evil snack food

10-20-99

I've cheerfully tried all kinds of Southern foods since moving here. People at work have gone out of their way to introduce me to scuppernongs, grits, collard greens, fried cornbread, sweet tea, boiled peanuts, and red velvet cake. Most of these things are one-time experiences for me; though I'm not offended by the thought of any of them, I think the only one I'd eat again on purpose is the cake. Figures.

Today I've sunk to my culinary nadir. I have never in my life intentionally eaten anything so disgusting as a pork rind. Sue brought some in specially for me to try. She was, luckily, not watching when I ate the icky thing. I held it as I read the nutritional info (bad idea) and the ingredients (pork skins and salt.) I stared that pork rind down. I smelled it (really bad idea.)

Finally I tossed it back, chewing, ugh, UGH, and gulped at my water bottle. The gluey taste lingered for eternities and I trotted to the water cooler to refill the bottle. Hours later, after minty baking soda gum and gallons of water, I still belched that nasty plasticky-bacony taste. Ew.

I had to keep a paper towel-plate of the sickening things on my desk for a while to make it look like I was eating some. Didn't want to offend anyone who might actually like pork rinds.

Other than that (ew,) it was a boring-but-fun day at the office. Not much to do, but I've finally started bonding with the coworkers. When I have two days left. Good, Bets.

The days are blocked off into sections based on breaks and radio events. Two local radio stations are holding call-in contests. On one station they spin a big wheel every few hours and call out a date, and you call in if the date is your birthday. The other station plays a certain song and the tenth caller wins some money. We keep two radios going in different parts of the office.

Around 4:30 they played the $1000 song and we all glued ourselves to our phones. One of the planners dialed and called our, "Mine's ringing! Y'all can just hang up now, 'cause I'm going to win!" Then he spoke into the phone, "Yes! Thank you! All right! Goodbye, now!"

He was faking, and we all knew it. We all just kept dialing and hanging up, dialing and hanging up. Thirty seconds later he said, "It's really ringing this time! I mean it!" and he went through the whole spiel again. We dialed and dialed, smiling at his idiocy.

So a minute later, when he said, "I'm caller 9! Thank YOU!" we all thought he was a dumbass. The song ended and the dj went through callers 3-10, announcing what caller they were and listening to them cuss and bitch. When he called out number 9 we heard Scott's voice booming "Thank YOU!" through the radio.

Well, it was funny when it happened.

Only 1260 minutes left. Not counting lunches.

I was cranky when I got home tonight, until we went to play racquetball. I cheered up then, even though John kicked my ass. We played Scrabble again while we did a load of laundry at Becky's. John kicked my ass at that, too, the final score being 317-260. Corny, gorier, fedora, anal, tamales, sloe, remit, beep ( on a triple word score,) and jazz were the big words tonight. Crappy words...hmm...where should I start? One, hit, and rod were the biggest losers, I guess. Doesn't get much worse than 'one.'