#i go thru this every time i want to include people eating dinner together

[smoosnoom]

hi can u guys let me know what time u eat dinner

[rogershoe]

Lights, Camera, Action

Part seven

(Part six)

Summary: You’re a production assistant on the set of Cursed. The night before your first day at work, you opened your laptop to shockingly realise you’d be working with Daniel Sharman (and a plethora of other amazing actors), someone you’d been watching on screen since you were a teenager. You kept your expectations low, the PAs rarely got to interact with the talent…what was your chance?

Word count: 3.1k

Tag list: @sxperncturalimpala67 @mrsaaronkeener @tinygardensoul @disasterday @5am-cigarette @lancelotapricot @demoiselle-en-detresse00 @slytherlight @18somethingpsyche @ceruleanmusings @glxctt @cavillxhenry @lovelyapplessss @hereagainsstuff @linkpk88 @aliceperdida @weeping-redemption @magicalsaladnacho @ineedyourskulls @fandomarstrash @cheythefangirl @pure-ghost @estrielle @tessxblxckthorn @isaac-lahey-is-bae @bubblyanis @proudhufflepuff77 @dollfacev8 @everlastingdreams @thehatredofshiprrick​

Warnings: age gap between reader and Daniel, swearing, slow burn, mentions of sex

Notes: So sorry if this chapter is also a bit all over the place! I’ve been very distracted with school and it’s been a bit harder to find the time to write. All that said, here’s chapter seven and I hope you guys enjoy it!! Sorry again in advance for the lack of Daniel content, but I promisee that the next will have a lot more to make up for it. Thanks for reading!

(picture by @archivesharman​)

“We’re good then?” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear.

“Ofcourse….yeah….we were always good” you mumbled.

He smiled at you before turning around and walking away. 

What had just happened? You didn’t know if this day was the best you had ever had or the worst. 

It was probably both. 

As you pulled off your headset, your heartbeat thudded in your ears. Too many thoughts rushed through your mind, some good some bad. Why was he apologising to you? Did he really think he was at fault? And had he actually heard the part where Cassandra mentions you getting nervous around him? Had he noticed your uneasy behaviour? Or was he going to start noticing? 

You thought you’d hid it oh so well…that no one could tell you had a weird crush on Daniel. Was it even a crush? Or was it feelings? You barely knew him, you’d have to get over it sooner or later…or atleast you hoped you would. 

One part of you wished you could be like Siara. She didn’t give a shit if they were actors. She saw them as regular human beings and nothing more. She didn’t get nervous or starstruck. From what you’d seen, those were the type of people actors felt comfortable around to like and be friends with. Not anxious fangirls like you.

You shook your head, shivering. Why did it have to be so cold? 

6:06 pm 

You walked into your apartment, which was not much warmer than the outside. You took off your sweater and put on a thicker one, also grabbing a warm blanket and settling on your couch. The second you turned on your tv, you saw that Netflix was recommending Medici to you. You had seen from Daniels instagram that he was starring in the second season. Maybe this was a sign that it was time to watch the first. You clicked play and leaned back into your couch, letting the show whisk you away from your own troubles. 

Tuesday, January 15th, 2019

3:32 am

You jerked awake when your phone vibrated on your thigh. You were shocked when you looked down at your watch to see it was half past three. You had only gotten through one episode of Medici before falling asleep from your exhaustion. You contemplated falling asleep again but decided against it, you were starving and hadn’t had anything to eat since 12:30. 

You felt oddly refreshed, and felt like going out to get something to eat. You usually weren’t the spontaneous type, especially not at 3 am…but for some reason, your body craved fast food and also the cold night air. You though it out in your head and decided that you could get drive thru and eat it in your car, and by the time you were done, it would be time for work anyways. 

You got up and got ready. Freshening up and putting on your “work clothes”. You hadn’t slept for eight hours straight in a while and so didn’t even feel the need to drink your usual cup of morning coffee. 

You grabbed your jacket and headed out, your keys jingling as you locked your apartment door. 

The night breeze was just as you imagined. The cold crisp air felt oddly refreshing against your face, and you could almost taste the coldness when you inhaled. You had kept your car window down, weirdly craving the chillness. 

After a few minutes though, you found yourself shivering and rolled up your car window, licking your lips to warm them. You thought over where to get breakfast (or dinner?), and decided that McDonalds was your best bet. You knew they’d be open and also exactly what to get. 

It took you five minutes to get to your local McDonalds. You pulled into the drive thru window and ordered a McChicken, a large fries, a coke, and an Oreo mcflurry. You usually never ate a big breakfast, especially before work, but you were starving and felt like you could eat their whole menu. Actually, you were holding back. 

You got the food, breathing deeply when the hot smell of salty fries wafted towards your nose. There was a 7/11 a few shops down so you went and parked in front of it. From you seat, you could clearly see the door of the 7/11, and also the inside through the windows. It was one of the few places open at this time and you loved people watching. Especially people at a store at 4 am in the morning.

You pulled out your food and took a bite, your jaw aching with pleasure. When you took a sip of the coke, you could feel the cool liquid travel down your throat and through your chest.  You looked up and saw that there was a cashier inside the 7/11, a teenage boy. He was sitting on a chair, his eyes droopy.

You tore your eyes from him when you heard a car pull into a parking spot a few spaces away from you. Your eyes widened in confusion when you saw Bradley step out. You knew your next actions were stupid and immature but you still went ahead. 

You quickly (but carefully) put your food down on the seat next to you, and with unnatural swiftness, pushed/jumped yourself onto the back seat, lying flat on your back so he wouldn’t see you. You hoped he hadn’t seen the car move, but you don’t think he did since a second later you saw him walk into the 7/11, unbothered. You took a deep breath looking at your watch, it was 4:12 am. Huey had texted you saying that the crew and actors both would have an early start today. You would have to be at the studio by 5:00, which was 10 minutes from the store. 

The position you were in wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was definitely getting slightly hard to breath. What the fuck were you doing? You should just get up and continue eating, he probably wouldn’t see you anyways. 

Before you could, you saw him coming out and froze, holding your breath. You saw him look into your car but not at you, just at the empty front seats. There was a small box in his hand but you couldn’t tell what it was. You waited for his car to pull out but after waiting for almost thirty seconds, you got increasingly confused. Suddenly the car started shaking rhythmically and your eyes widened when you realised what he was doing. 

He was busy now so you quickly got up and climbed into the front seat. 

Seriously? He was really having sex in a car an hour before work? It was odd but you weren’t one to judge. You actually envied his spontaneity. 

You started your car and drove away.

4:50 am

You opened the door of your car and got out, locking it behind you. You felt sick from all the food you ate, especially since it was right after you woke up. After you had driven away from the 7/11, you had decided to just eat in the studio’s parking lot and wait until it was time for work. Now.

You walked towards the building, rubbing your hands up and down your arms, your keys jingling in between your fingers. It was freezing this early in the morning. 

When you walked into the studio, you were surprised to see all of the PAs except Bradley and Jay standing in a group together, talking to Huey. You walked over and greeted them, standing next to Siara. Huey was looking through the papers and you took the opportunity to ask her what exactly was happening. 

“What’re you guys talking about?” you whispered.

She turned to you, also speaking quietly, “Something about how we might have to travel somewhere”

“Us?” you said surprised. 

She nodded. You swallowed, trying to lessen your excitement. They would probably want the more experienced PAs anyways. 

Huey cleared his throat and you turned to look at him. 

“Alright. Please listen carefully since I’m not going to repeat this”

Everyone nodded and he continued, “To make a long story short, we’re going to be moving filming to England in two weeks and we want all of you to come with us. It’s fine if you’re unable to, but it would be extremely convenient for the production if our crew were mostly the same” 

He paused and you took a glance at Siara. Her expression was blank. You sighed looking away and at Huey, who was now speaking again.

“All expenses, plane tickets and accommodation are payed for. Along with lunch, breakfast is also included. We’ll be in England for nine months with a two week break every three months”

Distraught spread through you as you realised you would have to be in England for nine fucking months…only if you accepted. 

You nodded as Huey handed a folder to each of you, “This has all of the information you’ll need…if you decide to come, sign this and give it to me before the end of this week”. He walked away, leaving you all to discuss what you were to do. 

Louis spoke up first, smiling widely, “Please tell me you guys are coming, you have to come”, he sounded like an excited child.

You beamed, “I really want to…but, it’s more than half a year”, you saw a sad expression spread over his face. 

“I’m going…I’ve always wanted to visit Europe” you heard Siara say. 

“Come on Y/N” Louis said looking at you.

“I’ll decide when I go home and let you both know” you said smiling. You wanted to go so bad, but the thought of nine months away from home terrified you. Even if you could visit.

10:48 pm

You had just gotten out of the shower and settled into your bed after drying off. Your work day had been exciting of course, but definitely not as eventful as yesterday. You hadn’t interacted with Daniel except your usual “hey”. You had talked to Jasmine about the change in shooting and she had told you that her and Cassandra were definitely going. Although you hated Cassandra, Jasmine was one of your closest friends on set and that made the decision much easier. 

You pulled out your phone and opened your’s and Louis’ chat.

Y/N                                                                                                                         Hey, good news! I’ve decided I’m gonna come. I’m gonna miss Talia, but this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I don’t wanna miss out at all!! I'm so excited [10:29 pm]

Louis                                                                                                                         What?? That’s great! I honest don’t know what I would’ve done without you [10:32 pm]

Y/N                                                                                                                           Hahaha                                                                                                                       We’ll def talk more about it at work tomorrow, I think I should really sleep now lmao [10:33 pm] 

Louis                                                                                                                     Of course of course. Same here...gn! [10:33 pm]

Y/N                                                                                                                          Gn :) [10:34 pm]

You smiled to yourself before texting Siara as well. She usually took longer to reply so you decided not to wait and turned your phone off. 

You were equally nervous, scared, and excited for the trip. You’d get to travel? To another continent? Over a whole ocean? For nine fucking months? And almost for free? You honestly couldn’t believe it. The nine months still scared you but you tried to focus on other things instead. Like the beautiful sights you’d get to see in your time off…and also the places you’d get to shoot scenes. Daniel obviously as well. You wondered for a while if he was happy to go to England too. It was his childhood home. 

