This Is Not About Shot-a-palooza

I know that this burger was eaten on the same day as Shot-a-palooza, and I know that you probably would rather hear all the funny stories that happened, but it's just not going to happen. I don't think that these stories need to be immortalized on the web forever on a low-quality cheeseburger blog. Some of the people involved may need to get jobs someday, and these stories could compromise their hire-ability. You can thank me later.

Instead you get to hear some less funny stories about our trip to Ruby Tuesday. Still funny though.

My original plan was to have some pasta for dinner, but when I was offered the chance at a burger, I decided to take it. First off, our waiter talked way too quietly pretty much every time he was at the table. I had to base everything I said to him off of what other people said. Oh, Mom's ordering a water, so he must be asking if we want drinks. Why can't that guy just talk like a normal person?

I am not exactly sure what Mom got, but it included the salad bar. The only problem was that the guy either didn't tell her to head over to it, or he told her but said it super-quietly and she didn't hear it. Either way, she did not think that she should go up there, even though she was obviously allowed to as it was part of the order. Salad bar: 1, Mom: 0.

I went with the Boston Blue Burger because I wanted to make sure I didn't eat the exact same burger as last time and also because Matt ordered the Smokehouse Burger and I didn't want to be a copycat. It has onion rings, blue cheese, Boston barbecue sauce, lettuce, tomato, red onion and, unnecessarily, pickles. I forgot to check for those little dill bastards, so I ended up being slightly upset later. I really have to start reading the menu more carefully when I go places. On a positive note, I actually remembered to take a picture this time. Well, not so much remembered as was reminded, but either way, the picture happened. See?

And you guessed it; that's some Tabasco ketchup there in the middle. It also turns out that Ruby Tuesday has unlimited fries, but I didn't try to take advantage of that because I didn't want to have a full stomach for the evening's festivities.

That burger was pretty good! And it was actually cooked correctly again!! Maybe all these restaurants are reading these stories and realizing that medium-rare does not mean well done. Or maybe I've just been getting lucky lately.

After we ate, we ran over to Ocean State (which is apparently the unofficial thing to do after eating a Ruby Tuesday). As I was wearing a Lacoste shirt I got from Dad, I am almost positive that the most expensive thing in the store became my shirt as soon as I walked in the door. Take that, Ocean State!

You should ask some people about stories from Shot-a-palooza II. It was legen. . . wait for it. . . dary.

-Jon

Now We're Talking

It probably be seems like Mmmm, Burgers is off to a slower start in 2010 than it was in 2009, but that is only if you look at the numbers and see that I am only on pace for 60 burger stories this year compared to the 73 from last year. However, you may also realize that I have posted 5 times in the past 2 weeks, which extrapolates to 130 stories in a year as well as a dangerously increased level of cholesterol and, presumably, some serious extra poundage.

Oh well, I do it for the readers.

Tonight was burgers at Mom & Chuck's newly updated kitchen, which has been several months in the making. They have a crazy new stove that scares me because it apparently gets super hot and will probably injure me severely at some point in the not-too-distant future. Stay tuned for that story, either here or at Mmmm, Opinions.

We had regular burgers (with cheese added later due to a slight oversight on Chuck's part) with the options of bacon, stealth onions or mushrooms. I passed on the stealth onions because I thought that onions would be an option later. I turned out to be wrong there. I also put the mushrooms on the side, as I have had some troubles recently with those sneaky fungi escaping from my burger. So pretty much my burger was a standard bacon cheeseburger. Hey, not everything needs to be an elaborate creation!

Aw crap! I forgot to take a picture again. I am really a disappointment, both to myself and my family.*

The burger was pretty good. A bit overcooked for my liking, but not to the charcoal briquet level. I only had one because it turns out that I am actually very fat and need to lose 15-50 lbs. The doctor suggested the first amount, but that sounds pretty half-assed to me. Now obviously, I will fail in this endeavor, but at least I have an excuse not to eat food I don't like.

-Jon

* - I am not sure that my family is disappointed in me, but I have to assume they are.

Happy Memorial Day

Ok, I keep forgetting to take pictures of my burgers, and this time it is really unfortunate. Kathryn and I went to her mother's house for a Memorial Day cookout, and there were some burgers and hot dogs since I think it might be the law that you have to serve them at any Memorial Day activity. Unfortunately, Chloe and Odin were not invited, even though Odin would have loved the yard there. It was completely fenced in and probably close to 3/4 of an acre. Plus there are some snakes that live in part of the wall. I feel like those would have entertained him for hours. Then I would have either a story about Odin running around carrying a snake, or a story about us taking Odin to the vet to treat some snakebites. Win-win really.

