A Childhood Dream Come True

I don't think I've written about this yet, I'm too lazy to check, and I have never tagged anything, so you get what you get.

Remember the Scholastic Book Fairs in elementary school? They would take over a classroom for a few days, and there would be books piled everywhere that you could buy. It was heaven for me. It was a lot better than the catalog, where they had only a smattering of books and then you had to wait for them to be shipped to the school. I did love getting Dynamite magazine from the catalog, but I can't remember if they had them at the fair.

One of the books that I bought at the book fair when I was 8 or 9 in the late 70s was the Guinness Book of World Records. I absolutely loved that book, I used to pore through it everyday. I think I first heard about it on the Brady Bunch episode where Bobby and Cindy are trying to go for the see-saw record. I believe it was also the first time I saw a current picture of Paul McCartney. I was a burgeoning Beatles fanatic and at that time, had only seen pictures of them as Beatles (I think Paul was in there for songwriting).

The entry that most captivated me was for the World's Quietest Room. At that time, it was located in Bell Labs, in my home state of NJ! I had no concept of where it was, but I knew that it was close by. The entry mentioned that you were able to hear your own heartbeat while in the room, I think that's what really got me. I built up an image in my brain of a dark room with red lights all over the place, trying to match the air of mystery the room had in my head. (I was also fascinated with the phone at the time, which is much different than it is now. My family went to Sears once, and I remember seeing a darkened inside window, and I could see red LED lights and make out the outline of a person inside. I asked my mom and dad what it was, and they said it was a switchboard room for the telephone system in the store (my mom was a phone operator at one time). So I think I transferred that mystery to the Quiet Room.) I read the entry over and over and dreamed of going into the World's Quietest Room. But eventually, I grew older and forgot about it and the Guinness Book.

In 1995, I started working for the food service contractor Aramark. The building that Aramark was servicing was AT&T in Murray Hill. Murray Hill was vaguely familiar to me, and I thought it was because of the sign for it on Rte. 22. But you know where this is going already, right?

On my first day of work, I found out that my friend's dad also worked in the building, and both of us were very surprised to see each other. We caught up a little and saw each other a lot at work over the years I worked there. His son and I were in a band together, so we talked about music a lot (he was also a musician).

Eventually I found out that I worked in the same building as the World's Quietest Room! I asked my friend's dad about it and told him my story. He told me that it was indeed in the building, and that it was no longer the World's Quietest Room, which made me a little sad. I don't know if I broached the subject of my seeing the room, but he didn't take me there then.

On my last day at Aramark, my friend's dad came to the kitchen and asked me to come with him for a little while, and I got pretty excited. He took me into an auditorium and showed me the sound system that was there, which was pretty cool. Then we were standing at the door of the World's Quietest Room! It was nothing like what I had dreamed about. First of all, it was huge. Wikipedia says it's wedge shaped, but I recall more of an oval, but it was a long time ago now. You entered the room in the middle of the wedge/oval, and the floor was made of some kind of netting (the engineer in there told me what it was, but I have forgotten). It was a little rough walking through there, but upon entering, it felt as if your ears closed up on you, but you could still hear. You know how when you hold your ears shut with your fingers, and you can hear yourself in your own head? It was like that, but much clearer, and of course you weren't holding your ears.

One of the coolest things that the engineer showed me was when he walked a few feet away from me, and his voice had the same volume as it did when he was standing next to me. Then we all stopped talking for a minute, and sure enough, I could hear my own heart beating (it was going pretty fast at the time!).

Even though I had forgotten about the room and it had lost its worldly stature, it was still one of the coolest things I have ever done. And my friend's dad was the best for taking me to see it and fulfilling a childhood fantasy. Thanks Al!

Yay, it's Christmas!

Christmas officially started today, for me. My adoring fans may remember last years November blog post about foods I like to eat and make at Christmas, mainly Archway pfefferneusse. I am friends with Archway on Facebook, and they said their holiday cookie assortment would be available on November 1. I made it to the store that usually has them after work today, and there they were! There are two new varieties this year, one is a choclate cookie called Snow Top and the other is a sugar cookie with candy can bits in it called, oddly enough, Candy Cane. OMG the Candy Cane cookies are awesome. I did not buy the Snow Tops because I am trying to eat better and I had to buy some pffeferneusse. I just wished they still made the fruit cake cookies, those were awesome. I was inspired by them to find a recipe for work, and they sell pretty well, plus they have a longer shelf life because they are filled with booze. You should see the Amish woman's noses wrinkle when I soak my fruit in bourbon (that's not a euphemism for anything, just so you know). The store also had, as an added bonus, Southern Comfort egg nog (booze not included, dang it). I also make my own egg nog at Christmas/New Year's, but I don't drink it on school nights because it too is filled with booze.

