Strollin’ Through the Big Easy

I would have to say that New Orleans is the weirdest city ever. And this is coming from someone whose hometown relies on a groundhog for weather forecasting.

One would expect that weird stuff goes on during Mardi Gras, and I'm sure New Orleans is extra weird during that period of time. But as it turns out, things are pretty extremely weird on a non-stop basis, at least in the French Quarter.

We had some time to explore the city prior to heading further south on our mission trip last weekend, so three of us from our church headed into town. Our first order of business was to buy beignets at Café Du Monde.

Beignets are basically donuts, and they're $1.88 for three of them. The catch is that you have to stand in line for a long, long time to get one. One of the members of our group, Sally, was on a mission to get one, though, so she and another church member stood in line 45 minutes to make the purchase. They were good, but I'm not sure they were 45 minutes worth of good.

I spent those 45 minutes trying to find a legal parking spot. I eventually settled on a parking spot, conveniently located somewhere in Iowa.

When we walked around the French Quarter, we saw all sorts of bizarre people. Many people were dressed all in silver with silver body paint. Some of these people did street shows where they posed as "robot people" for tips, but it seemed like others just liked to dress that way.

We saw numerous dogs dressed up with fancy outfits, and plenty of stores that can help you fulfill any perverted fantasy you've ever dreamed about. There's also the historic St. Louis Cathedral, which is the oldest continually operating cathedral in the United States, if I remember correctly. It's very elegant and religious-looking, but right outside the door is a row of psychics, apparently for the convenience of church-goers.

And, to wrap up this posting, I'll have to share with you this fine photo of a woman I saw on the street, who definitely wasn't a woman. Eeew.

Rice With Something On It

I'm baaaaaaack!

The Smootmobile now has an extra 3,070 miles on it, having just returned from a mission trip to southern Louisiana. There were about 45 of us who made the journey to the small town of Dulac, about an hour and a half southwest of New Orleans.

This community is primarily made up of members of the Houma Indian tribe, and they have been repeatedly devastated by hurricanes over the past few years. We had the opportunity to help with various projects to help them rebuild homes throughout the course of the week.

The United Methodists have an operation in Dulac to organize this effort for groups who come to town. In an orientation meeting, they told us that the local people may offer to cook for us while we're working on their homes, because "that's all they have to offer." They asked us to please eat the food if we're offered, because it would be insulting to them if we turned it down.

It seems that the main diet in this area consists of "Rice With Something On It." And it's not always quite clear what the "Something" might be. We were told by several people that they'll eat "anything that walks, crawls, swims or flies." So it was best not to ask specifically what might have been on the rice.

Those of you who know me are aware that I am not a bold culinary adventurer. I don't often venture outside the realm of the nacho and cheese food groups. But I did my honest best to sample the local cuisine, and I survived. Some of it was obvious, like shrimp, and it was quite good. Other dishes weren't quite as obvious.

Most of the food was seafood-oriented; shrimp fishing is their main industry. And it was cool to eat stuff that you knew was very fresh, considering you couldn't stand anywhere in town where you couldn't see numerous shrimp boats all around.

In any case, I am going to try to get through this week on a rice-free diet.

Another Adventure in the Smootmobile

It's that time again! It's time once again for me to hop into the Smootmobile and head out for another adventure. I'll be getting up early tomorrow morning (getting up early will probably be an adventure of its own) and heading south for a church mission trip.

I'll be picking up two other members of our church, and we'll drive to Memphis, TN, to spend our first night. We'll be meeting up with several dozen other people who are making the trip from this area, and we'll somehow be stuffing 3-4 people into each room for the night. I've done the math, and considering there are generally only two beds in a hotel room, I have elected to bring along a sleeping bag.

We'll continue on to New Orleans on Saturday, where we'll all get heavily intoxicated and throw beads at one another. Well, probably not. But we will take some time to explore the city a bit before we head to the small town of Dulac, about an hour and a half south of the Big Easy.

A friend of mine reminded me that Dulac is actually the name of the town in the movie Shrek, so I'll be curious to see whether there are any similarities. Perhaps I'll see an ogre.

We'll be helping to conduct hurricane cleanup work, which could come in the form of painting, roofing, drywall, or whatever. I'll be more than happy to help out with whatever they deem appropriate. Once they recognize that my "manly skills" are quite limited, maybe they'll tell me that the best way I can help is to simply sit in a corner and not touch anything. We'll see.

