but if you crush one and immediately dive into the second, you may be in trouble! Don't say I didn't warn you.

Pinata death scene

This is an idea for Halloween that I'm going to try. The vision is epic. It's a pinata death scene. First, start with a pintata, lay it on the ground and surround it with an outline (I'm going to use masking tape since it's an office). Then, pick up the pinata and sprinkle candy over the outline. Then, the plan is to place several pinata's around the outline as if in mourning. Possibly light a few candles. Have a bat lying nearby. I'm excited. :D

There's a new Foreman on the job

One of the best ways to make food in the office is to bring in a George Foreman grill. I've made all kinds of things in the office (and at home of course) on this jack-of-all-grills. Of course there are the standard burgers, dogs, brats, etc etc that you can make. These all have the wonderful effect of emanating throughout the office, making even the most die-hard health nut or staunches vegetarian salivate. But what do you do when you're tired of the same-ol' same-ol'?

Quesadillas. Now, it takes a little bit of care when making quesadillas on a foreman. First off, they're fantastically slanted which makes draining grease great, but that really works against you when you're trying to make a quesadilla. The last thing that you want is your queso sliding out of your dilla. There's remedy to this and it comes with your foreman. It's the grease tray. Simply flip it upside down, rest the front legs on it and padow! flat grill! Now, on to actually making the dilla. What you want to do first is grill the meat. I like the pre-cooked, pre-sliced, pre-flavored chicken. It's easy, doesn't make much mess and it's tasty. After you've toasted that up, next you move on to the tortillas. You'll want to toast these so that they just start to bubble and crisp. Also, make sure that you flip them so that they're nicely toasted on both sides. Once you've got them all toasted, it's dilla makin' time! Put the toasted dilla on the grill, sprinkle a little cheese on it (I like 4-cheese mexican by Kraft), put your chicken on there (sauteed mushrooms are also fantastic, but still more work... more of a home dilla than a work dilla), throw a little more cheese on top and make sure that there's enough around the edges to seal it without having it run out. Finally, put the another dilla on top and close the lid. It won't take long, but you want to toast it until the cheese is well melted along the edges and the dilla has gotten nice and crispy. You'll have to fight people off.

Side note: if you make these at home and you make them right (cheese sealed around the edges to keep the deliciousness in), you can put them in the large ziploc bags and they transport really well. Just nuke it and you're good to go. You just have to be careful and cover it while you're walking down the hall so that you don't get jumped.

Happy feasting!

Spider attack!

This started while in Target. There was a spider. It was remote controlled. It was $16. It was for kids. It had glowing red eyes. It was perfect. In my office, we have several people that are deathly afraid of anything that doesn't walk on 2 legs. One of whom is a feisty, body-building lady who intimidates all kinds of people, usually by sheer force of will. :) After seeing this delightful little toy, I knew what I had to do.

First, we needed a distraction. Another co-worker lured her into his office to discuss an issue. With spidey hiding covertly behind a notebook, I snuck, ninja-style, into her office and placed him strategically in her lunch box. Once I passed by his office again, he wrapped things up and then followed her back to her office to discuss something else (we had to have someone in prime view of the fireworks!). I went into the office next door and started using the remote to make out little fuzzy friend do his little dance of happiness. I could hear mumbled talking, then a 'what's that noise?' followed by a yelp, screaming and then the thunder of a panicked woman who (so the story goes) actually hit the ceiling before gaining traction and hightailing it out of the office. I saw her run by the office I was in in a blur of legs and arms, sounding much like a fire truck aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!!!! My coworker and I, doubled over in laughter, tears streaming from our eyes stumbled out into the hallway. That, is when she turned. Seeing our laughter was like a red cape to a pissed off bull. She charged. Luckly, her muscles are just for show and we were laughing so hard that her blows were ineffective. Then, she couldn't help it anymore and started laughing too. Once she regained her composure, the orders were clear and direct 'Get that motha-@#%#in-piece-of-s@#$-out-of-my godd@%#-office-right-this-second-or-I-will-stab-you!' I went in, retrieved spidey and held it up to show her. Things were going ok until my coworker hit the remote and sent her squealing away again! Oh, too much fun!

Spidey strikes again!
Now, after the riviting success of our first deployment, I figured that spidey's usefulness was about up. I figured that everyone in the office had heard it so there's no way that he'd be able to freak anyone else out. I was wrong. Very wrong. Not long after his first successful mission, he was deployed on another. This time on another coworker's coffee mug. The mug was under a hutch, so it was relatively dark. She walked it and said 'Who put a fake spider on my mug?'. Then, it moved. If she'd have had claws, she would have climbed the walls!

