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They F*ck You at the Drive Thru

24 Aug 2010 | By Tinalicious

Mickey D's

As I went through the Mickey D’s drive thru yesterday to grab a quick and fattening-but-oh-so-tasty lunch, I placed my usual order:

McDouble, no onions

Large Fries

Sweet tea, no ice

Yes, I’m one of those people, the ones who want to break away from the default not-so-fast-food preparation and get it my own way. It’s not because I’m trying to be a pain though I don’t really care if I am one. I just want what I want, is that so bad? I mean, I am paying for it, so it seems I should get what I’m paying for, no?

I don’t get onions because they give me bad breath. I don’t like onion breath. On me or anyone else.

And I don’t get ice in my tea because if I do, then the cup is 2/3 full of ice and only 1/3 full of tea. That’s just not good economics, in my humble opinion. Why pay for ice? If I want ice, I’ll add it when I get home. But it’s tea, people. And hot, warm or cold, it still tastes like tea. So going sans ice is no problemo for this chick.

Anyhoots. I always watch the order screen as I place my order at Mickey D’s. When I say “no onions,” then “no onions” shows up on the screen. And ditto when I say “no ice” in the Sweet Tea. That’s just visual confirmation that I am indeed going to get what I ordered. But yesterday, when the gal took my order, I did not see “no ice” under my order of Sweet Tea. So, just to be clear, I repeated it for her: “and no ice in that Sweet Tea, please.” To which she replies, “yes, OK.”

So I pull up to the 1st window, which still amazes me is in use, by the way, for the simple fact that it was put to use as a means to speed up the “fast food” process. But I personally haven’t noticed any change in pace at the drive thru since the extra window’s implementation, so what is the point? But I paid for my order and pulled ahead and waited (naturally) for my food and beverage.

The giddy gal at window #2 [and why is she so giddy if she works at Mickey D's?] hands me my Sweet Tea. And what is that noise I hear inside my decidedly un-eco-friendly styrofoam cup? Um, that’s right. It’s ICE. So, being that I’m one of those people, I promptly hand my environment-killing cup back to her and say, “I requested this with no ice. Twice, in fact.” And as I did so, I couldn’t help but flashback to one of my all time favorite movie moments. It’s from Lethal Weapon 2. The Drive Thru scene. Where Joe Pesci’s character, Leo Getz, lays the much needed smack down on drive thru service everywhere. And I literally laughed out loud, right there in my car.

If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about, but if you haven’t, you have to see the clip. [CAUTION: Rampant F-Bombs Ahead!]

That scene with Leo still gets me every time I see it. He is oh so right. They F*ck You at the Drive Thru. But thanks to Leo, I always check my order, before I drive away.

I’m sure the drive thru gal thought I was insane, sitting there laughing to myself in my car.  But she pretended not to notice and apologized for the fast food faux pas with my tea as she handed me a new one, without ice. And I’m equally sure she had a good laugh herself with a co-worker or two after I drove away.

Coworker, to the snickering drive thru gal: What is so funny?

Drive thru gal: Nothing. Just one of those people.

Tina Siggy

Category: Have Blog, Will Babble, Rantics  Tags: , , , , , ,  6 Comments

5 Things Learned from Shopping

03 Aug 2010 | By Tinalicious

Believe it or not, apparently you can learn things as the direct result of a routine  craft-shopping excursion.  And I’m all about shopping misadventures, don’tcha know.  (Be sure to check out one of my favorite  shopping posts, Adventures in Shopping with Goobs.)

Anyhoots, as I ventured off to the big city yesterday (a.k.a. Fort Wayne, Indiana), approximately 50 miles southwest of my humble abode in NW Ohio, little did I know it would turn out to be such a lesson-filled day. But learn, I did. And like it or not I’m here to share my new found knowledge with all of you. So here goes.