Back to the burgers. These were not your everyday, run-of-the-mill burgers though. Due to whatever combination of factors caused it, the burgers ended up being super tiny once they were cooked. We're talking like maybe and inch and a half across. They were like sliders! That means I ended up eating 4 burgers, but I am not counting it as a tie for the record due to the minimum size requirements. That title still goes to Amy and Scott's cookout from last June. In addition to the burger medallions, we also had fruit salad, baked beans, some salmon and beers. I imagine my stomach is going to be upset with me within the next 12 hours.

So the short version is that I really dropped the ball on the picture taking today. I apologize profusely. And also about the length of this story. I used up all my words yesterday typing about the beer tasting. Go read that if you need more Jon-based journalism.

-Jon

3 Burgers in 1 Day

Burgers and snack food were pretty much the entire menu for today. I suspect that it will turn out that this is not a decision that a smart person would make.

I am not really the kind of person who has a plan for his life. For instance, I have already resigned my current job without a new job lined up. Most people would not consider this to be a good plan, but for me, plans are pretty much what I make even though I generally have no intention of actually following through on them. I am a much bigger fan of just waking up and going with whatever seems to be happening. So when I heard a commercial for a summer kick-off party with beer-tasting and free hamburgers that was happening at a giant package store, that seemed like a good thing to do. And it was! All the of-age brothers (plus Tony) attended this rocking event with high levels of beer-based success.

I tried a whole bunch of new beers for the grand total of a $5 donation, and you can read about that here. I also got to eat a hamburger for free. It was still overpriced.

I understand that when you are a radio station sponsoring an event, you are probably not overly concerned with the quality of the food; you just need to get the jokers attending the event some food and get them out of line. On the other hand, all you need to improve a burger is a little bit of seasonings. Salt, pepper, garlic powder, grilling seasonings, onion powder, granulated onion. . . the possibilities are pretty much only limited by your imagination. Unfortunately, the people in charge of this event decided to choose the last option, which was none of the above. And they didn't even put cheese on the burger! And I had to wait a while for the burger, which wasn't even good! That was a very disappointing burger, which slightly marred the rest of a pretty good event.

After that, I headed over to Michelle and Steven's for their 3-hour cookout. It actually turned out that the 3 hours was not accurate, but it's much funnier if you think of it as the world's shortest cookout. Steven was running the grill, and was obviously much more capable than the folks taking care of things over at Table & Vine. Not only did these burgers actually have cheese on them, there were tomatoes and red onions for additional burger awesomeness. Anyone who knows anything (or reads this blog) knows that red onions are a great way to make a burger better. I ended up eating 2 of these burgers, a bunch of Doritos, a few pieces of barbecued chicken, some fruit and way too many cookies. Nice work, Steven.

-Jon

Brewers Festivals are Awesome

This was the first brewers festival of any type that I have attended, and it was great. The closest thing to it that I have been to was the Taste of Springfield, which sucked. Everything was overpriced, and it was in Springfield. The First Annual Brattleboro Brewers Festival, on the other hand, was not overpriced (because Kathryn bought my ticket for me. Thanks!) and was not in Springfield. Also, it was focused mainly on beer, which is obviously an improvement for me. I mean, how much food can you possibly eat compared to how many beers you can try? Exactly. Since I knew I was going to be having all new beers, I drank a Summer Ale right before we left, just out of respect for Sam. 86 and counting.

There were a whole lot of beers I tried, so I wrote that part of the story over there. (Dear Jon, could you please make the last 2 words there into a link to the other blog at some point? Thanks, Jon)

After the festival ended, Diana & other Jon, Laura, Kathryn and I went to get dinner at this place called The Marina up the road from where the festival had been taking place. It was nice if you like places that overlook ponds that are covered in tons of pollen. I got the Bacon Burger, which was disappointing. I ordered medium rare as usual, and got whatever you call it when there is just barely a hint of pink, as if the guy cooking it had forgotten what he was doing until the last possible second before it turns well done. If I had wanted to eat a charcoal briquet, we would have stopped at Hannaford's instead. Also, the fries were garbage. I ate like 6 of them, hoping that things would improve. Sadly, I had no such luck. Luckily, I ate a couple delicious things at the festival, and I know that we will be going to the Mohawk Diner in the morning (I hope the blueberry pancakes are available!), so the weekend was not a total food loss. Plus, there were all the beers. Go read about those.

