— Brand new writing! —
Today’s post is not a rerun!
For years, I’ve taken a daily overdose of Vitamin C to ward off sneezes and slight fevers, but lately the sneezes and fevers have been insistent, so I’ve been drinking orange juice. And I am not a highfallutin guy, so it’s cheap generic frozen concentrate.
One week the store had a sale, so I bought a jug of “not from concentrate,” and wow, it’s better. When the sale ended, being a cheapskate, I switched back to frozen concentrate and it’s like drinking orange dirt.
So they got me. Now I’m a highfallutin guy, drinking fancy orange juice that’s not from concentrate. It’s only like 75¢ more p/gallon, and darn it, I deserve it.
♦ ♦ ♦
In other news of no consequence, my cat Izzy has begun sleeping on my backpack. I don’t know why she’s doing it, and there’s no figuring out a cat, so but she insists.
She’s a white cat, though, and sheds amazing quantities of white fur all over my black backpack. To avoid becoming Fuzzy Wuzzy myself, I added some catnip to the cat’s longtime bed of blankets, hoping she’d return and sleep there. Nope.
Laundered the blankets and added fresh catnip. Nope again.
Stashed my backpack on a different, higher shelf, only to watch Izzy jump up and curl down and go to sleep on my backpack again.
Pushed her off and put a layer of cardboard over the backpack to make it less comfy, but the next morning the cardboard was on the floor and the cat was on my backpack.
The cat wins. I’ve given up. Now whenever I leave the house, I’m basically a furry.
♦ ♦ ♦
My diner of habit is Little Pat’s Place, in Burien. I’m there, three to five times monthly.
But there’s another restaurant, El Super Pollo, that’s easier to get to on the bus — it’s one ride, instead of two, and not having to transfer to a second bus means it’s about 45 fewer minutes, round trip, than eating at Little Pat’s Place.
The food’s fine at El Super Pollo, and the prices are OK, but in three years where I’m living, I’ve only eaten there a few times. I wasn’t sure why, so I returned for lunch, and a closer look.
El Super Pollo is a few bucks more expensive, but so what? It would be worth a few bucks to get home 45 minutes quicker. And El Super Pollo has slightly smaller portions, so I leave a little less stuffed than at Little Pat’s, but again, so what? I need to lose some weight.
Here’s the differences that matter, ranked from least important to most important.
El Super Pollo plays radio music over speakers in the dining area, and it’s OK music (salsa and rock’n’roll) but a little too loud, and it’s the radio, so there are also commercials. The music and especially the commercials get on my nerves over the course of a meal.
El Super Pollo has several TV sets hanging from the walls. The audio has always been off when I’ve been there, else I’d turn around and leave, but unless you stare at your food you can always see the TVs across the room, and that’s Orwellian.
What most keeps me away, though, are El Super Pollo’s electronic menu screens over the front counter — several big screens showing pictures of the food, with swoopy camera work and images that fade into other images every few seconds. If I forget to take a seat with my back to the menu screens, they’re always flickering at me. It’s only a slight annoyance, but along with the radio and TVs, who wants to pay to be slightly annoyed all through a meal?
And there’s the answer: That’s why I’ll almost always ride a mile further, transfer to a second bus, and eat at Little Pat’s Place — where there’s no TV, no music, and the menus are only on paper.
— I promised brand new writing, and it is. —
I didn’t promise it was any good.
11/20/2025
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