The Hazel Project

WOW.

I’m in reverant awe of how everybody helped me in leaving town.

I stayed with davak’s family Wednesday night. Went firefly hunting with
their 4 year old.

We mostly caught worms and rollie pollies. Nevertheless we put forth a good effort. Firefly hunting is exponentially more difficult after a few glasses of a nice table red from southern season.

Thursday was intense.

My last day at work.

I was amazed at the kindness and the cards and the cake and the cameras. I’m going to miss these people and this place. This job was a transforming experience for me.

Later I did another reduction at my 5×5 unit and finally delineated what could go and what I’d need to store at Larry and Linda’s.
Larry and I went on a 5k run. We all had a great dinner, even Smokey the dog. We hung out on the porch that we reconstructed together earlier this year, had a great time.

The fireflies were out, doing their thing. I was surprised how high they could fly. They lit up the trees like blinky Christmas lights. It was fantastic. All set to ‘ventura highway’ from America’s greatest hits; Larry’s latest cd.

What’s an ‘alligator lizard’ anyway?

Friday was also a whirlwind. Up early and took more equipment to sell to GC.

So I left town finally at 4:00 with the remainder of my belongins packed in the VW.

It rained.

A torrential downpour.

It took an hour to get to wakeforest from capital boulevard.

I spent Saturday with Dan and Peg and their pups. Dan showed me the work he’s doing this summer, regarding a model of the human ear.
Very cool. Then he showed me an actual temporal bone, with a human ear attached. Looked at it under a microscope. He explained how cochlear implants worked in words of 3 syllables or less so I ‘d understand. We also looked at the inside of an ear under a microscope. Fascinating stuff. Regarding the mechanical to electrical conversion that stimulates the auditory nerve, we decided it was magic.

Try putting that on a test.

Sunday I ended up at wal mart somewhere at 7:30 AM to buy a floormat and cushion for for the drivers seat. It was weird to feel bad for the Chinese person who made my seat cushionn and thankful at the same time. Tried to get a biscuit at the in-house mcdonalds. Fortunately they were closed and I had a lemon poppy seed clif bar instead.

I got hold of a chicken sandwich loaded with MSG somewhere after Knoxville. It was a Subway attached to a gas station. It took 20 minutes of waiting in a line of 1 person. She was ordering Sunday dinner I guess. I was getting frustrated then noticed the 2 girls behind me, must’ve been about 8 or 9, making up a dance routine to the song, “promiscuous”. Those who know me understand how surreal this
moment was. Only in real life, especially in the south it seems, surreality is commonplace.

I ate my MSG laden lunch on the road and 30 minutes later I was taking a nap at an abandoned Exxon station. I pulled the car in and noticed a tall pole that had 10 or so hollow gourds on in it. Bird houses. Only the birds were left at the Exxon.

I began to laugh with irony when the AC unit clicked on cooling the inside of the gas station; I guess to keep the left over cigarettes fresh?

I wonder who’s paying that bill?

Memphis was great. Met up with the parents, Betty and Herb, and we went for dinner at Corky’s bbq.

Betty and I noticed that the large neon sign outside was protected by chicken wire. Then we noticed an armed guard sitting on a truck bed. We chose to hurry up and wait inside at that point.

The food was delicious. Memphis style ribs. 1/2 dry, 1/2 wet. Being from NC I HAD to put the localized Texas Pete on mine. It was very tasty.

Today, After repacking the car, to make space for Herb. I put more stuff -including the green analog machine- in Betty’s car. Herb and I rolled down the windows turned up the sirius jazz satellite radio and lit out for California.

The coolest thing I saw today was a windmill energy farm in OK. There were at leat 50 of these things. They were very big and had a certain grace about them.

The windmills offset the meal in Oklahoma city at a mexican resturaunt.

We asked a Mapco attendant about a good place to eat and she obliged.
As we were leaving she said, “make sure to get the cheese dip!”

So we get there and it’s clean enough with standard mexican resturaunt ‘hominess’. faux stucco, sticky vinyl seats, tall red and white plastic glasses for coke products & modern tex mex music-with Tuba!

Then the waitress brings the standard chips, salsa and a bowl of yellowish goo.

I thought great! Chceese dip! I love this stuff. Well I learned I love queso. This was different.

I’m very tentative eating this, I look over at Herb and he’s eaten 1/2 of his little bowl of the stuff.

The waitress comes back and we order our dinner no.s and Herb says
“Oh by the way we’d like to order some cheese dip.”

the waitresses eyes glaze over-she’s searching; cheese dip? cheese dip?

So herb tries again, “you know the white queso dip”.

Betty and Herb are conosuers of this particular appetizer and Herb was really surprised they had no such thing.

The reason they didn’t have the cheese dip Herb and I were expecting was because we were eating their particular kind.

It was, and I wish I was exaggerating here, a heated can of cream of chicken soup. I kept tasting it to see if there could be any cheese…nope, no cheese. Just salt, and chicken boullion taste.

My review of the rest of the meal.
My portion alone would feed 3 people.

enchillada?
salt

rice?
starchy salt

beans?
with lotsa salt

The salsa, was really good though. It had some real vegetables in it.

Is there something wrong with my taste buds? I love mexican food!

I think I’ve been spoiled by fine cooking from all of you who read these posts.

Particularly the Asherby’s, Larry and Linda, Dan & Peg, The Wrights, the Davaks, Tom & Suzanne.

Thanks for spoiling me with your fine cooking and recipes, now I can differentiate more tastes other than sweet, salt, and starch.

Oh how wish you were all here to have tasted the chicken soup passed off as cheese dip in Oklahoma City.

Thanks for checking in,

Stephen A. Thomas

This entry was posted on Monday, June 26th, 2006 at 11:29 pm and is filed under on the path, posts & stories . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.