You may be wondering if I'm a lush, if that is still a PC term. I am, but just at Christmas time, and as long as the booze is in something. Although I generally will dump some bourbon or brandy in the pancakes whenever I make those. Go ahead, try it and tell me you don't like it.

Anyway, sorry about that. I get the Baking Sheet, which is a quarterly, uh, magazine is probably too generous a term, and pamphlet is too stingy, so I don't know. King Arthur Flour puts it out and it is chock full of recipes, and the most recent one is for the holidays, and this year there is a pfefferneusse recipe which I want to try. The Archway has raisin paste in it, but the Baking Sheet version doesn't, so we'll see how it goes.

Wow, it's great to see that I haven't lost any of my writing skills.

This is not my fault

It's National Blog Posting Month again, and my friend Monica has shamed me into joining again this year. How did she do it? She wrote on my Facebook wall, I provided my own shame. as is my wont. But it will be fun, I'd rather be doing something active on the internets than passive. So he says.

The keyboard just said low battery, so I have to wrap this up. Plus I have to go to bed. So I will end with a quote from one of the trick or treaters last night, it was a boy of around 10 or 11, and really, it's a life lesson in one sentence:

"I have no skin, and I regret nothing!"

You can't get much more succinct than that, right?

Christmas Disappointment, Atari Style

Non-video game geeks, bear with me here.

Say it's Christmas, 1987. You and every other kid in the universe want a Nintendo. Your parents or whatever adult figure in your life know this, but maybe they're not really clear on what a video game is, or they're hopelessly behind the times. Maybe they're turned off by the 200 dollar price tag. Maybe they have fallen prey to a salesperson who wants to get rid of old stock.

Christmas morning comes, and you rush downstairs and go for the box that you think the NES is in. You hurriedly and excitedly tear open the wrapping to find...

An Atari 2600. Junior. In 1987.

This scenario popped into my head yesterday because we went to a Goodwill, and I found a box full of 2600 games with a 2600 Jr. console, which I bought (I collect them). I noticed there was nary a Combat cart among the 41 carts in the box, nor a Pac-Man, both of which were pack-in carts for the original 2600.. There was a late 80s version of Space Invaders (you can tell by the label), and a few other late 80s games, as well as a few reissued games from the late 70s-early 80s.

The Atari 2600 Jr. was released in 1985 or 86. It apparently was ready a few years before that, but the Video Game Crash put an end to it, until the NES came along to resurrect video games. I think the reasoning behind releasing the 2600 Jr. in the heyday of the NES was to get rid of old stock, and to be able to say that the 2600 Jr. played more games than the NES. Not that they were better, because they definitely were not. Well, that's subjective.

So what I think happened was perhaps that mom and dad saw the huge NES price tag, then saw the lesser Atari price tag (under $50), and also saw that the games were also dirt cheap compared to the NES (I remember seeing 2600 games at Pathmark for a dollar in the mid 80s). So their precious child could have more games for the same price, and could get a lot more games cheaper from their paper route or lawn mowing money. They also could have been out of touch with video games, and figured that the cheap one was just as good as the expensive one. Whatever the reason, I could feel some one's Christmas morning tears welling up through that box of games.

Candid Camera is now Punk'd, I Guess

Yesterday I went to the bank, and I went through the drive-through lane. There were three lanes in total, and I went into the empty one. While I was waiting, the person in the far lane got the tube thingy back, and they proceeded to back out of the drive-through lane. Obviously there was no one behind them, but there also wasn't anything blocking their way forward. The person next to me had a small trailer behind their truck, and they also backed out of the drive-through lane. There was plenty of room for them to get through the front with the trailer. I was perplexed by this time, and I looked all around for hidden cameras, but saw none (that's why they're called hidden, I suppose). I resolved that I was not going to be one of those people who just blindly does what other people do before them, wrong or not, and left in a forward motion. Thankfully I did not explode or run over a bunch of glass or end up on Youtube, but it was strange nonetheless.

