Midweek Chillin'

Well, it looks like Falcon Rob found himself some inspiration and hit the kitchen again late last night. After reading the sandwich thread, he found his curried-chicken salad recipe and made a huge bowl of the stuff.

I fixed myself a sandwich earlier this afternoon, and was impressed. It tasted better than the initial description, although I'm not quite sure if I like grape halves in my sandwich. That's a new taste sensation for me that I think I'll have to grow into. They don't taste bad--I love red grapes. But hell, I just had them in salad for the first time a couple years ago--putting them in sandwiches is pushing the culinary envelope for me. Curried chicken is always good, but I think I prefer it hot. Maybe I'm just a traditionalist when chicken salad is involved. Who knew?

But we've got a huge bowl of it in the fridge now, so sandies for the rest of the week are taken care of. Now it's my turn to come up with something tasty and new.

Otherwise, it's been a very relaxing day off, the highlight of which was my leisurely stroll in the sunshine (not to hot today--the sweltering heat has broken for good) down to the leasing office for a little harmless flirtation with the young hottie behind the desk.

Actually, it was a two-fold mission. I had to pick up a package from Amazon that was delivered yesterday. Of course, I got my ego stroked when I walked in and she said "Mikey! You have a package!", causing me to think Wow, out of all the hundreds of people that live here, she remembers my name and such... Score! The dirty old man still has it!

So I just played it cool and said "Well, that's not the main purpose of my visit, I was just coming down to see you. A package is just a little bonus..."

Don't know if she believed that, but it was the highlight of her my day. Yes, I lead a dull life.

I wandered back to the house and spent a couple hours reading Four Guys in a Boat -- A decade of rum, cigars, poker, and lies which sounded like it was right up my alley when I first purchased it. I've already finished it off, and decided that if Sheridan House would write that guy a check for putting out such a simple manuscript, then I should have more money than John Grisham. That's the second book I've read that I *know* I could've written much better than the author. (The first was that book 24/7, about the guy who took $50,000 and went to Vegas for a month. Oh how I wish I could've written that one--I'd still be on the talk show circuit!)

Anyhow, it was mildly entertaining, but very shallow. And the anecdotes the author thought to share were not very funny or entertaining, yet he kept falling back on the old 'most of them shouldn't be retold' excuse. Whatever dude. Maybe I'm disappointed because there was so much untapped potential in the book. And he started out with a lot of Oprah-esque "it was a journey of self-discovery blah blah blah" but it just turned out to be a less-than-stellar travelogue. Too many missing details, I guess. And poker? Barely a mention. Rum? He talked more about port wine. I felt a little bit cheated.

Another disappointment was the fact that it was only about 120 pages long. Seriously--ten years of week-long sailing trips, and that's all he could come up with? If this book were a sandwich, it'd be all bread with just a thin slice of off-brand baloney in the middle. It was that disappointing.

Hopes dashed, and all that.

All I know is, when this Buffoons at Sea trip comes along in March, the narrative will be richly detailed, photos will be shared, and all of the off-color jokes will be included so that they live on forever.

Maybe I can even get somebody to pay me for it...

Mikey