911 Challenge

As my sister reminded me as we texted eachother after the earthquake, I love them chicken wings. It was 1995 in Charleston, SC when I realized this along with my love for spicy food. The place I went to on Market St had Habanero wings (first time I heard the word "Habanero") and they made me cry and sniffle and made my lips numb and I loved it. There is a place very nearby where I take work trips to California named University Chicken, and they have these strange tasting wings. They don't taste bad, but they are very sweet and tangy besides being spicy which is an interesting combination. Like alot of spicy wing places, they have a scale of spiciness of which I've gotten to the second from the top. They also have a challenge for which they make an extra special wing sauce advertised as two levels higher than their normal highest strength sauce. You win something if you eat so many of their spiciest wings in such a period of time. Well, Tuesday after I had my 5 second-from-the-top wings and a few beers, a large group of college kids came in, all of which who had won the 911 challenge except for 3-4 of them who were being initiated that night. I watched the whole ordeal and they were in some serious pain.

I had been debating whether or not to eventually try the challenge. Each time I go there I fear it will be my last time as I think I'll either quit my job or be fired shortly. So when I saw they had a few cups of the nasty spicy wing sauce leftover after the challenge, I asked if I could try some. I took a bite sized piece of celery and loaded it up with not a huge scoop, but definitely more than a teaspoon--probably about as much would coat one chicken wing. I knew from my vast wing sauce eating experience that it would be fine at first and take a bit to build up to a painful sensation. It took a good five mintues, but it got there. The pain on my lips and in my mouth was bad but it felt like I could probably withstand it for a long time. I don't know about 10 wings worth, though. What really makes me doubt if I can handle the challenge, though, was the feeling in my stomach. I was having some serious unfamiliar pain in that area. I didn't end up throwing up or going to the restroom, so I guess it wasn't that bad and it might be something I could get used to. But at least half of the contestants I was watching eventually threw up outside of the place. I imagine if I had more than a few wings worth of that sauce I would be in the same situation. It's all a question of how long I could hold it. The challenge requires holding it for 10 minutes. Maybe I will try next week, but I doubt it, because it also caused some issues the next day at work. Not serious, but not comfortable.

The challenge is described here and you can see videos here.

Earthquake!!!

I've been here for less than a day and this has already made it worth the trip. Somewhere around 8 weeks now I'd been out here this year, and I still hadn't experienced that stereotypical San Francisco earthquake. I think tonight's was better than most. I was in the hotel room watching a few minutes of the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown special when it hit. It lasted somewhere between 10 and 12 seconds and was a magnitude 5.6 from the first reports. Here are my actions/thoughts:

0 - 3 seconds: Lying on bed watching TV. Whoever was having a loud conversation in the room next door has now decided to either move furniture around, vacuum the carpet, or is testing out their jackhammer for their job tomorrow.

3 - 5 seconds: Yeah, the building is shaking too much for this to be just the guy next door. This is an earthquake! I stand up next to the bed and spread my arms and legs out like I'm a basketball player guarding an opposing team player.

5 - 12 seconds: Whee! This is fun. Feels like being on a subway train bouncing on the tracks.

Then it stopped. Only after that did I wonder about how subways are designed to withstand this kind of shock, and that buildings that I am on the third floor of maybe aren't. So, I never thought about leaving the room or anything to make my situation safer. There probably wasn't much I could do in that period of time if the building was going to collapse anyway.

In case there were aftershocks, I wanted to be someplace more interesting, so I went out for a run, and ended up gettin' some wings. That turned out to be pretty exciting too. See next entry!

Vacation 1

I took a vacation, which obviously included posting to this blog. I may write a few vacation posts eventually. Right now I have only one which I wrote before I became completely lazy. Here it is:

Vacation (post written 7/16)
For a bunch of great and stupid reasons, I decided to fly to JFK, rent a car, and drive to Boston. It's been a good choice so far. In order to justify flying to NYC, I had to stop somewhere before driving out. Flushing Meadows Park was an appropriate and convenient place to go. I parked by Meadow Lake which wasn't super close to the Unisphere which is the reason why I stopped, but the hour or so spent walking to it and back was a good break between the flight and the drive ahead. As I walked North from my parking spot, the first thing I noticed was how everyone is playing that sport that is all the rage now--Cricket!!! I must've walked by three or four matches/games/whatever they're called. I don't know what the rules are but apparently this is the place to play it. Everyone wears white shirts and white pants. And apparently the cricket balls (whatever you call 'em) aren't worth TOO much because I walked past someone who drove a sorta "home-run" (or whatever) which ended up in a huge puddle that the fielder (or whatever) wasn't willing to get his white pants dirty enough to retrieve.

The Unisphere is cool! I bet it looks even better at night. It's hard to see how the rings around the planet are attached in the daylight so it must be really great when you can't see the wires. The area below the sphere is meant to be filled with water, but they must've stopped doing that awhile ago. It is now taken over by skateborders and little kids running around. So, you can get under the sphere if you like. Maybe I will do that if I go back.

I wonder how the MIB writers turned the saucer shaped things at the NY Exhibit into UFOs, because its really a stretch looking at the state they're in now.

The most heartwarming site was the mother helping her two daughters on bicycles up the LI Expy overpass as I was walking back to my car. She pushed the younger one as she pedaled up to the peak, then let that daughter go on by herself down the other side as she ran back to help the older one who was just barely riding side to side instead of up the incline. She gave the older daughter a push up to the top and then of course had to keep on running to yell directions to the younger one who was now quite aways ahead. The mother ran the entire time. That must've been quite a workout but I bet she does it all the time.

No! Dinner!

Yah--so instead of the usual "I'm feeling like I'm actually getting stuff done and finally making some progress, etc." that I get from these trips to CA, I'm more of the "everyone I work with is stupid, why am I wasting my life with this BS" kind of attitude. I blew off a vendor-mandated "let us buy your team an exotic dinner since you're paying us all this money anyway, oh, but we won't let you know until the last minute because of course you couldn't possibly have made other plans so why should that make any difference." This I will pay dearly for tomorrow with a lot of public "so where were you last night?" statements and probably a lot of private "why doesn't he want to spend EVEN MORE TIME with us after work?" thoughts.

For the record, I did my own thing tonight which did involve leaving the hotel room and having interesting conversations with people I've never met. I'm sure I had a better time than having some better than average Indian food and talking about work.

My vacation starts after work on Friday.

Drinking Milk in Public

“So what’s the deal with all the milk drinking in Minnesota?” That’s what a friend asked me the other night after returning from a week long fishing trip to Canada. Apparently they had stopped at a restaurant on the way back home and witnessed two macho looking men with beards and steak dinners order milk to drink, and thought it was odd. I lived in Minnesota for a couple of years and in Wisconsin most of my life, and it also struck me as odd. You just don’t see adults drinking milk in restaurants--in the Midwest, the Southwest, anywhere. I don’t think I’ve ever ordered milk at a restaurant, have you? It’s always been water, soda, or alcoholic beverages. So, I told her I didn’t think this was a more common occurrence in Minnesota or Wisconsin than anywhere else. However, I do think more milk is consumed at home in that region of the country, if only because that’s where all the dairy farmers live. And they aren’t afraid of 2% or (God forbid) whole milk.

There is one dish that I would consider ordering milk with—meatloaf, with lots of ketchup. Milk tastes great with that.