To Whom It May Concern

I'll Just Park Here In Your Living Room

While in Iraq I rarely watched the news, because quite frankly it was just annoying to watch the complete bullshit that CNN and others try to pass off as 'reality' about Iraq when in fact it was trumped up speculation about how much we are 'failing to show results' over there. Anyone who really believes that has quite obviously not been to Iraq and talked to any of the Iraqi people. Enough said about that.

When I was in Nebraska I watched the news quite a bit because my parents and others watched the news every day when I was growing up. When you've lived in the same area of the world for your entire life, most of all the news you watch relates to you in one way or the other because you can see something like a car crash and "Oh my, that is a bad intersection, I could have told them that!"

But now that I'm in San Diego, I don't typically watch the news because A) I don't really know much about the issues they bring up, and B) A story about a "bad wreck on the corner of Chelsae Street and Horshire Blvd" has no bearing on me because I just don't know where that's at. I'm sure if I were here long enough I would start to recognize what I see, and the stories would relate more to me.

From what I have seen on the news though, there are a lot of people out here that mistake a personal residence as just another place to park their car. I swear, every news program I've watched, maybe half a dozen or so, has included a brief story about some idiot who went crashing into someone's house. I wonder sometimes if I need to install some concrete barriers out in front of our residence to avoid these crazy California drivers who insist on smashing into houses.

I'm still getting used to the people out here. Disrespectful, rude, discourteous, need I go on? I would say the word 'polite' is just not known out here, and it's not just driving, even when you are walking somewhere they act like idiot assholes. They back up in front of you, cut in front of you to look at something, standing in the middle of aisles talking with their whole family and not moving when you are coming down the aisle. You pretty much have to get rude and say "EXCUSE ME, WOULD YOU MIND LETTING ME THRU?" like some sort of real life Garth outtake from Wayne's World or something.

Well, we were out traveling around, looking at external hard drives and other computer stuff at Fry's electronics, and we decided to go look for a place to eat. We drove around for a little bit and decided on something Italian, because I really wasn't in the mood for burgers (we ate plenty on our trip to and from Arizona) and neither of us was into Mexican or Chinese.

Then we noticed a little ApplebackClone (what I call all the cliche eateries that look alike) type Italian place called Carinos and we decided to try it out.

It was a pleasant little place done up in that 'southwestern' kind of flavor, adobe looking walls, painted a soft yellowish tan, with high beamed ceilings. It was a pleasant place, not too light, not too dark. We ordered our drinks and got the italian nachos for an appetizer. I remarked to belly that the nachos were excellent, maybe as good as Old Chicago, my favorite.

They also had all you can eat bread, and with the skillet prepared pasta meal for me, and spaghetti with meatballs for belly, we got our choice of salad or soup. I took the Ceasar and belly got "mo' naked hos" with bacon soup. Everything tasted great, and the food was wonderful, but then a little problem came up.

We finished our soup and salad and then after about five minutes the waitress brought us more bread. About five minutes later I turned to belly and wondered aloud about how long it was taking to get our main dishes out to us.

This was just the beginning, we waited for FIFTEEN MINUTES more before they finally brought out our food. From the time we ordered to when we received our main dish, it was roughly 45 minutes, a full 25 minutes of sitting with our thumbs up our asses when the salad and soup were finished.

This was really disappointing to me, because I would have no problem going back to this place to eat again, except the poor performance by either the cook or the waitress getting the order to the cook will pretty much ensure that I will never eat at Carinos ever again. They didn't even bother coming over and trying to explain what was going on, we were just left there by ourselves waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Oh well, like I said, we won't be back there, ever.

Right now job hunting is a priority, and I'll be getting into that heavily this week. I have plenty of money in savings but that's right where I want to keep that money. My goal is to buy a house when we move out of California, and if I spend much of my savings it will hurt any chance of getting a decent house, so I really don't want to do that.

I'm sure you'll hear more about California in the coming days.

At least Fry's is really cool.