You might remember me ranting a few years ago about Netflix and their shady tactics and keeping down the common-movie-watching-man. Even though I had lots of complaints, I never quit Netflix. It’s just so handy and enjoyable.
Lately, I’ve been waiting quite a few days for some new DVDs to appear and just received an email stating they are having problems with their shipping system, are sorry for the delay, and will be applying a credit to my account.
Now that’s the way to take care of problems and keep customers happy.
I would guess that one of the things people like least is the DMV, BMV, or that place you get your driver’s license. In fact, trips to that place can be downright horrific. This morning I took a trip to my local DMV here in New Hampshire to get what appears to be a photocopy license.
I had heard some stories. They’re changing up the way they do things I guess and now you get a temp license and some central location actually prints the real thing and sends it to you. That just sounds like an opportunity for disaster with mail fraud.
The wait wasn’t too horrible. I got in and out in under an hour. Just had to fill out a short form, give up my Indiana license, show proof of residency (car registration), and show them my passport. Fifty dollars later, I was out the door.
It’s always interesting being in places like this and observing how people act and react to the situation. So far, everybody has been pretty nice to us here in NH, and this statement extends to both the city hall and the DMV. I don’t often utter this phrase, but, nice work government. One interesting circumstance was an elderly woman trying to either get or renew her license. She looked and sounded just like the grandma from Happy Gilmore. I kept picturing her answering the door with a KISS mask on. She wasn’t too happy about having to take the written test. Hopefully she did alright.
If you’re in the same boat as I am, my advice to you sir would be to get there early. Hopefully you’ll beat the long lines that snake around the room.
Since moving to New Hampshire, we’ve been trying to find some delicious local pizza places to frequent. The First one we tried out was Hot N Fast on Market Street in Somersworth. It’s just before you get to Berwick, Maine.
This is a smaller restaurant, but it does have several dine-in tables available. The staff was very friendly and the pizza did come out hot and fast. We ordered up a large pepperoni. This is usually a good litmus test for a pizza joint. If they can’t do the simple well, I usually don’t even give their specialties the time of day. I wasn’t sure what to think of the pizza when it first came out. It just looked a little weird, but I sure did enjoy it once I gave it a try.
The slices were large - New York style, and it had an amazing crust. It was hard and crunchy, but not burnt. I don’t remember ever having something of this texture and consistency before and having it taste good. Two thumbs up to Hot N Fast. I’m hoping to return at some point in the future.
For those of you who knew the late, great PJ’s from Warren, Indiana, I’m sure you know what this title means. It was a sad day when we showed up and the building was empty. So to commemorate summer and all things PJ, I made some Timmy Bread today with a few special modifications. I sliced up some onions and olives and added them to the mix.
While cooking and eating this wonderful treat we had yet another storm roll through. This one was a little intense with lots of high wind, thundering and lightening. Power flickered a few times, but luckily it never went off. For some reason it reminded me of that one episode of McGee and Me. If I ever see that again I’ll probably think it’s super lame.
I just realized it’s been almost a month since I last got on here. A lot has been going on. Liz is livin it large in France following the Tour again and I’ve been getting acquainted with a new job and town. New Hampshire’s not a bad place. Where we’re at is just big enough that everything is here, but not too big that I’m getting lost in a big city.
I’ve been cooking a lot of things and trying different combinations out. Last week I was able to recreate chili cheese burritos I like so much at Taco Bell. I also just finished up an insane week of work while we were hosting a new conference for 16 faculty from around the region. It was a lot of hands-on work and they even let me teach a couple sessions. I definitely hit the wall halfway through Friday, but at least I had the weekend to catch up on sleep.
The podcast is still going. Everybody kept asking me if I was going to keep it going. Working on some new interview opportunities. Hopefully they go well.
Liz should be back in a week and I’ll get to show her everything I’ve discovered out here while she’s been away.
I stopped by work today to fill out some tax forms and get a parking pass. Work doesn’t start until Tuesday for me, but I like to try and take care of things beforehand. Well, it was Friday and it was also casual day. April started explaining to me how CIS has traditions; for example, Friday is Hawaiian Shirt Day - so, if you want to, you can go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.
