ANOTHER CRAZY BANANA STORY!

I like having a banana split dessert sometimes, don’t you? Here’s what happened to me one day!

ANOTHER CRAZY BANANA STORY!

Deciding it was time for a banana split, I went to the Dairy Queen close to our house. They made me one, and I took it home to enjoy. It looked yummy, with the ice cream, three toppings (pineapple, strawberry, and chocolate), whipped cream, and a maraschino cherry on top.

So, I’m digging in, the cool creamy ice cream melting in my mouth, when I uncover this…this…ugly, black, vile, rotten, banana. It was disgusting. Ewww!

I wasn’t in the mood to drive back to the store for another one, so I just removed the rotten one, and added a good banana that I had at home, instead. I still liked the ice cream…it was fine.

I did, however, write a very descriptive letter to the owners of the franchise. I told them of the horror I’d found in my banana split from their store, even though, using the word banana really wouldn’t be correct in this case. It was too far gone, at that point.

A while later, I received a most apologetic letter in the mail. They were so sorry, and to make amends, they’d included two coupons for free desserts from their store. Yes, I used them, and I’ve been back to that particular store again, and never had any more rotten bananas.

Really, though, who would do this…I’m sure the employee could tell that the banana was rotten, when they’d put the split together. What were they thinking…they’d just cover it up with ice cream and no one (me) would notice? If, by chance, they’d ran out of bananas at the time, they could have just said so, couldn’t they? It boggles my mind to wonder what this person was thinking.

I don’t know if this person got fired or reprimanded or not, but I would hope they at least got a lecture about safe food handling and customer service.

Do I still like banana splits – yes. Have I ever gotten another one from this store – no.  However, there was one more incident at this store concerning banana splits, which will be my next story.

Does any else have crazy food stories, or is it just me? 🙂

THIS IS BANANAS!

What is it with bananas these days? Has anyone else noticed how unreliable they’ve become? It’s like something has infiltrated the banana farms…or is it banana groves, or maybe plantations?

I know they are cut off the stalk of the tree before they are ripe. Shipping them early, still green, and under refrigeration, is the best way to get them to market, as they are perishable. Most are still unripe that I see on the produce shelves at the store. It finishes the ripening process in the comfort of the grocery, or on our kitchen cabinets. If they were ripe when harvested, they’d be over ripe or rotten in a very few days.

This is all a pretty normal way of exporting fruit to other countries, no matter what type of fruit it is. The problem, though is that something strange is happening to the insides of the banana. I find that when I peel open one and cut into it, it is rotten anyway. Even if it looks perfect on the outside, the inside center is sometimes already molded, the seeds are larger than normal, and so hard you could break a tooth on one.

Now, if I want to eat one, I have to cut down the sides of the banana, leaving the center part and seeds behind…which is a pain in the ‘behind’ (pun intended)..so much trouble for such a simple fruit, don’t you think?

When we lived in south Texas, we had a banana tree in our back yard. Well, we called it a tree, because it was so tall, but I’ve since learned, it is not a tree, but an herb. It does not have a ‘true’ tree trunk.

Our banana tree was awesome! I’d never seen one before, and it was taller than the house. The dark green leaves were huge, and I loved listening to them rustle in the breeze. We’d go out every morning and cut off a banana bunch on it’s stalk for our breakfast. They were a bit smaller than what you’d find at the store, but oh, so much better. Plus, it was fun to have them right outside the back door.

One time we’d brought in some, and a green snake fell out of the stalk/bunch. It was wiggling all over the kitchen floor. Of course, the kids and I ran screaming into the back bedroom where we hid, until my husband caught the snake and put it back outside.

Then, on a rare occasion, we had an overnight freeze. Our banana tree was gone…it had frozen and toppled over into the yard. We sure did miss having our fresh bananas, after that.

So anyway, I wish bananas would be like they used to be, because they are my favorite fruit.

Do you have any banana stories? Do you find them to be weird now? I’d love to hear about your banana experiences. 🙂

I have another banana story I’ll write about soon…

 

Peace, Love, & Writing!

EXPOSER – TV NEWS

Here’s a little story I made up, using words from an online scrabble game called “Words With Friends”. These are fun to do…I just try to use all the words that have been played…try to make them fit into a quick little story. The words in bold are the words from the game. Enjoy!

EXPOSER – TV NEWS

Cue intro music and cool graphics…

“Good evening fans. Here it is Friday night, and we are swamped with updates here in our studio.

As always, we don’t try to demean anyone here…we’re just reporting the news as it happens. We oft get complaints from people who flip their wigs over our reg. news content. I say, if you can’t take a jab at someone as a joke, then Bro, you’re bent outta shape. This is raw and in your face. I don’t give a fig what anyone thinks.

