Returning the Favor and other Slices of Life

Returning the Favor
Returning the Favor
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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Mmmm...Butter Mints

It's the little things, really. Those little slices of life that make the trip from North Carolina, where the weather on the weekend is likely to be perfect for a nice 20-mile bike ride to Syracuse, NY, where the weather forecast for today says '21, Feels like 11.'

11!?!?!? That's a temperature? Fahrenheit? Really? That's just silly. What's even sillier is that I'm headed there. It's for some training for a manufacturer of theatrical rigging that we distribute, theoretically to make us better suited to specify their equipment and work with the factory. I think it's really to laugh at the southerners in the crowd.

But yesterday, as I was finishing up lunch at Mertz Heart and Soul (highly recommended if you find yourself needing a lunch or dinner in downtown Charlotte), I saw on the checkout counter a container of butter mints. You remember butter mints, the compressed sugar mints that you would get from a candy dish as you left the restaurants. Butter mints taste like childhood, so I bought a bucket of butter mints yesterday, and they make me hate the fact that I'm going to Syracuse a little bit less.

Suzy actually got to spend a night at home last night, while waking up every three hours to make her dad take his medication. I swear this must be what having a kid is like. It's more acceptable when the person you have to tend to every few hours is an infant, but when it's a grown man who can't manage to wake up to his own alarm to take his drugs every three hours and has to rely on his grown daughter to parent him it becomes less cute somehow. Although some of you who have spawned may tell me that it isn't all that f'n cute in childrens, either.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Yes, 11 is a temperature. It's what we've faced out here ALL WINTER LONG. I've had that temperature, or less, practically every time I've ran this year, including runs of more than an hour.


All you bloggers are wimps. :)

StB said...

That sound you hear is me and Drizz laughing at you. Just wait until you see that neat little dash in front of the temperature. Waking up to -2 weather is real fun.

The NL Wife said...

It's not so cute with kids, either. However, with kids, you know that eventually they will be able to do it themselves.

When its a parent (or grandparent, like I did), its just a little sad.

Hang in there, stay warm and have fun.

Astin said...

Make the 5 hour drive to Canada this weekend, and watch the temperature swing at the border to centigrade.

Southern pansies. :)