SF Thoughts and KFC's Promise

Today is Monday. Tomorrow is Tuesday. The day after is Wednesday. And the next day I’ll be leaving for San Francisco.

Am I scared? Yes.

The easy answer is the weather, which they’re now forecasting rain for the entire week, Monday to Friday. But that’s not it…I don’t think.

It might be the unplanned stuff or something not working out right or me losing something/forgetting to bring something.

The truth is, I don’t know what it is. It’s just a general fear. And maybe it’s the expectation factor. I didn’t go anywhere last year and the last place I went was on a road trip to St. Louis where all I really did was wander around a park, go up the arch and watch baseball. The last time I flew anywhere was to Boston (the trip where I got pulled out of line and had a slight altercation with a TSA official).

Maybe it’s the feeling that this had better be good because how long it’s been and how long it could be before I get to do something like this again.

Today, and the last couple days, I’ve been mainly preparing for coming back. Washing clothes so I don’t have a giant stockpile for when I get back. Tomorrow I’ll be pre-packing, so I can know what I’m bringing and how everything fits together.

As for the planning, there’s really nothing else I can (reasonably) do. I’ve done all the research, printed all the pages, and planned the best I could. There’s only so much planning you can do before you just let go.

I think one concern I have, and have had for a while, is that I don’t want this to be a trip where I hit point after point and the vacation is more of a checklist and I come back and either I’ve hit all the checkpoints or I didn’t. Those aren’t usually fun. This is about being away and I need to feel that. Running from point to point is just another kind of job. I’m concerned that I’m missing the spirit of a vacation.

I don’t want to come back and feel that I left something major out but I don’t want to come back so worn out that I almost regret going.

I just want this to be good.

101% Satisfaction Guarantee

I was in the drive-thru at KFC and I noticed a sign on the window that stated something like ‘Customers should be 101% satisfied with their visit.’ I don’t understand this. I mean, obviously, someone can only be 100% of anything within themselves. If they’re completely satisfied, then they’re 100% satisfied.

Yet, you hear about give 110% or 150% of yourself all the time. But KFC doesn’t go for the standard cliché. Instead, they settle on having the customer be 101% satisfied. And I felt slightly offended. If it had been 100%, I wouldn’t’ve thought anything. Had it been 110% or 150% or 200%, I would’ve probably rolled my eyes but there seems to be a certain amount of resignation in saying 101%.

They’re just shooting for 1% more than what you expected. For instance, I expect between two and three napkins. They gave me 15. That translates to about a percent. So I guess I’m 101% satisfied.

Final Thoughts

A man shot himself in a theater while watching ‘Watchmen.’ It just shows that seeing a naked blue man on screen affects people in different ways.

SF Trip, Dr. Manhattan & Extra Pizza

Okay, so I’m slacking on the planning for the trip. What I need to do this week, is call several places that are tentatively scheduled for Sunday to make sure they’re open on Easter. I need to calculate the travel distances between the events and then by Wednesday (hopefully), start making reservations and locking everything in place.

Once everything is locked in place, I’ll print out some of the stuff I found off the Internet so I’ll have an Internet guide in addition to the travel guide I bought at Barnes & Noble.

The goal is to get everything done by next weekend, so I’ll have four weeks leading up to the trip and everything pretty much in place. Then I can focus on packing.

And Then There’s Dr. Manhattan



My girlfriend and I saw ‘Watchmen’ on Saturday at the new IMAX that just opened near Southlake Mall. The sound was incredible in the theater.

I could give me review of the movie, but I’ll be honest, what I really took away from the film more than anything is that I felt very emasculated. The same thing happened after I watched the other Zach Snyder directed film, ‘300.’ After my brother and I had watched ‘300,’ we went to Best Buy and I saw a woman struggling to pick up a box to get it into her car. So I helped her and that helped to counteract the way I felt after watching ‘300.’

But after ‘Watchmen,’ there were no women putting boxes into their cars that I could help them with. So instead, I kept thinking about Dr. Manhattan and his shoulders, pecs and yes, his giant blue penis that hung out there most of the movie.

After we got home, I put on another Billy Crudup movie, ‘Almost Famous’ just to show my girlfriend that Dr. Manhattan was a CGI creation. ‘Almost Famous’ is a really good movie but it didn’t keep me from thinking about Dr. Manhattan.

I Was Further Freaked Out When...

I went to Pizza Hut on Sunday. I’d ordered a pizza and cheesesticks online for carryout. When I went to pick it up, the cashier was staring off to the side, his tongue poking out of his mouth, displaying his bluish tongue stud. He look at me, and I realized he had these super-sea blue contacts in. You know, the ones that make your eyes look freaky. To top it off, he had very over dramatic hand movements and an effeminate way of talking.

He explained that he wasn’t paying attention and did the pizza wrong, so it had to be redone. Since they couldn’t use the other pizza, he gave me the ‘wrong’ pizza for free. So, I got two pizzas for the price of one. And that was good but he completely freaked the hell out of me.

Final Thoughts

I accidentally bought Brawny the other day. Didn’t their cover guy used to have a beard? What happened to the beard? Dude looks like he has a shrunken head too. It’s really freaky and I don’t think I like it.

Who am I kidding…I’m really still thinking about Dr. Manhattan.