Ten Tips for Taking Lunch to Work
 

Tip # 1
I prefer making lunch for work the night before and after my third beer of the night. This provides that much sought after and easily obtainable "element of surprise”, to next day’s lunch.  If you don’t drink beer, fixing next day’s lunch will be a drudgery.

Tip # 2
Don’t feed the cat at the same time you make lunch, especially after the third beer.  Mistakes happen.

Tip # 3
Always pack more lunch than you’ll need for one meal, that way, you won’t go hungry.  A “backup sandwich” will always come in handy, someday, when you badly need it.

Tip # 4
Pack a wet washcloth in a zip-lock baggy with your lunch.  You can use the washcloth for your face and hands after eating.  This adds a touch of sophistication to your meal—-making your workday more civilized.  You can even throw in a chocolate mint if you like.

Tip # 5
If you pack soup, make sure you include a spoon.  It’s hard to eat soup with a fork, and somewhat embarrassing.

Tip # 6
When packing a peanut butter sandwich for lunch don’t make it the night before and stick it in the fridge.  Peanut butter does not age well in the fridge and looks like HELL.  Wait until morning to make the sandwich.

Tip # 7
If you use a cooler to carry your lunch in, keep it clean.  Dried mustard, ketchup, axle grease, and the occasional blob of gum, will make your lunch look unappetizing.  If you use a paper bag, put your name on it.  It’s hard to explain how you “got into” someone else’s lunch by mistake, especially if you had forgotten which lunch was yours, due to strict adherence to Tip # 1.

Tip #8
If you prefer a sandwich for lunch, cut it in half, use two zip lock sandwich bags, one-half sandwich in each bag.  Trying to stuff a whole sandwich into just one of those little sandwich bags, invariably mashes the sandwich, and the bag won’t zip due to food junk in the zipper.  For more variety, mix it up on the bread.  Pumpernickel for one sandwich, rye for the other.  Take cornbread or crackers for soup. The following, Tips 9 and 10 refer to microwave ovens and the safe, courteous use thereof.

Tip #9
If you use a microwave at work to heat your lunch, and this is very important, learn what foods can and can’t be heated in a microwave without offending the noses of your co-workers.  Broccoli is a “NO NO”, along with any type of fish product.  Never, never put sardines in a microwave.

Tip #10
Popcorn.  Taking a bag of popcorn to work is very easy.  Popping it safely, on the other hand, can be a different matter entirely.  Do not walk away from popcorn while it is popping.  Burnt popcorn can damage the microwave. Burnt popcorn stinks.  If the microwave is in a public lunch room, and your popcorn burns, you WILL DEVELOP A REPUTATION quite possibly a nickname.  Being know as “Ole Smokey” or “The Popcorn Pooper” could follow you for the rest of your working career.  Maybe even longer.



Have a nice lunch. 

C. Allen Benson

 A Bladder Exercise for Beer Drinkers (Men Only)

I drink a lot of beer at night. Every night!  A strong and healthy bladder, to me, is very important.
To this end, I’ve worked-up an afternoon exercise to help strengthen the bladders of other, fellow beer drinkers, across America.  Calisthenics for the bladder, if you will.

WATER.

That’s all you need.  WATER. Well . . . . . . not quite all. It goes without saying when you combine “water” and “bladders” there should be a bathroom nearby.

Here’s how I personally do the exercise.  (You may have to change some things to suit your own, personal preference.)

Starting at about three or four in the afternoon, (there needs to be about seven hours minimum between the end of the bladder exercise and the commencement of the nightly beer consumption), what I do,  is to take my ounce,  BPA free, Nalgene water bottle and fill it full of ice water.   The idea here, and pardon my elaboration, is to expand and deflate the bladder over a period of two hours.  The bladder is expanded by drinking water.  The opposite,  or bladder-deflation,  is accomplished by peeing.  The routine is to drink, then pee; drink, then pee; and drink, then pee.  I call it the DRINK THEN PEE BLADDER EXERCISE PROCEDURE or D. T. P. B. E. P. for short.

An afternoon of trotting back and forth to the urinal not only builds up the bladder’s stamina but stretches like a balloon, the bladder’s side-wall muscle. A strong side-wall muscle is essential when it comes to peeing forcibly, and to beer drinkers, there are not many things more important than peeing forcibly. If you’ve ever worn white socks with sandals in a public place, and have to go stand in front of a urinal in the bathroom, you know what I mean.  If your pecker pushing power is not up to snuff, gets loose, and your pecker points in the wrong direction those white socks may take a direct hit.  No one, but no one, will believe that your socks have been TYE DYED.  If you’re re-joining a party, and your wife is there, she will not be happy.

Not only will this exercise keep you from being a weak pee’er but it will also increase the volume capacity of your bladder, and that or course; means fewer bathroom breaks.  The downside is, you quite possibly will develop a “sloshing sound” when you walk.  But hey, everything's a trade-off.
Try this exercise for a couple of weeks and see if it helps your nightly beer drinking enjoyment. If you have any tips or methods of improving on this exercise, please let me know.