And again!
The first co-worker demanded that she be involved in a future deployment (seemed a reasonable request, since we didn't want to get stabbed...). She picked the target and I deployed him under some papers. He worked perfectly. She lept up from her desk, almost took out her office mate and was screaming from a back corner of her office refusing to come out until someone got the spider. Since she would have to get closer to him to get out of the office, there was nowhere she could run! Braahahahahaha.

And again!
This one was more of a spur of the moment deployment. Sometimes, the situation is just too good to resist. A coworker came in from lunch and dropped her purse outside of my office as she took some things into another office. I'm not sure why she left her purse there. It didn't seem like the best idea in general, but especially not with a spider on the loose! I popped out, quickly put him in, covered partially with a paper. She walked by a few seconds later and I had the remote all ready. I didn't even get a chance! She saw the leg, and like an Olympic hammer-throw champion flung her purse halfway down the hall with an AAAAAAHHHHHH!!

The thing that makes the last one more amusing was that after the other deployments, she'd played with spidey. She knew it was fake, but he still got her in the end!

Since the initial round, he's come out a couple of times, bringing joy and laughter each and every time.

Better mileage

Did you know that shaving your head will get better mileage? Not only to you decrease wind resistance, but you're also reducing vehicle weight and improving your personal cooling which means that you can use the AC less so that your car can get even better mileage! Plus, drivers around you are stunned by your beautiful cueballesque noggin and will automatically get out of your way thinking you are a pro-wrestler or hitman or something. Bonus!

Truisms

A little explanation is probably required for my truisms. These are things that I basically make up and may or may not have a shred of truth to them. The trick is in the delivery. You have to give a pretty factual presentation, preferably to someone that probably knows better.

Did you know that eating ice cream can actually make you burn more calories because your body has to warm back up?

Did you know that standing on one leg burns more calories than standing on two? First, there's twice as much weight on that one leg, but because you're using a lot more little muscles to maintain balance, you're actually doing more work.

Global Warming, caused by fatties!

Ok, so here's the theory. I'm not a Dr. I'm not a scientist. I don't even play one on tv, but I think that I have a theory that's about as plausible as some that I've heard on Global Warming. The root cause is fatties. How, you're probably wondering, are the fluffies among us causing such global problems? Well, allow me to elaborate! Hold on, it's going to be a wild ride and try to keep up.

By sheer definition, fatties eat a lot. that's how they got that way of course. One of the favorites of fatties everywhere is ice cream. Ice cream, of course, uses milk as one of it's main ingredients. Milk, at least in many parts of the world, comes from cows. Cows need to eat to make milk, otherwise they die and milk production falls off rather abruptly. So, assuming that cows are eating, they're generally eating feedstock which is grown on farms. In order to grow enough and to help prevent disease and other crop problems, farmers will use fertilizers and other chemicals. These chemicals will sometimes run off into streams, lakes, rivers etc. Fertilizers have been known to cause massive algae blooms which can kill fish. These fish, are covered in shiny scales and when they die will sometimes float to the surface. Once on the surface, they will begin to reflect light onto whatever happens to be above them. These dead floaters will tend to cluster around bridges where they will reflect light onto the otherwise cool underside of a bridge, causing it to get hotter than it otherwise would. Because the bridge is now super-heated, the vehicles crossing will have their tires heated abnormally high. This high heat will cause the tire to weaken and wear out faster than normal, thereby necessitating that more tires are created. The more tires that are needed the more people that are involved in the tire-creation process. All of those people need to drive to work and we all know that driving emits all kinds of things into the atmosphere that cause problems, such as global warming.

So, there you have it. Definitive proof that fatties are a leading cause of global warming!

Jelloing a mug

Ok, so this isn't anything especially new or original (The Office was my inspiration on this one!) but I thought I'd put a few comments up here with my lessons learned. Ok, so first we had a target. A coworker has a coffee mug that he really likes, but he leaves it all over the place. We had to do some weekend work, so it was the perfect opportunity to thoroughly encase his mug in a bowl of jelloy goodness.