So, without further ado, Lee will start us off with our first story.”

“Hi, Lee, what is our top story of the night?

“Ed, it would be the drag event, held at the ER disco ballroom, last evening. It was supposed to be a stag party for the groom to be, a foreigner by the name of Chine Zoa. The ETA of this shindig was to be 7 p.m. Everyone was to come dressed in drag. A Drag/Stag party. Well, the ballroom was set up nice, but the management nixed the addition of slot machines.

Then, Mike, the best man, threw dye into the decorative fountain, that turned the water as green as clover. The manager hies to the scene, and as he’s yelling at everyone, Ti and Qi, the twin viola players, hired for musical tunes, jump into the fountain. This caused a riot, as they can’t swim and needed to have the life bouys thrown in to save them.

There was chaos and looting, and it was not contained until midnight.”

“That was the highlight of our news cast. Thank you, Lee. We bid you adieu. Tune in tomorrow for more of…

Cue dramatic exit music and cool graphics…

The Exposer!!”

THANK YOU!

Just wanted to say thank you to all who have come by to visit my blog. Thank you to the ones who follow, like, and comment on my posts! I’m having fun posting different things, and hope you have fun reading them! I appreciate each and every one of you!

THE ARCHER

Just a little story I made up….enjoy!

THE ARCHER

“Hear ye, hear ye! May I have your attention, please!” the mayor shouted through the bullhorn. As the crowd of townspeople faced him, he cleared his throat, before speaking.

“Thank you all for coming. We are blessed to be here in this historical city park, today. As many of you have heard, we are here to dedicate our first public art piece. It is a beautiful symbol of our forefathers, built to commemorate…” he continued, as people nudged one another. The mayor was known for being long-winded.

“Get on with it, Mayor,” yelled one man.

“Yeah, unveil the art, already,” yelled another.

Others took up the chant, now…”Unveil the art…unveil the art.”

As the voices of his constituent’s grew louder, the mayor’s speech was cut short.

“Very well,” he nodded to two councilmen, standing by a large, tarp covered, mystery piece of art.

People had been speculating for weeks, even taking bets on what it would be. The time to see it had arrived. As the drape was pulled off, there was a collective gasp from the crowd.

“Oh, my God, it’s so big.” … “That’s not politically correct, Mayor.” …”We can’t have this here, representing our town.” … “It’s an embarrassment.”

Everyone had an opinion, but none of them counted toward rectifying the awkward situation.

“People, people, settle down,” the Mayor urged, again yelling through the bullhorn.  “The artwork will remain in place. There is no more discussion. Please disperse…the meeting is over.”

Some of the people grumbled as they left the park. Others came close, to touch the giant, metal sculpture. Pictures were taken, but as the evening turned into night, the park was soon empty. The only illumination now came from the footlights surrounding the very large bow and arrow.

~

Around midnight, people were startled from their sleep by a loud sound. As no one watched, the giant, metal arrow was pulled back. It swished through the night air with an earsplitting twang. Rushing from their homes, everyone screamed, as they saw it zoom overhead, over their houses, and trees. Static electricity flickered off the sharp point. It found it’s mark, with a firery explosion. The Mayor’s mansion was struck, and the structure was fully engulfed.

~

A week later, the Mayor’s funeral was held. Several speakers delivered glowing speeches, and heartfelt eulogies for their fallen leader. The Mayor Pro-tem spoke of the art piece in the park, and the arrow that had so strangely shot through the air that night. Most everyone in the town wanted it torn down. However, it was not to be. The Mayor Pro-tem explained.

“The arrow had a note attached to it…it did not burn. The note said.. ‘You disrespected my ancestors by erecting cheap art on our land. You will not disprespect them further by tearing it down. If you disregard this message, the arrow will claim more lives, one by one until you all are eliminated or exiled, as my forefathers’s were.’…”

It was signed…The Archer

PHOTO

Still trying to figure out why I can’t add a photo to my blog posts. Nothing works anymore! I go to the insert photo tab, click it and I get the pictures that are on my computer, then I open it …then nothing…it freezes up every time. Hmmm …not fun. It used to work just fine, then one day, nada. … Oh, well, so much for that. …Now it just is frozen at 0%…

PROCRASTINATION

Procrastination…To put off intentionally and habitually the doing of something that should be done.

fr. pro-forward + crastinus of tomorrow, fr. cras tomorrow

Pro = for     Anti = against

Just a bit of a ramble here on that word, procrastinate…

So, if ‘pro’ means something good, then why does the word procrastinate mean something kind of bad? You would think to put something off until tomorrow, and keep on doing that habitually, would be a bad thing to do…especially if it is something you really should be doing today, or as soon as you can.