Breaking The Law (Unintentionally)

I consider myself a law-abiding citizen. Not just federal law, but really rules of any kind, which I suppose is boring to some people. I don't really speed much anymore; my last speeding ticket was 10 years ago, but this decision grew out of my very first car accident 4 years ago, which wasn't my fault. I try my best to keep on the straight and narrow in everything I do. Having said that, I'm going to tell you about the time I broke into a Burger King.

My friend Jeff and I became obsessed with Pink Floyd while in high school, and we heard that tickets were going on sale for a Roger Waters solo show in Madison Square Garden. We decided that we would go and wait in line for tickets at midnight, figuring there would be a long line. We hit the Foodtown and bought lots of drinks and snacks to tide us over, then we headed to the late Cheap Thrills in New Brunswick, which was the closest place that was selling tickets to the show.

We got there around midnight, and there wasn't anyone there. There was a parking lot behind the store, so we parked there and waited for awhile in the car, thinking that we would go and get in line when someone else showed up. By 3 am, no one had come, and we needed to go to the bathroom. We got out of the car and started to walk up the street, and we saw a Burger King that was lit up. We assumed that it was open since all the lights were on. The fact that we didn't see anyone didn't bother us, since it was 3 in the morning.

Jeff grabbed the handles on both of the glass entrance doors and pulled them open. We went straight back to the bathroom and decided to get some food on our way out. We went to the counter and looked at the menu for a few minutes, waiting for someone to come and take our order. No one did, so we ended up leaving. On our way out, we noticed that one of the doors that we had opened had a deadbolt sticking out of it. Technically, the doors were locked, but the door without the deadbolt wasn't deadbolted to the ground, so that's why we were able to open them. When we realized that we had just walked into a closed and locked Burger King, we freaked out and tried to put the doors back, to no avail. We speed-walked back to the car, hoping that no one had seen us.

The smart thing to do, of course, would have been to leave, but the Roger Waters tickets were far too important, so we stayed in the parking lot. No one ever came by, so we thought we were in the clear. People started to appear around 7 and we got out of the car to get in line. At around 8, a police car that was riding by came to a halt right where we were standing. We were sure we were going to be arrested and tried to disappear into the sidewalk. The policeman only rolled down his window and asked what the line was for. Someone else answered and the policeman went about his business, much to our relief. After that, we never waited in line for tickets again.

I was reminded of this incident yesterday when I went to the ATM. The ATM at our bank is on the side of the building, and you can drive up to it. Unfortunately, there is usually a lot of glare on the screen, making it hard to see. I was trying to make a withdrawal, and somehow I managed to get to the DOS menu screen for the ATM! I once again freaked out, thinking that the bank was going to think I was trying to steal money from the ATM. Luckily I was able to see the last option on the menu, which was "8 Return." I pressed 8 and it went to a screen that said the ATM was not in service. I was about to pull away when it went back to the normal screen, and I was able to make my withdrawal. I am hopeful that this will be my last act as a criminal, because it's very stressful.

Savannah Vacation, in Food

If you know us, you know we like to eat, and you know we plan our vacational food visits before we figure out where to stay. We went to Savannah GA this past week for Sarah to attend a Wordpress conference, and it was no different this time.

We took two days to arrive, stopping in Raleigh NC on the way. We ate at a couple places there, but they were not very memorable. When we arrived in Savannah we stayed at a motel called The Thunderbird Inn, which is a 1950s motor hotel that has been restored to its former glory. It was a pretty nice stay, despite the fact that we had to call 911 on our fighting neighbors at 2 am the first night, and were awakened by a drunk person trying to get into our room at 3 am the next night. The food in the area definitely made up for it.

Sarah loves barbecue, so the first place we went in Savannah was Wiley's Championship BBQ, which was a little confusing to get to, and very small inside. I had always wanted to try BBQ brisket, and it was delicious. Sarah had the pulled pork, but I think she liked the sauce better than the pork, so we got a bottle to go. I had the potato salad, and it was most definitely the best potato salad I ever ate.