The plan:
Use multiple colors: Red, Blue, Green to give a nice, layered look

Use a chopstick and fishing line to suspend the mug perfectly in the center of the bowl
Use a Kitchen Aid 6qt mixing bowl as the holder

How things went:
Well, first off, we didn't have anywhere near enough jello. I thought that 6 large boxes would be enough. I found out that I probably needed to double that. You can't use the recipe that's on the box because it'll come out way to runny. It needs to be firmer or it's not worth the effort. Unfortunately, I learned that after the fact. The 6 boxes covered most of the mug, but the handle was still protruding from the top.

So, the logical thing to do is get more jello. So I did. A lot of it. I got this Knox clear jello and used a ton of it for what would end up being the base of the creation. One downside to this particular part was that it smelled. Bad. Really bad. Like something died kind of bad. But, being the troopers we are, we soldiered on through it knowing that the ends would justify the means.

We let it sit overnight in the fridge and then flipped it over on a plate to extract our glorious work. This is when we ran into another, little, problem. It wouldn't come out. We ended up getting a hairdryer, warming the bowl (possibly a little too much in places...) to get it to slide out.

The end result? Outstanding. It looked like a giant purple blob with a coffee mug embedded inside. Did it come out the way we thought it would? Absolutely not!

The birthday candles, somewhat mutilated, really put the finishing touch on and made the whole exercise even more worthwhile.

Office Cooking

When cooking in the office, there are a number of things to consider. It must be easy to use, easier to clean up (if at all!) and must make a wide variety of deliciousness. My current weapon of choice is a Cuisinart sandwich maker. It's small and simple and best of all not limited to just sandwiches. Sure, I've made grilled cheese, ham and cheese, toast, peanut butter (with honey!) sandwiches and all kinds of things like that. The truly great thing about it is that you can make pancakes with it. Delicious pancakes that will cause the entire office to drool in envy (if you're into that kind of thing). Since it's non-stick, it's wicked easy to get the food out, only thing is that you have to flip the pancakes so that they cook evenly. If you dab a little honey in the center of the pancake after it's cooked for a little bit (the sides have to be firm enough to keep it in the middle), then you get a nice little honey pocket. It's delicious. I've found that the instant pancake mix works well since all you do is add water and shake. The best part is the way that the smell wafts down the hall so that it's impossible to escape the deliciousness.

Foiled!

This is how the foiling turned out. I misjudged the amount we'd need (I figured that 400 sq. feet would be enough, I was wrong...). I'll post more detailed pictures later, we were especially proud of all the little touches like the ketchup packets, paper clips and post-it notes that were all lovingly covered as well. There's only so much that can be done after hours, but we made a valiant effort. That box on top of the hutch is upside down, filled with packing peanuts and a foil covered rc spider. Just for added effect during cleanup. :D

OTOO

So, this is the beginning. Not totally sure how this is going to work, but figured that I'd share with anyone willing to listen. Hopefully you'll find some of it humorous, some of it inspirational (if it inspires you to do great and wonderful things, cool, but I'd be just as happy if you recreate some of my pranks) and basically all of it random. A friend suggested that I create this as a way of documenting the discombobulation that is my thought process. While nobody's really ready for that much knowledge, I'll post tidbits. More of a peephole than a window. Got to leave them wanting more!

Ok, so first thought. A coworker is out of the office (OTOO) for a couple weeks. I want to make sure that he knows that we noticed his absence. I've spent far too much of my day trying to come up with something to do to his office and since we just recently covered another coworker's desk in foil (I'll post that later), we can't do that.

Option 1: So, I'm thinking about suspending his desk about 3 ft off the ground. I figure that I can get some chain or possibly light cable, run it up through the ceiling to the girders and have it suspended pretty well. I'd also like to suspend his chair, so that if all works well, he'd actually be able to sit in it. It might be worth if for the pictures alone! There is one minor drawback to this idea. My office, while being very forgiving for nearly everything I've done, might frown upon my cutting holes in the ceiling tiles. Not to mention, there's the very real possibility of him getting crushed into nothing, should the contraption fail. While I'm more than willing to overlook these minor possibilities, I must take them into consideration.

Option 2: We have about 20 old desktops, some of which still have their hamster wheels and hand cranks. I'm thinking that I can arrange them, under his desk and chair, to make a raised platform. It would (probably) be safer and could still be used as a fully functional desk. This is probably the more likely scenario as the death toll would probably be a little smaller should there be catastrophic failure.

Now, I must go recruit a minion to help. My previous partner in crime isn't in our office anymore and a suitable replacement hasn't really emerged... It's lonely at the top...