-Jon

A Nice Day for Burgers

Tuesday was a terrible day. I don't know what my students' problem was, but they were absolutely awful. Wednesday was a slight improvement, but still not great. Then somehow, today turned out to be fine, even though it was basically a Friday in the kids' minds. Oh well. Life is funny sometimes.

Then the day turned even better! Burgers for dinner!! And we also had Kelly's tomato salad, which only makes things even more awesome. In addition, Dad was doing the grilling, so you know you're actually getting a medium rare burger instead of whatever foolishness is currently passing for medium rare at your local establishments.

After school, I made yet another attempt to mow the disaster I currently call a lawn. I managed to do the majority of it before I lost my patience (and will finish the stupid project tomorrow so I can return the lawnmower to its proper owner), but I still dumped the extra clippings all over the place because 1) I am lazy and 2) I don't know what else to do with them. My lawn looks like a grass genocide took place.

After that, Kathryn and I walked over to Dad & Kelly's with Chloe and MonstrO to hopefully wear that little black beast out a bit before bed time. It turns out that all he needs is to run around like a nut for 2+ hours to turn him from a tiny black demon into a normal, calm puppy. He still makes it very difficult to type on a laptop when he decides you are a pug-bed though. For example, he is attempting to sleep on me right now, but can't find a comfortable place. Silly pup.

The burgers were obviously awesome, and the tomato salad was also awesome. And the chocolate milk I drank with it was awesome too. Hopefully tomorrow's prosciutto-wrapped pork can live up to my currently raised expectations.

Ewwww! There are pug boogers on my shorts! Dammit, Odin!

-Jon

A Return to Form

Wow! Two posts in one day!! Looks like I am officially back!

Since James and Nicole closed on their house and officially moved out, I have been quite busy with what basically amounts to re-moving in to the exact same place I have been living for the past year. It turns out that most of the important things for day-to-day life were not mine, just as they were not mine when I lived at Munsing. But no more!

I am now the proud (?) owner of such exciting things as a TV stand, plates, bowls, silverware, a knife set and a whole host of other kitchen items (see the post 2 below this one for the details of my unmanly excursions). And all of these things need to be washed first before you can use them, which is a lot of work in itself even if you don't include the gargantuan task of trying to eliminate all the husky hair that took over the house.

Enter Kathryn, Queen of the Vacuum.

While I did all the boring stuff that needed to happen, Kathryn let loose the fury of her crazy, animal-hair seeking, pug-scaring super vacuum on the many carpets of the house. All told, she filled and emptied that thing 5 times of dog hair before she was satisfied with her work. I think she also cleaned the bathroom, not to mention the delivery of all sorts of unmanly things like candles and fancy hand soaps. I suppose this place will need a woman's influence once my brothers move in.

After all that cleaning, we decided to grab dinner at Ruby Tuesday and then look at rugs at Ocean State Job Lot. Actually I decided on the dinner part, and Kathryn was the only one who looked at rugs because I hate Ocean State Job Lot with a passion due to the many "quick" trips I've been subjected to at the hands of my mother, but I went there with Kathryn anyways because obviously I owe her one.

The funny part of dinner is that since there was a short wait, I put us on the list and then loudly said to Kathryn, "Do you want to wait outside since it's nice?" to avoid them thinking we were leaving. Except that they still thought we were leaving, and then skipped over my name on the list. Stupid ball lickers. We did quickly get a seat after they realized the error of their ways, but it was not enough to avoid mention in this tale.

I ordered the Brewmaster Burger, which tasted like something I had eaten before. I really have to go back through all these stories and update the tags at some point so I can actually look this kind of stuff up. Maybe after 100 posts. Familiar or not, it was still very tasty, especially when combined with my new side of French fries with Tabasco ketchup. I would tell you the recipe for Tabasco ketchup, but it's a closely guarded family secret. (Hint: the name of the recipe is the whole recipe!) If you like spicy and you like ketchup, I would give it a try. Take a look. The picture sucks because of the weird-ass plates that they have at Ruby Tuesday, but as a bonus you get to see Kathryn's Avocado Turkey "burger."

More important than the ketchup though, is the fact that they actually cooked my burger medium rare! It was perfectly done. And just in time, because I was starting to lose hope for a decently cooked burger in a western Mass restaurant. Thanks for bringing back my faith, Ruby Tuesday!

