i know that color!!

Once again, my wife and I allowed ourselves to be pillaged for the "privilege" of being Georgia Tech season ticket holders. We do it because we love going to the games. It gives us an excuse to hang out enjoying the weather and good friends with good food and good beer. To be honest, we could spend as much as we do all season doing just one short trip to Orlando or any other tourist destination so it's not horrible. We just sometimes feel that we get fleeced paying full face value plus a "seat premium" for supposedly better seats when they hand out free tickets, family packs on the cheap that include food, drink, and spirit wear, or tickets for $12 for a few days before a low sales game.

Anyhow, not to complain about that here. The title of the post has nothing to do with bitchy season ticket holders. It has to do with the new GT uniforms. Mostly, when I saw it, I thought "Wow, now they are going to have to call us the Olive Jackets", or something else to describe that color, which is certainly some bastard child of gold and an amalgam of army fatigue greens. In the stadium, the helmets don't look like they match the pants and we sure don't look like we stole Notre Dame's helmets and slapped a GT logo on the side anymore, but they do look like they match the pants on TV and in photos. I don't know, it sort of grew on me during the game, but not in a "I really dig the new unis" kind of way. Supposedly change is sometimes good and I'm sure that we are just on the front end of some freakish return to 70's-era color palettes. Maybe. I think?

After a few days, it really dawned on me what the color really was. Big thanks to the Russell sports wear guys. No, really. You really pulled a fast one on us there. I know that we don't graduate a lot of fashion designers or anything since we aren't much of a liberal arts school (yet!) but it looks like UGA did train some. And they work for Russell. As a designer. And they gave us this color scheme. See pics below for more detail. They say pictures can speak a thousand words or so and I invite you to listen carefully to what these can say.

wow

I thought it would happen in my lifetime, but I never imagined it would happen this soon. It is truly amazing that our country will most likely elect a president that will either place a bi-racial man or a woman into the White House in January of 2009.

How novel.

how mccain can win my vote

Pick a quality VP candidate. It's not too much to ask. I definitely won't vote for his top competitor so he has that going for him.

Who would win my vote? Three people that I can think of. The easiest choice is Ron Paul. Want a guaranteed vote from me in November? Pick this guy. He's honest, he's not overly conservative, he upholds the Constitution, is a foreign non-interventionist, and he has a vision for the country that involves us remaining on top. He has the age thing working against him if that's an issue for a voter but that just leads me think that those voters have a lack of faith in modern medicine and statistics that people are living well past 80.

Who else might win my vote? Condoleeza Rice. It'd up the ante on Obama's race-card by raising him a vagina. It's not that I'm a big Condoleeza fan, I'd just really enjoy seeing some of the air let out on the whole "historic and monumental" Obama band-wagon. Besides, it'd make great TV and talk radio between now and November.

Mike Huckabee. And for the sole reason that he is a Fair Tax supporter. Do I believe it's a panacea for our country? No, but it's a good start and will stop rewarding non-productive people (economically speaking, not reproductively) at the expense of the productive people. He's a bit too theologically conservative for my tastes, but that would probably be a good thing for the McCain ticket vote-bringing-wise since it means putting our women, gay people, and pre-aborted fetuses in their place for the ultra-conservatives. Wow, I just made up a double-hyphenated word in there somewhere.

So listen up Mr. McCain!

1. Ron Paul
2. Condoleeza Rice
   
3. distant third, Mike Huckabee

I still predict keeping the party happy by picking Mr. Second Place. I'm still going to cross my fingers for a McCain-Paul ticket.

ma gooch's, cleveland, ga

The new job took me to Cleveland, GA just a few weeks ago. I apologize for the delay in the update, but it's not like anyone is reading this regularly enough to matter anyhow.

I woke up pretty early by today's standards and headed out towards Cleveland, GA where I was to train the middle school teachers of White County. I don't like surprises on the road so I always plan to arrive at least an hour early. Today, I was more on track for two hours early because I over-estimated the time it would take to make copies at Kinko's on the way. I hadn't really eaten breakfast and was seriously in need of a decent cup of black coffee. I arrived at the town square of Cleveland and surmised that it was really more of a town circle in the style of a European round-a-bout. It was difficult to look for a restaurant while keeping the other cars at bay and looking for the right street so I ended up just going along my route, hoping something else would turn up ahead. I turned again on my route and ended up at a little place that looked inviting enough and relatively new. Turns out they only accept cash and I only had $5 so it's off to the bank. Double back on my route back towards town and I see another place that looks much more "worn in" while sitting at the traffic light. Got some cash, came back to the new find. The first store's loss if you ask me for not taking plastic. I found myself at Ma Gooch's in the heart of Cleveland, GA.