It was hard not to bust out laughing or follow up my dress code question with one about Swingline staplers binding up less than their Boston counterparts.
We’re in New Hampshire now and everyone seems to be quite friendly. I was a little apprehensive about moving to the East Coast at first, but New Hampshire seems to be a good fit so far. I even saw some guy with “THEDUDE” on his license plate yesterday right after we crossed the state line.
One thing I’m glad I did was to get our internet hooked up on moving day. That is allowing me to post this. It also makes a lot of things much easier like finding directions, contacting people, and finding phone numbers.
They town we’re in isn’t too big, but isn’t too small at the same time. There are plenty of local and chain businesses, but there is also a very down to earth feel about everything. I already have a favorite neighbor that lives upstairs. We’ve seen him outside probably 10x already. He’s a smoker and the building is non-smoking so he makes a lot of trips outside. We found a good pizza place down the street already, and we’re also about 2 blocks from Maine if we feel like crossing the border.
Our apartment building is an old textile mill so our windows overlook a small river out back. I guess the word “small” isn’t very descriptive, but if you grew up next to the Mississippi river close to its widest point, the little trickle out back can only be described as small.
So far we’ve had a lot of people say they’re going to visit us. I think they’ll enjoy doing that if they were serious.
After Liz’s weeks of packing and my several days of concentrated packing, we were able to get our moving truck all loaded up with the help of 8 or 10 friends. Helping people move is something I’ve done a lot, but you never realize what a big deal it is until people help you.
This afternoon, some of the people from yesterday, and a few other friends, met us at Clancy’s for some bowling. On Sundays you can get a lane for $8/hr. That’s a pretty good deal compared to normal charges per person per game.
Tomorrow we’ll be heading out of town on our way to New Hampshire, so if you don’t hear from us for a few days, that’s probably why. The cable company is scheduled to setup our internet on Wednesday so we should be able to check out email then.
I’m real big into comfort food. I love meat, cheese, and potatoes. I call it manfood. I grew up eating what my mom would call Meatloaf Casserole. It’s meatloaf with a layer of mashed potatoes and then cheese on top. It’s pretty stellar.
Since we’re moving in a week, we’ve been trying to eat up all of our food. One way I could do this was make the aforementioned dish, and incorporate bacon. That should work, right? Bacon tends to make every meat more awesome - even bacon!
I thought a while about what to do with the pork. I could work it into the meatloaf, actually wrap it around, put it into the potatoes, put it on top…..I finally settles on cooking the bacon the day before and then chopping it into about 1/2″ to 3/4″ pieces and sprinkling them on top of the meat before I slathered on the potatoes.
I guess the short of the story is that it turned out to be a success. I think Liz was a little skeptical at first, but she enjoyed it too.
I’m a big fan of the television and have been seeing these commercials for the new Indy Whopper at Burger King. I’m always a fan of trying out new, big burgers so I got one today for lunch. As always, the sandwich didn’t really resemble the picture. At first I thought they gave me the wrong thing because all I could see on my sandwich was two meat patties, some lettuce and BBQ sauce. Supposedly this sandwich also came with bacon, cheese and tomatoes (currently on hold because of the salmonella outbreak). After some excavation, I found two pathetic slices of bacon hiding in the sauce. Now there wasn’t that much sauce on there so that tells you how small this bacon was. I’m also guessing I was supposed to request the cheese for a nominal fee.
The burger wasn’t too bad with the exception that all I could taste was crappy BBQ mixed with mayo. I know there’s supposed to be cajun blackened mayo, but either it was super nasty, or I got BBQ, or a wrong sandwich or something. Since I didn’t have the tomatoes to help soak up the sauce and there wasn’t any cheese to help the flavor, it wasn’t exactly an enjoyable meal. Overall, I’d have to say that I’m, once again, disappointed with a new Whopper. It’s also interesting to note that my review of this burger pretty much matches 95% of the reviews I’ve heard/read of the new Indiana Jones movie.
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