Feeding and Care

Here’s a little Random Factoid, not even really a proper Anecdote. When I was in high school my buddies and I used to go to the local diner a lot to hang out. It only just now occurs to me that the diner was a lot like a bar, in that we could go there in a group of any size and sit around and shoot the breeze for long, theoretically open-ended spans of time, with the added benefit of not needing to be 21 (or have a fake ID, or just be located in a college town where the proprietors have a business model based on not caring overmuch) to get in. As opposed to most restaurants, where if you stay very long past the point where you’ve finished your meal they start to look at you funny and suggest that you take things elsewhere, the diner staff didn’t seem to mind if we made modest orders and then nursed bottomless cups of coffee for hours.


I almost always ordered the same thing every time we went to the diner, which was the Pizza Burger Deluxe, something which is not quite as monstrous as it sounds (but only barely). It was basically cheeseburger which used mozzarella instead of American and also trapped a layer of marinara between the melted cheese and the beef. You might be thinking that the “Deluxe” part of the name alluded to extra pizza toppings like pepperoni and sausage and mushrooms and olives and so forth, but in fact it simply meant that the platter came with french fries. The burger was also on a regular bun, not between two slices of Sicilian or anything like that. So, only vaguely pizza-esque. More like a Meatball Parm sub with the shape and ingredient proportions rearranged. But I was addicted to those things. I think I might have started eating Pizza Burgers before I actually acquired a taste for normal cheeseburgers, weirdly finicky eater that I was as a kid.

I was thinking about the old diner go-to order today because it’s been a long week and I did not bring lunch to work (mostly I forgot, but didn’t really have a lot at home I could bring to begin with) and I’ve exhausted my laid-in supplies here at the office, so I was forced to wander the streets in search of food. I didn’t wander far, just to the café across the street to get … a bacon cheeseburger. The café does not offer Pizza Burgers on its menu, sadly. I haven’t had a bacon cheeseburger all year, since I’ve been trying to cut back on eating crap and spending unwisely, but I felt entitled to treat myself – like I said, long week.

Not much else of notable insight beyond that, I’m afraid, and this weekend looks to be busy despite currently being unplanned, due to the painting and furniture-assembling that I would really love to be more or less done with by Sunday night. I shall report on Monday as to whether or not those dreams are realized.