My inner Gwenyth spent years lying to me about squash--no particular squash, any and all squash.  I finally got that bitch to shut up and now I now better than to try to convince myself that zucchini noodles are edible.

There is one restaurant that I won’t go to here because of the noise.  The entire place is tiled, and it is narrow, so the sound has no where to go.  They top it off by playing loud club music despite the fact that it is in no way a club.  It is so loud that in makes me stress out.

That is very common, especially for high-end businesses or ones that can only serve a small number of customers at a time.  Even things like major chain hotels do it.

Please tell me there was a portal to John Malkovitch’s head.

As someone who has worked in large buildings, I am surprised they suspected anything worth calling the police over. There are always maintenance people and various contractors about.  Even managers are often not told there will be an electrician in or whatever, and they are so overworked and used to not being told…

I can’t even remember the last time I saw a Jack in the Box, so I will leave that to your tastebuds.

I had to go read the letter myself to make sure the greeter didn’t have a developmental disability, because I could see that situation happening. But that doesn’t sound like the case here.  It could still be that he was hired as a favor to someone (my cousin is new to the country and needs a job) but to hire an…

Big city grocery stores have greeters?  Since when?  I have lived in two major cities and have never seen a grocery store greeter.  Some small towns have them, and they tend to be developmentally disabled or elderly.  This story smells worse than 3 day old fish.

When I started supervising people at work, a hard lesson for me was that we could be friendly, but we couldn’t be friends.

Yep.  The worse the coffee, the more additives it needs.

But, but... Splenda is bitter.

Four?  You must not have grown up in one of those families that insisted you would stunt your growth by drinking coffee.

I get what you are saying. Sugar sometimes brings out a weird flavor in coffee. It is worse with white sugar, which is purely sweet and doesn’t bring anything else to the party. There are a few foods that taste instantly bad to me when sugar is added—mainly meat and sweet potatoes. There is some chemical reaction…

For as much as people like to romanticize “just like grandma used to make” she was raised during hard times and the era of super-processed foods and never really learned to cook.

Dunkin. It was late at night and I was driving and wanted to stay alert, but even that couldn’t get me to finish that swill.

I have the ingredients, if I can substitute falernum for orgeat, and I am going to have to make one.  It sounds good.

I am a fan of the maple leaf--whiskey, maple syrup, and lemon juice.

Oh gawd. Here we go. Mention that hops make beer taste bad, and all of the people who assume I have never had anything but Bud Light and double IPAs jump to tell me how wrong I am. No, hops are bad. They are bitter, nasty things that need to stay the hell out of my browns, oatmeal stouts, sours, and saisons.  And very…

I am not 12. I have tried a lot of types of beers. Things that have no business being heavily hopped like saisons and sours are even being ruined now.  And for those of us who are sensitive to bitter flavors, hops taste bad.  Really, really bad.

No I am not.  Just last week I returned a saison at a bar because it was a hop bomb.  A saison!  They have no shame.