Friday, January 25th, 2019

5:05 pm

You licked your lips to warm them as you entered Daniel’s trailer and took a deep breath as the warmth inside enveloped you.

It had been two weeks of helping Cassandra and Jasmine and you had finally gotten the hang of it. So far, your first day had still definitely been the most eventful, with you cutting your finger and then Cassandra getting angry at you. The rest of the days had been much better in some ways. You were still very giddy around Daniel, but you had learned how to hide it. 

It was also much easier since you were more confident in what you were doing. You had actual jobs, like removing his make up and getting his skin ready…things which Jasmine used to do before you. Now that you did it, it gave Cassandra and Jasmine both more time to focus on his actual make up and hair. Cassandra wasn’t much better. She hadn’t blown up on you again like she had that day, but there was a significant increase in scowls, eyebrow raises, and dissaproving looks in general. If looks could kill, you’d be dead ten times over. 

 “Hi Y/N” Jasmine said, as you closed the door behind you. You looked around and saw that Cassandra was absent. Thank God. 

“Hey” you replied, grinning. You glanced towards Daniel, who offered you a short smile. 

You got to work, pulling out a make up wipe and rubbing down his face gently. You had learned that leaving the tears for last was best. That way you could use a separate, stronger wipe on them too. 

Although you had done this about ten times now, it always made your flutter to be so near him. It was also odd how accustomed you had gotten with his skin. You noticed whenever he had a new scratch, or a pimple, a tan…any small changes. 

For some reason, it made you feel special to be this close to him. It almost didn’t make sense to your brain, how close you were to him everyday, yet how little you actually interacted with and knew about him. 

Today you were too busy looking at his eyelashes and didn’t realise you had run your wipe directly over a small cut on his jaw. He hissed slightly, opening his eyes. Jasmine cocked her head towards you both from where she was looking through a make up drawer. 

Your mouth hung open in shock as you snatched your hand away from his face. Your eyes fell to where his cut was, and you swallowed. Why did you have to be so distracted and clumsy? 

“Oh no, I’m so sorry” you said nervously and rushed over to the sink, wetting the corner of a small towel. 

You jogged back over to his chair, being extra gentle as you dabbed the damp corner on the cut, trying to wipe the make up wipe’s liquid away. You then dried it with the dry part of the towel.

“It’s fine really Y/N” he said laughing slightly, “It happened during filming”

Your skipped a beat when you heard him say your name. It was still surreal to you that Daniel Sharman knew you….let alone you name. You smiled slightly before setting the towel down on the counter. 

“Is it still stinging?” you said gesturing to his jaw, your hands shaking.

“Oh no, not at all” he said shaking his head. You felt that he wasn’t telling the truth but you let it go. Grabbing the make up wipe, you continued wiping his make up off. It was a much smoother process, and you took the time to ease your racing heart rate. 

The flight was tomorrow and you couldn’t help but feel excited every time you thought about it. Louis had informed you that Jay and Bradley had opted out of coming on the trip. You were sad about Jay’s decision, but not so much Bradley’s. 

You were happy but also terrified that your work was taking you out of comfort zone. Jasmine had texted you yesterday saying that she’d pick you up so you could both go to the airport together, which made the whole ordeal a whole less nerve wracking. 

You had gotten quite used to this trailer, to the studio…..and you hoped that your routine and jobs (that you had finally gotten somewhat good at), wouldn’t change the minute you got to England. 

Saturday, January 26th, 2019

2:58 am

You jerked awake and checked your phone, afraid you’d overslept. Nope, there was still a whole two minutes left until your alarm. The flight was at 7:00 am and you had told Jasmine that you wanted to get there atlaeast two and a half hours before. You rather be early and wait in the airport for an hour than be late and miss the flight. 

You had thankfully packed everything the night before and it only took you almost forty minutes to get yourself and your bags ready. Just a few minutes after you were done, you phone rang. It was Jasmine. 

“Hey, you’re here?” you said, smiling and wheeling your suitcases closer to your apartment’s door. You phone wedged between your cheek and shoulder.

“Yes!” she said sounding excited. You were eager to go too, but you had only slept four hours and were finding it hard to get to her level of excitement. 

“Great..I’ll be right down”

It was a struggle, but you managed to get both your suitcases into the elevator and onto the curb outside your apartment building where Jasmine was waiting. The cold night air hit you like a brick, and you felt energy surge through you. 

Jasmine got out of her car quickly, “Oh let me help you with those”

You both loaded your suitcases into the trunk of her car. Y

You rubbed you hands together warming them, as you got into the car, you backpack at your feet. Jasmine started the car, beaming. 

“You excited?” she said, driving.

“Very” you laughed, turning the heater up. You were tired, but the adrenaline from your excitement kept you wide awake. 

4:56 am 

It took you guys almost twenty minutes to get the airport, which wasn’t bad. You were now walking through the airport, your luggage hopefully making it’s way onto your plane. You had made it through security smoothly, and there had been no problems with your boarding pass or passport. If there had, Cassandra would’ve probably killed you both. 

“What’s the gate number?” you asked Jasmine, who was holding the boarding passes. 

“Uhh” she looked at them, “32B”

You nodded, just a little farther. The smell of coffee and food from the various little cafes made your stomach grumble. 

You thought your adrenaline would’ve died down by now but it hadn’t. You tried to keep telling yourself that it was because you were travelling to Europe…but inside, you knew the real reason you were so excited. 

[angeltrapz]

saw ur post 4 saw asks n im here to deliver!! (also fully gonna answer the one u sent me i just had a busy night 💚) — hmmm would personally love to hear more abt the Matthews-Faulkner-Stanheight-Blank family dynamic? esp maybe Daniel + Art, but rlly just anything u wanna talk abt there! maybe if they have any sorta family traditions, what holidays look like for them, that sorta deal

shfajs tysm!!!! (also tht's totally okay, take yr time!!!)

also oooo I love this question okay. so like u mentioned this when I asked abt what Eric n Daniel's relationship would b like post-trap, but I think it's very very good fr Daniel 2 like. see tht Eric has ppl who love him n who don't mind helping him when he needs it n who are THERE fr him bc again, like you've mentioned, seeing a parent so utterly shattered th way Eric was after his trap is incredibly difficult, esp for a kid (though Daniel is like. at least seventeen? still). knowing tht his dad has a good support system n is surrounded by ppl tht care abt him helps put him at ease bc he knows he can trust Adam n Art. he knows they'll keep Eric safe n tht they'll help him to heal, tht they love him n want 2 see him do well n get better. plus, Daniel knows tht if he needs to talk 2 some1 abt how difficult seeing his dad like tht is, he knows both Adam n Art r there fr him and tht helps a lot. of course, he also has Rigg + maybe Hoffman (until th whole. u know.), but they don't live w Eric. they don't see him every day th way Art n Adam do. that's not 2 say they don't know Eric is struggling, but there is a difference btwn them n Eric's boyfriends. basically, Daniel is very much grateful fr Art + Adam.

I feel like Art wld be VERY good at lending an ear fr when Daniel needs 2 talk. whether that be abt their trap + tht whole experience, Eric's trap n the consequences/rough aftermath, just plain venting, etc.; Art is there 2 listen to them + offer a solution if they want one. most times I think Daniel just wants to b listened to, esp when it comes to what they went thru in the Nerve Gas House - tht's smth they don't feel comfortable discussing w Eric right away fr obvious reasons, but therapy can only do so much. I think th two of them have more in common than they might realize at first, bc hey, Art Killed A Man Because Trevor Was Going To Kill Him If He Didn't, and Daniel Killed A Man Because Xavier Would Have Killed Both Them And Amanda If They Didn't. I feel like Art is like. very reserved abt th details of his first trap + how they affected him (and th second one tbh; it's not smth he vocalizes often at all), but fr Daniel he wld gladly talk abt it if it meant Daniel didn't feel alone. if it meant it could help them, reassure them that hey, it wasn't yr fault, u did what u had to, n I know tht can be hard 2 believe right now n that's okay. u need to process things at yr own pace.

and so Art tells them abt the Mausoleum, bares a part of himself he keeps locked away where he doesn't often give it much thought/actively ignores it. n I think tht's healing fr him too, maybe. there's solace in tht shared experience, as horrible as it was in th moment. 2 know there's someone out there who has even th faintest inkling of what u went thru + what u had to do to survive. of course Daniel relates 2 Adam fr this reason too, but like. Art will use his Lawyer Voice n make sure Daniel understands tht what they did doesn't make them a bad person or confirm tht Jigsaw Was Right And They Deserved It. n tht's rly important fr Daniel 2 hear, esp early on. it's honestly one of th first times Art is truly honest abt his feelings on th matter + the Mausoleum, n it's just. a step tht much closer to healing for both of them.

family traditions!!! they do have a few! in the summer, every sunday they have Daniel w them, Eric Art n Adam go out fr ice cream, even if they get it at the drive thru n eat it in th car bc none of them want 2 be around all th people/sit outside in th muggy weather. it's a good way to get them all out of th house fr a little while, something enjoyable tht doesn't require too much energy or even interaction. it's just smth nice they can do where they're all together n chilling n just enjoying each other's company!

this is mostly a Daniel one but every year around April Fools he just. puts fucking googly eyes on everything. n every time some1 discovers some, it doesn't matter where in th house he is, u can hear him cackle abt it. Adam thinks it's an absolute delight n has assisted on multiple occasions. tht's abt as far as pranks go fr them, bc none of them like surprises like that, but god is it ever hilarious 2 hear Eric frm the kitchen while Art Adam n Daniel r in the living room when he says "I found another one!" while he's looking fr smth in the fridge kjdkfsf.

