Ask any photographer and they’ll tell you, in a series of bad photographs a picture of a sign is an egregious sin.
But still, I had to show you this, just to prove it. (Pay no attention to the four clashing fonts.)
That’s a New Jersey diner named after a Missouri literary character. Only in America — one hopes.
The important concept here is that there aren’t a lot of true diners in our part of the world. The Yankee, being a Yankee, misses them. We saw this one while out running errands today and decided to stop in.
Not like any diner I know, but a nice joint. Here’s their site which has that tortured, flash template feel. This is the website equivalent of over-produced pop music. In the photo gallery I found some faces we saw in the diner today, not all of them even of the staff.
The place gets decent reviews, 3.5 stars from Yelp and is well respected by whomever writes Trip Advisor, where they call it the best diner in the area and one of the best in the state. They say it was destroyed by fire and recently rebuilt, which explains the new feel of a family-owned business dating to 1974.
It does not explain why everyone was wearing ties. Or how her tie got in our waitress’ way of returning to the table.
The uptown feel and the carefully designed staff uniforms don’t scream diner to me, but everyone has images in their head. Mine is not very good. I started describing what I pictured as a diner: white, chrome and bright, but not necessarily clean. Narrow and long.
As I was describing this I realized I was talking about the old Tiger Time. And then I grew a bit sad. The place was removed and replaced by an unsuccessful string of uninspired things that have failed one after the other. At this point I’m not even sure what is even in that location.
So we just left it with the world needs more diners, no matter where their names come from.
Oh. This morning my father-in-law told his daughter: I watched television on my iPad! He’d downloaded his cable system’s app and was streaming the Today show. He’s a natural.
Until two years ago he’d vigorously defended against ever even owning a cell phone. Look at him now.
I feel disconnected here, because my computer time is drastically cut short compared to work and home. That’s fine, and as it should be, but this makes news junkies twitchy.
There might be news! Someone could write a compelling essay and link to it on Twitter! What if I miss a really great joke? Or what if there’s a brand new meme!?
Life is hard, I know.
I read the local paper this afternoon. The Times Daily‘s lead story today has to do with a lack of funding for the local landfill:
With a depleted Solid Waste Fund temporarily carrying the load for garbage disposal, the City Council must find another source of money to meet state and federal requirements for the eventual closing and monitoring of its landfill.
Dan Barger, city treasurer/chief accountant, told the council Tuesday that more than $2 million is needed to satisfy requirements for landfill closure. He said it probably will have to come from the General Fund.
The Environmental Protection Agency requires owners and operators of municipal solid waste landfills to show proof they have adequate funds earmarked for closure costs and monitoring the landfill for 30 years after closure, Barger said.
Because the Solid Waste Fund has operated with losses of more than 5 percent the past two years, he said that fund no longer satisfies the financial tests necessary to guarantee closure operations.
The print version had to do with only two weeks worth of space remaining in the current landfill cell. The council has been split for some times, it seems, along a 3-3 vote, on whether to add to the existing space or ship off trash to a third-party site. The mayor, the story said, had had enough and last night started naming names.
My grandparents have taken to watching the city council meetings on television. They don’t even live within the city limits. That’s how entertaining these meetings can be. And you’ve been shirking your civic duty.
Also watched the local 5 p.m. news. The lead story on the B-block was the traditional Better Business Bureau story warning you of e-card scams. Someone had to write a tease for that piece. But it was a relatively slow news day. There was a fatal car accident and two men were caught in a check stealing scheme.
Shame they didn’t have this footage of a dog terrorizing the local stuffed citizenry:
Finished the Christmas shopping today with a whimper. The last thing I picked up was a gift card.
photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Sick, making this a photo day 3 14 Dec 11
I’m getting better, my complaining to the contrary.
I don’t feel like talking, so I dodged two phone calls. (Sorry about that.) And I’m not sure I’m speaking loudly enough when I have to talk. Repeating yourself when talking is unpleasant is just about the most demoralizing thing you can do with a roof over your head.
But I can breathe again, and that’s a huge victory. Huge. So my head is entirely better. Everything between collarbone and belly button is now miserable. I have coughed so much — or rather, so hard — that I’ve strained my abdomen muscles. Also, there is a great deal of congestion. And a lot of coughing.
Despite all of that, I do feel better.
Here’s another picture placeholder, demonstrating the curative power of Peeps.
