My boss, DeWitte, and I went out to lunch today to a new Chinese buffet close to the office.  We both love Chinese food, and we both get excited when a new restaurant opens (it adds variety), so we thought it was a good idea to try.

Not so much.  It wasn’t delicious.  Everything had an odd flavor to it and we were sadly disappointed.  Have you ever had stomach cramps, indigestion or gas after eating Chinese?  Yeah, that’s how good it was. . . for the rest of the afternoon.  However, the lunch was not without entertainment.

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DeWitte is the type of person who will TRY anything.  I’ve seen him try chicken feet before.  So today was no different.  Everytime he’d take a bite of something, I was like that little kid that asks a million questions – “What’s that?”.  Here’s how the conversation went:

**eating this thing that looked like a fried sardine**
Me – “What’s that?”
Him – “That was fried Smelt.”

**eating something rubbery with tenticles**
Me – “What’s that?”
Him – “That was grilled squid.”

**eating something that looked doughy**
Me – “What’s that?”
Him – “THAT was a mistake.”

What a crackup!  I busted up laughing, and I still spontaneously laugh when I think about it, because really. . . the whole lunch was a mistake.  Lesson learned.

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Well, THAT lesson.  There was another lesson for my day.  Yes.  I had the pleasure of calling a Dryer Vent Cleaner Man. This guy looked exactly like Big Daddy Aaron McCargo, Jr on The Food Network minus the earring. Exactly – like they could be brothers. I digress. Anyway, I needed him to clean out my ridiculous dryer vent that goes 30 feet straight UP the wall and out the roof.  Nice, huh?  And this little venture costed me $150 bucks!  He also had to climb up into my attic and take it apart at the roof where he found a nice football sized plug of lint blocking the whole escape hatch.

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I got back to the office where DeWitte went online and looked up the tools to clean the vent and found one for $29.95.  I’d have to buy some extra extensions, but even so, altogether it’d be less than $50 bucks.  He also used what looked like a leaf blower (check) and he had a shop vacuum for cleanup (check).  Hell, for $150 bucks, I could have bought ALL of that.  In fact, I think I WILL and do it MYSELF from now on.  Except for that climbing in the attic part. . . I’ll leave that for my two strapping young boys to do.  I didn’t go through 12 hours of labor birthing those boys for nothing.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!