holidays!! every Christmas they all sit down in th living room n watch a couple of movies w the blankets spread out on th floor w snacks n hot chocolate. the first Christmas following his trap, Eric was sat on th couch between Adam n Art while Daniel chose to sprawl out on th floor, n he just looked around at his boyfriends n his son n the fake pine tree they had all decorated together n he like. needs to take a moment bc this is it. this is all he cld ever want out of life right here. this is a level of peace Eric never knew he wld ever be able to reach after what he went thru fr those six months. n he just sort of presses his face into Art's shoulder n breathes thru it. he doesn't even have to say anything fr Adam n Art to know what he's thinking bc Adam's hand is on his arm n Art's resting his cheek against th top of his head, n he might cry a little, but he's happy. surrounded by th ppl he loves n who love him, love him enough to keep the lights down low n the volume on th television soft, to use subtitles so he doesn't get overwhelmed, Eric realizes he has a home n it's just. oof.

fr Valentine's Day, this one was actually Adam's idea initially: wht they do is take sticky notes n write little affirmations on thm fr each other, n stick thm in places where they'll see it. sometimes Daniel joins in on this one, but usually it's an Art Eric Adam thing. so like it'll be little things, like a note frm Adam telling Eric how proud he is of him, or one from Art letting Adam know he couldn't have had a better best friend, or th one from Eric that thanks th both of thm fr helping him w his rashes + helping him 2 accept tht part of him n start to see it as nothing to be ashamed of. it starts on th first day of February and ends on Valentine's Day itself, n sometimes they get those packs of cards u get fr kids just to write goofy shit on thm to pass back n forth n make each other laugh. they also get th discounted candy!! (Adam steals all th twix bars tho. tht's okay bc Eric likes snickers anyway n Art is fond of reese's peanut butter cups. they share th sweet tarts + conversation hearts!)

Halloween is when they get a big bowl of candy 2 leave on th porch fr the kids who're trick-or-treating while th three of them stay inside (+Daniel sometimes!) n watch some classics, like their Christmas tradition. they Also add in some bad movies 2 mix it up a lil bit bc sometimes u just need a laugh. I am like in Lov w the idea u had abt Eric n Adam sometimes building cozy pillow forts, so they do tht n the three of them just vibe in there n lay together n look n talk. n like it's So Much Fun 2 have ppl to like. discuss movies w while yr watching them! esp when they're ppl who won't be annoyed w u when u wanna share a thought! like Eric n Adam will get into this deep discussion abt horror movie decisions n Art will just lay there n listen bc he loves them so much n loves hearing them get amped up abt things. he'll offer his own two cents if asked too! mostly he listens, but he can definitely contribute.

inevitably at some point, someone's hand ends up in Eric's hair n he's just. asleep not too long after that. usually on someone's shoulder or against their chest, n depending on who's still awake, they either try 2 move to th bedroom or they just sleep in th living room (i.e.: Art will try to convince Eric n Adam to come to bed properly, whereas Adam will just b like "fuck it" n pass out right there. has this led 2 them waking up sore b4? absolutely. but it's like. "we r adults who live w our decisions n this one happened 2 be sleeping on th floor" so.

n then a minor one is on their birthdays, some1 (usually Art, to be completely honest w u) will cook tht person their favourite comfort food fr dinner n they all help make cake/cupcakes/cookies/something dessert-related of their choice. so like Art rly likes brownies, Adam is fond of strawberry jello poke cake, n Eric can make some RLY good carrot cake cupcakes w homemade frosting too. it's just smth fr them to do together + like! it's celebrating! they've all been thru so much hell but they're still here! n that's rly th focus for the three of them. sometimes they have ppl over too - like Rigg, Gibson, Brit, Mallick, Lawrence, William (all of them best-case, obv); it's nice 2 have a lil party sometimes! after what they've endured they've kind of earned it I think!

thank u sm!!! this was so fun 2 think abt fjdkjsk

(lil random hc: when Daniel was little, Eric used 2 write letters to him frm Santa. eventually Daniel got "too old for that," but honestly? they cherish tht memory. I wanted 2 include it bc it makes me kjehfje!!!)

[purplesurveys]

1269

Last thing you bought online? Did you like it? OMG OMG so I got Angela an Army Bomb!!!!!! for her birthday!!!! It was HELLLL looking for sealed ones that were already onhand, but fortunately I was able to find one from this really nice seller a few days ago and the shipping was quick as well. I’m just a little worried because the outbox has a little dent on it :( but it was the best onhand offer I could find so I got it before anybody could call dibs. I still hope she likes it! I got her batteries too so that she can try lighting it up as soon as she has it. :D

Could you date someone who didn’t drive (and didn’t show an interest in ever getting their license, either)?  I feel like this is such a petty thing to make a big deal about...if they knew how to commute or any other way to get to their destination, I don’t think this should be a problem. It would only be an issue to me if they refused to get a license in a very I-generally-lack-ambition kind of way.

How would you react if your artwork became famous?  I don’t have any to show off to begin with. I love appreciating art, but creating it was never a forte of mine.

Would you get your nipples pierced?  No, I don’t plan on getting any piercings. How many people know your birthday?  Outside of my family, my best friends. I think everyone else relies on Facebook to be reminded, which is fine with me.

Has anyone ever tried to ruin a relationship you were in?  No. Quite the contrary, really...I was sometimes informed about red flags taking place, which of course my stubborn ass ignored.

Have you ever watched a whole hour long infomercial?  Probably, as a kid. The channel from which I used to watch WWE aired these really long infomercials so I would watch those while waiting for like Raw or whatever show was going on after.

What is your current MySpace song?  I never hung out on Myspace. I had an account, but I was too young for it so it wasn’t long before I got bored.

What is your favorite kind of meat to put on your sandwich?  Pulled pork or fried chicken.

Which one of your exes do you feel like you have the most chemistry with?  I only have one ex.

How do you feel about people who make Facebook profiles for their pets? I find it really cute. But I personally wouldn’t put in as much effort lol.

Have you ever personally known a pair of conjoined twins?  Hmmmmmmmm I don’t think so.

What was the most disturbing thing you have ever heard your mother say? She threatened suicide in front of me and my dad in a very calm way when I was around 11, I think? Maybe 12, idk. I haven’t actually thought about that moment in an extremely long time until this question. I’ll move on now and shove the memory at the very very back of my head before I get sad.

Is there something in particular you like to look at photos of? What is it?  Aside from members of BTS (lol), interior design inspirations.

Chewy chocolate-chip cookies: like or dislike?  Ooh, love. When I bite into a cookie it hassssss to ooze chocolate, otherwise I would be underwhelmed.

If your boyfriend/girlfriend wanted to dress only in the opposite sex’s clothing, would you support that? If not, would you leave them?  Support.

Do you think your grandmother is/was beautiful?  They both are.

Which of your fields of interest are you a total expert on?  Anything that has to do with writing (except poems), I guess? I like being able to give people advice and tips when it comes to that.

When was the last time you got all dolled up?  Last July when we had a big PR media launch thingy and I couldn’t afford to look like shit on Zoom.

Do you ever name objects? (i.e. mp3 players, guitars, cars, etc.)  Never.

Do you have a criminal record?  Not criminal but it’s possibleeeee that I have some kind of record on my license from the time I got stopped by an officer in Alabang, lmao. It was a minor offense from a tiny part of the town so I don’t actually know if they filed it, but it’s possible.

Last person you took a nap with?  I don’t really nap with other people. I hate falling asleep in front of others to begin with.

Does seeing your mother cry automatically make you feel sad as well?  No.

Do you think someone likes the same person you like?  I don’t like anybody.

Do you want your life to stay the way it is right now forever?  No, I do not want to stay in a pandemic and not get to maximize my life the way it’s supposed to be enjoyed forever.

Have you ever been to craigslist.com?  I’ve never checked it out; idk if we have that here?

What about eBay?  I also dunno if they operate here so no, I’ve never bothered.

Have you ever used Nair?  Not Nair, but I’ve used Veet before.

Are you medicated?  Nope.

Do you shape/fill in your eyebrows?  I never do stuff to my eyebrows except shave them.

Have you ever stolen/borrowed clothes from an ex?  Several articles of clothing were left behind here, yeah. I never had the chance to give them back because I stupidly thought we were going to get back together eventually. By the time I moved on the timing was already off, so the clothes stayed with me untillll...just a few days ago, actually – when I finally cleaned up my room and got rid of a bunch of knickknacks that accumulated here over the years, including all her shirts and sweaters and stuff.

Could you make a statement about anything political?  The 2022 presidential election landscape looks like complete shit and I’m nearly at that point where I want to stop giving a fuck about this country’s future.

Do you think you’ve already met your soulmate?  No.

Do you get the feeling something good will happen in your life soon?  I think I’m already living in it, haha.

Do you enjoy romantic movies, even when they’re cliche?  Sure, but cliché is also hit and miss for me. I love Titanic and Love Actually, but I cannot stand movies like Me Before You and The Notebook. I guess it depends on certain executions, like the acting, screenplay, casting, etc.

Have you been to McDonald’s in the past month?  No, not inside. We did drive-thru within the last month, though.

Have you ever slept over at your best friend’s house?  Not at Andi’s, but I have at Angela’s.

How often do you go bowling?  Extremely rarely. I can’t tell you the last time I went bowling.

Last time you were in an apartment?  Like 2007 when I visited my aunt back when she still lived in one. None of my friends have their own apartments.

Have you ever seen a live seahorse?  I don’t think so.

Would you like to have your own yacht? I mean I wouldn't say no if you offered it to me for free, but I'm not exactly interested in one. < Same.

Winnie the Pooh or Tigger?  Tigger always made me laugh as a kid.

What’s the unhealthiest thing you’ve eaten today?  Luncheon meat, I think? I didn’t go overboard with the junk food today.

Has a stranger ever offered to buy you a drink?  Hm, not that I can recall.

What is something you’d be happy to receive as a gift, that doesn’t cost a lot?  A bag of the salted egg chips that I really like costs like 30 bucks, or roughly 60 US cents.

What kind of music does your significant other/crush like to listen to?  I don’t have any irl crushes, can I use a celebrity crush instead? HAHA he’s heavily into jazz and whenever he gets asked for music recos he always gives jazz artists from like the 50s and 60s.