-Jon

That Was a Fun Day

Since we got the tickets way back in November, I have been pretty excited about the Mark Knopfler concert for a much longer time than is probably safe. Finally, the big day arrived, roughly 6 months after Kathryn got the tickets and we got our free copy of Get Lucky.

The concert was over at the new MGM Grand at Foxwoods, so we decided that it would be even more fun if we met up with Scott & Amy and Alex & Erica beforehand. This turned into a barbecue that I was unaware of ahead of time, and that turned into surprise burgers!

Scott came up with some kind of crazy concoction for the meat that started with a bunch of diced up vegetables (mushrooms, green peppers and onions), the huge hunks of burger, and then "Burger Seasoning." I believe this may be the same seasoning that was previously documented at a different cookout hosted by Scott and Amy. Those beasts looked something like this:

I am not sure if you can pick up on the enormity of them from the pictures, but they were massive. Maybe this one will give you a better idea of what was going on.

And yes, I ate 2 of them.

After that, it was time to lock up the pups in pug jail and head over to Foxwoods. Side note - I am not a fan of the new road system around Foxwoods, which causes me to freak out unnecessarily and frequently end up going in the wrong direction. Stupid Foxwoods.

Did you know that the MGM Grand and the normal Foxwoods are not connected to each other by any kind of walkway and are actually quite far apart? I know that now. It is a good thing that we arrived with ample time before the show and are excellent Foxwoods navigators, because we got the shuttle and arrived at the MGM way before concert time. In fact, there was plenty of time for us to wander the slot machines and find out that the one Kathryn likes is apparently very popular.

The show was awesome. Not so much the girl who opened, because she kept using the word beautiful over and over and played music that was a little too country for me. I may be imagining the second part though, as the guy who accompanied her had a cowboy hat on, which means I was going to hear country music no matter what he played. However, the Mark Knopfler part was fantastic. The only negative was that he did not wear a headband or wrist bands or a sports coat with weird pants, but his voice was exactly the same as I remember it from those old CDs. It was kind of weird, but it really crushed my memories of 1980s Dire Straits. I hope that Tom Petty doesn't do the same thing in August.

-Jon

Earth Day is also Jen's Birthday

If you are friends with Jen, you will probably be familiar with the phrase "Earth Day is my birthday!" Especially if you were on that trip to San Diego a couple years ago. I am surprised that no one punched her in the nose after the 32nd time. I guess you aren't allowed to punch the birthday girl. Also, I am just teasing Jen, so hopefully no one gets mad. The blog for infuriating people is the other one.

Melissa organized the mini-celebration for Jen, and decided that it would include burgers and Summer Ale, which was a wise decision. A less wise decision was my decision to have 2 burgers, because they looked like this:

Holy crap! That beast contains a giant burger, pepperjack or Monterey cheddar (each burger got one of them), a tomato slice, bacon and red onion. There was absolutely no reason that I needed to eat 2 of them other than to prove my manhood for reasons to be explained shortly. You can also see the pot of baked beans back there. They sucked. They were some kind of crummy canned crap, and even adding some bacon to them couldn't save the day. I will expect better results in the future!

The burgers themselves were good, although I think they increased the volume of my stomach by about 50%. I feel like a pregnant woman must feel, but without the kicking. Those burgers are have definitely claimed some of the valuable real estate formerly occupied by my liver and kidneys.

Now for the story about why I needed to prove my manhood.

I had my regular appointment with New England Dermatology, except that instead of going where I normally go, I had to go to the Longmeadow office. Not really a big deal as it's right near where I used to work and easily reached without much difficulty. I have also heard that there is a store called Home Goods (which I thought was supposed to be a section of a store) that has a lot of good stuff for someone whose roommates own all the kitchenware but are moving out and thus that someone will be without kitchenware. I decided that I would take a little trip there after my appointment and see what I could find.

Wow, do I not belong in that store alone.

While I was there, I counted a total of 3 males. One guy I am pretty sure was lost, because he just kept walking laps around the store and occasionally stopping at the rugs. The second guy was with his wife, and both of them were old. He'd obviously just given up on arguing. And the third guy was me, who was completely overwhelmed and then lost his cart. Don't worry though, I found it a few minutes later. Or I found the cart of someone who was buying similar items to the ones I wanted, so it's close enough. I even bought a picture, which is the first thing I've ever bought that is 100% decorative and serves no other purpose than to look nice. Don't worry; I will be pointing it out to every person that comes to my house for the first 2 months it is up. You will be very sick of it.