I do not expect to have much in the way of Internet access while I'm on this trip, and I doubt I'll have a plethora of spare time during the week, either, so you'll have to somehow cope with the fact that there will likely be no new Hank Smoot Files until I return. Judging from the lack of comments for the past several days, I may very well be the only one who notices anyway! In any event, I'm sure we'll all get through it. I'm sure I'll be refueled with whacky anecdotes come March 30.

The Numbers Are In!

Well, I've been pretty faithful about going out and taking walks nearly every day for the past couple weeks. Normally I'll do a 2.2 mile walk to the end of our road and back, all in the hopes of becoming a little less rotund for the upcoming thong season. The weather has been cooperative, so I have been doing this walk or other hikes quite religiously.

As my reward, I stepped on the scale this morning to see how I've been doing. And I'm extremely proud to say that I have... gained four pounds?!? What the heck? How could I be the only person in history to begin a regular exercise routine and wind up in worse shape?

I can assure you that when I am taking these walks down our road, the neighborhood isn't setting up two miles of buffet tables that I'm sampling along the way. And I really am walking the entire distance, as opposed to wearing roller skates and having a dog tow me, or some such thing.

I'll admit that we have enjoyed a few tasty feasts on a couple occasions this past week, and the mountain of Girl Scout cookies at Smoot Central has been reduced to a mere hillside, but still... surely these walks should be doing some good, right? I have to wonder what would be happening to me if I hadn't been taking these walks. I doubt I'd even fit through the door any more, I guess.

I think for the next couple days I'll do an experiment. I may just sit in the living room with a giant tub of chips and dip, and watch marathon episodes of The Simpsons. Given my recent experience, I'm guessing I should lose several pounds under this regimen!

Howdy, Chief!

I'm getting set to go on another long drive this weekend, so I headed down to get my oil changed yesterday afternoon. While I was there, I was reminded of one of my numerous pet peeves. During my visit, the Jiffy Guy called me "Boss" at least 85 times.

"Hey Boss, do ya want the 10W-30 oil?"

"Hey Boss, you have a hamster stuck in your air filter!"

"Hey Boss, for another $57.50 we can grease your muffler bearings for you!"

"Hey Boss, you're all set! That'll be $375, plus the hamster removal fee!"

Blah blah blah.

Pal, I am not your boss. Even if I were your boss, I'd really appreciate it if you didn't call me "Boss." And I'd agree not to call you "Pal."

Speaking of bosses, I once had a boss who called everyone "Partner." This was back in my radio days, and this guy owned the station. Oftentimes the hotline phone in the studio would ring, I'd answer it, and hear, "Hey, Partner!" And then he'd spend the next 10 minutes reaming me out for whatever DJ sin I had allegedly just committed.

Whatever the case, I really didn't consider myself to be his "partner" in any form of the word.

Even worse, he had a son who was being groomed to take over the family business, and he called everyone "Chief." Now that was really annoying. I happen to appreciate the opportunity to learn about the culture of Native Americans, particularly after visiting portions of Navajo Nation in Arizona and Utah this past summer. But I doubt very much that this qualifies me to be a Chief.

So in the future, I would appreciate it if people didn't patronize me with these silly titles. Please address me as I would prefer. "Your Highness" would work just fine.

The Kleenex Kontroversy

I think it's about time we do something about these out of control Kleenex manufacturers.

I consume my share of Kleenex. I have some sort of unnatural obsession when it comes to keeping my nose clear of boogers and other nasal anomalies. I like to think that when people see me on the street, they can remark to one another, "Wow. Now there's a man who takes his personal nasal hygiene seriously."

So I routinely go through plenty of Kleenex, which brings me to the problem. When I open a new box, I always try my darndest to remove just one single Kleenex from the box, but this is apparently impossible. The powerful Kleenex cartel has seemingly decided that upon opening the box, it will be virtually impossible to extract any fewer than four or five tissues for the first use.

Once you get those first few out everything is fine, but things are so tightly jammed into the boxes that the first bunch of them always come out as a big blob. What are we supposed to do with all of the extra ones? I've tried jamming the extras back into the box, but that just creates new, annoying problems. Sometimes it screws up the entire box so none of them come out correctly, and getting each Kleenex out is like conducting an archeological dig.

I've tried wasting the extras by dedicating two Kleenexes to each nostril… or by sharing a couple with the cat, or whatever. But my point is that I end up wasting numerous of the first tissues, and you just know that the Kleenex people planned it this way.

Just a few Kleenexes doesn't sound like a whole lot, but think about it on a grander scale. Imagine how many extra boxes of Kleenexes they manage to sell every year because they're ripping us off by as much as 5% per box! This is obviously worthy of some sort of litigious action, and we should start passing around petitions, or some other sort of irrational action, and soon.