Who did you have your first kiss with? Do you remember what colour his/her eyes were?  Gab. Dark brown.

Are there any themes from TV shows that you like to sing along to? The Big Bang Theory and Friends; and then I also liked humming to the themes of Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and BoJack Horseman. The Phineas & Ferb theme was also a lot of fun to sing along to.

Do you eat dessert after dinner? No, I never do that. I’m usually already full after dinner, and we don’t always have sweets at home anyway.

Have you ever had too much to drink and felt embarrassed about your behavior the next day?  Sure.

When you go out drinking, what do you prefer to drink?  Cocktails. I very rarely go for hard drinks/shots, especially if I brought my own car.

What was the last animal that you saw?  Dog.

What was the last thing that you said to one of your siblings?  I just told my sister I was done using her laptop so she can have it back. My Memories of 2020 DVD turned out to be region-locked so I have to use her laptop every time I want to watch it :(

What is the most expensive thing that you’ve purchased that you paid for:  My Map of the Soul photobook cost me around 5k in total.

What is your favorite messaging program?  Messenger.

Do you eat fast food more than 5 times a week?  Wow no. Aside from being extremely unhealthy, that’s also a LOT of spending??

Have you ever almost drowned?  Yes.

Have you ever learned something shocking about someone through Facebook?  I mean I’ve had to learn about more than one family death through my Facebook feed, which sucks but is nothing I have control over. Otherwise the most shocking thing I’ve seen is probably classmates from high school having their own kids, but at this point I’m used to it already.

What’s the scariest living animal that you’ve petted?  I’m not really afraid of carrying/petting animals especially if there’s a guide or expert nearby, but the most daring one was probably the crocodile I volunteered to hold in Palawan.

Do you remember the first conversation you ever had with the person you currently have feelings for?  Not at all.

Do you dread certain days of the week? If yes, what day/s and why?  I hate Mondays for obvious reasons lol. I don’t know anyone who is actively cheery about reporting back to work.

If you eat oatmeal, do you have it plain or do you have certain toppings that you like to add to it?  I never eat oatmeal. I had that every single day for breakfast from like kindergarten to 4th grade and I vowed never to take a spoonful of it again.

What is the funniest or strangest thing you’ve ever heard somebody say in their sleep?  I dunno. I used to keep a log of the things my ex used to say in her sleep and a great deal of them were hilarious, but obviously I deleted that note a long time ago.

Choose one - Butterfinger, Milky Way, Snickers:  Butterfinger.

Do you use Mozilla Firefox? Nopes.

Who is your favorite person to hug? Angela and Laurice.

Have you ever had to have a mug shot?  Nope.

What was the last thing you carried to your room?  Kimi.

When was the last time you had a late night phone call?  WELL over a year ago.

[early20thcenturynerd]

“Margetta Hirsch Doyle ’45 was a regular student at William & Mary. Her friends called her 'Getta' and she was a Kappa Delta. Doyle kept a diary and wrote about her philosophy quizzes, described how much she enjoyed making Red Cross surgical wrappings and mentioned hours spent spotting airplanes from campus buildings. Doyle was a student during World War II. 

During the second World War, William & Mary became a predominantly female campus. While many college-age males fought abroad, women kept up the war effort from Williamsburg. In between their studies and social life, students volunteered with the Student War Council and the American Red Cross. Along with other service work, they, like Doyle, made surgical dressings and spotted airplanes, sometimes in groups and sometimes alone.”

Margetta Hirsch Doyle's Entries for May, 1943:

MAY 1 

Happy May Day! It was Saturday and so we didn’t do much. Cary, Beth, Mrs. Dalthud and I went marketing and made out pretty well. Cary and I made the first major mistake of our careers as housekeepers. We bought birdseye fish for dinner (no points) and naturally thought we should keep it frozen in the ice box. By the time Lizzie and Flora arrived there were just so many chunks of ice lieing there. We all howled hysterically over it and had a vegetable plate dinner (I hope the fish will thaw by Monday!) This afternoon Cary and I went down town and to the Wigwam. I wrote some letters, changed the bedding on my bed and generally wasted time - worked tonight. I received a card from Bill Brennan - his 29 day training is almost up.

MAY 2 

Such an unusual little day! We slept unusually late and then Beth, Punchy and I dressed to go to church. As we came out of Bruton, Joy Allen pounced upon Punchy and me saying Cary had walked by with two ensigns and a lieutenant j.g. and wanted us to walk up to the Lodge and meet them. Bewildered, we looked at each other with a what-the-heck attitude and walked on up. Sure enough, there was Cary with three naval officers! We soon became acquainted and had loads of fun drinking champagne cocktails and eating dinner. After awhile we came back to the house and played the vic. It was really a terrifically pleasant afternoon. Cary, Punchy and I pored through the want ads and I wrote six or seven letters of application to see how the land lies. I tried to phone Bill Brennan to wish him a happy birthday but couldn't get the call thru.

MAY 3 

Things may seem “awfully dismal” at times but I’m really so very lucky and the bright spots of life are so nice. Tonight - brazen hussy that I am! - while down at work I placed a call through to Bill Brennan again. It wouldn't come, but the little operator kept trying (pull!) and finally just after I got back to the house the phone rang and a voice said “Boy! This is wonderful!” Ya huh, ‘twas Willy and gosh it was super talking to him. It wasn't at all like a typical long distance conversation - we just said dumb old things and deep things and you’d have thought we were both in Hollis rather than in Billsburg and Atlantic City respectively. So nice! Oh I forgot to mention that I got a perky letter from him too. I’m beaming obnoxiously. I wish…….. My life has a mysterious element too. This evening while I was out two darling marines came to see me, one of who “was a very good friend of a girl from home.” Vague, but I hope they come back!

MAY 4 

I’ve still glowed all day from last night’s phone call, and even now nice things keep happening. At lunchtime the package man came bearing a gift for me: a lush "bon bon" spoon with an awfully sweet note from “Mom” Brennan -- I was so tickled with it, and love her good. We rushed today informally - Betty Marie Ellett for lunch and two other girls for dinner with the usual accompanying intra-sorority feeling. Initiation for Jinx Richardson, Ann Wilson and Eleanor Ramsdell was last night and so we had a cup service at seven o’clock this morning - then classes, marketing, fun and work. I received real nice letters from Mother and Daddy and a faintly perky one from Bill Boyd. He is trying to stall off his furlough until June when I’ll be home. Gosh, I hope it’ll work. I’m so lucky! Flat Hat mentioned Punchy’s & my badminton defeat.

MAY 5

This morning was the annual convocation for the tapping of the members of the junior class chosen to be Mortarboard and ODK. It was very impressive and full of suspense, since supposedly noone knew who was to be selected. Fran Pendleton was one of the five girls to get Mortarboard and we’re all very thrilled about the whole thing. The other girls were Margie Lentz, Katie Rutherford, Marion Ross, and [Lebe] Seay. Mary Wilson Carver is the new president. Punchy, Carolyn Harley and I went up on Barrett roof sunbathing and got faintly tanned. Then we went shopping for Mother’s Day gifts and had our pictures taken at the telephone office. Per usual when having our pictures taken, Punchy sneered and I had “my fixed look” sat on the camera, but we’re celebrities anyway. Beth & Marty won badminton matched over Gamma Phi.

MAY 6 

“Rabbit - rabbit” really worked this month cause things keep getting better ‘n’ better. Today was a usual Thursday: marketing classes (Econ outside in the Sunken Gardens), archery (I’m off the 30 yd line at last) and swimming. After that we went downtown to the official dedication of the U.S.O., with music and speeches, including one by John D. Rockefeller, ‘Jr. ‘Twas sort of impressive. Yearbooks came out today and it’s the best Colonial Echo in years. We spent considerable time in poring over it, laughing and "ohing" and "ahing". Remember the marines I wrote about Monday night? Well, Warren Ripley came back this evening and is awfully nice. He knows Mary Claire Willard from St. Mary’s and she gave him my name. -- small world. He, a goon, Mavis Bunch and I went to the movies (”Truck Busters” was horrible) and then to the Lodge coffee shoppe

MAY 7 

I’m awfully tired, and in a bad mood though still awfully happy about everything. Such a nice life? Nothing exciting happened today. I didn't go marketing, but instead went up in the Library tower for two hours - once with Cary and once with Midge - spotting airplanes. I managed to get a bit of studying done for my philosophy quiz which I sleepily took. (B- on last week’s) I went over to the office to get a social card for Warren and ended up talking in Louise’s room; then I wrote letters to both Bills and fooled around. Holly Rickis has come back for the weekend - it’s natural to have her here. Work was bitter - everything went wrong and the time dragged. A “nice voice” called me up and chatted and a sailor walked us home. Such a masculine life as I’ve been having glimpses into. I can’t get over it! Floyd wrote me from Hunter Field, Georgia

MAY 8 

The weekend has come and I’ve resolved to purely have fun - and how it has started! This afternoon Beth and I went downtown to do our weekly shopping for odds and ends and then she Punchy and I went sunbathing by the practice house with Danny and Eleanor Ramsdell, It’s really hot too! Warren came by with two other marines to tell me that they were going to Richmond and he mightn’t be back right on time for our date tomorrow night. Seeing the other two marines I promised Beth & Punchy dates tomorrow night - and I dood it. Every few minutes, after we were all together I would say “Do you really want to do to Richmond?” and finally we talked them into staying for a howl of an evening. We saw “Air Force” one of the best pictures I’ve ever seen, and went to the Lodge. Ray and Dick kept wanting to be in Richmond, and kept making all sorts of classic remarks! Such fun!

MAY 9 

Happy Mother’s Day -- and what a day! Being hot, we lazily relaxed around the house and didn't quite get to church. I wrote home and Bugsie, changed the bedding on my bed and dressed for dinner. In the middle of it Warren (who wasn't supposed to arrive until late this afternoon) came with Ray, and thus began the second day of my truly unusual experience. Since there isn’t much to do with a date here on Sunday afternoons we went for a walk through the woods and then sat and watched people playing tennis, after which we went to the movies and saw “Air Force” again. Then we went up to the Lodge for champagne cocktails and a howl of a dinner - amusing (!) episode about the time and the tip. What a boy! Mother phoned tonight - and then Harold from Camp Peary phoned me. He sounds nice but you can’t tell. He phoned the telephone co.

