Ryan Fields

Eating at Outback tonight

One of my favorite local restaurants is the Outback Restaurant.  I love their mashed potatoes, and they serve a great steak too.  Sometimes I order the pork chop, but I have to order it without any spices on it; if I forget to do that I don’t like it at all.  The are two things I don’t like about eating at the Outback Restaurant - first of all their booths and chairs are not very comfortable, and second is that on the weekend if you don’t get there early enough you have to wait a very long time for a table.

It’s a good system that they have, though, for waiting for a table.  They take your name and give you a type of pager that has lights on it.  You can go outside and sit on the porch and have a drink while you wait for the pager to go off.  Usually by the time you have finished your drink, the light on the pager flashes and then you can go in and be seated, so it’s not usually too bad.  Unless the weather is bad, and then it’s not so good because they have very limited, very uncomfortable waiting accommodations inside.

Risking your life for cheaper gas? Are they crazy or what?

The short answer is yes, they ARE crazy! They MUST be crazy! My wife showed me an article dated June 19 that she found on the Internet about people risking their lives for cheaper gasoline by crossing over the Mexican border from the USA. They are going to very high crime areas where they know that they are in danger of being kidnapped or killed. And they are doing it to save $100 a month on gasoline. Now THAT is desperate, or stupid, or crazy, or all of the above!  

Today is Father’s Day

Today is Father’s Day and I plan to spend the day doing whatever I feel like doing.  I’m going to go for a nice long ride on my Harley.  After that I’m going to wash and polish my Harley Davidson, and my trucks.  That should take most of the day.  After that I’m going to grill a couple of large steaks for dinner.  Yeah, that is exactly what I think is the perfect Father’s Day!

Ax men

I’ve been watching the television show series Ax men on the History channel lately.  I ask my wife to tape it for me and then I watch the tape later on during the week when I have time.  Sometimes I forget to ask her to tape it for me, and then I get angry at her for not remembering to tape it!  I forget that she is juggling a lot of things and expect her to remember every single detail of what I want.  So then I get mad at myself for getting mad at her!  Oh well, she is a forgiving woman!  Fortunately I’ve found that the show is on several times every week so if I forget to ask her to tape it I can usually watch it again later on anyway.  So it’s all good.

30 days television show

My wife and I enjoy watching the television show 30 days.  It is a summer replacement show, I think this is the third year it has been on.  Anyway, my wife tells me that tonight is the season premiere of 30 days, and we are going to have to set up the VCR to tape it - it is on at 10pm, which is past both of our bedtimes!  The topic is something about living and working as a coal miner in West Virginia for 30 days.  Sounds interesting!

ENGOBI’s Guitar Hero video contest

ENGOBI, the company that produces snacks that combined flavored chips with caffeine has announced a cool contest called “Don’t Be a Piano Hero” showdown.  The contestants compete to win a variety of prizes, including an Xbox 360™-enabled, customized Fender® Stratocaster, ENGOBI gear and other prizes.

The contestants have to make an energy-packed video of themselves and their friends “rocking out” and then upload the video ENGOBI.com. 

As part of the launch promotion, the ENGOBI van will be touring the east coast and southern cities with the ENOGBI girls, who will be handing out ENGOBI gear, bringing samples of the snacks, and giving people the opportunity to play the Guitar Hero game van-side with their friends.

Going out to eat tonight

My wife and I love to eat dinner at restaurant at The Senator Inn in Augusta.  There is a good salad bar that I like to eat a lot of salad from, and they have a really good seafood alfredo dinner that my wife and I both LOVE.  They also have some good steaks.  The inside of the restaurant is really fancy, so we like to dress up in our “good” clothes to try to make the night special.  Unfortunately there are usually a lot of people who show up there straight from their job at the farm, wearing their tattered jeans and flannel shirts or t-shirts with rude sayings on them and not even enough class to take off their baseball caps covered with grass clippings when they sit at the table.  We try not to look at those people and try to enjoy our meal regardless of the low class folks that wander in from time to time.  I think that this restaurant is classy enough that they should have a dress code for dinner - like shirts with collars, sports coat and tie.

Anyway, the food is good, and we enjoy eating there when we can!

Picked up a couple of new side jobs

I was out raking an old lady’s lawn the other day, as usual, one of my side jobs, cleaning up her lawn, and a woman from across the street came over.  She said “This is so-and-so and I was talking on the phone the other day and she told me that you come over to clean the lawn every spring and every fall and when the lawn gets too much for her in the summer you come over and straighten it out for her; mowing and trimming.”

She told me that she is going on vacation and a couple of times this summer and wanted to know if I could mow her lawn while she is gone.  I said “Sure, I’ll be glad to.”  She told me that she had been watching me for the last couple of years and that I did a really good job.  She then told me she was going to tell all her friends.  I said “Don’t do that!”  She said, “well, it’s hard when my friends come and see how nice my lawn looks and they know it wasn’t me!”  I said “well, just tell a couple of the ones that can really afford it because I feel my time is really valuable and I really can’t afford to mow more lawns for little or nothing.”  She said that was fine, money wasn’t an object.  So now I have three new lawns to take care of for occasion for the summer, but I can use the money!

Snowboarding

This is a good time of year to be thinking about buying winter sports gear - a lot of the stuff is on “end of season clearance” sale prices!  One of the winter sports my friends and I like to do is snowboarding.  We’ve been talking about buying some new Burton snowboards over the Internet from www.christysports.com.  They have a great selection of winter sports gear, and we saw that they have some clearance specials for about 50% off going on for snowboards, boots, and bindings right now, too!  They offer free UPS shipping on orders over $75, and that’s a good deal, too!

Spring cleanup

I had the afternoon off of work today, so I spent most of the afternoon doing spring cleanup chores around the yard.  Picked up the branches and twigs, swept up the sand, raked up the leaves, repaired the snow plow damage to the lawn, straightened up the mailbox that was leaning precariously to one side. 

Went into the gardens and raked out the old growth and put down new mulch.  I’m going to be fertilizing the yard and garden soon. 

Took the power washer to the siding of the house, it sure looks good now!  Boy no wonder I’m tired - I’m beat!