Once I left the store, I realized than I needed to make up for this HGTV bullshit that I am currently involved in by doing something manly. You know, like eating dead animals, drinking beer, looking at boobs, punching a hobo, yelling at the athletes on the television. . . man stuff! It was actually very lucky that Melissa was making burgers, there was beer in her fridge, and the Sox were playing. I guess the other stuff will have to wait until tomorrow.

Now come over to look at my new picture!

-Jon

Friday, We Hardly Knew Ye

Editor's note - I am way more intoxicated than I thought I was, so apologies in advance for when this doesn't make sense, slash is unreadable.

Today was a very full day. I left the house around 7:45, and, except for the 10 minutes I took to change from referee attire to public appearance attire, didn't return until 2:15am the night/morning after. It was almost like the entire day zipped by like a. . . zipper? Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Anyways, if this were a Facebook status update, it would read something like:

Woke up, taught math for a while, participated semi-appropriately in PD, officiated volleyball, then off to dinner at Paradise City and the Gaelic Storm concert followed by a few cocktails at the Lighthouse and blackout central.

Except that if it were me making the post, I would have made it more ridiculous and in-depth by indicating all the minutiae like going to the bathroom, sneezing, driving, etc.

I swear that when I started typing this, I had a point . . .

Oh right. I had a burger tonight!

Since Kathryn and I were going to a concert at the Calvin, it only made sense that we would eat dinner somewhere in Northampton. And after being foiled many times in my attempt to eat that burger with pulled pork, we went to Paradise City in order to fulfill my meat-based desires.

Ok, that sounds awkward.

I arrived first, so I snagged a table and ordered some random beers. I chose the Green Flash Hop Head Red Ale*, and got Kathryn something with watermelon. She liked hers, but it actually sucked, while mine was super hoppy and not too shabby. But more importantly, I got a burger with at least 2 animals on it. Take a look! That thing is gigantic!

Seriously, a burger nearly the size of a pint glass? That is wild. I think I may have discussed this burger in the past, so I won't dwell on the details, but I will touch on the major points. Those fries to the right of my burger? They sucked somethin' fierce. But Kathryn's fries (not visible in the picture, as they are behind my burger) were delicious. I apparently got the end of one batch while she got the firsts of the next. What the hell!? Does Kathryn write a blog solely dedicated to burgers?? No, she does not! Impress me, jerkoffs!!

Luckily for them, the burger was delicious. Even though the went a little too far with the cooking and hit the medium cooking range, it was still pretty juicy and did not resemble a piece of charcoal. And did you see the incredibly terrible picture Kathryn put on Facebook? I am clearly enjoying myself in my burger consumption. And there were two different onion options, including the highly coveted red onion! Can't really go wrong there.

In the long run, I will probably be stealing this burger idea for Burger Bros. Possibly coming soon to the Lighthouse! But even more possibly not coming soon.

Long story short: the burger was delicious, the fries sucked, Gaelic Storm put on a great show and Jager defeated me tonight in a close battle. Enjoy the weekend!

-Jon

* - This should be a link at some point. Please call/text/Facebook me and give me a hard time if it's not a link by Sunday, April 18th, because it means I have forgotten and need a swift kick in the pants to get me back on track.

This Actually Didn't Happen Today

For reasons that shall go unsaid, the following stories all happened on a different day that is definitely not Tuesday, April 13th. Let's go with Sunday.

I have a long list of things to obtain in anticipation of Nicole and James moving out with all their stuff and Matt and Bill moving in with not any stuff. Some of these things make me sad, like pots and pans, silverware, etc., because that means I am probably going to be a grown-up soon. I decided to check on some prices today (which is Sunday), so I headed over to the Holyoke Mall. This of course, can only mean one thing.

Wendy's.

Since pretty much anyone who has ever eaten at Wendy's knows what a burger from Wendy's tastes like, I will instead list a bunch of random thoughts I had while walking around the mall. Also, I will show you what my bag from Wendy's said.

Nerds.

I bet this post will be popular with Michelle Sagan Gonçalves.

-I can't wait until I don't have to work and can walk around the mall before there are many customers. When you're the only customer in the store, you sure get a lot of attention! I am also excited about reaching that age where you stop caring about your appearance in public. I have to assume that many of those people do not have mirrors in their homes/mobile homes/vans that double as homes.