MAY 10 

Nothing at all new again. Classes, marketing and quite a lot of studying this afternoon! I actually did some English Lit and then typed away on an interview for Psychology, letting my imagination run rampant with information. I really did get from Warren on the subject “Alcohol and You”. This evening there was the last W.S.C.G.A. meeting of the year, and then we went to an Economics makeup, disturbed by retreat’s being blown from the naval chaplains in our right ears. After that, we had song practice and sorority meeting, made vivid by stirring remarks about the state of the treasury and the consequences of not paying fines and the like. We had a dreamy serenade by Eddie Anderson and two other boys complete with guitar and drooled out the window at its romanticism.

MAY 11 

I went to classes, and then as usual went downtown with Cary to do the marketing - was amazed that some boxes of puddings had arrived in town - it made our housekeeping have a bright spot for the day. Archery was nice in that I got off the 40 yd line in one try. I must have just been jinxed by the 30 yd line - I have a new lease on life now though. On the way back from archery, I stopped in to see Holly, Kay and Louise and talked to them for awhile before coming back to the house and getting ready to have my picture taken again for the Transmitter, the Telephone Co. periodical. Speaking of pictures, the Flat Hat came out today with our crummy picture and the writeup. Punchy and I are celebrities! Mother phoned about Daddy’s maybe coming down and to say she has the measles - imagine! Harold also phoned me!

MAY 12 

Another awfully nice day! After classes and marketing I did my philosophy and then Beth and I rolled bandages for the Red Cross with Mrs. Pomfret. Beth and Punchy played badminton intramurals with Theta and won - I silently stood by and cheered. Warren was here when we got back & stayed till I had to go to work. He wanted a date tonight and Friday night too but I work both nights and so I got out of it very easily. He’s a nice fellow but a little too eccentric to be very enjoyable. In the mail I got a “big” picture of Bill Brennan in uniform. He looks good and it’s interesting to compare it to the other big picture I have of him. He’s so neat and how I’d like to see him! He enclosed a note as did his mom.

MAY 13 

Gad! I’m weary! Today was another one of those days where nothing noteworthy happened but little thing after little thing kept piling up till I haven’t got much energy left. Why do I bother to mention classes, marketing and my athletic afternoon? I’m stuck on the 50 yd line in Archery and in swimming after I emerged from the pool, I slipped, leaped into the air and fell completely flat on my back -- I’m sore and my posterior hurts! At work everyone seemed irritable (probably just because I was) and things didn’t seem to get done right. It’s being paycheck night was the one bright spot -- by the way, with my remaining checks I’ve decided to pay for my $25 room reservation fee besides my ticket home. Then I’ll feel I’m doing something worth while and useful with my earnings.

MAY 14

Life keeps getting better ‘n’ better, excepting for some things of course, the chiefest among which being a meeting of two representatives from each sorority to which I went with Dr. Pomfret, Miss Wynne Roberts, Charlie Duke and Vernon Nunn all about eating in the dining hall next year and reductions (?) in rent, involving all sorts of amazing involvements. The fur was flying as we got in truly deep discussions. There’ll be another even hotter meeting next Monday evening. All the things that keep happening! Such a nice thing happened at work tonight! A Mr. Curyea, who has been calling New York to his wife quite frequently from Camp Peary asked me my number and when I came back from my relief a lush box of candy was waiting for me with a card which said “In appreciation of the service that I have received in my calls to New York City”. It was one of the sweetest things anyone’s ever done for me. Bugsie comes tomorrow! Life can’t get much nicer!

MAY 15 

Such a beautiful life. Bugsie was supposed to come this morning but got lost through connections and finally arrived at 3:00 P.M. on the bus; Gosh! It was super seeing her again! We came back to the house and then walked around campus -- had a screwy time at dinner and afterwards getting dressed for a mass blind date - eight couples. It was super with us walking to the Lodge, Chowning’s, Rexalls #2 and going to the dance in Blow Gym with eight army lieutenants. It was a crazy evening but loads of fun, and I hope Bugsie had a kick out of it. Other lovely events: a cute letter from Jimmy Mooney and a perky one from Bill Boyd signed “All my love”. (slurpy, huh -- I’m so glad!) News that Bill Brennan is stationed at Hamilton College, N.Y. Oh things can’t get better

MAY 16 

My poor feet! We crowded so much into this little day! First we went to Bruton for a service made completely memorable by the presence of British Admiral Pound, General Wavell & others. It seems that General Marshall and the other important allied military leaders have conferred in Williamsburg about future campaign tactics. As we prayed in church (all of us) it made me realize how insignificant I am in the powerful drama being enacted now. After church Bugsie and I went to the Lodge for dinner and then went sightseeing at the Capitol and Governor’s Palace, stopping at Lavery’s on the way. We went over to see Dossie and had supper with her in the dining hall. We had a typically crazy evening together in the house - Kay came over and we walked her home. Whee - so much done this weekend.

MAY 17 

Still everything keeps on happening! Bugsie and I went downtown and did some marketing before I saw her off on the morning train - it was so swell having her here! This afternoon I attempted to do some studying and ended up by writing letters and indulging in bull sessions - also became a bit dreamy over a card and six page letter from Bill Brennan from Hamilton College announcing that things look awfully good so far as our seeing each other once or twice this summer is concerned. (Lovely thought!) This evening Becky and I went to the sorority representatives meeting for setting the rent problem with the administration. They’ve made concessions but even with having 2 extra girls in the dining room our individual room & board will increase about $25 a semester. Oooh! Touching last sorority meeting of the year.

MAY 18 

Ooooh! I’m tired! Punchy and I slept through Philosophy, and I got up for the marketing sort of sleepily. In Economics I hesitantly began to read my report on Agriculture (1940-1942) and Doc Heidingsfield said it was one the best: therefore I love him good. This afternoon I graduated from the 50 yd line in archery and was happy to go in swimming on account of its being so very hot. At work tonight there were too many of us to record so I just sort of sat and was errand girl - terrifically boring - it’ll be sort of good not to work anymore. Mother called tonight to tell me that Daddy’s coming down this weekend - it’ll be swell and I’m awfully glad, but I can’t push off studying for exams much longer!

MAY 19

Today was the day when my conscience finally pushed me to the point of doing some studying - English Lit. - and I really got quite a bit of it accomplished, considering all that I have to do. So much work all at the end of the year (I know: it’s my own fault!) at 3:30 P.M. Beth, Punchy Carolyn and I took time out for trek towards the Wigwam for milkshakes and tin roofs to brighten our dreary outlooks on life. At work tonight I learned Rate and Route and that’s all the news there is about me. Mimi Jardine became engaged to MacGregor (a lieutenant in the navy who seems swell). Gollee - that’s the third in one little week for the KΔ house. Carolyn Harley agreed to take George’s miniature on her five hours off “campus” with him Saturday night, and Marty and Tommy are finally all set too. Such romance!!

MAY 20 

No more classes or anything, ceptin’ exams - I still can’t believe it -- Honest! ‘Tis all over but the shouting and I’ve even made up my double gym. Archery, with a tournament, was terrifically hot, and so it was super indeed to go swimming even though we didn't have a regular class. Now I can go on towards being a Junior (depending on my exams natchally!) I got a letter from the New York office of the American Tel and Til Co. telling me to come in, in June to see about a job. At least it’s something definite that I can look into to see what they have to offer instead of wandering around completely aimlessly. Mrs. Dalthud took over the marketing today; and we’re really elated about it. Three cheers! I washed my hair tonight and am comparatively smooth! So much studying to do and so little time to do it in.

MAY 21 

So many things have happened again today. I went downtown and then paid my $25 room reservation deposit out of my savings. At ten o’clock the train came in and Daddy got off after a hectic trip. He, Cary and I went to the Lodge and found he’s rooming with a Marine major who is quite a character and has wild parties each night. Poor dad - he came here for a rest too! We had lunch in the dining room and then I read over some philosophy notes, just for the heck of it. More relaxing and then Punchy and I went to work for the last time. I’m glad it's over in a way cause it’s getting sort of boring not to be doing anything new, but we’re going to miss the neat gang down there. A senior party back at the house with lush lovely reminiscences, singing, munching on candy bars, punch and lollypops. Such wonderful girls!!!

MAY 22 

Day after day, things pile up! I went up to the Lodge and met Daddy for lunch, then coming back to campus for an Economics Review class. Warren Ripley and his mother (down to see him) came over to the house and then they went to the movies with Daddy and me to see “American Empire” one of the corniest Westerns I’ve ever seen. - ‘twas horrible. Beth and Punchy went up to the Lodge to meet us and we had a hysterical evening, including a yummy STEAK dinner, a trek to the major’s room, (meeting him and some of his gang.) and chatting with Chuck Gondak and other interesting people. We laughed and laughed together and really enjoyed ourselves. Marty became officially engaged to Tommy with a lovely ring. Mmmm! Perky letter from Floyd.

MAY 23

Another day at the Lodge! Carolyn Harley and I walked up to Bruton to meet Daddy for church. Reverend Wood, from Toronto, Canada, preached the sermon which was one of  the best I’d ever heard (personification of the Cathedral in Coventry and St. Paul’s in London - most unusual but stirring!) Kay, Lou Holly and Danny came up to the Lodge for dinner and more idle chitchat. Kay, Lou and Holly left soon after dinner to do some studying. but Danny stayed and the three of us relaxed in the sun. We had a bite (a bite, I say?) to eat in the coffee shoppe and then I came back to the house and dove into my English Lit. - my mind’s bleary as it always becomes at this stage of the game (and I haven’t even started to study yet!) Harold called tonight!