For our first breakfast in Savannah, we went to J Christopher's, which I just found out is a chain in Georgia. Our vacation rule is to stay away from chain restaurants, unless it is a regional chain that we don't have near us. The vibe was more coffee house than breakfast place, there was art on the walls and it had almost a warehouse atmosphere. One of the front windows was a large garage door, and we wondered if it had been a garage or a firehouse long ago. The food was okay, I am usually upset when I order corned beef hash (my favorite) and it is the pre-made kind, which is what happened here.

That was not the case at Clary's Cafe on Abercorn St. The hash was excellent, Sarah got these huge pancakes that were delicious (but she couldn't eat them all), and the service was excellent. The biscuits were heavenly. the atmosphere was definitely better for us, even though we don't go out to eat for the atmosphere.

Sarah picked a pub for dinner called Molly MacPherson's. The reason she picked it is because they had Scotch Eggs on the menu, which is something I've wanted to try for a long long time. In case you don't know, a scotch egg is a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage and deep fried. The epitome of healthy eating! It was really good though, but not something you want to eat every night. When we got there, I started to think that maybe we should go somewhere else, because it was a small bar that served food, and I thought the food was going to be mediocre. Thankfully I was wrong. I had the fish and chips, which I always get in a place like this, and it was really very good. It was light, which is surprising for fried food, and it wasn't a huge portion, which was nice. We also had the sticky toffee pudding for dessert, which is something else I've wanted to try for awhile, and it was incredible.

Sarah found a place online that we probably wouldn't have found otherwise. The Masada Cafe is actually a church (United House of Prayer for All People) that raises money by selling food from a cafeteria-style setting. It is traditional southern cooking, and it's inexpensive and delicious. The people there were very friendly and talked to us about our trip. The ribs there were awesome.

On the way home we hit two soul food restaurants, Vick's Drive-In in Fayettville NC and Ann's Wings and Things in Stafford, VA. Both had traditional southern food on the menu, like chitlins and pig's feet, which I am frightened of. At Vick's, we both got the cheeseburger and fries, which was way better than it had any right to be. It looked like a frozen or pressed patty, but it was amazingly soft and delicious. I got the ribs at Ann's, which were great, but not as good as Masada's. What was good was the baked beans, which I think were the best I ever had. I got to sample Sarah's turkey dinner, as she was not too fond of it. I liked it a lot, it came with cornbread stuffing and was smothered in gravy. I was perplexed by the amount of mashed potatoes she left, until I ate them (they put vinegar in it).

Sarah's favorite place (I think) was Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room in Savannah. They open for 3 hours a day, and there are 10 person tables inside where strangers all sit together. There is a long line, but luckily we got there a little early and made it in by noon. When you get inside the tables are covered with all manner of southern dishes. The meat on the day we went was fried chicken, which was great. There were a ton of side dishes too, all the southern favorites. You just grabbed a bowl and passed it around the table. The last time I had a meal like that was when I was 8 and I visited my Aunt Emma in South Carolina. On Sunday morning she was in the kitchen making a ton of food and the table looked pretty much the same. It was the most vegetables that we ate on the trip too, so that was good.

My favorite place was The Breakfast Club on Tybee Island, which is about a half hour from Savannah. This place also had a line out front, but we didn't have to wait as long as at Mrs. Wilkes. I love breakfast, especially if it involves eggs and some sort of meat (I have made myself an egg sandwich with hot dogs on it). This place had so many interesting egg dishes that it was hard to decide, but I got a scramble that had kielbasa in it (the owners are originally from Chicago), and it was incredible.I don't normally eat grits unless I'm in the South, and these were by far the best grits I've ever had, just served with butter So good. The best part was we sat at the counter right in front of the grill so we could watch the cooking. They had one guy on the end doing prep and making waffles and replacing empty stuff; then two cooks on the grill in the middle making everything; and I think the owner on the other end finishing and plating. It was beautiful to watch, like a breakfast ballet. I harbor thoughts of doing that myself, so it was a learning experience for me.

All in all, there were very few disappointments, although a major one for me was being plagued with bad coffee. It wasn't all horrible, but nothing was better than I could make at home, which made me very sad. The absolute worst cup I had was in a cafe, of all places.

Some of you who have dined with us in the past may notice the absence of food pictures, which we like to take when we go out. I think it was just that the food looked so good, we just forgot to take them.