-If you walk around the mall taking pictures of products and writing down the UPC numbers so that you can look up the prices later, people are going to look at you funny. But no one will say anything to you, which means you don't have to stop doing it.

-Children + shopping = misery. I cannot figure out why people even try to have a normal life while they have children under the age of 10. Unless their kids are crate-trained, so they can leave them home while they have fun.

-A lot of people who work at the Holyoke Mall speak Spanish. It makes me miss the ridiculous times we had in Sra. Bennett's Spanish II, III and IV classes. And also that study I had in her class senior year. Poor Sra. Bennett. . .

-I bet when people order food at restaurants and all the employees are speaking another language, the more racist people think the employees are saying things about them. When Bill and I open a restaurant, I think we should learn Greek just to mess with people. I bet that not many people around here know Greek.

-For some reason, walking around with a Starbuck's cup made retail people take me a lot more seriously. Haha! Joke's on you, suckers!! It was hot chocolate, not coffee!

-I feel really awkward looking at things in the housewares section. I think the employees there know that I do not belong. I am going to have to bring Kathryn next time.

-Why is Target so huge? And why don't they have CD racks? These are the questions that will keep me up tonight.

-I should probably stop going in the "sad puppies" store next to Macy's. At least until I win the lottery and can actually buy some of those poor pups. Also, did you know that they make white pugs? There was one at that store, but I bet it won't be there next time I go, since I've never seen the same dog twice. She is either doing an amazing business, or it's a kill-shelter. I really hope it's the first option.

-I am going to say that if someone pulls up to you in the parking lot of Dick's Sporting Goods and offers to sell you a surround sound system and projection TV, there is probably a 99.9% to 100% chance that those items are stolen. I couldn't even make this story up.

-What kind of store is Kohl's? I thought it was a clothing store, but apparently, they also sell this:

I am so confused right now.

-Kohl's really needs to be 2 floors. At Macy's, I know I belong upstairs. At JCPenney, I know I belong downstairs. At Kohl's, I got completely lost and ended up in a section of clocks. This is a problem.

-I don't know much about vacuum cleaners, but I know I definitely do not need one that costs $549.99. For that price, it better vacuum my house for me while I'm gone!

-One of my shoes squeaks when I walk. I keep thinking that I've stepped on a mouse.

-If there is a (non-food or drink) product I like, there is also a really good chance that if I ever want another one, it will be impossible to find. Like that CD rack Melissa gave me. That thing is great. Too bad I am completely unable to locate another one like it. Now I have stacks and stacks of CD cases that are homeless.

-Baystate Medical Center is clearly a maze. I think I rode 5 different elevators and ended up on at least 3 different floors before I found Kathryn. Then I put a tracking device on her in case I ever need to find her there again. I am not repeating that navigatory disaster. I hope she doesn't read this and find it. Also, apparently "navigatory" is not the adjective form of navigation. I'm leaving it there anyways.

-If someone you don't know tells you they recognize you from Facebook, it may cause you to panic. Or maybe that was just me.

-If you are driving, and there is not a stop sign, it is a good idea not to stop. Otherwise you may aggravate me and end up being referenced in a blog that 5-10 people read. Yeah that's right, Stupid-Old-Lady-Driving-a-VW-Golf, I'm talking about you. Why were you stopping!?

-Have you seen the guy who walks around Ludlow with the crazy white beard? That must have taken a long time to grow. I bet it's really itchy.

-For some reason, when I am halfway done cleaning my room, it looks worse than when I started. I think I'm doing something wrong.

-Some people are really intense about their lawn. And other people don't seem to care at all. I am in group 2. Sometimes I worry that the people in the intense group see my "lawn" and are secretly judging me. Hey, lawn care cuts into my Sam Adams time.

-If you pay $13 for a shoe rack, you are definitely getting what you paid for. I am pretty sure that I could break this thing by sneezing too hard.

-Why is the packaging on this shoe rack so hard to open? Were there a lot of people opening the packages at the store and running off with the racks? This seems a little extreme.

-I have way more shoes than a normal man needs. Waaaaaaaaay more.

-That was a lot of thoughts about shoes. I hope I don't have a foot fetish.

-Jon

The Celtics Almost Kill Me

In case you didn't watch it, the Celtics beat the Cavaliers today in a game that had both a terrific performance by the C's as well as a completely horrendous performance by the C's. It also had a whole bunch of technical fouls, a guy dressed in a bunny suit dancing to "Livin' On a Prayer," and an insane 4th quarter performance by LeBron James, which I can only assume will greatly aggravate Bill and Dad.