  1. I have the power of invisibility. No, for real. I do. While standing in front of the magazine rack at JoAnn Fabrics, I backed up a wee bit to allow my field of vision to take in all the magazines on the lower shelves. I mean, it’s not possible to see all of the magazines unless you do that, so I did. And in the process I was occasionally bending over to get a better view than my aging eyes would allow me while standing completely erect.  [OK, I admit it, I was determined to include the word erect in my blog post today. 2 points for succeeding. Minus 3 points for getting a juvenile yet jovial chuckle while typing that word.] And as I was standing there perusing the titles, two other women walked over and stopped right in front of me to look at the magazines as well. For a second I thought that it was just a momentary pause on their part as they perhaps were looking for the nearest checkout line. But, um, no. They were going to stand there, about 12 inches in front of me, and just look at the magazines, completely obliterating my view. So that’s when I realized that yeah, I have the power of invisibility.
  2. I don’t have the power of subtlety. If I had that power, then I would have just politely said, “excuse me” to the ladies who blocked my view of the magazines, rather than walking away in a huff  and muttering something about the rudeness of craft-shopping-magazine-Nazis.
  3. Crying babies are a staple at every craft store. I was in 3 craft stores yesterday and there was a crying baby in every one. And I don’t mean a sweetly soft crying baby; we’re talking top-of-the-lungs-bloody-murder-is-this-a-hidden-camera-show-crying-baby, which, if I wasn’t already a mother and well-prepared for the sound-barrier-breaking volume that crying babies are capable of, would have scared me straight out of ever wanting to become one.
  4. 70-year-old women should not wear Daisy Dukes. On my way home from craft shopping, I spied with my little eye an  older woman, who was very thin and with skin having the appearance of a well-worn leather chair, wearing skin-tight, black and white striped, fraying Daisy Dukes. And no, I am not kidding! If only I’d been at a stoplight when I saw her walking by, because I would have whipped out my cell phone and snagged the photographic evidence to post for your enjoyment, or disgust, as the case may be. But since that image is  forever etched into my memory, I thought it only fair to show you something. So I found the following image on Google that will help to illustrate the horror I felt in that truly unforgettable Daisy Dukes geriatric moment.  Daisy DukesOne does not have to be Joan Rivers to realize that some fashion statements should never be made. Oy.
  5. And finally, I also learned something very, very important at the end of my craft-shopping-lesson-filled-adventure. And that is, Taco Bell food should never be eaten while driving. And I think their drive-thru should come with a disclaimer: You Eat It, You Wear It.

Tina Siggy

Category: Have Blog, Will Babble, Rantics, Shopping Misadventures  Tags: , , , ,  8 Comments

My Razor is Evil

26 Jul 2010 | By Tinalicious

Personal Touch Razor

OK, I was shaving in the shower, as I am prone to do when my leg hair begins to scuff the living room furniture. And I used my trusty Personal Touch razor, the same one I’ve been using for the last 26 years, natch. Just as an FYI, that’s as old as my marriage, and I often wonder which will last longer: the razor or the Hubs. But anyhoots, the blades on the razor are new…well, new enough to do the job, but not so new that I should have to worry about nicking a vein or something in the process.

So imagine my profanity-ridden astonishment when I’m finishing the first leg, only to look down and see blood running down my leg. Now I must point out that I am extremely nearsighted, and I am too cheap and afraid well adjusted to be bothered with contact lenses, so I wear glasses, which obviously I must remove before taking a shower. So to say that I can see blood running down my leg, you have to realize that it is very…red…blood I’m seeing; not a  blurry pinkish hue that could easily be written off as soap residue. We’re talking real blood here, people. And I hate blood, especially  my own, and especially in my nice, clean shower!

Surprisingly though, I feel no pain past the initial nick. You know the pain I’m talking about, ladies…that acid-like burn you can only get when you nick yourself while shaving. The one that makes you want to scream bloody murder even when plain water pours across the slit that is so tiny it would likely require a magnifying glass to see it.  The one that makes childbirth seem like a walk in the park in comparison.  Yeah, didn’t have that.  Had lots of blood, but pain? Not so much. So I decided to just continue on and get finished, since there was an In Touch magazine on the couch with my name on it.

And then. It happens. Again.

And this time, there is pain. So any cuss words I missed during the first nicking I made sure I hit this time. I think I may have invented a few new ones too. And I’m thinking to myself, what just happened here? How did I just manage to nick myself not once, but twice? And while I pondered this pointless but still nagging question through the blinding, unbelievable, burning and exaggerated pain, it hits me.

My razor is EVIL.

What other explanation can there be for the deliberate and localized attack on my well-lathered lower extremities? Clearly that razor is evil, or at the very least it was momentarily possessed by some sadistic spirit with an axe to grind against large, naked, nearsighted grandmas who shave in the shower.

Or, um, maybe I was just in a hurry.

You decide.

Tina Siggy

Category: Have Blog, Will Babble, Rantics  Tags: , , ,  8 Comments

Glue Tubes Suck

16 Jul 2010 | By Tinalicious

OK, so here is what I discovered is a pet peeve of mine, and that irked me so much I had to go all bloggy about it:

Glue Tubes Suck!

I can’t be the only one who has encountered this problem. You buy a tube of expensive glue and use it for a special project. You put it away when you’re finished, to use at a later date. But when said later date arrives and you try to use the tube of expensive glue, you can’t, because it’s clogged. WTH?!

The offending glue tube in my case is E-6000.

E6000This stuff is billed as “industrial strength adhesive;” it’s also something that many crafters use because it is supposed to work so darn well…which is why I bought it. At $4 for a tube. This is despite the fact that it states clearly on the package that it contains chemicals that are known to cause cancer in the state of California. Well, hey, lucky me, I don’t live in California! So I should be safe enough, no?

Ahem.

And yeah, it is a good, strong glue. Looks all pretty in the package, too does it not? The marketing team has done an excellent job on its packaging too. We know that it’s Flexible, Waterproof, Non-flammable, and Photo Safe, and all of these things are very important to wanton craft addicts like myself. But what it should also say on the tube is this:

Will clog after first use, rendering the tube unusable,
and the consumer pissed off and $4 poorer!

