SCAMPI:The review: Not a four star restaurant.

                             

 I am committed to good food.

My wife (the little French Lady) and myself have become addicted to Geocaching.  We have been doing our little adventure of finding Tupperware in the woods using million dollar satellites for about 6 months.   We are getting further from home, looking for caches.

Last weekend we were about 30 miles from home.  The day was winding down and we were getting hungry. Enough geocaching for one day.  We should get something to eat. We were famished.  We weren't too familiar with the area so we just drove around looking for a place to eat.  We were not interested in Burger King or Kentucky Fried Chicken.

We finally saw a place that sounded pretty interesting.  It was called SCAMPI.   I like Italian food, and so does my wife.  We pulled into the parking lot; it was a huge parking lot. Good sign.  I must say the building was quite impressive also.

As we walked through the parking lot we noticed a security guard walking about. Another good sign.

We were met at the door by a very distinguished gentleman.  He was obviously the maitre'd of SCAMPI. We were greeted.
"Good evening, My name is Sigmund and you are....?"
"Jonathan Hemlock."
"... and she is?" "Ms Hemlock."

Sigmund walked over to his computer and I saw him type my name into google. His eyebrows raised and mumbled something like, "I thought he would be taller."
I took this to be a good sign.
"Ah, Mr. Hemlock! Welcome."
"We would like to be seated near a window . Preferably in a booth"
"I'm sorry we do not have any windows or booths, Mr. Hemlock."
"Whatever.  We will have the special."
"Fine. Mr. Capote will bring it to you."

This guy had a real large attitude problem.  He wanted to be called Truman. He thinks he is a president or something.  He acted very gay.  A gay president. What next?

As we waited for our food a couple of gentlemen joined us at our table.  They were introduced as Mr. Harry Callahan and Mr. Walter Kowalski.  These guys also had a surly attitude, yet I felt strangely comfortable with them.  We introduced ourselves.  Their attitude brightened when I told them my name.

"Hemlock?...huh, I've heard of you." Callahan queried.  "What are you doing here?" "Geocaching." I answered.
Callahan and Kowalski just looked at each other and shrugged.
Our food finally showed up.  It wasn't scampi.  It was Shepard's Pie.
"Truman, you gave us the wrong meal."
Truman's attitude became condescending and huffy.

Harry stood up. "I've had trouble with this guy, too. I think he stole my bread stick."
He grabbed Truman by the lapels and said, "I know what you're thinking, punk! Did he have five breadsticks or six? Well, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being these are Olive Garden Bread Sticks, the most tasty breadsticks in the world, and would clearly satisfy anybody's appetite, you have to ask yourself one question. Do you feel hungry, punk?...Well, do ya?....?"
"Do you have anything to add to that, Kowalski?"
"Ummm...No...just stay off my lawn."
"Check please!!!"  Harry and Walt were getting a little cranky.

We told Sigmund that we received the wrong food.  He told us to sign the release and there would be no charge.  We signed.

"Bernard will show you to your room."  Bernard was a wiry little guy.
"You can call me Barney. Everyone does. Hey, would you like to hear me recite the Preamble to the constitution?....We.... We?"
"Nip it, Barney. We are not staying here tonight."
Sure you are.  You just signed yourself into SCAMPI."
"We just came here for the food. We didn't even get our scampi."
"Well, there's your problem right there. Sigmund we have a problem."
Sigmund reappeared.  Bernard explained. Whispering and nodding. "Aha!!!"
The situation was explained to us.

RECAP: All the things we thought were a good sign, were bad signs.  We were just told that we have signed ourselves into SCAMPI: the South Carolina Asylum for the Media Programming Indoctrinated.  We thought we were in an Italian Bistro, but it was really a mental asylum for people who have watched too many movies, too much television, read too many books and lost their identity.   
We probably would not have gotten into SCAMPI if I had used my real name.  I used my blogging name and Geocaching name.  This usually is not a problem.  However when Sigmund (Freud) googled me, my name came up as a fictional character... Jonathan Hemlock, a character in the movie Eiger Sanction, played by Clint Eastwood.