The day also included 2 fun trips on the T (which are actually not fun), an annoying experience with some stupid bitch who (whom?) I wanted to punch in the teeth, Kathryn and I looking like lost tourists, and lunch/dinner at a place called The Four's.

We parked at Riverside and rode the Green Line in because: a) I suck at driving in cities and it terrifies me to have to do it, and b) we are stupid and wanted to participate in the massive social experiment that is public transportation. Since the Garden is at North Station and the train only went as far as Government Center, we had the choice of either waiting for the next train to ride 2 stops or walking it ourselves. Well, it was nice out, so, armed with 2 cell phones equipped with GPS, we headed out into the sunshine. I have got to assume that seeing us was hilarious to anyone else. Picture us both with our phones held out, slowly spinning in circles trying to figure out which direction is northeast. What am I, Magellan? Give me directions I can use!

Eventually we decided on the correct direction and arrived during the 1st quarter. The Celtics proceeded to build a 22 point lead, which had fallen slightly to 17 at the start of the 4th. Then, things went terribly wrong for an extended period of time. They missed pretty much every shot they took while LeBron must have turned on some cheat code and hit the turbo button to run by everyone on the court several times. Eventually, Ray Allen remembered that basketball games are 4 quarters and not 3, sunk a huge shot and the C's hung on for the win. I am pretty sure that I almost had a nervous breakdown during the game. Thanks guys.

Now, Kathryn and I didn't eat lunch before the game, so by the time it was over we definitely needed some food. According to her iPhone, The Four's was close to our location and only in the $$ range, so we walked over and hoped for a table. Hooray! We beat the rush. Seriously. By the time our burgers came, the place that was empty when we sat down was completely full.

I got something called The Frenchie, which had some crazy garlic sauce and brie cheese with onion straws. Important advice for the future: brie is not a good cheese for burgers. Most of mine had melted off and ended up in my pile of fries. Plus they overcooked it. It would appear that the good folks at The Four's attended the same culinary school as those at Fitzwilly's. Anyway, the whole thing looked like this. You can see the cheese in between the burger and the fries, where it does not belong.

On the plus side, that little pot there was filled with delicious baked beans that could give the Dias Baked Beans a run for their money if The Four's ever figures out to throw some bacon in there. Also, those fries were pretty good as well. Not pictured are the Buffalo Chicken Nachos, which may be one of the top 10 appetizers of all time.

I would give the meal overall a positive review, because the whole was more than the sum of its parts. Some day I'll find that perfect burger, but today was definitely not that day.

-Jon

Let the Nerdiness Begin

This was an unexpected burger, which is often the best kind. Actually, I am not sure why I said that, because it's not true. I would estimate that unexpected burgers have exactly the same percentage chance of being delicious as a planned burger. So really, this entire opening paragraph is kind of pointless. Time to get down to business.

Alex and I embraced our inner nerd (which I openly do on a daily or bi-daily basis since I teach math and have to be a nerd by default) and hit up PAX East 2010 to see what all the fuss is about.* In my opinion, we had actually set our nerd bars far too high. While we did see many silly things (we had joked about making BINGO cards with things like "a person carrying a plastic sword" or "an article of clothing containing a Triforce"), there appeared to be many people that are normal. Well, as normal as it gets when you are at a convention put on by people dedicated to video games and attended by similar people.

We stayed there for a few hours, checking out some upcoming games, playing some demos, and rocking some old school Donkey Kong Country on the SNES. Remember that game? It was pretty much the (2nd) greatest thing about owning an SNES, behind Chrono Trigger. I am probably going to go home and buy that from the Wii Shop.

I am very easily distracted lately.

After we had gotten our fill of nerdy activities for the day, we walked around the corner to a little place called Bukowski's Tavern. It was really little. As in about 15 feet wide. It was also packed. We got the last 2 spots at the bar, which was good because we were both starving. I chose the BBQ Bacon Burger, because I can't resist a bacon topped burger.

It was delicious! Almost as good as the burger from the night before. The only thing that I would have liked a little more would have been if the BBQ sauce hadn't been so sweet. It was like a weird combination of meat and sweetness. It also was nice that the burger was pretty close to rare, just into medium-rare territory. That is definitely a key factor in burger enjoyment.