And don't even get me started on toilet paper.

An About-Face

Ok, I have officially changed my position regarding Facebook.

A few months back I wrote a blog entry about how I just didn't get Facebook, and the whole site seemed to be more bizarre than anything. Well, over these past couple weeks I have found myself spending more and more time messing with that site, as though I really need yet another time wasting activity in my life.

My initial impression of Facebook was based on the fact that I was getting all sorts of whacko e-mail requests to join gangster battles, throw virtual pillows at people, or stupid things like that. I figured out how to turn those e-mails off -- woo hoo!

The cool thing about the site is that practically everyone I know has a profile there. I have found people I haven't talked to (or thought about) since grade school, and I've been able to catch up with them and find out what they've been up to these last 300 years.

There's another feature that allows people to say what they're doing at that particular moment. This is goofy, sure, but it is rather interesting to see how people use this tool. Oh, and I have also figured out how to upload pictures to the site (and change my "what I'm doing now" status) right from my cell phone, so that will give me something to do at times when I would otherwise just be steering.

Even my brother, who would have been the last person on Earth I would have suspected to find there, has dipped his toes into the Facebook pool. I half expect to find that our cat has his own profile, which would explain the times where I can't seem to find him around the house.

Mrs. Smoot has caught the Facebook Bug, too. Several nights this week she has come home with allegedly important work to do, and oddly enough she'll still be sitting there late at night with a goofy grin on her face as she reads someone's profile.

I still think some of it is bizarre. I don't get e-mail alerts for these things any longer, but I still see on my page that I have a "Kidnap" request, a "Christmas Ornament" request, and a "Snowball War" request, among others. Who knows, in a few more weeks, maybe I'll get into these weird things, too, and I'll be hosting my own Facebook Elf Bowling Events, or some such thing.

It's Coming: Pi Day!

You may be aware that we recently celebrated "Square Root Day." A bunch of nerds got all excited because a few days ago the date was 3/3/09. Since 3 times 3 = 9, and nine is a square root, someone decided to call it "Square Root Day," and it was on the news and everything.

This amazing event only happens so often. The last time was 2/2/04, which was overshadowed, so to speak, by Groundhog Day. Square Root Day won't happen again until 4/4/16, and then 5/5/25, and so forth.

I failed to get too excited about this whole thing, mainly because I hate math. I can remember when I was in college and I had to take an algebra class, and it was only through Mrs. Smoot's wonderful tutoring that I managed to pass. Barely.

My algebra teacher had some kind of fascination with making us figure out what "X" was. We'd spend a whole afternoon figuring out that X was his secret code word for "7" or some such thing. And then the next day, sure enough, X would mean something completely different. He was always jerking us around about X.

Anyway, since I'm as much of a good sport as anyone about this stuff, I decided to invent Pi Day. That will occur this Saturday, at 1:59 p.m. See, Saturday is 3/14... and Pi is 3.14159. So I am suggesting that at 1:59 p.m. everyone eat a piece of pie on Saturday. Just don't ask me what "Pi" actually means. Pi could be X for all I know.

Anyway, enjoy your piece of pie. And be sure to alert the media and all of your pocket-protector-obsessed friends!

The Annual Futile Fitness Attempt

It's time for my official AFFA Week! AFFA, of course, stands for Annual Futile Fitness Attempt. And it generally lasts around a week. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.

The weather got really nice for a couple days last week. It's Mother Nature's way of teasing us in early March before turning around and dumping more snow on us to depress us further. With the nice weather I was inspired to go out and take a nice, brisk walk down to the end of our road and back. It's a 2-mile round trip, enough that I think it actually qualifies as "excercise." I have been making this trek daily, with a couple exceptions of really rainy days, since then.

I get this way every year around this time. I'll think, "A-ha! THIS is the year that I'm going to get into some sort of shape!" And before I know it, I'll come to accept the fact that "round" is indeed technically some sort of shape, and I'll say the heck with it.

It's sunny and reasonably warm again today, so I guess I'll take my walk in a bit. Or maybe I'll eat some cookies. I'll have to think about it.

The Little Smoot Flute

Little Smoot has developed a new, odd habit.

Last year in school she was issued one of those annoying little flute things (a "recorder"). I guess they use them in a lot of schools to help inspire kids to take up musical instruments. They also inspire many parents to go insane, since the sound of these things is absolutely screechy and annoying, no matter how talented you might be at playing one.