When we sat at our table we were seated with Mr. Callahan (Dirty Harry!!) and Mr. Walter Kowalski (Grand Torino). Both were characters in Clint Eastwood movies.  This is why I felt comfortable with these guys. What could be more natural?


So there was a little misunderstanding.  Our friends are horrified with what has happened to us.  We will be here for at least the next 45 days.

I will bring some ice cold
Silver Bullet beer, guys.
If I get drunk enough I
will give you a peek under my
mask.

They are trying to get us released. I told them to mind their own business. 

"Your deal, Hemlock!"

I am enjoying playing pinochle with Johnny Carson, Adolph Hitler and the Lone Ranger tonight.
I hope I don't get Hitler as a partner again.
My wife is having a nice French meal with Charles De Gaulle and Napoleon. Ahhh... Home cooking.  
Bring me back some cretons.  The guys will love it.

Irony defined? A True Tale of geocaching.

Irony defined: A state of affairs or an event that seem deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.

My wife and I recently  became geocachers.  One of my internet friends occasionally made reference to "geocaching" .  I tried to ignore it, but it just kept popping up.  I am a naturally curious person.  I googled it ...  I google everything.

It brought me to a website which, strangely was called "Geocaching".

The website defines geocaching as: A recreational activity of hunting for and finding a hidden object by means of GPS coordinates posted on a website.

In other words, finding tupperware in the woods using billion dollars worth of military satellites.  

This sounded like a fun activity to me.  It would be easy enough to get started: I already  had a TomTom GPS for our vehicle.  I signed up on Geocaching.com.  It was free and I found a few simple caches near our home.  

I was hooked.  Since a TomTom would not do the job out in the woods, I  started looking for a GPS that would best suit my needs.  

 A GPS saying, "Turn left on Ocean Blvd." would not be very helpful.  The actual decision took me only about four months.

One day my wife said to me, " Are you going to buy that GPS before you die?"

I had it the next day.  My biological clock is ticking, you know!

After a couple of days figuring out how to put my batteries in and turn it on, I was ready to geocache.  The little French lady went with me on my first few geocaches.

She seemed amused by my antics.  I would slither on the ground like a lizard, get hung up in bushes, have brambles in my hair, walk in dog poop, pick up dog poop thinking a cache would be hidden under it.  Once I even crawled under a gazebo looking for a cache.  A woman came along and asked my wife if she should call 911.  My wife talked her out of it.  I generally made a mess of myself while geocaching.

One day the little French lady asked some question about my GPS.  She started showing a little interest in my new hobby.  The next time we went geocaching she started questioning my navigational skills.  I was meandering all over the place.

Finally, she said, "Gimme that thing!" . Sigh... I did not see much of my Garmin Etrex that day.  Every once in a while I would whimper, "Can I look at it?"  The next day she ordered a Garmin GPS for herself.   She was hooked.

We learned about geocaching very quickly.  But...alas, not fast enough.  We would take a trinket out  and put a different one back in.  The trinkets are called "swag".

Somewhere in the beginning we apparently made some breach of  swag etiquette.

One of the cache owners sent us a nastygram accusing us of replacing her high price swag (her treasure)  with our cheap swag (our trash).  She said we plundered her cache.  We acknowledged that her swag may have been more valuable than ours. We did not consider our swag as  "trash", nor did we plunder her cache.  We didn't think swag was the point of geocaching, and we still do not.  Nonetheless she called us everything but a human being, which we thought might be considered a breach of etiquette also.  We were kinda taken aback by the whole incident.  I guess "One man's treasure is another man's trash".

We decided we would place our own cache and dedicate it to this incident.  Naturally we called it, "One man's treasure".  Wanting to keep with the theme, we decided to hide it at an appropriate place, near a flea market.  But ... we had no idea how ironic the whole story would be.

