Döner Kebab!

Scotty having a döner kebab and pilsner at Mt Ararat in Dreseden circa 2003. A little slice of paradise.

As some of you may have heard me go on about at one time or another, a döner kebab is one of my three or four favorite foods. But I only get döners when I visit Germany. I did have one in NYC once, but it was a poor imitation using a flour tortilla, instead of a pita.

Until Wednesday. A QA at work told me about a little shop that opened in Dundee that sells döners! So I skipped my packed lunch and hopped in the car at lunch to go check it out. And they do sell them Amsterdam style, not German style, which is too bad. But still the taste was 9/10ths right. The only thing that pisses me off is that they opened this shop in my old neighborhood four months after I moved.

Observations

The other day I was driving home from work with Anke and Corwin on the freeway. We get passed by a late 90's civic with one of those loud coffee can mufflers. Corwin is at the age where he likes to point out the obvious. He promptly says "lawnmower!" It's enlightening that there are things he can already figure out on his own, and doesn't need to be taught.

Flood

Yesterday I went with a couple of co-workers to Missouri Valley, IA to help clean with the flooding that occurred a couple of weeks ago. The neighborhood that we were working was a rather poor place to begin with, before everything was swamped with three to four feet of water. Most of the houses were single story homes, built on concrete slabs. The owners of these had no where to put their valuables even had they known the water was coming.

In the morning I helped out with the salvage of one of these homes. This old woman lost nearly everything. The stove, fridge, washer and dryer. All of the furnishings of the house creating a pile in the front yard. The carpet that we were pulling up was a drab brown, except for a single two foot by four foot rectangle of white where something had protected it. We cut the carpet into blocks, pulled it and the padding up and added it to the growing detritus. From the pile it would go into the bucket of a giant end loader donated by the local Case Implement dealer to be taken Zeus knows where. Nasty, ugly, smelly work. It made me thankful Woodmen provided free tetanus shots for us.

It's saddening to see those that have so little, lose nearly everything. It makes me thankful for what I have, and that I don't have to live on a flood plane. It has to be disheartening to see all of the possessions that have taken you years to accumulate and many of them that must have some sentimental value, being ruined and thrown away like the garbage that they now are. How do you start over?

After lunch I helped at a vet clinic. Most of the clinic had been emptied by the time my team got there. We were helping to clear out a storage room in the back. The vet had seven or eight book shelves back there filled with books. The bottom half of all of them sat in water for a week. It felt sacrilegious to be throwing so many books into plastic bags and added to growing pile of junk in his horse trailer. Thousands if dollars of books being added to the thousands and thousands of dollars of other stuff. The vet was in a better situation than most, financially, to deal with the disaster, but he too was hurting. Especially because during the cleanup he hasn't got any income coming in.

I had to leave early to pick up Anke at work and Corwin in daycare. The relief effort was being organized at the local pool, which was convenient, allowing me to shower and change clothes before having to climb into the car and meet civilization again. But that may have been the coldest shower I have ever taken. I suppose swimming pools don't feel the need to hook their showers up to hot water heaters.

Yard Work

For the past month and a half, Anke has had me out in the yard doing Yard Work every weekend. I had no idea that owning a house would entail quite so much of the stuff. First shoveling snow and now this.

To help with the job, I picked up a Craftsman racing mower from sears. It has a 6 3/4 pound feet of torque Briggs & Stratton engine. Big directional tri-spoke wheels. And a parachute on the back to help me slow down. On top of all that, it's menacing black, with a fire red engine cover. Maurice may have a faster car than me, but my mower smokes his. One thing that does confuse me is that I can't find the rabbit and turtle to control the throttle.

See those bushes behind me? They used to be huge. Anke thought that they were too huge, and had me wack them down to nearly nothing. She says they'll come back bigger and better than ever. All I know is that it was a lot more work than I wanted to do. And now I have a big patch of dirt that used to be covered by bush.

Notice how tall the grass is here? That is in my swampy area that nearly never dries off. At some point I'm going to have to do something about that, like a French drain. Or something. But my racing mower took care of that 8 inch wet grass like it was nothin'. Torque bitch!

Here is the obligatory picture of Corwin trying to help out. He loves water and therefor he loves the water hose. He's also getting taller and talkier.

Anke has also had me planting plants galore. Two rose bushes. Two currant bushes. Transplanted a blue berry bush. Weeding, weeding, weeding. Ripping out Virginia creeper and a couple of poison ivy vines by the root. The yard really did need a lot of work. Since the house was unoccupied last summer, the yard was a bit neglected. We also planted two bamboo plants, one of which is shown. I'm actually excited about the bamboo. They are small now, but they should reach around 6 or 7 feet in height. The bamboo photo was taken with my new phone. It isn't quite camera quality and very far from our DSLR, but it's much better than my old phone.

Social Distortion

Maurice and I went to see Social D on May Day.

The first opening act was The Black Halos. They were kind of like the Evil Dead 2 of punk bands. Like Evil Dead 2, you're not quite sure if that was supposed to be funny or did it just happen to be funny? It took me awhile decide: Is the lead singer was really trying to be super cool or is it a bit of a tongue in cheek act? It was when the lead singer took off his shirt and he had a bit of a Chris Willcolm build (a round belly and narrow chest) that I decided, he can't be taking himself too seriously. I liked them a bit better after that. Musically I thought that they were a talented band, but the lead singer needs to learn how to sing. I could never understand him.

Band two was I Hate Kate, and they were very good. More of a modern rock band, but very strong. ...this post is now continued almost a week later. I'm sure there was more that I wanted to say about I Hate Kate, but I can't recall what it was. Anyway, I liked them.

I like Socol Auditorium. It's an old place in south Omaha, that has lots of character. And no air conditioning. It is set up mainly like a giant high school auditorium, but with no seats. There is a balcony that rings the main floor, giving a good view of the stage if you are in the first couple of rows. But Maurice said that the balcony is a good 10 degrees hotter than the floor. When we got there early the building was comfortably cool and it remained that way though the first two bands. Then it rapidly started heating up as the energy level was noticeably raised when Social D took the stage. They played a variety of tracks from their whole catalog of albums including favorites like Prison Bound, Ball and Chain and Highway 101 from their newest album. A couple of covers were included- The Stones Under My Thumb, Hank Williams Sr.'s Six More Miles and of course Ring of Fire made popular by Johnny Cash, but written by his wife June Carter before their marriage. The didn't play my favorite Social D song Story of my Life, but that was the only disappointment of the night.

Social Distortion played with the precision that one would expect of a band that's been around since the late 70's, but more energy than one might expect of guys on the north side of their mid 40's. I was surprised by how old they looked until I thought about how long Mike Ness has been making rock 'n roll. And I doubt they were all easy years.

It was also fun seeing Omaha's Rockabilly crowd come out. There was an authentic rad rod parked across from Socol when we came in. If I had more garage space and time. And money. I'd really enjoy having a rat rod. Along with several other cars. But now I'm getting off topic. There were several cats there with the slicked back black hair or horn rimmed glasses or black and white wing tips. The punk girls with tattoos and 50's style bobbed hair, the tight capri pants and string tank tops. Yummy. I love punk girls.

A grand night out, and one of my last ones for the next year or so.