Toward the end of her 4th grade year, Little Smoot's school held a choral concert which also featured her entire class playing these flutes, almost in unison. I have to admit that the kids did a better job with it than I was envisioning, but it still sounded a lot like what would happen if you were to obtain several dozen cats that were trapped in a giant blender.

Anyway, Little Smoot has kept this instrument since last year, and she has chosen to keep it in the bathroom, next to the toilet. So when she goes to the bathroom, she'll sit there and play the flute at the same time. I find this to be a little disturbing.

Sooner or later I have this terrible feeling that she is going to make an attempt to synchronize the sounds of the flute with whatever other sounds she might be making at the same time, if you know what I mean. And, if she's anything like me, she'll want to record such a thing and make it available for who knows how many other people to hear. I can hardly wait.

So Many Clocks, So Little Time

I think someone sneaked into our house this weekend and scattered a whole bunch of new clocks all over the place. I'm sure we didn't have this many before.

For most of the year, if you were to ask me how many clocks are in our house, I'd probably guess, I dunno, maybe there are five of them. But now I'm finding that we must have hundreds of clocks all over the house, demanding that I set them ahead an hour to comply with Daylight Saving Time.

Just as I was typing the previous paragraph it occurred to me that I have to remember how to set the stinkin' answering machine again. It's always one of the most annoying ones, because it actually talks to me while I'm trying to set it, and I can never remember which buttons to push. I swear that after a while of poking various buttons on it, the electronic voice adopts a more annoyed tone as it squawks at me. Someday it's going to come right out and say, "Yo, moron, learn how to push the right buttons!" in its weird robot voice.

Then there's the microwave, the stove, the clock in the car, various little decorative clocks, and the DVD recorder, which allegedly sets itself but seems to usually display times from other planets on it. And of course there's my prized fake Rolex.

Thankfully Mrs. Smoot gave me a last minute reminder on Saturday night that it was Clock Night... otherwise I would have arrived at church an hour off. Don't ask me if it would have made me an hour early or an hour late; it fries my brain to figure out which hour off I would have been.

I usually get all of the clocks synchronized correctly by, say, October, when it's time to go monkeying with them all over again.

Reader of the Week!

My blog has officially reached the point where I may have to begin a “Reader of the Week” recognition promotion. Considering there are likely no more than three of you reading this in the first place, it’ll probably be pretty easy to receive this prestigious acknowledgment, perhaps even more than once or twice a month.

But we do indeed have a reader who has gone above and beyond the call of duty, responding and taking appropriate action as a result of a recent blog entry. A couple weeks ago I wrote about my tendency to get really excited about getting mail, especially when it involves the UPS truck pulling up to the house.

In that article, I mentioned that I am often tempted to mail silly things to myself, just so that I could take pleasure in having the big brown truck pull up to the house. Specifically, I thought that it would be cool to have Kleenex delivered right to the door while the neighbors imagine that I’m receiving something extravagant.

So you can imagine my excitement and elation yesterday afternoon as I was getting ready to pick Little Smoot up from school, and up pulls the giant brown truck. Naturally I was giddy, especially since I didn’t recall ordering anything that I hadn’t already received.

Since it was surprisingly warm outside, there were even a couple neighbors in their yards who were able to witness the big truck’s arrival. I’m sure they were imagining what must be inside the medium-sized box that the UPS dude was handing me. Knowing my geeky tendencies, they probably thought I was getting some sort of new electronic gadget, or perhaps a belated birthday gift or some such thing.

None of the neighbors were in the house with me when I opened up the box to reveal its wondrous contents: a new box of Kleenex! It’s worth noting that the package was also stuffed with wadded up balls of newspaper to protect the contents, as if it’s humanly possible to do that much damage to a box of Kleenex while being transported.

Not surprisingly, the return address indicated that the package came from “H. Dat,” also known here as Hoosaid Dat in his numerous and frequent blog comments. So needless to say, the first ever recipient of the Hank Smoot Files Reader of the Week Recognition Promotion goes to: Mr. Dat.

I only have two regrets regarding this surprise gift. First, I wish I had the UPS tracking number ahead of time, so I could have followed the whereabouts of the Kleenex as it made its fantastic voyage to my doorstep. And I also kinda wish I had jokingly suggested something more valuable than Kleenex in my original column, like maybe gold coins or something.

Anyway, I am forever grateful for this gesture, and you’ll be glad to know that I was able to instantly use the Kleenex to clean up some of the Pepsi that I spat out of my nose as I was laughing upon realizing what was in the box.

Pumped Up

Last weekend I was coughing so bad at night that I actually sought medical attention from a person in the medical profession. Normally I limit my medical care to a quick sprint through the NyQuil Aisle at the grocery store.

