Too sarcastic for this world

found out via princessofgeeks that apparently ivorygates passed away earlier this month. she had not been in good health for awhile now, but it is still a shock.

i've been subscribed to her DW the whole time (or nearly so) i've been on DW (2009). i always enjoyed her comments about stargate; sg-1, both the show & about the actors/writers/producers.

i didn't know her as well as some of you did, but i may have been reading her journal back when i was an anonymous commenter on LJ.

words are always inadequate at a time like this and mine are failing me. so i'll say: rest in peace ivorygates, i hope the afterlife is filled with your favorite things.

some time ago (like 7 years) me & my brother got an olive garden gift card from someone. we had wanted to use it for these breadstick (bigger than normal breadsticks) sandwiches they had, but we ended up missing the boat on those & they never brought them back.

we went in for lunch on tuesday. it was busy, but we didn't have to wait for a table. the silverware comes wrapped up in a huge cloth napkin& i'm not sure if it's meant to be used, or just keep the knife & forks (2 of the same size for some reason) together. they have coke products so we both got cokes & ordered Lasagna Fritta for an appetizer because my brother really wanted it. he got the lunch-size eggplant parmesan (substituting angle hair for the spaghetti) & i got the soup, salad, breadsticks lunch.
he was not impressed with his food, the eggplant slice was small & they must put oil in the water when they make the angel hair, because the sauce would not stick to it. he said the frozen eggplant parmesan from michael angelo's is better.
my stuff was just OK. i had a bowl of the Chicken & Gnocchi and Pasta e Fagioli (both piping hot!) the gnocchi was little balls, not the pillows with ridges i'm used to. neither of us liked the Lasagna Fritta, it was hard to cut. however, the coke was some of the best fountain dispensed coke i've had in a long time.
but now that we've gone, we don't need to go again.

this was our first time at olive garden & can now weigh in on the red lobster cheddar bay biscuits vs. olive garden breadsticks.
my brother gives the win to the biscuts. the breadsticks had garlic salt on them and he doesn't like garlic. even less when it's garlic powder or salt. and he thought they had too much butter spread/margarine on them, which gave them an odd sheen. he said it was a good thing that we never got the breadstick sandwiches considering the way the breadstick were.
i barely give the win to the biscuits, because they have cheese. both are kind of dry, but if the breadsticks didn't have the garlic salt, i'd give them the begrudging win.

and we have an opinion on the cheesecake factory rolls (despite never have been there) because we got them from wal-mart once. we are both of the opinion that it is a dressed up wheat bread & nothing special.

since it is november several food places have turkey dishes they hope will tempt people to buy them.

a couple of convenience stores have a "thanksgiving leftovers" sandwich, some more popular than others, me and my brother decided to try it from the local chain.
first of all; it was only 6 inches & very expensive (about $8) it includes Cheddar, Turkey, Turkey Gravy, Stuffing, Cranberry Relish on White Sub Roll. they didn't put the relish on ours, which is just as well. someone we know said it overpowered the one they had.
it was OK, the turkey kind of tasted like stouffer's turkey dinner. i had read on-line that the stuffing was very dry, which was not the case with the one we had.

arby's has 2 turkey subs; a "thanksgiving leftovers" sandwich & a "turkey club" sandwich, we had the first one. it is a more reasonably price of around $7 for a closer to 7 inch sub. it is Deep Fried Turkey, with crispy onions, Swiss cheese, stuffing, cranberry spread & mayo on a toasted sub bun​. my brother hates onions, so we got it without.
it was fairly good, the cranberry spread alternated between sweet (the gel) and tart (the berries).

in late december of last year someone* gifted me 6 months paid DW account and that (plus the 6 month i had because of some points) means it expires in early december this year. and other than using my semi-fabulous icons, i have not done anything with it. so, in the spirit of doing "something" i present a random poll.





*hope that person had a very nice year.

i'm pretty sure we gave up on the katrina documentary after one episode. too depressing.

music by john williams--very good. he is so brilliant.

jaws @ 50--so many people said the shark looked so real. i though the common complaint was how fake it looked. unless that was in the sequels, i didn't really watch any of those.

light & magic (season 2) about ILM and the work they did on the star wars prequels & digital stuff in general. goes into the hate that jar jar binks got & george lucas being convinced that he'd be everyone's favorite character in 10-20 years*.
he said the director/interviewer** "everyone hated c-3po when star wars first came out."
interviewer; "i don't remember everyone hating c-3po."
lucas: "well, try this. you thought the ewoks were weird when we were doing return of the jedi."

i was like; that is not the same thing. one guy thinking some characters are "weird" verses the hate that jar jar got, & still gets.


*i still don't like him. although i've only see Ep1 a few time and 2 & 3 once.
**Joe Johnston, who used to work for ILM and directed honey, i shrunk the kids and captain america: the first avenger, among other movies.

we've been watching disney+ stuff for a couple of days now. my brother is watching the MCU TV shows (none interest me this time) & we are watching star wars; skeleton crew.

i think they were going for a 1980s live-action kids move vibe. i can see the makers being inspired by the last starfighter and flight of the navigator, with a bit of the goonies and E.T. thrown in. they ride on some kind of mini-speeder bikes (wim's has a basket), they live in a suburban area, wim & neel look like they live in/on a cul-de-sac.

we are 4 episodes in and both me & my brother feel they were going for a han solo vibe with fern. her jacket, the way she was sitting outside of the principal's (they had a different term) office & her whole attitude during that scene. as a woman who wanted to be a girl version of han solo, i love it.
wim is an idiot, i don't know if that will change. his friend neel is the the fat (nerdy?) friend that is often in these kid's things. KB has 2 moms & i guess that was in the background enough that i didn't hear complaints about it when this first came out.
i would watch a series about fern & KB having adventures. maybe solving mysteries like nancy drew. but the rabid fan boys don't like female-lead SW stuff.

