1 Happy St

Jill and I took a mini-vacation to Wisconsin over the weekend. The weather was perfect all three days, which was nice because we found out later that it rained back home the whole time we were gone (HA ha). We did some boating, some eating, some drinking, some boating, and some eating. Oh and drinking. In that order. We visited with Jill's grandpa at his (near)-lake house, which is always a good time. Some of the highlights:

We went to a restaurant/bar and the service was beyond the worst I have ever seen. They had one poor girl waiting every table and she couldn't have been older than 15. And she was shy. Have you ever met a shy waitress? Yeah it's not good. The people at the table next to us had been waiting on their pizza for 2 hours (not an exaggeration) when one of them said to her "is our pizza gonna be much longer?" and she responded with "I'm not sure". It was perfect. No "let me check" or "it'll be 5 minutes". No, she said "I'm not sure" and then walked away. Well then. It was so bad that everyone was walking up to the bar themselves to get refills on their drinks. I think they need a better system. We tipped the girl $10 just for comedy's sake, and I figured it would make a good ending to the story on this blog. In hindsight, I wasted 10 bucks.

I love watching local news broadcasts in small towns. They have nothing to report. I'm used to the top 10 stories on my news being about murders and assaults and political corruption: you know, the good stuff. Not here though. The top story for small towns is always the weather. It was 80 and sunny the whole weekend, so how is that news? I could see if we were setting heat records or if there was 20 inches of snow or something; that'd be worth reporting. But who the fuck cares about the weather when it's 80 and sunny? Small towns kill me.

One of the neighbors was removing a tree from their yard that had been damaged by a wind storm.

That last one wouldn't have been a highlight if the police hadn't shown up. It's probably still not a highlight, except for the fact they showed up for no reason. I swear you really have to love small towns. The police only showed up because there was nothing else going on. So the officer just stood in the yard and watched as the tree was removed. "Hey Carl, you gonna head on down to the Johnson house this afternoon? I hear they're removing that tree that was damaged last week." - "I'm on it, Sheriff." And yes, all police officers in hypothetical dialogues about police officers are named Carl.

I'm not used to people being nice. Jill's grandpa bought some telephones from Radio Shack a couple weeks ago, but he wasn't happy with them. He wanted to return them and he had the receipt, but he didn't have the boxes that they came in. So Jill and I put them in a bag and drove over to try and bring them back. We were so ready to put up a fight with the Radio Shack people. We figured they'd tell us that without the boxes, there'd be nothing they could do. But we went in there and the guy took them back with no problem at all. He even apologized on behalf of the phones for not working properly. It was odd. As we were walking out of there, I said to Jill, "what was that? Was that customer service?" It's weird seeing things for the first time.

One morning we went out to breakfast and I got two eggs over easy, hash browns, bacon, and a cup of coffee for only $3.50. And it was eggs-cellent (puns worthy of a Full House episode). Gas was only $3.98/gallon. And beers at the bars only cost $2. I love Wisconsin.

I could never live there though. Not because I don't want to, but I'd probably be kicked out for not being able to grow a cheesy mustache. And by "cheesy", I don't mean lame. I mean actual cheese. Every guy who lives in Wisconsin looks like a walrus. Goo goo g'joob. It's a wonderful place to visit though. I can't wait to go back.