MAY 24 

All morning I grinded over English Lit till I could scream - I’m so sick of the darned stuff! Daddy came up to the house to meet everyone and then we had a sandwich in the Greek’s. This afternoon we went back to the Lodge and sat around talking. Oh, and yes, I did some more English Lit. Dossie Hostetter came up for dinner and we reminisced some more. All the gals down here are so neat! I said Goodbye to Dad till a week from Thursday, and then came back to the house to cram some more. Such monotony! I received another cute letter from Bill Brennan and mail from mother.

MAY 25 

Dad left this morning on the morning train but along that time I was hibernating in Wren with my English Lit. exam. Twas really a corker - most of it was fair, but as always I met my Waterloo on the spot passages. At least the darned thing is over and I’ll never have to think about English Lit. again. (one exam down and four to go: Eureka!!) This afternoon I stopped at Barrett with a birthday present for Holly, went to the Wigwam and eventually settled down to studying Psychology of the interview, rather halfheartedly. My brain can’t stand too much concentrated studying all at once. Gee, I’m living and breathing for a week from now when it’ll be all over. Such fun as it’s been though. A postcard from Harold.

MAY 26 

Apologies, Diary, for the monotony of these entries but the fact remains that I’m a study bug and nothing else. My only communion with the outside world was a trek to Casey’s for shampoo with which to wash my hair; and after that I returned to Philosophy and Economics. Such a broadening intellectual viewpoint as I’m developing! Much excitement over Jinx Richardson! Supposedly she spent the night in town with Bill Lugar already married and is being shipped. Rumors are spreading fast and furiously. ‘Tis a shame cause she really is a neat girl inspite of all the confusion in which she’s been involved. Letters from Mother and Bugsie, saying she has to have her wisdom teeth dug out of her jaw. Poor gal! Also packages & empty cartons from Dad.

MAY 27 

Another day of pure studying! I’d much rather have exams day after day, than sit and cram Psych., Econ. and Philosophy into my head at the same time and then wait to find out how much I don’t remember. I can picture me writing Psychological answers on my Economics exam! All morning and part of this afternoon I spent over at the Practice House reviewing Econ. (see! I said I was in a rut!) with Danny. It helped to see the various emphasis placed on things. Then this evening inbetween perpetual feasts (from boxes à la Hollis) and a phone call from Mother, Beth, Punchy and I rambled over Psych. I got a card from Bill Boyd - he’s been on maneuvers and is going out again - doesn’t lead to a very satisfactory correspondence; but when the real time comes……

MAY 28 

My brain just keeps on getting wearier and wearier. This morning I had my Psych exams, and this afternoon Econ., both of which were entirely different from what I’d expected. Unless Doc Heidingsfield is terrifically lenient - there goes my A! Good and amazing news though: I got a B as my final grade in English Lit. Dr. Crane mustn’t have counted all my mistaken spot passages very much. I love him dearly for it. - for bringing my C up to a B when I hadn’t expected a C definitely. Then too, I learned I’d gotten B on my last Psych exam (taken weeks ago!) So, excepting for what I did on my exams today, scholastically life’s looking up. After supper, Beth, Punchy and I took a longish bike ride and it was such fun! Twas my first actual ride and rather long too. A letter from Colbie and cards from Dad.

MAY 29

All my stiff exams are now over. Three huzzahs! Philosophy this morning was completely fair and one of the nicest exams I’ve taken this period. Now there’s only Spanish left. This afternoon we were fed up with the utter filth of the room (I’m not kidding either.) and so again moved beds, dusted, vacuumed, and rolled the rug in moth balls. Then the trunks were moved in and the room looks like a confused mess of the nth degree. I thought I’d lost my keys of the trunk and called home; Mum is sending down the duplicated and “All’s Well that Ends Well” We packed, sold our books in the Wigwam (only collected $2.55 for three books though!) and revisited the telephone company.

MAY 30 

The last day of studying and working a la intellect until September - I can scarce believe it yet!! We didn’t go to church but personally improved ourselves, while I did Spanish and Beth and Punchy finished packing their trunks. Then Janie Beth Punchy and I ran a final hasty comb through our hair and went to the Lodge for claret and dinner. It was smooth and we had a lovely reminiscent time, catting and chatting about people. Gad, how I’m going to miss the super Seniors. I’m not at all anxious for the end of the year to come. It’s all been one continuously mellow feeling full of laughs and a few almost-tears which have made Kappa Delta and all the super gang in the house so near and dear to me!

MAY 31 

Such a snap of a Spanish final with translations of sentences like “How are you?” - would that they all had been like that! Anyhoo, it’s over and I’m beautifully and blissfully free. This afternoon I pulled open drawers; dumped things on my bed; and by a process of elimination, packed my trunk. I love to pack, and really enjoyed it. With frequent trips to town for returning extra board money and doing last minute shopping, the afternoon sped by till time for Cary, Janie, Mimi Boone and I to see “The More the Merrier,” a howl of a movie about the Washington housing problem, starring Charles Coburn, Jean Arthur and Joel McCray. Darling. Letters from Daddy, Audrey and Bill Brennan.

[simplylove101]

Influential TV Shows

Okay this is kinda random and why I prob won’t tag the shows I list cuz this is more just something I wanted to get out of my head after watching J&J’s latest podcast where they were talking about this topic. They kept it to 7 shows each and while that would certainly be interesting to try, that’s kinda hard. lol I went about grouping some of them - shows that shaped me growing up, shows that impacted me/stuck with me, comfort shows/watch with the family, taught me about fandoms, etc. And saying something about each of them. Anyway, this is stupid but here we go lol:

The Shows Growing Up:

Sailor Moon: Okay, nobody make fun of me. lol This is the first show I remember really watching as a kid that wasn't Barney or whatever, something I decided to watch by myself and it actually had an ongoing story. And ofc it took time for me to realize that this was just an English dubbed version that they would play on Cartoon Network. Looking back on it, it’s a little cringey (the voice readings, Serena being a bit of a crybaby) but seeing girls, even if it was animated, kicking ass over evil as a group made an impression on me so it’s no wonder I would watch it religiously after school and was sad when they stopped airing it. And ofc I watched all the movies too. I was a shameless fan. lmao I also eventually read the manga and appreciated it.

Hey Arnold: As a kid, I would watch Cartoon Network & Nickelodeon (& eventually Disney when I got a little bit older), and I think one of the Nickelodeon shows that really stuck with me as a kid, like Rugrats, was this one. It had a wide range of really distinct characters. It was genuinely funny. And I did love the dynamic between Arnold & Helga (who was interesting & sometimes they would let her be the protagonist of an ep instead of him, like the therapist one which is a def fave) even if her crush was kinda as stalkerish as you can get why maintaining innocence. lol And you know what? I did totally watch the recent movie they did where it tied up loose ends like getting these two together and allowing her to grow as a character. Gotta say it was rewarding after all this time. lol  

All That: I feel like I gotta put this here because I watched this show all the time as a kid. And I think it’s something that really taught me about comedy. I had seen things from Saturday Night Live growing up cuz of my parents but this was my Nickelodeon version with people that weren’t much older than me at the time so I could really get what was going on/enjoy it. It’s also the first place where we saw people like Amanda Bynes & Kenan Thompson & Kel Mitchell (which is partly why I later watched things like The Amanda Show and Kenan & Kel) What can I say? As a young person, it was just really cool seeing kids being funny. Yeah, there was some cheese but I didn’t care. It stayed with me.

Boy Meets World/Sister, Sister/Lizzie McGuire/Even Stevens: I kinda cheated here and bundled these shows because these are four of the shows I watched on Disney growing up (Disney showed reruns of Boy Meets World & Sister, Sister for the record) There were others like That’s So Raven, Suite Life, Wizards of Waverly sort of, Proud Family to name a few but these shows I picked have such iconic episodes that I still remember well and love. Like Even Stevens - musical episode hands down Idc. Boy Meets World - Scream-inspired Halloween ep for sure. Yes, there was cheesiness with all these shows. Sometimes very after-school special, but they shaped me I think. Also gotta mention, I remember thinking of Hilary Duff as my idol. lol

The Ones I Watched With the Fam:

That 70′s Show: Now the thing with my family is that we were one where for a time we would watch tv while eating dinner and my dad would have control of what channel we watched. It was always this way, which meant it would either be Law & Order or Seinfeld (the second one I was cool with and I almost included it on here cuz it’s such a staple comedy but eh,,, I appreciated it more later on. It felt more forced on me at the time) This is probably one of the only shows I can say my whole family truly agreed on watching all together tho, including my sister who generally watches trashy reality shows. This show will always remain one of my faves, because it was hilarious. It got a little weaker towards the end (We do NOT speak about Season 8) but I loved how it was a true ensemble sitcom where everyone brought something to the table and enjoyed the different dynamics between the group. The funny running gags, Jackie & Hyde still remain one of my all-time otps, and Kelso is probably the funniest & lovable dumb character I can think of (If nothing else, Ashton Kutcher was meant to play this part ok) It was nice to have something my whole family could enjoy together. It was a rarity so this show has a special place in my heart for that alone.

