A Day at the Park

Bastrop State Park has gone all high-tech. Is nothing sacred?!?

Okay, so it's not actually high-tech, but they've reorganized the trail system since I was last there several years ago. The trails are all color-coded now, with signposts at each intersection indicating that, to stay on the red trail, you keep to the left. The blue trail is off to your right. The signposts have park maps with each trail indicated by a colored line. It's just like the Metro, only less expensive, and with slightly better odds of reaching your final destination, assuming you're trying to get back to your car.

They also have a cabin camping area. Cabins? We checked them out after our walk, driving among them slowly, scoping out our picks for some future weekend visit. Let me tell you what, those are some nice cabins. They are bigger than my house. They have fireplaces, too, and curtains. I haven't gone camping in several years now, but my dad used to take me all the time, so I know there are certain things that are a part of camping and certain things that are not a part of camping. Camping involves things like canned vegetables, Tang, collapsible 5-gallon water jugs, and (God help us all) pit toilets. It emphatically does not include curtains.

I've always hated pit toilets. I'm intrigued.

"Where would you recommend," asked my companion in the park office as he bought a year pass, "a good barbecue place in Bastrop?"

There was such a long silence that I wasn't sure the staffer had heard him. Finally her coworker piped up. "It's not a hard choice," she said, "there's only two."

"Billy's and Cartwright's," added the woman helping us at last.

"I saw Cartwright's as we were driving in," I said helpfully to my friend.

"Yeah," said the woman who had first spoken, "Cartwright's has a really big sign."

This didn't really strike either of us as a ringing endorsement. "So where would you go for barbecue?" pressed my friend.

There was another long pause. "Lockhart. I'd drive to Lockhart," they chorused.

Or Elgin, they went on to add, so we had dinner at Meyer's Barbecue there. I'd been to Southside Market once before, a year ago, on my work group's fam tour of Central Texas; and I thought it was really quite good, although a coworker of my friend's and mine, who lives in Elgin, was outraged that the tour took us there instead of Meyer's, which she insists is much better. So we checked out Meyer's, and I have to say, their sausage (for which Elgin is so well-known) really is tasty. At least I liked it, and I don't like sausage. But you can't go wrong with Southside Market either. I had a side of creamed corn and discovered that my companion thinks creamed corn is an abomination, which is something of a pity, as creamed corn, from a can, falls rather firmly into the things-that-go-with-camping camp.

But that's okay - so do marshmallows, a fact I don't have a problem with as long as the marshmallows are slowly immolated in flames until they drip, sizzling in sugary agony, into the glowing embers. Then you eat the chocolate and give the graham crackers to your kids: that's my recipe for S'Mores.

Happy New Year! 2010 is off to a good start. I'm looking forward to doing some camping.

Tripping the Plastic Fantastic

As I was logging into Blogger just now, I spotted "Erectile Dysfunction Treatments" on the scrolling list of just-updated blogs. It seems odd, to me. I can't imagine having a whole blog dedicated to just that one topic. I mean, the subject comes up now and again (just never when you want it to!) on mine, but if it were all you ever wrote about, it seems like you'd run out of material fairly quickly.

Or you'd damn well wish you had.

There's medical treatment for it. There's medical treatment for everything! At happy hour last night, my friend Kevin and I, admiring a ridiculously tiny purse-dog sported by a woman a couple of tables down, suddenly had our attention called to what happens when medical treatment for being hit by an ugly stick (or perhaps just a middle-aged stick) goes horribly wrong: the woman turned in our direction, and her lips were unnaturally huge and bloated and bright pink, and her eyes had a strange, tight look to them. She also had big, fake - um, fingernails.

We wondered why someone would do this. I mean, sure, you couldn't really have guessed her age by looking at her. But if an observer is also left with some question as to your actual species, you've gone a bit too far.

Food is just as bad. I don't insist on all organic foods, but have you ever noticed how many things on the market bear little to no resemblance to actual comestibles? Yet people willingly consume these things - Wonder Bread, Cool Whip, Velveeta, marshmallows, Spam, non-dairy creamer.

Let the record state that I've just officially invented the S'Less. You all better not forget it.

It just seems like the more fluff and vanity you add to life, the more you take it all for granted as a basic necessity. Not that I'm any less guilty of this than anyone else. But at least, by God, my fingernails are real.

Marshmallows: No

I just read this Yahoo feature on Thanksgiving side dishes.

All right, fess up: who likes marshmallows?

I don't have too much problem with most other foods, using that term loosely. I think Wonder Bread is gross, but I don't care if you eat it. Cheez Whiz? Ick! Don't eat it when I'm around, and I'll pretend not to know. Cilantro sets off my gag reflex. You like it? Please, buy it all! Cool Whip? What's wrong with you?! Eat whipped cream fer crissakes! Why would you schlep a big glob of trans-fat on - oh, fine, do whatever you want. Eggplant is eh: not inedible, but given a choice, I'd rather eat Kraft mac-and-cheese, sorry. And you all know my fond, irrational feelings on candy corn.

But marshmallows are an abomination.

How can you eat these things? Not to say that they have no purpose. You can take them camping. You can poke them on the ends of sharp sticks and set fire to them. You can watch, mesmerized, as they dissolve gradually into blue and pink and lavender flames;* I don't think iceberg lettuce would do that, though you can always give it a try.

And why would you contaminate a perfectly good Thanksgiving side dish with the gelatinous little bastards? Sweet potatoes are yummy. You can chop them up and bake them in brown sugar syrup. You can mash them. I suppose you could even sautee them. They're good with turkey, gravy and stuffing, if (to be perfectly honest) a little redundant with the mashed potatoes. But if you can't have redundancy at an orgiastic holiday feast, when can you? Grandma always made up for this by also serving soybeans. Eat your soybeans! You never know when you might suffer from a wax shortage.

But marshmallows? No. They are not tasty and they are not good for you. They make hot chocolate slimy and undrinkable; they convert S'mores into S'Lesses. Rice Krispie treats? Whatever. Just try to tell me those have any nutritional value whatsoever. You might as well eat spray insulation.

Under attack next week: football. What is with you people?!?

-----------------------
*Food rule #1: If it turns pastel when you set fire to it, it isn't food.