Life can be funny.

We received an email this morning from a geocacher named "The Shady Lady".

Here's what she said: "We  saved this cache! The landscape clean-up crew had thrown it in the garbage.  They were pretty interested to hear the explanation of geocaching and will be on the lookout for other mysterious containers that may pop up in their line of work. Tftc (Thanks for the Cache)".

Whew! that was close.  From Trash back to treasure!!!  Thanks, Shady Lady for saving GC2N3XP (One man's treasure).

The writers (bloggers) block

Writer's corner.....30 seconds after I stood up.

This has been a busy Christmas season for the little French lady and me. She takes a two week vacation during this time of year. We do things that will entertain both of us during the holidays.

I have been doing a little bit of geocaching in the previous months. At first, I didn't think she was interested. I was wrong. She had been sneaking a peak at my preparations for my adventure. One day she decided to follow.

Hmmm! I will bring her into the woods, walk her through mud, make her slither on the ground like a slug, I will make sure it is hell for her.

Well....That's not exactly what happened. We arrived near the geocache location and entered "the jungle" I had chosen. I had my little GPS in hand.

My wife said "Where are we going? How far is it? Let me see that GPS." That was the last time I touched the GPS that day.

I was looking under termite infested tree trunks, climbing trees, moving rocks that weigh more than I do, kneeling in drainage ditches, poking at animal scatology, rolling in ant hills and walking through a leaking cesspool. It was hell for me.

My wife loved it. She purchased her own GPS the next day. I am the official crawler of the team. My wife will touch no geocache that requires that her knees touch the ground.

During this vacation we have discovered 36 caches within 4 miles of our house. It kept us busy. There was not much time for writing a blog.

When we weren't geocaching we were playing Qwirkle. This is a simple game for anyone but to be good at it takes concentration. If your mind wanders, you're beat.

My wife beat me 10 times in a row. My mind tends to wan....what was I talking about?

I think I have DAD (deficit attention disorder). I may be dyslexic also. As I like to say, "Dyslexic untie" , our battle cry. This has also blocked me from writing my blog.

The biggest obstacle to writing my blog is losing my creative writing nook. That would be my Milan Puff chair w/Ottoman. I am not quite sure which day I lost it, but it's gone.

Wilson and I had a tacit agreement that the chair would be exclusively mine but he could use the ottoman at any time.

He respected this agreement for many months. Then, one morning he breached the contract. I removed him from my chair and put him on the ottoman. He kept going back to the chair. Before going to bed, I would put the ottoman on the chair. This prevented him from using the chair while we were sleeping.

One morning I came downstairs for breakfast. I looked in the chair. He was scrunched up in the chair behind the ottoman. He had the look of defiance, the attitude of Houdini after a miraculous escape. His demeanor said it all, like "nice try, Bucko!!!"

I had seen that cattitude many times.

well, I guess I am going to have to share.

Didn't happen!!!

If I get to the chair first and I am blogging on my laptop, he gets on the side of the chair, pushes his head under the laptop and lifts and he keeps lifting until I dispose of the laptop.

If he sees me walking toward the chair, he will run to chair and hop in it and glare at me.

If I stand up to look out the window, which only takes 5 seconds, when I turn to sit down again, he is in my spot in the chair.

I think it's Wilson's favorite game.

One day I whined to my wife, "He is ruining my creative flow. He has taken over my chair, he has ruined my life. I am done as a writer, a blogger. I am sure Hemingway didn't have to put up with this problem."

My wife started laughing.

" Now your comparing yourself to Hemingway? If you're Hemingway, I'm Bill Gates.

Do You mean Ralph Hemingway? Incidentally, Ernest was a big fan of cats and he probably did have this problem. Stop your whining. Fight for your chair. Work it out among yourselves."

We did.

After much bickering, threats and cajoling we came to some sort of agreement.

As I write this from the kitchen table Wilson sits in my? chair. I am blocked from my writer's nook.

Writer's block indeed!!!!