I am rather hesitant to seek professional medical care from medical professional humans because now that I've surpassed Age 40, something terrible is eventually going to happen.

Eventually I'm going to be in a little sterile room and everything will seem bright and happy... and then the lights will suddenly dim, scary music will start playing, and someone is going to lunge at me with their hand concealed in a scary, white glove. I'm not ready.

So I generally avoid human medical care unless blood is actively shooting out of one of my main orifices or something.

Anyway, nothing scary happened at the walk-in clinic I went to. The nice lady gave me an Albuterol inhaler, which greatly helped me take care of the nasty coughing. And for whatever reason she prescribed a series of steroid doses for me, so I have been taking those all week.

On the first day of the steroids (or "Roids," or "Juice," as me and my pals on the street like to say), you take 6 of these pills, and then you take one fewer pill each day. Today I'm down to just two pills.

I will say that I have been feeling much better these last couple days. The only real side effect I've noticed is this weird, uncontrollable urge to play baseball.

Smoots in the City

The Smoot clan headed into Pittsburgh last night to attend the annual Home and Garden Show at the Convention Center. As a result, I spent much of the evening attempting to avoid eye contact with vendors, while keeping my ears pealed (or is it "peeled?" Who knows) for those wonderful words: "Free Samples!"

It's rare that I'll willingly put myself into a situation where I know that people are going to be attempting to sell me stuff. There are few things in life that I find more annoying than sales pitches of any shape or form, let alone when salespeople materialize out of thin air in front of me.

Thankfully the sales leeches weren't terribly bad at the home show. I may have become somewhat desensitized by them after our recent Christmas cruise to Mexico, though. In the port community of Majahual, it was almost necessary to fend them off in slow motion, like a scene from The Matrix.

Anyway, I managed to escape most of the sales pitches merely by avoiding eye contact last night, although I was alert and ready to pretend that I was deaf, or merely oblivious, or having a seizure, or whatever was going to be necessary to express my non-interest. I did wind up in an extremely one-sided conversation where I learned everything there is to know about a certain brand of candles, and of course we now have a new candle in the house as a memento.

Mrs. Smoot, who is a much better person than I am, has a much higher tolerance for sales goons. At the very least, she's polite to them and is capable of acknowledging their existence. And oftentimes she's willing to stand there and listen to a sales pitch while I pretend to be invisible/deaf/oblivious/in the midst of a seizure.

The free samples got me by, though. We barely needed to eat dinner after indulging on little cubes of meats and little pretzels with various goo on them. We also greatly enjoyed many free samples of potato chips, including a hot dog flavored chip, which was alarmingly good.

Today is The Day

Every year around this time I come upon a single day where I decide that I simply can’t take any more of winter. And I think I’ll declare today as The Day.

It’s March, for heaven’s sake, so I’m officially ready to start seeing temperatures rise above freezing. Preferably way above freezing. We should be out flying kites in March, right? But yesterday and today we’ve had temperatures in the teens with highs maybe reaching into the 20s. Bah on that.

Sunday night we were walking home from a neighbor’s house, and we nearly turned into popsickles. (As a side note, one of our neighbor’s last names is “Sickles.” I often wonder if the father of the family is called “Pop Sickles.”)

It’s somewhat ironic that I am fed up with this winter, considering I have already made two trips to Florida since December. And I have another trip to the South coming up in less than three weeks. You’d think that I could tolerate a couple more weeks of the cold, knowing that I’ll be basking in 70s or maybe even 80s later this month, but I can’t seem to convince my brain to thaw out and be just be content with that.

I am going to write a snippy letter to my congressperson to see what can be done. I think the weather needs a government bailout.

Slept Like a Baby...

I can definitely say that I slept like a baby on Saturday night. I woke up every three hours, and I wanted to hit the bottle.

Who came up with that stupid phrase in the first place, "slept like a baby?" I am guessing that person never had children. Everyone I know who has been personally involved with babies would probably attest that getting a baby to sleep in an acceptable manner is pretty much freakin' impossible. But for some reason people use this phrase to describe a delightful night of sleep.

Anyway.

This cold has been driving me nuts, and Saturday night was just miserable. I couldn't fall asleep until well after midnight, and then I woke up coughing my head off at 5:00 a.m. I wasn't even fully aware that there was such a thing at "5:00 a.m." until then.

Thankfully I got me some more powerfuller drugs yesterday, and things are going much more smoothly today. The only side effect seems to be that I tend to make up words, like powerfuller. But otherwise I seem to be much less wonkified.