plutoTV is....interesting. buzzer has some game shows that we never heard of. like Body Language where people play charades & then just the words to fill in a mad libs type puzzle? they also have channels with supermarket sweep, family feud (dawson & combs ears, as well as the newer ones) '70s match game, the price is right (barker & carey eras) & a few others.
there's a columbo channel (they're supposed to have kojak & quincy M.E. too, but don't) & we watched that for a bit. there's a murder she wrote channel (which has the show logo in the corner all of the time, very annoying) & the nice thing about episodic TV is that you can jump in anytime and not be lost. also, the show is an interesting mix of old movie actors & future stars. george clooney was in an episode, and linda hamiliton was in another.

so, once again i'm getting low on deodorant & had to start that quest once again. i liked the suave powder & fresh scented ones, but my brother said no. and since he's the one smelling me most of the time, he gets a big say.

and so many of them are expensive now (that rant over here) so that makes it harder to find one. but we both agreed that we could put up with the suave coca butter & shea one, so fingers crossed that works out.

while we were there (at wal-mart) we saw there is a old spice superman (described as bright citrus and cosmos) and a batman (black cherry and nightfall). we were like WTF? & checked theme out. the superman is a light citrus scent & the batman is a dusty cherry.

we liked the superman one better and my brother asked if it was cheaper (it's $7.97!) would i have objected if he got it. i said it was a nice scent, but any citrus thing ends up smelling like cheap vitamin c tablets every time.

previous ranking. this post was inspired by trying the frosted (full frosting, not drizzled) cinnamon roll pop tarts.

*not every variety listed is currently available. some are seasonal, others were for a limited time.

• frosted brown sugar cinnamon
• s'mores
• pumpkin pie (one of the few seasonal flavors i've tried, because who wants to commit to a box of 12 if you don't like them?)
• cookies n' cream
• chocolate fudge
• chocolate chip
• chocolate peanut butter
• frosted banana bread. ok. could be more banana-y.
• frosted (full frosting, not drizzled) cinnamon roll. not as good as brown sugar cinnamon
• lemon crème pie. lemon things are either; not very lemony, lemony, or LEMON! these are the second.
• peanut butter
• fruit ones
• pretzel pop tarts. dry & come apart at the end seams.
• sugar cookie. would've been better, but smells like some kind of chemical. probably what they use to print the winter scenes on them.
• frosted chocolate chip pancake. vague syrup flavor, no chocolate flavor. looks odd because of the chocolate chips on it.
• apple jacks. barely tastes like anything, much less apple jacks
• snickerdoodle. possibly tied with unfrosted, since they are too.
• unfrosted ones
• boston cream pie. boston cream filling is not meant to be eaten warm.

on friday the old/former neighbor mentioned in this post needed some help with stuff, and afterward he offered to buy us dinner. we let him decide the restaurant, it was 8pm by that time & i thought be might end up at a burger place. but he chose to go to red lobster.

first, of all it was so dimly lit. like, i've had better lighting with a couple of candles during a power outage. my brother & i went a couple of times with our parents before long ago, but that was during the afternoon & we could see better. i had a hard time reading the menu because of how the dim the over the table light was.

got root beer to drink. it's supposed to be mug brand, but didn't taste the same as the mug from taco bell. my brother figures it was watered down.
had a couple of the cheddar bay biscuits. which were flavorful, but dry & i could never favor them in the red lobster vs. olive garden bread sticks debate. although, i don't think i've been to olive garden to try the bread sticks.
i went to the bathroom afterwards to wash my hands because of the butter topping from the biscuits. i only use public bathroom soap sparingly on my fingers, because it make the backs of my hands break out in weird, itchy bumps. the label on the dispensers said safeguard & whatever it was smelled a bit like a perm.

my brother got the grilled lobster, shrimp and salmon with a baked potato and orzo rice. he could not get any meat from the lobster tail, it was basically flatted in the grilling process. everything was on a large bed of the orzo rice. which was kind of nice, in terms of the amount of food overall. he didn't finish it & brought the leftovers back and had them for lunch. where he was more successful with eating the lobster tail.

i got the admiral's feast with seasoned broccoli and mashed potatoes. they bring it out on a huge tin tray of some sort & it didn't look like much of a "feast". the former neighbor asked if i had gotten an appetizer & i said it sure looked like it. i got 4 shrimp, a handful of fried clam strips, another of fried bay scallops & a piece of fried, breaded flounder cut in half. the sides of seasoned broccoli and mashed potatoes were on a a separate plate, literally to the side.
the picture online (i know they're all BS) shows a full tray with all of that, but 5 pieces of shrimp & 2 pieces of flounder plus optional fries. they'd be better off having it on one of the oval plates/patters, that way it would looked like you got more. and save the tin tray for the 1 pound of snow crab legs and stuff like that.

overall, it was not horrible. just a bit disappointing.

the company that mows the grass here started their weekly cutting today. while it's technically spring, it has been mostly on the cooler side lately. but, i suppose the bouts of rain and those days with 70-ish degree temperatures lately were enough for it to grow some. but you could not prove it by me, because other than some tufts of grass by the buildings it didn't look like it grew at all.
especially since at the end of the cutting season last year there was a 3-4 week period with little to no rain & a 1/3 to 1/2 of the grass looked dead.

what they really need to do here is to cut back some bushes they have near the road in a few places. the last time they were trimmed was about 5 years ago & they desperately need it.
they're hard to see around, which makes things dangerous for anyone crossing the road near them. they're starting to encroach a bit on the sidewalks that they're next too. and i'm pretty sure if they get much bigger they might qualify as trees.