Why wouldn’t it be called ‘anti’ crastinate? Anti means against something. If you are ‘pro’ you should be happy about delaying the action, but we’ve come to think of it as a bad thing to do…a bad habit.

Then, if you don’t like procrastinating about things, you should just say you are an ‘anti-procrastinator’, which would make more sense, but would be a pretty long, confusing word, don’t you think?

Anyway, using the approved meaning of procrastinate, I find myself doing this a lot. I procrastinate. There, I admit it…it is said. Like Scarlett O’hara in ‘Gone With the Wind’, I’ll think about that tomorrow…and the next day, and so forth.

What have I been procrastinating lately? This blog, for one thing. I keep putting off writing on here for days at a time, for many reasons. It’s not that I can’t think of something to write about, just the opposite…too many ideas. With ADHD, it gets overwhelming at times, the many directions my thoughts go toward…do this one, no do this one, then back to the other one. Finally, I’m at a standstill, and do nothing.

I was doing pretty good with the daily posts for the A to Z Challenge, but when that ended, I got a bit sidetracked…distracted by all the possibilities I could bring to this blog. So, here I am now…being sidetracked again by a little problem I’m having here, that I can’t quite figure out, so I procrastinate in writing on here. The problem? For some reason I cannot get a picture to load onto my posts. I have tried for many days, and have had great suggestions from a WordPress helper in the forums (thank you jackiedana). I am still trying to get it to work, as I really like to add pictures. It was working fine on my earlier posts, then it just quit working.

So, I’ve been not writing, in the hopes that the insert photo, part will someday work for me again. But, the time for procrastination is over. I’m going ahead, pictures or not, for now.

In the end, maybe procrastinating is not such a bad thing…it gives you time to think about where you are going and what you are doing…just don’t wait too long, right? 🙂

SUPER TYPHOON TIP…CAT 5

Recorded as a Catagory 5, super Typhoon Tip hit Honshu, the largest island of Japan, on October 19, 1979. Thirteen Marines were killed, and 68 injured, at their base training camp, near Mt. Fuji, near Tokyo. Forty two deaths occured from flooding, and another 44 from shipwrecks.

We lived there at that time. My husband’s helicopter unit, at Camp Zama, was called into action to MedEvac the injured Marines to the hospitals. Several of these servicemen were injured, also.

In our city of Sagamihara, right outside Tokyo, we’d been getting weather updates for days. A sign was posted at the entrance/exit of the base housing area. Cat 1, Cat 2, Cat 3…no one knew at this point, that they would eventually catagorize Typhoon Tip as a Cat 5, the strongest measurement available at the time.

Typhoon Tip has been officially classified in history, as the most powerful typhoon ever recorded. With winds of 190 mph plus, at it’s peak, and a diameter of 1,380 miles, it was almost half the size of the whole United States.

In the few days before it struck our city, the weather was calm, but a bit muggy. It soon became hazy with a fine mist in the air. We would get short bursts of rain, in squalls, but that did not stop us and our neighbors from our regular habit of cooking outside on the grill. The men rigged up plastic tarps, strung from the tree branches, as a make-do awning over the grills, so the rain would not put out the fire. We did manage to get the food cooked in time.

The next morning, the base was hunkered down for what was to come. I’d never been in a typhoon, or hurricane before, so was excited and anxious as to what would happen. As the torrential rains began to fall, our neighbor’s car stalled out in the middle of the street. She asked if my husband could help. So, he went out in the rain and helped push the car up into the driveway.

We stayed inside the house the whole time, as there wasn’t anywhere else to go…there were no evacuation plans. Our girls were very young, and they still needed entertaining, and I did do some reading, as I sat at the table. We all watched, as the rain was windblown sideways, along with items from outside that had not been tied down. At one point the electricity went out, leaving the house in semi-darkness, so I lit candles. This lasted for hours.

By late afternoon, the roaring sound of the wind suddenly stopped, and it became clear, with no rain. The sun shone for a little while. Everyone came out of their houses, to see if there was damage. Some speculated that we were in the eye of the storm. We knew we had been, when the wind and rain begain again, from the opposite direction.

When it was all over, we went out to see what damage was done. The only big damage we could find, was several huge trees had been uprooted in the back yard. I know we were lucky that none fell on the house.

That was my experience of a typhoon. I know it had been a bit downgraded from a Catagory 5, to around a 4, by the time it hit us, and with winds of 130 mph, it was till very strong. For some reason, though, I was not scared. After being in the F-5 tornado, in my hometown, nine years before, the Cat 5 Typhoon was more of an exciting event to me.

It will, however, be an experience I will never forget.

For more on the Super Typhoon Tip you can find it here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Tip