It's a pretty neat place, a building in the corner of a parking lot of a somewhat larger shopping center. When you come in, you can either be seated at the table section to the left or the diner side to the right. Of course I chose the diner side. They let me pick my own table which is always a source of anxiety for me. I never choose the right table it seems, always picking the wobbly one or the booth where the table is too close to the seat on both sides. Got lucky and picked a decent one for once.

The cook was out at the bar and I asked him what was good there. Of course he started rattling off the whole menu. So, I figured I'd go with my country breakfast standard. Two eggs scrambled, patty sausage, biscuit and gravy. I'm so vanilla when it comes to breakfast. But it does at least let me compare different restaurants on a level playing field. Speaking of, I had a hard time adjusting to the regular meal style breakfast while I was in Japan a few years back. Sorry, just can't do soup, fish, etc. for breakfast, too. My stomach is too conditioned after years of good, old American style breakfast, heavy on the starches please!

Anyhow, coffee was standard diner fare, not spectacular but definitely drinkable. The eggs were awesome, not too greasy, not browned on the edges. That's one of my biggest peeves with scrambled eggs. I have trouble not browning them, but then again I don't cook them everyday for a paycheck. Sausage was good, hand-formed patties which is rare these days. And the biscuit and gravy combo was dead-on, little chunks of sausage in the gravy with a little saltiness to it and just the right consistency on the gravy. Biscuit was standard fare, but at least it was fully cooked.

I also had an interesting chat with the cook after he prepared my order. It was about 10:30 and they were kind of between breakfast and lunch. He was wearing a New England Patriots hat so I asked him if he was from up north. Turns out that he was born and raised in Georgia so I ragged him about being a fair-weather fan but then asked him seriously about why the NE hat. He gave me a story about how he was watching one of their Super Bowl appearances (didn't ask specifically, so it could have been any of the last 22 games since they're always in it) with his dear ol' Grandma, just before she died. He said it was the last memory he had of her and they were rooting for the Pats so he sort of just became a fan. Said he's a Falcons fan as well, but they haven't been doing well. I concurred and stated my reasons for not being a huge fan in recent years due to their "thug team" stylings. A few more personnel changes and I might bring myself to be able to watch them again.

Anyhow... a great diner-style breakfast if you find yourself in Cleveland, GA for whatever reason. You might stop in on your way to Babyland General, birthplace (literally) of Cabbage Patch Kids, or to the local zoo, Wildlife Wonders, as seen on Dirty Jobs, or even on your way to hokey ass Helen, GA. And just in case you're wondering, Ma Gooch's will take credit cards, unlike the other place I almost stopped at.

country cottage family restaurant, woodstock, ga

I took the car in for an oil change early this morning and figured it was as good a time as any to grab some breakfast on the way home. I also stopped by a car wash on Hwy 92 in Woodstock that claimed to have free vacuums for purchasers of an automated wash, but the machine failed to produce the token needed to claim said vacuuming service. Grr.

Anyhow, about the breakfast...

Place was kind of dingy on the outside which sometimes means good. Also dingy on the inside but sometimes that's okay. It's the food that makes the decisions for me!

Ordered a standard coffee, no cream anytime they ask. If the coffee is good, it doesn't need cream or sugar. Unfortunately, I should have asked for the cream. Drinkable, but barely. As in I'd rather drink from the 12-hour old pot of trucker's coffee at the Waffle House.

Not too many choices on the menu, breakfast plates and omelets. I'm not a big omelet fan so I chose the plate. Two eggs, choice of meat, grits or gravy, biscuit or toast. People who know my breakfast preferences know I got scrambled eggs, biscuit and gravy, but maybe they don't know the sausage.

Sausage was obviously cut from a cylinder of sausage. Not even a slight attempt at forming it into a neater patty. Hey, at least it's not from frozen! Or maybe not as I have had better frozen sausage. Not good.

Biscuit? Looks fantastic. Until it's opened. That's when I realized that the thicker portion of the biscuit was still dough. Oh well, raw dough ain't going to kill ya' so I ate it anyhow. The gravy was made with sausage grease, as it should be, but lacked a bit of substance and was overly salty.

But hey, the eggs were good. It's not impossible, but it's tougher to screw up scrambled eggs.

In the black and white world of hit or miss breakfast restaurants, I'd say Country Cottage Family Restaurant gets a big ol' miss. Airball, even. You'd be better off driving an extra mile or two to the Sunshine Biscuit Co, reviewed earlier.

Who knows? Maybe it's better at lunch time.

the universal sign for asshole

...can be found here.

I don't know about too many former national leaders that had their own salute. I remember some of them having gestures that they made, the "W" referenced in the article by our current prez and Nixon's infamous peace signs. But I can only think of one that was greeted with salutes from their followers.

But is this the best they could come up with? Way to shun the perfectly good "O" created by/for our deaf community! Or did you have to pay royalties for that one?

I also think that this refers to the new size of my (and any other middle class folks) bum hole if this guy gets elected, which is looking more and more likely judging by the cult of personality that this guy has been able to create.