Here, have a Stage Plank

Driving back to Nashville after Thanksgiving, I pulled in to a little gas station in north Georgia to fill up my tank and get a Coke, and instead wound up making quite a find: Uncle Al's Stage Planks. I hadn't had a Stage Plank in a zillion years. They're pink-frosted gingerbread-y cookies, big and flat. I remember getting them from the convenience store in Warrenton where I used to work.

Via Google, I noticed a blogger in Savannah described Uncle Al's Stage Planks recently as "frightening." Respectfully, this is undeserved. However, the gas station where I found the Stage Planks was also sellling barbecued fatback as a snack. Now, that's frightening. (You can read more about people like me who enjoy a quality Stage Plank on this message board.)

Worker 11811, where are you?

Saw the German silent movie Metropolis this weekend at the Belcourt. It was good. I'd try to explain the plot here, but you'd never believe it. When the slave laborers were being herded up the steps and into the machine in the early part of the movie, I couldn't help but think it was an eerie foreshadowing of what would happen in that country just a dozen years later, with masses of innocent people led to their deaths in work camps.

Rock Star Movement No. 6 ...

Blue Man Group were awesome. Saw them at the Arena on Friday night.

Delbert Mann -- movie director, Oscar winner, Vanderbilt alum

He died out in California over the weekend. I got to interview him once for the student newspaper at Vanderbilt, for which he had served as co-managing editor when he was in school. He seemed like a really nice man.

They're still making typewriters ...

I started college with an electric one, and I've still got the little Royal manual portable that my mother took to the Women's College of Georgia with her in 1965. Yep, it still works.

Banjers on 'SNL'

Three banjos were being picked on stage on Saturday Night Live this past Saturday when the singer Feist performed her song 1234, which is also used in an iPod commercial.

Why is it so hard to find this stuff?

+ Cinnamon Altoids. Is it just me, or have a lot of stores stopped selling the cinnamon flavor in favor of the dark chocolate dipped Altoids? I think it's true. I hate dark chocolate. And I hate peppermint Altoids. I looked far and wide for the cinnamon flavor, but found them only in the candy aisle at my local Walgreen's.

+ Women's jeans that aren't skin tight or low-rise. I can understand that trends come and go, but is it really necessary for all the major stores to get rid of all the clothes that don't fit the trend, as though shoppers don't want anything that's not trendy?

Just a thought.

Fishing on Priest Lake

Miss Anne and I took in the women's fishing clinic today at Long Hunter State Park and had a good time. She caught three, but I didn't catch any. But I enjoyed it.

Good to see an old friend again

I was in the first aid section of the pharmacy at Wal-Mart yesterday morning when I looked up and saw something I hadn't seen in a long time: Band-Aids in a metal flip-top box. Looks like Johnson & Johnson is putting out some of the metal boxes again as part of the Band-Aid's 85th birthday.

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Go Commodores!

Susan and I made it to homecoming weekend-before-last, and sat there and watched as our likely victory evaporated and was finally kicked away by the Georgia field goal kicker as time ran out. But the Commodores knocked off No. 6 South Carolina this past weekend.

More pictures posted: These from Warrenton

I've updated my Picasa Web albums to include some older pictures from Warrenton. They're not mapped yet, but I hope to soon do that.

All hail the arch

A picture I took on my way to mapping training in Missouri, from which I returned just a few days ago. The arch was indeed very arch-like.

Absolving themselves of their carbonated responsibility?

It's been happening more and more over the past few years: fast-food restaurants are rearranging their interiors so that customers are handed a cup at the counter and then pour their own drinks at a drink "station."

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that you're more likely to get a "flat" soft drink, or a drink that's mostly soda water and little syrup, at these do-it-yourself drink stations?

I wonder if, when restaurants move these drink thingees out to the customer area, the staff is less watchful of when the Coke taps need to be changed out so that they give out the right mix of syrup and carbonated water. As I encounter more and more of the do-it-yourselfer places, I get fewer and fewer soft drinks that actually taste right.