And then it should also have a picture of how the tube will look after you’ve spent half an hour trying to unclog it, causing it to become all wrinkly and misshapen, and so cracked at the sides that the glue begins to ooze out of it all over your hands and your craft project, so that you have to wrap it with masking tape to get it to stop.

E6000 After

And don’tcha find it funny how the top of the tube says, Amazing?! Yeah, it’s amazing, all right. Amazing that I spent $4 on it. Amazing that it clogged after the first use. Amazing that I actually devoted a half an hour of my life trying to get it unclogged. Amazing that wrapping it with lightweight masking tape actually stopped this industrial strength, cancer-causing-to-Californians adhesive from oozing completely out of the tube and creating a sticky puddle on my work space. And equally amazing that I just spent another half an hour of my life creating this blog post about it.

Yep. That’s pretty amazing.

Tina Siggy

Category: Have Blog, Will Babble, Rantics, WTH?  Tags: , , ,  8 Comments

The Coffee Pot Curse

05 Jun 2010 | By Tinalicious

I should have known.

Back on our wedding day, June 23, 1984, the Hubs and I received some wonderful wedding gifts. They ranged from the practical (crock pot, tea kettle,  mixing bowls, wok) to the elegant (crystal stemware, silver photo frame) to the just makes you wonder (stuffed teddy bear) categories.  It was quite the haul show of generosity from our loved ones.

John and Tina Wedding Gifts

However,  the running joke that day (outside of the fact that our organist never showed up, leaving me to walk down the aisle while guests hummed the Bridal March), was the fact that we received not one, not two, but three coffee pots. And why is that funny, you ask? Because neither John nor I really drank coffee at that time. We were happy to get one, since we have plenty of family members that drink coffee. And what happy little house frau doesn’t want to be able to offer her guests a good ole cuppa joe, eh? So even though it was rather funny to get 3 coffee pots, we made the best of it: we kept one, and exchanged the other two for other things we still needed.

So fast forward quite a few years. The lone coffee pot I kept stayed in my kitchen cupboard, only to be pulled out when we had family over. So really, it was still a good coffee maker, even after 17 years or so. But then I started drinking coffee, and eventually John did too, and over time that old coffee pot got slower and slower, despite regular cleanings and proper maintenance. So even though it worked (very s-l-o-w-l-y), I decided to get a new coffee pot.  I saved my old coffee pot, just as a stand-by, for many years, before finally selling it a garage sale.

And that, my friends, was the dawn of the Coffee Pot Curse.

It seems that as soon as I got rid of my 20+ year old wedding-gift-keeper-stand-by coffee pot, and got the first brand spanking shiny new coffee pot, it just didn’t take long before it died and went to crap appliance heaven (also known as the county landfill).

Apparently, that old coffee pot cursed me on its way out the door, after I so coldly and brazenly disposed of it like, well,  an old wedding gift. It was pissed. And as a result, I was doomed to suffer the coffee pot curse, which meant having to repeatedly buy coffee pots, only to watch them die before my very eyes. Seriously, it’s like they’re all in this together. Are they really  just dying? Or are they actually killing themselves in some grand gesture to stand in solidarity with the coffee pot I so callously disposed of years ago? Hmmm.

So earlier this week, my latest coffee pot, which is less than a year old, decided to join its fallen comrades and bit the dust. And naturally, just to mock me, I’m sure, it did so before I could even make the morning coffee! So I put the dead appliance in the garbage at the curb (it was trash pickup day, after all), and put the glass carafe in the recycle bin (it was the decidedly green thing to do) before I left for the morning.

The Hubs and I went up to Wally World later than evening to pick out a new coffee pot. I wasn’t going to go another morning without my coffee–curse or no curse. And as if the latest kamikaze coffee pot death wasn’t bad enough, I got an extra little surprise went I reached the coffee pot aisle and saw the following notice taped in front of the same model as my dead coffee pot:

Safety Recall:

Hazard: The coffee maker can overheat, posing fire and burn hazards to consumers.

Incidents/Injuries: Walmart has received 83 reports of overheating, smoking, melting, burning and fire, including three reports of minor burn injuries to consumer’s hands, feet and torso. Reports of property damage include a significant kitchen fire and damage to countertops, cabinets and a wall.

And then naturally, there is also a notice that consumers are to return their coffee pots to Wal Mart for a full refund of the purchase price. Yipee! I can get a full refund for my dead coffee pot…I can use that money to buy my shiny new coffee pot…I can…I can thank the damned coffee pot curse for allowing me to throw my dead coffee pot in the trash that morning, which the trash collectors have already taken away, along with any chance of me getting a full refund of the purchase price.

Yep. It’s a official, that stupid curse is real and no one can convince me otherwise.

And I should have known.

Tina Siggy

Category: Have Blog, Will Babble, Rantics, The Hubs and Me  Tags: , , , ,  2 Comments
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