Hearty
Because Crime Scene Kitchen is airing (again) nationally, we’ve had quite a few visitors to the stores in hopes of seeing Jeanne or I - which is so weird to me, because we are just us, television or not. I was alone for a few hours today at Nifong and two different people stopped by because of the show. One gentleman was in his 70s and never said much while he shopped but when he checked out with his pies, he put his hand over mine and said he was just so surprised and happy to see me here because he loved the show. And then because I’m eternally awkward, I always apologize for our poor performance and our demise on the croquembouche. So basically I’m saying I wouldn’t be a good famous person because I always need to apologize for everything and I could never fly commercial and make a movie that some people don’t like because I would feel the need to apologize for any low score on Rotten Tomatoes. (On the other hand, Jeanne never apologizes for the croquembouche. She fully blames the producers for picking a crazy dessert. This is every thing you could ever want to know about the difference between us.)
Here are two other ridiculous things from our week:
I’m working on a project and it involves a discussion with a large company in St. Louis. The point of contact emailed to ask if our marketing team and I could get on a call and have a conversation with their marketing team. I actually laughed out loud because the marketing team is me and a rising high school junior that is basically me in a younger version. So, that’s awkward, right? Though as Travis pointed out before he left, maybe they think we are so good that we have a whole team of well paid adults running this plan? More than likely not. But I haven’t answered her because there’s no good way to say “you are talking to the team” without looking like a dork.
And also, you might remember that we paid over $3,000 in maintenance shortfalls at the Nifong location for 2021. It is the highest amount that we’ve ever paid in eight years - we pay a monthly charge based on our pro rata share of square footage and typically that comes pretty close to what the landlord spent on making the center look “nice” (though, clearly “nice” is subjective). But today I was hauling out trash because there is nothing glamorous about what I do and I noticed that the weeds growing in the cracks between the parking lot and the actual building were growing A TOMATO. I would guess that when Subway left a trail of sliced and rotted tomatoes from the back door to the dumpster, a seed flew into the crack running along the building. And since the subjective definition of nice doesn’t include pulling weeds growing up the side of the building, we’ve progressed to tomatoes. Well, a single tomato. But considering the conditions back there (cigarette butts, garbage, a whole mattress in the dumpster, rust everywhere, buckets of standing water, and more), that is a HEARTY tomato. I’m impressed. But don’t order tomato on your sandwich at Subway, because who knows.