Joan of Arcadia: Another show that has a place in my heart, despite it only lasting 2 seasons and it ending on a bad note (major cliffhanger, still never fully making things right w/ Adam after destroying his character, ultimately S2 was problematic but still) because this is a show that I watched religiously (pun not actually intended here lol) with my mom every Friday it was on. What I loved about it was that the concept is centered around Joan talking to God yet it generally wasn’t being preachy. Joan wasn’t always willing to do what God wanted her to do, and things didn’t always turn out how she wanted. It was a kinda perfect blend for me and my mom to watch together. After this we were more willing to watch stuff as a pair cuz we were close but this started all that. I remember always being curious how God would appear to Joan cuz it was always changing, but there were some fave recurring ones like Cute Guy God, Goth God & Old Lady God to name a few. heh Joan was played wonderfully by the awesome Amber Tamblyn who could always make me cry (naturally she played my fave Tibby in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants movies too lol) and she had awesome friends in Adam & Grace (who were my faves) and family. I rewatched this show and you know, I’d say S1 holds up and even the first half of S2. Heck, the episode where Joan & Adam break up towards the end of it, while totally heartbreaking and PISSES me off cuz bad writing for Adam, was solid simply for the acting so there’s that. lol

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Putting this show under this category because this was a show that I mostly got into because my sister loved it growing up. I was really young when it came out so I mostly remembered bits & pieces when I later watched it when I got a little older. It stuck with me tho cuz ofc the awesome Sarah Michelle Gellar playing badass Buffy (she was my sister’s idol) and it was a genuinely funny and smart show. It also got dark too. It wasn’t always solid towards the end, but I think it mostly nailed the actual ending (why Anya had to die tho... Spike I got but ugh) Anyway, this was kinda a big deal cuz it was the only thing my sister and I really watched together that wasn’t bad reality television or me barely paying attention to Dawson’s Creek at the time lol This showed that my sister could have taste when she wanted to (lmao sorry)

The Carol Burnett Show: I had to mention this show because this is one that got me, really my family, through dealing with my mom’s dementia. We chose to care for her at home instead of putting her in a nursing home. We did this for 2 years until her death. And the one thing we (excluding my sister cuz her & old stuff don’t mix) could always count on cheering us up was this show. My dad told me that my mom loved this show growing up and that’s why we turned on for her. So luckily memory or no memory, she still had a sense of humor and she knew when to laugh. And with good reason. This show is hilarious. So iconic. Carol Burnett was/is rightfully loved dearly for this show. I wish I had more I could say, but this was truly a comfort show when I desperately needed it so I am forever grateful that it existed.

Honorable Mention: Young & Hungry - another show that got us through that dark period, my dad actually really enjoyed this, despite seeming skeptical, and eventually started calling it the “Josh & Gaby Show” lmao Only thing is we never finished it together so oops. Not so much influential maybe but worth mentioning it felt like since it was underrated, got me thru a tough time, was hilarious and I loved that cast a lot. Emily Osment deserved to be the lead of her own show. Comedy queen.

The Ones That Brought Out the Fangirl In Me AKA The Teen Years:

The O.C/One Tree Hill/Gossip Girl/The Vampire Diaries: Another category where I’m just grouping them up together cuz ultimately it wasn’t about high art with these shows. They were the staple teen shows that everyone was watching and well, I was one of those people. lol It all started with The O.C. It was one of those ‘at the right time’ kinda things cuz I just went into the 6th grade when S1 started and it was such a big hit that everyone was always talking about it and there were even shirts involved (I never went that far lol) but this is where my need to explore YouTube came and then I was making fanvids. Gossip Girl is the one where I actually inserted myself into a fandom for the first time. My goodness the cringe that came with it but it gave me two of the longest online friendships I’ve ever had so I don’t regret it. (Shoutout to @backtothestart02 here as one of them) And well, three of these shows taught me the toxicity that can come from fandom. So I’ve been less vocal/more aware with other shows because of it. There’s problematic stuff in all of these but they were entertaining most of the time despite frustration (lol) 

Honorable Mention: Teen Wolf - Had to mention this one cuz this was a show where I had a group of friends who all watched this together and we talked about it til the end (even when we weren’t happy with it lol) I was never really vocal in the fandom cuz by this point I was wary of them (fandoms I mean), but it was nice to share a show with people who felt similarly about it. As a show, I truly loved it up to 3B. Some of my favorite episodes were the ones that almost felt standalone-ish (3x06 AKA Motel California still remains my fave to this day) Lastly, it’s because of this show I was introduced to Dylan O’Brien who I always refer to as my ‘always & forever’ guy so yeah lol

Maybe Superhero Shows Are Worth Watching lol:

The Flash/Daredevil/Cloak & Dagger/Runaways: So I’m someone who growing up, beyond Spider-Man and Batman, never really jumped at superhero movies. I still don’t to an extent but I’m more willing to watch stuff now. I think because when it comes to TV, I’m willing to check out at least an ep. I got into The Flash because my friend Lauren was really into it (and still very much is now) and wanted me to check it out so I did. I sorta watched Arrow before it until a point so I’d seen Barry’s appearances on it and remembered thinking he was precious so I wasn’t surprised that I liked him as a main character. I do think these later seasons have lost some quality but I think the earlier ones were very solid and Grant is perfect in the role. Daredevil... R.I.P. That show was so high quality so the fact that Netflix cancelled it is just rude. Now... Cloak & Dagger has been one of those surprises for me cuz it was such a slow burn that when it really got going it left me wanting more. That S1 finale was so solid. Cannot wait for S2. Love the dynamic between Ty & Tandy. Now Runaways isn’t perfect but it’s my biggest fandom right now and I’m proud of that fact. It’s a show that highlights diversity with 4 PoC leads & 4 kickass ladies (Nico & Gert are my bb girls), healthy ships including an LGBTQ couple currently as the main one (tho it is Gertchase that owns my heart), and overall a pretty great cast that meshes well like the thrown together family they portray. It even got me back into writing fanfic again. A miracle tbh. lol

Overall Just Amazing:

This Is Us: I just think that this show pulled me in the second they revealed that first plot twist in the pilot. It surprised me and then they kept doing that a bit after. Now it’s more about how it has the ability to make me cry every ep and feel things. It doesn’t always touch me the same it did in that first season (it was an emotional year for me tbh) but it does have a class act cast who can always pull at my heart strings.

Boardwalk Empire: This technically could have went under something I sort of watched with my dad, but it is kinda a weird show to share I guess. We didn’t usually watch it together (saved some awkward convos sometimes lol) but always talked about each episode weekly and it was kinda fun cuz it was usually in-depth. My dad still quotes things from it to this day. He also once said that he considers S1 the best TV season he’s ever watched. I agree that it was great. For me, the first 3 seasons are solid while the last 2 felt different but still pretty good. There was such quality to it. Great acting headed by Steve Buscemi. What can I say? I have a thing for gangster stories. I could say more but I’ll stop. lol

Stranger Things: The show that really turned me into a binge-watcher. I had just gotten Netflix and what show did I decide to watch on my birthday? This show. I had seen things in the media about the kids from it and I was like, they’re adorable!! And ofc I got hooked when I actually watched the show. It just has everything in it that I like: mystery, thrills, humor, hint of romance, awesome acting, music moments, nostalgia. This was my obsession for a while until I got into some other things but if you don’t think I’m totally pumped for S3, then you best believe I’m watching it all in a day if I can. lol

Community: This is a show that reminded me how a show can think totally outside of the box and still have a lot of heart with its comedy. I love situations where a group of misfits come together and become a family. I love that this show celebrates being different. Troy Barnes remains one of my favorite TV characters ever (& omg his friendship with Abed is pure goals!!) and Donald Glover played him perfectly. And Alison Brie is just adorable as Annie. Love this group of weirdos. The quality was different after S3 but I still adore it.

Into the Badlands: Have to mention this show because what it has been doing action-wise is just incredible. The fighting sequences are out of this world. I’m always excited to see how they top it. Also, an Asian male lead? Go dude! The whole cast is wonderful and everything is just high quality, ok? Also, that cinematography!! Can’t believe it’s ending when it comes back. Sadness.

One Day at a Time: This is more of a recent discovery for me (had friends who watched it and knew it was good but only decided to check it out not too long ago) but it’s already made its impact on me. This show has so much heart to it. The writers put so much care into their work when they bring up these controversial issues in the episodes. All while being totally hilarious (but also trust me, I manage to cry at least 1 or twice an ep lol) A show centered on a Cuban family, plenty of good rep for LGBTQ/non-binary people while also handling things like depression/anxiety, addiction, immigration, etc. It’s definitely making its mark on TV. Also, Rita Moreno is a living legend who I adore. I love this cast so much.

12 Monkeys: I. loved. this. show! I still think it had the best series finale that I have seen in a while. It wrapped up things so well that I was smiling for a while after watching it. I couldn’t believe that of all shows this one gave me a happy ending. lol Casserole remains one of my all-time ships because they were truly epic and pulled at my heart strings so many times. Jennifer Goines was my queen. But seriously, a show about time travel that managed to make sense? So impressed. And the visuals? gahhh

Friday Night Lights: Last, but most definitely not least, this show is just up there as one of the all-time bests IDC. The fact that at first glance the show seems centered only about football and it got me to keep watching definitely says something. lol This show had so much heart, the cast was excellent, an ending that was pretty much perfect. Coach & Tami Taylor were relationship goals. Honestly one of the best portrayals of a married couple I’ve ever seen because they were very much a team (while yes there was the occasional bickering that you gotta love) and it just felt real, you know? Also, it’s a show that proved that you can come back from a sophomore slump (yeah S2 was the worst season) and continue to be great.I can’t decide if it’s my favorite show of all-time but it’s certainly one of the first ones to come to mind. So glad I decided to give it a chance.

There’s probably a couple other shows I could list here but some I haven’t finished yet and don’t feel ready to put them on here yet. This is just what I could come up with.

[tuellertrails]

It’s hard to put into words what our first week on trail has been like, but I’ll try.

Tiring. Hot. Cold. Amazing. Beautiful. Adventure. Ouch. Hungry. Thirsty. Dirty. Smelly.

There you have it!

Starting out the PCT was an emotional experience. It was surreal hiking those first few miles, and then it just sinks in “oh right, this is just hiking. And hiking is just walking. And walking is tiring. Wow it’s hot. Wait, how am I already this dirty?” We only made it about .3 miles when we came upon a little campground with some trail angels that we talked to briefly. One of them was an older man with long white silver hair and blue eyes named Legend who apparently is a triple crowner (has hiked the PCT, AT and CDT). He told us to put our hands towards the trail and then grab some air and cup it into a ball in our hands. He said we had grabbed a little piece of magic from the PCT and it is carried in all the hikers who had gone before us and that we were all connected. He told us to hold it up to our hearts to absorb, but being the brilliant nurse that I am, I held it to the right side of my chest instead of the left, so I guess that means the magic went into my rib cage instead. I’m not an expert in PCT magic 🤷🏻‍♀️ so who knows how it will affect me. Magic ribs? Time will tell. He also told us to take another piece of PCT magic and put it in our pocket to give to a friend. I will sell mine to the highest bidder. Authentic PCT magic, hard to come by, Bitcoin will be accepted as a trade.