This is downtown Homewood, late in the evening. Had dinner on the southside with a college buddy. This was part of the drive afterward:
Normally this road isn’t so empty, but Homewood rolls up the sidewalks by 9 p.m., even during the Christmas season.
A wide version of this is now one of the rotating footers at the bottom of this page. There are now 17 of those. The bottom of the page has to catch up, though. There are 38 images in the header. Reload often!
More grading tomorrow, and the last class of the semester.
Pearl Harbor links. One of my uncles, if I am remembering this story correctly, was at Pearl Harbor soon after the attacks. This is him, a few years ago:
Here’s a story from yesterday about some young local boys who rotated through there in 1943 on their way to the Pacific front.
Every now and then I tell a story about something like this, because it astounds me that a lot of these people were my students age. Like these kids, who happened to be in Hawai’i to play football when the Japanese flew in. That’s a great read. And it is hard to imagine those could be my students.
He sees you when you’re sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
so shop the endcap for goodness sake.
Those are foam stickers, Santas, presents, stockings and trees. They have the thin white peel-back paper and will stick pleasingly onto some clean surface for exactly four days, three if there is any curvature of the stuck upon surface, 36 hours if you do it more than a week before Christmas.
There’s something about that Santa Claus’ face that is unnerving. How can he see me? How can he knows? His eyes are closed. And yet he still has that wan smile. Maybe it is the economy. The strain of it all is probably getting to him too. Like in this story:
The result is a Christmas season in which Santas — including the 115 of them in this year’s graduating class of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School — must learn to swiftly size up families’ financial circumstances, gently scale back children’s Christmas gift requests and even how to answer the wish some say they have been hearing with more frequency — “Can you bring my parent a job?”
Santas here tell of children who appear on their laps with lists that include the latest, most expensive toys and their parents, standing off to the side, stealthily but imploringly shaking their heads no. On the flip side, some, like Fred Honerkamp, have been visited by children whose expectations seem to have sunk to match the gloom; not long ago, a boy asked him for only one item — a pair of sneakers that actually fit.
“In the end, Santas have to be sure to never promise anything,” said Mr. Honerkamp, an alumnus of the school who also lectures here. He has devised his own tale about a wayward elf and slowed toy production at the North Pole for children who are requesting a gift clearly beyond their family’s price range. “It’s hard to watch sometimes because the children are like little barometers, mirrors on what the country has been through.”
And if that story doesn’t tug on your heartstrings, I present to you the Press-Register’s Neediest Families, like the Colemans:
The 33-year-old Prichard native says that it takes a lot to keep them smiling. And even as she battles sickle cell anemia and struggles to support Ashley, 7, and Michael, 14, she believes that with a few key breaks, her household will come out OK.
Cooking, for example, is an issue since Coleman has only a microwave and hot plate, but no regular stove.
In June, 51-year-old Norman Hodges saw a doctor for what he thought was a pulled muscle. Testing revealed lung cancer.
The five months that followed were filled with chemotherapy and radiation treatments, sudden paralysis, long hospital stays and severe complications from infection. The father of two passed away at home on Nov. 2.
It’s not even December yet, and those stories just grow more and more heart-rending. I read them all when I worked at al.com. I’ve read them all every year since.
The building in which I work, the best I know, is now 54 years old.
Not much has changed over the years. This shot was from last fall:
There’s probably no way of knowing how many roofs have been on the building in those decades, but there’s no getting around the need to fix at least portions of it now.
The layout is a bit unusual. As the building stretches back out of the frame there are second-floor wings on both sides. Those roofs are flat, which does not promote drainage. And water freezes nicely on it too, as you might have noticed if you were on the site last February:
My office, on the third floor, commands a view of the second-floor wing roof on one side. Walking to the stairs on the front end of the building shows the other side, where the leaks are.
Today they’ve been destroying the old roof coating, which appeared to be a tar-based material. There’s been precisely rhythmic hammering — you could gesture, like a conductor, and keep perfect time with the worker — and some sort of mechanized tool. If anyone on that side of the building got any work done this morning you should be impressed.
But we worked anyway.
Later. The promotional sticker on the CD case calls it the “greatest Muppets soundtrack ever.” Track 11 is “We Built This City,” so I doubt that claim.
To your everlasting amusement, however, the Muppets Barbershop Quartet covers “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
You should be singing that for a day or two. You’re welcome.
