In a year, I buy a lot of crap. Junk even. Money just kind of flies out of my wallet and I didn’t know why until now. I had a sneaking suspicion that I was simply buying too much fast-food from McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, and Freckle Bitch’s, but I didn’t know to what degree.

I compiled my purchases for the year 2008. This is pretty easy when you can do online banking and all you ever buy anything with is a debit card (Sidebar: my bank can only export to MS Money or Quicken. What? No Raw data? sigh). No, I’m not going to tell you how much I make, and yes, it’s much less than you make, but here’s the breakdown in a hand-dandy chart.

Too much fast food

First off, rent is the lion’s share and I’m not going to shy away from that, but damn. Look at the fast food portion. Of all my expenses, excluding rent, I pay more for fast-food than I do for anything else. It’s not like we don’t have food at home, either! It’s a convenience thing, really. It’s less hassle to run out and grab burgers for about $5 a plate than it is to actually make something.

Thing is, home-made food is more delicious, tends to be healthier unless you fry the shit out of everything, and it’s cheaper at about $2 a plate if you do it right. I’d be happy if the grocery bill matched the fast-food bill and the latter disappeared almost entirely. I can’t say I won’t ever get fast-food again, because hey, sometimes I get a craving for Jack in the Box.

It’s no longer topical, but when has that ever stopped me before? Ame likes to play the “no purchase necessary” McDonald’s Monopoly sweepstakes when it comes around, and this last season was no exception. We have McDonald’s a couple times a week as it is, so this game is really just an opportunity to collect little colored Atlantic City properties and hope for a match or instant win.

The odds of winning any prize is about 1 in 3 or 4, but “any prize” really sucks like a small frosty with purchase of a large drink. Right on. The big money is in the property matches, and, just like Monopoly, the shitty properties are the shitty prizes, but matching Boardwalk and Park Place is where the real action is. Don’t get me wrong, matching even the dark purples, Baltic and Mediterranean (yes, I’ve practically memorized the game board of Monopoly), the lowest property in the game, would still be awesome because winning is awesome.

If I recall correctly, the odds of winning the Texas State Lottery is something like 1 in 65,000,000. At those levels, it really is no real appreciable difference mathematically in buying a ticket or not. Not quite a less-than-zero percent chance, but why bother? It reminds me of a goofy and kind of insightful comment I saw at Slashdot. 

“…you can have a negative percent chance of succeeding in a task. For example, if you have a -5% chance of succeeding, not only will you fail every time you make an attempt, you will also fail 1 in 20 times that you don’t even try.”

So whenever the McOpoly game comes around again, I just roll my eyes and hand all my miniature Monopoly properties over to Ame whereupon she hoards them with glee like some sort of paper-token miser.

Goddammit! Park Place again!?
- Ame

I’d never eaten at a Grandy’s before until Monday morning. I had dropped Ame off at work and taken the car to the shop for an oil change. I know how to do it myself, but it can be messy and the price is right to have someone else do it for me while I stay at home watching TV or playing video games… which is what I did, ha!

Anyway, before the short quarter-mile walk home, I stepped into the Grandy’s right there. I had always seen their advertising marquee with different specials for lunch and breakfast, so I figured I’d check it out.  Honestly, I was expecting more of a sit-down setting than what I was presented with. The front area was a lot like McDonald’s and a bit to the side was the breakfast buffet. I stood in line for 15 minutes and ordered that up with an orange juice.

The bacon was good, the sausage patty was okay I guess. I don’t think that’s a fault of Grandy’s though. I’ve never really, really enjoyed sausage patties ever. It must be just me, so I won’t fault them there. The scrambled eggs were runny though. Gross. And the orange juice was awful. I had mistakenly ordered a large. I mean, orange juice is not hard, and I really like orange juice!

I won’t be going back for breakfast stuffs, but I did notice they have a chicken fried steak meal platter, which, if you don’t know me, I love chicken fried steak. I’m sure you Texans know exactly what I’m talking about, and it’s really weird when you think about what makes a chicken fried steak good. Basically, you take a pressed steak of questionable quality, and then deep fry it like you would a piece of chicken from KFC. Make sure you deep fry it fairly poorly, but you still want the batter to stick to the meat. Serve with mashed potatoes and white gravy. Bonus points for Texas Toast (hobo garlic bread) and corn on the cob.

mmmm…

At work today, pizza was provided in the break room as the first day of Employee Appreciation Week. It was Cici’s, so it was terrible of course, but I still helped myself to a couple slices. Come on, free pizza! Why wouldn’t I pass it up?

It got me thinking though. The slices were ridiculously small, something like 20 slices to a large pie. I know Pizza Hut will allow you give special instructions for how to slice the pizza. The example they give is “cut into squares.” That’s a pretty neat service if you ask me. Why not ask for something obnoxious though? The reasons are obvious, like not wanting extra off-menu toppings (gross) on your pizza, but how about a pizza cut into 7 slices?

Anything 5 slices and under require only a little thought. Everyone knows how a 5 point division works. 6 is an easy concept, the cuts go all the way through, the difficulty is simply in getting the slices all the same size; but from my experience in receiving pizzas for delivery, this mustn’t be a hard and fast requirement either – even on the standard 8 slice pie…

7 though. That’s tricky. It’s seven cuts, all halfway through. And on large surfaces, the middle is hard to find unless you mark it. And what are you gonna mark it with? A topping? Maybe not, overshooting the middle is acceptable for difficult cuts though so I’ll let that slide. You might get lucky and get an engineering major who’s putting himself through college on this one and end up with a perfect result.

And on the maximum side, anything over 10 is ridiculous. Even on extra-large pizzas, the slices get too small after 12. You might be able to do an 11-slice pizza on that size of pizza, but with the same technical difficulties as a 7 or even a 9.

How about cutting it into pieces that aren’t slices at all? A spiral cut that’s still one piece, or a pentagon or pentagram? That could be fun…

“Avoid the noid”

I likes me some roast beef sandwiches from Arby’s, but my last visit there irked me a little bit. You know how they have that promotional deal where you can buy 5 items for a low, affordable, price? You might remember it didn’t always used to be like that. For a long time, it was only a limited time offer, and then only at individual stores. Asking if the “5 for 5 deal” was in effect awaited an answer with bated breath. The sweet part of the deal though was you could get 5 Beef and Cheddars, big F’n roast beef sandwiches, for $5.00.

Then there was a change. Instead of Beef and Cheddars, they became Arby’s Melts. Just as delicious as before, but smaller. At $5 for 5 sandwiches it was still a hell of a deal, and still only at participating locations. Then they changed it again. The deal was now “5 for $5.95.” I understand that time passes, the dollar inflates, so really… a good deal.

Then there were two changes, pretty recently, and for the better I believe. First you could choose from 7 other items to mix and match your way to “5 for $5.95.” Second, the deal was in full force at all Arby’s locations all the time. A glorious moment. No longer did I have to ask if the deal was in effect. I could safely assume I could get tons of beef, and even curly fries included, without asking.

Then there was a change. This was my most recent trip to Arby’s, and this one snuck in under the radar just as the others had, but took me by surprise. I pulled up to the window to pay and the total was more than I expected! $6.95. We’re now in a dangerous territory friends. If this trend continues, and I’m almost certain it will, the 5 Arby’s Melts (to be accurate 3 sandwiches, a drink, and curly fries) will cost me $7.95 and no longer be worth my money compared to any other combo item on the menu.