 C. Allen Benson

             The Great Anti-Clockwise Twisty-Tie Crusade

In my quest for quirky retirement activities, I've come across a small group of individuals who believe as I do, that all twisty- ties on bread, bun, and bagel packaging, have been improperly installed for the past sixty years.

It all started back in '58.  Several of the major bread companies got together and developed a standard still adhered to today; that of placing twisty-ties on bread, bun, and bagel packaging with a clockwise rotation twist.  This means that opening a loaf of bread, buns, or bagels, would require turning the twisty-tie to the left, or counterclockwise.

We think this is backward and regressive.

Call us bohemians if you must, but our small group believes that a higher power, i.e., the great Master Baker, originally ordained twisty-ties be removed from bread, bun, or bagel packaging by turning the twisty tie to the right in a clockwise direction instead of counterclockwise, but the ordaining was systematically ignored.

Our group, the Anti Clockwise Twisty-Tie Federation of North America, meet once a month, car-pool it on down to Kroger, Wal-Mart, or Publix and congregate in the bread department.

Inconspicuously, we each grab a loaf of bread, buns, or bagels, undo the twisty-ties halfway, cross the two ties over each other, then coil them back in the opposite direction.

We then, nonchalantly, move on to the next store, and the next, and the next.  Our goal is to cause enough consumer annoyance as to eventually effect change in the packaging of loaf bread, buns, and bagel products.

If you have ever had a conniption fit trying to remove the twisty-tie on bread, buns, or bagel packaging, you've experienced our handiwork.

Rise up.

Join us.

We knead you.

Don't Kill Off the Dog

(This post is directed to my fellow moviegoers and Bob.)

I've finally gotten enough tequila inside me to address a pet peeve of mine that's been festering for decades, if not longer.

Have you ever sat down to watch a movie when an animal, usually a dog, has been introduced into the opening scene?

You have?  Then you might possibly know where I'm headed with this.

The dog is most likely, killed-off.  Am I right?

It gets shot, ran over by a garbage truck, or dies from a rattlesnake bite.

When this happens, we the audience, you and I, collectively sigh.  "Oh, no!  Not Fido."

Well, I've got breaking news for you moviegoers.  The dog's demise is only a ploy.  A hackneyed, overused ploy, that a few lazy writers use to push their plot along.

As the movie starts, the camera pulls back to show a wide shot of a crowded park.  A few people are picnicking.  There's an ice cream truck surrounded by kids tugging at their parents for ice cream money.  Old folks are sitting on benches feeding the pigeons.

The camera zooms in and shows us a dog chasing a bouncing ball.
It's a young bulldog with a happy look on his face.

Ominous music fades in.

(Spoiler alert ahead.)

The music is a dead giveaway and pardon the pun.

The dog, that puppy, that baby, that innocent creature is about to meet its demise.  

We, you and I, as a responsible audience, at this point, should be asking this poignant question from those miserable, good-for-nothing, booger-eating writers who were about to injure Fido.  "Do you really have to kill the dog off?"

WRITERS!

LISTEN UP!

Stop using the death of an animal as a sympathy crutch, then calling it good writing.  It's not.

Why don't you use a few clever twists to advance the plot instead?  Use the part of your brain that God gave you to write with instead of the mind farts you refer to as ingenuity.

Let the dog live.

The movie could have gone something like this.

(MY change to the plot.)

As the opening scene starts, the camera pulls back to show a wide shot of a crowded park.  A few people are picnicking.  There's an ice cream truck surrounded by kids tugging at their parents for ice cream money.  Old folks are sitting on benches feeding the pigeons.

The camera zooms in and shows us a dog chasing a bouncing ball.
He's a young bulldog with a happy look on his face.

The camera continues to follow along as the dog closes in on the ball.

Suddenly, the ball hits a tree root sticking out of the ground, takes a five-foot jump and smashes into the butt of a well-manicured poodle in the middle of doing her doggy-doo.  The speeding bulldog isn't able to stop in time, his foot lands in the middle of the poop "a la grass" and he slides headfirst into the poodle's owner, putting a doo print smack dab on the woman's thigh.

The bulldog's owner, by this time, catches up to his dog, grabs the leash, slips in the same place and falls backward.

You guessed it.

The camera pulls back.  Everyone, including the she-poodle, seems to be embarrassed by it all.  Everyone except the bulldog.  He just appears mildly irritated.  Probably because his ball got lost in the hubbub.

Together, both the poodle's owner and the bulldog's owner, rush over to the ice cream truck, dragging their dogs behind them, looking for napkins, paper towels, or anything else with which to clean smeared dog poop off of one's self.  The parents and kids line in front of the ice cream truck parted, sensing the urgency of the situation.

Needless to say, the ice cream truck's business came to a halt, as the couple stood off to one side, unceremoniously dabbing at themselves, cleaning up.

The bulldog lives to chase more balls, the dog's owners have cemented a lasting relationship, and the she-poodle has an admirer.

This is how it's done, writers.

REMEMBER IT.

WRITE IT DOWN.

As the camera pulls away and the credits come up, in the background you can see a young toddler reach down to pick up a stick of chocolate ice cream from the ground.

The camera fades to black as we hear a hysterical mother yelling.

"No!  Sweetie! THAT'S NOT ICE CREAM.

 D-O-N-'T!"