Their fries are also good, and they don't give you like 3 lbs of them which makes you feel like a failure at the end when you can't eat them all. Way to ruin my self-esteem, other restaurants!

-Jon

* - There is a very good chance that this link will be dead at some point in the very near future. In that case, I don't know what to tell you.

This Is Not a Surprising Revelation

I did a lot of things today. I went to PD. I drew 4 more panels for the Cupcake Saga (which means people need to get off my back for a couple days). I made 3 ridiculous mini-books, one of which would probably get me fired. I officiated a volleyball game. I went candlepin bowling. And all of that means nothing because this is a blog completely dedicated to cheeseburgers, which means all of these stories are not related to our main focus.

All of that was just some distraction stuff because I ate a Blackjack Burger tonight, and it's widely known (by all 4 of my readers) that the Blackjack Burger is the ultimate burger at this point in time. Basically that means that I don't really have anything to say about it, unless you want me to start a new blog exclusively about Blackjack Burgers. Is the world really ready for Mmmm, Blackjack Burgers? You know what, don't even answer. It's not happening. That's just as ridiculous of a suggestion as Mmmm, Burritos. Which I have also already considered today. I am going to pimp the shit out of this Mmmm, [Plural Noun] idea. Maybe one of them will pay off and end my working career.

The short version of this post is that today's Blackjack Burger was excellent, but not as excellent as previous Blackjack Burgers. There was also the opportunity to meet RF himself (he's called Sully by the employees). Except apparently he's a creeper, so maybe it's a good thing that we didn't meet him and end up as lampshades in some guy's creepy apartment.

This is what the Greatest Burger So Far looks like. Notice the sauce, which is made of 95% deliciousness and 5% spiciness. Also, those aren't fries. They are like gigantic potato wedges masquerading as fries. You can see them behind the onion rings that I didn't order but got anyways.

I also drank way more beer than I am currently capable of drinking at the present, so that may explain the rambling in this post. That, or I am trying to keep the post length up. I am not even sure.

-Jon

In Which I Get Unnecessarily Aggravated

I like burgers, as you may have guessed. I like people cooking burgers for me. I enjoy trying to come up with delicious ideas for burgers. I even enjoy cooking them myself on occasion.

I do not enjoy grills with uneven heat. Especially when I am not aware of this fact ahead of time.

Dinner went from being 3 other people to being just Mom, and since I was put in charge of picking the meal, I chose burgers. Yeah, I'm a real mystery. I decided to try and be crazy and also to put some new knowledge to use, so I went for the blue cheese stuffed burger with bacon. And also with blue cheese on top, because there really isn't any such thing as too much cheese.

So I take the block of raw hamburger, which is already gross (ironically I hate having to touch raw meat, but still have aspirations of owning a restaurant; it's quite the catch-22), and separate it into 3 parts to make 3 burgers. Then I took each sub-block and made 2 mini-burgers out of it so that I could put the cheese in the middle and seal that good stuff in. And that part of the plan worked out wonderfully, minus the dry skin resulting from washing my hands 6 times. Then things took a turn for the worse.

So there was plenty of propane (which I should have checked ahead of time but didn't because I am a daredevil like that), but apparently the grill there only heats certain parts of the grill top at certain times. That is annoying. And even though both of my burgers came out perfect (give me a call, Fitzwilly's, if you need a refresher course on what "rare" means), Mom's was a little bit rare. Or you might call it raw. Let's not split hairs here. How many factors do you really need to consider when constructing a grill? 1) How many dead animals can I have cooking here at once? 2) Does this grill correctly cook all the dead animals? 3) See #1 and #2. Really, that's it. If you miss any of these things, your grill blows, and eventually you may annoy an anonymous internet loudmouth to the point where he will write a long-winded post about it. Thanks a lot, jerks.

There were also some sweet side dishes. Some kind of canned baked beans, which were not really even close to as good as the secret family baked beans, and tater tots, which made me feel like I was back in 5th grade. Also, they weren't officially tater tots, because they were Big Y brand and had some weird name like "Tot-Shaped Potato Snacks" or something equally ridiculous. And yes, I realize that "sentence" up there was a sentence fragment, and I don't care because I love sentence fragments. It would be much easier to go up there and throw a colon in place of that first period, but I would rather just make this post really long and maybe teach all (both?) the readers of this site about grammar. I am a teacher after all.

Oh. My burgers were delicious. Even though the bacon was a little crisper than it should have been, a mistake that will not be committed again. It's all about learning in the burger world.

-Jon