Synthetic Organics and the Tire-less Weekend



I'll wrap up the weekend in a second, but first an observation. Central Market recently introduced their own line of organic foods. So I thought I'd try their microwave popcorn... it might make a good snack at work. I detected a slightly "earthier" flavor than regular popcorn, so I checked the ingredients list:

Certified organic gourmet popcorn, certified organic palm oil, certified organic butter flavor, salt, annatto.

Could someone please tell me what is "certified organic butter flavor?" Not actual butter, mind you-- butter flavor. How can imitation anything be organic?

SATURDAY

Jenny & I slept in for the first time in several weeks. We had a leisurely breakfast... next to the Highland Park high school crew team. One of our favorite breakfast spots is right by our apartment-- Barbec's . It's just a classic diner, but a guilty pleasure nonetheless. And it's usually enjoyable... except when you have a bad headache and a bunch of boisterous teenagers right next to you. I know, I know... it's kinda petty to complain about loud teenagers on a Saturday morning.

After a couple of errands, we went to Cedar Valley College for a production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers . Jenny's brother Jonathan was one of the brothers. The cast was pretty darn good. The musical itself was awful. let me explain-- The best cast in the world can't rescue a poorly written script and disjointed musical score. But the performers were great.

The rest of the day involved some shopping, dinner and crashing in front of the TV, catching up on stuff TiVo found for us. Boring? Perhaps. But we'd had a busy day. Then came Sunday.

SUNDAY

We knew we were in for a bad day when we headed for the car to go to church and found that the two back tires on my Mustang were flat. VERY flat. Like they had been slashed, or punctured. Having no time to inspect them (we were running late), we decided to deal with the tires later. Church. Lunch at Maggiano's , where we had awful service for the second time in our last two visits. (How does one forget to turn in the order for THE MAIN COURSE?) Then back home to deal with the tires.

When you have one flat, it's not hard to change the tire, put on the spare, and head to the store to get it fixed. But when you have two flats-- it gets a bit more challenging. You have to take both tires off and take another car to the store. Unless you're lucky enough to have two spares, but we weren't. So here's my sad car in our parking lot:


I wish I'd thought to take a picture with the two flat tires... alas, I did not. Anyway, off to Pep Boys, where we saw the cause-- two screws, thoughtfully placed in the treads. Freak accident or deliberate job? Who knows? One screw, I wouldn't think twice about it being an accident. Two? I just don't know. Whatever the case, since they were screws and not, say, a razor blade or knife across the sidewalls, the damage was covered by my road hazard warranty, and we got the tires fixed for free. Our luck was turning around.

It shot most of the day, of course, but that was resolved, and we didn't want to mess with the world anymore last night. So we ordered a pizza and watched a marathon of Alias, season 3, courtesy of the fine folks at Netflix . Things were looking better. Then, of course, the weekend ended. Darnit.

Posted: Mon - March 21, 2005 at 10:00 AM          

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