Hiking has been very physically exhausting for me, more than I expected to be honest. We’re going about 2-2.3 miles per hour at this point, and have done 10-16 miles per day. We wake up between 6-7 AM, pack up our stuff and head out. Generally we eat breakfast at our first break of the day after 3-4 miles, and I’ve found that I need a break about every 3 miles. If we can get to a great spot for lunch, we will generally take at least an hour and sometimes more if it’s in the heat of the day. We try to stop hiking between 5-6 pm, so we can have time to set up camp, make dinner, roll out our feet and sore muscles, and write in our journals before bed. We are very tired every night, but sometimes we don’t sleep very well if it’s windy or very cold. I always take my trusty Benadryl and sleep better with it!

The hardest part for me so far has been the wear and tear on my feet. The biggest mistake I made at the start was not putting inserts in my shoes. My feet have been in a lot of pain and I’ve had to take more breaks to roll them out to continue hiking. No matter how tired I am, I have to roll out my feet at the end of the day or they fee pretty rough the next day. I’ve also been dealing with some blisters and some chafing, so basically everything hurts! Doing miles on miles every single day is a lot of work, and we are sore every day. Other hikers that we’ve met who have done other thru hikes assure us that we will get our trail legs (eventually) but it’s going to take about 3 weeks

Ok, enough complaining!! We have met some amazing people. Landon’s cousin Justin hiked out with us the first day and it was fun to give him a taste of the trail. There was a small group of people that we started with who have been a bit faster than us and are now ahead of us on the trail, but maybe we’ll run into them again!

We met a mother and son duo named Chris and Pat. Pat is a psychologist at a University and counsels students. She was the nicest friendliest little lady and I immediately liked her. Chris, her son, works in film media and is trying to become a landscape photographer. They were both lovely but Pat can't go very fast so I'm not sure we'll see them again, but we're following each other on Instagram now.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time with a small group of hikers, hiking and also hanging out with them in Julian (where we are taking our first zero day, no hiking and only lots of resting, eating and socializing). Half of them are not American which is exciting! Florian is from Germany and is a super interesting guy. He works for Google and has lived in Australia, the UK, and most recently in San Francisco. We talked about the differences between Germany and Europe, some about politics (how crazy American politics are compared to relatively boring German ones), gun control, Mental illness and lack of resources in America, our messed up healthcare system, the largeness of Australian huntsman spiders, and a whole bunch of other things. Lauren is from Canada and loves to quiz you about geography and ask fun questions. Today she asked "which animal most represents the place that you live?" Landon and I debated for a while and decided on a big horn sheep 🐑. She and Florian met on the JMT and are hiking together as friends as they both have significant others. She is always scavenging for everyone’s extra food and someone suggested that her trail name be Trash Panda (people give each other “trail names” on thru hikes, and then that’s how people introduce themselves. We haven’t gotten ours yet but it’s only a matter of time). I don’t think she accepted that trail name though 😂


Another woman from the group is from Germany named Silke who is a bit more shy but still friendly, and man is she fit. She just blazed past us on the trail today. We also gave her a piece of pop tart and some skittles to try, and she hated both, which was very funny to watch her disgusted reaction. She hasn’t built up the junk food tolerance that we have I suppose, it takes years to build and I started very young! Carolina is from the Czech Republic, and has a great sense of humor. I can’t imagine the kind of bravery it takes to go to a foreign country where you know no one and the language spoken isn’t your first language, and taking on a monumental task like hiking the PCT. It’s pretty incredible and I have a lot of respect for all the hikers, but especially the foreign ones. We took a picture yesterday before Carolina had showered and she said “I look so dirty and crazy!” 😂 I ask just about everyone “what does your family think of your coming out to do this?” and the most common answers include “they don’t really get it...” and “They think I’m crazy.”

Otter is a 58 year old guy who was in the airforce for 30 years and has spent the last 5 years of his retirement hiking and traveling. He hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2019. Otter said that he decided to hike the AT initially because he read a story of a guy in his town who hiked it when he was 18. The guy had to ask permission from the board of education in Virginia to graduate high school early in order to hike it, and they told him no, so he quit high school and did it anyways. Otter told us that he read that and it stuck with him, and he made it a goal of his to hike the AT someday. He said it took 35 years, but he always remembered that guy and wanted to do it. Just goes to show that you never know what kind of impact you can have on the people around you! He has been very kind to us and let us come to the Airbnb that he had rented to do laundry and shower when we got into Julian, and we have used the Airbnb as a hangout zone for our whole group yesterday and today, which has been great. After showering and having clean clothes, we almost felt like normal people 😂. In Mt Laguna at mile 42, we showered in a campground bathroom and washed our laundry in the shower like the hiker trash we now are. Real food from a restaurant and a cold drink from a trail angel (people that provide food/drinks/rides to hikers) is also incredible. When you’re living so minimally, the little things are a big deal!

Lastly we have Brandon, who I met on Instagram last year and was also supposed to hike the trail but canceled due to Covid. He ended up getting a permit for this year too and started the day after us (coincidentally he is also a travel nurse). Last night, after hanging out at the Airbnb, We camped behind the Julian Market (they allow PCT hikers to camp there) and Brandon came too. At 5:30 in the morning after just settling back down into his sleeping bag after getting up to pee, he hears a voice say “oh good, you’re up. I really need someone to talk to.” He looks over and sees this strange girl that he doesn’t know (and wasn’t there when we went to bed) who is wrapped up in her sleeping bag. He says “Oh, um..are you ok?” And she says “I have no pants”. And proceeds to tell him that she ripped her hiking shorts and didn’t carry any warm sleeping clothes because they were too heavy. He tells her that she needs to have warm base layers if she is going to continue hiking (and not die) and that she can pick some up at the gear store in town. She tells him that she asked the guy she was hiking with if she could come and cuddle with him and he told her no, so she knocked on some random strangers window at 3 AM and asked for a ride from Mt Laguna to Julian, and the stranger gave her a ride (and luckily didn’t murder her). So that’s how she ended up on that back porch in Julian, possibly staring at Brandon for hours and willing him to wake up to tell him this. Apparently she talked to him for about 45 more minutes and at some point said that she was waiting for her meds to arrive. He said “Maybe you should call your family?” And she said “no way! They’ll freak out” 😬. Landon and I were returning from using the bathroom and we walked right past them, I thought that they knew each other somehow and somehow missed the pleading desperation in Brandon’s eyes to help him in this incredibly awkward 5:30 AM conversation with this random girl. Eventually she ended up going to the pie shop across the street and sitting in there to get warm and charge her phone. Long story short, I really hope that girl is ok, because hiking the PCT is hard enough as it is without having any warm pants. Also, hiking is not a replacement for a support system and therapy. Be safe and get mentally healthy before you hike!!

One last funny story. This morning we were eating at a diner when the waitress came over to take our order. She looked at me hesitantly and said “Um...I’m not sure how to handle this...you have a spider on your hat.” I yelped and threw my hat on the table. She grabbed my hat and took it outside and gently shook it off and de-spidered it for me before bringing it back to me 😥. What a good lady!! Please tell people if they are wearing spiders and help them out. I guess I am just becoming one with nature now.

Anyways, this is long enough, but I just want to say that we’ve had lots of great experiences, seen beautiful scenery, and met awesome people. Even though this is incredibly hard, it’s such a cool adventure and I am loving having a great partner to experience it with me. Hoping my feet are doing better in the next section and that none of my blisters get infected! Our friends helped me shake down my pack today and I was able to get rid of at least a pound in weight. When you carry everything on your back, hips and shoulders, every little ounce makes a difference! Much love to everyone and thanks for the support, it’s been a great first week!

- Joscelyn

P.S. - I’ll post our daily mileage for anyone who is interested

Day 1

Start: Mile 0 Mexican Border

Stop: Mile 11.4

Total: 11.4 miles

Day 2

Start: Mile 11.4

Stop: Mile 26 Boulder Creek Campground

Total: 14.6 miles

Went thru Lake Morena

Day 3

Start: Mile 26 Boulder Creek Campground

Stop: Mile 37.1

Total: 11.1 miles

Elevation gain: about 3k feet 🦶

Day 4

Start: Mile 37.1

Stop: Mile 47.7

Total Mileage: 10.6

Went thru Mt Laguna

Day 5

Start: Mile 47.7

Stop: Mile 63.7

Total: 16 Miles

Day 6

Start: Mile 63.7

Stop: Mile 77

Total: 13.3 Miles

Day 7

Zero Day In Julian

[onewheelneil]

My first 3 days

Day 1: Today I started my Appalachian trail thru hike journey. I woke up at hotel in Dawsonville, GA from sitting in a car, that my parents were so graciously driving, all day yesterday. We had an exquisite dinner the night before and my tummy wasn’t feeling well. I woke up at 7 am and took a nice long hot shower since I wouldn’t be having one in a long while. It was good for a hotel shower and I was thoroughly cleaned. I brushed and flossed as well. Afterwards my parents took turns doing their morning ritual and we left the hotel around 8:30 pm. We stopped at a breakfast place and a grocery store before heading to the trail. By that time my stomach was feeling better. Once we got to the visitors center I had a little orientation with several other thru hikers and were showed a new method to hang our food so bears couldn’t get it. After that I was off! My parents joined me to the top of the Amicalola Falls and after some pictures and hugging I was by myself for the rest of the 7 miles to the start of the Appalachian trail. It doesn’t start at the visitors center it starts at the summit of spring mountain which is an 8.8 miles climb from the visitors center. So I technically haven’t started the trail yet. Once I got started from the falls where my parents sent me off I was going at a nice pace and my legs fell into a rhythm and the pain from going up the falls seemed to melt away. I crossed some other hikers when the trail crossed a gravel road and kept going up. They were looking beat and I stopped to have a quick drink of water. We talked a bit but then I started cooling down which I didn’t want to do yet. So I kept going. I got back into my rhythm and got up a quite steep part until it went flat for a while. It was nice listening to nature through my grunts and breathing and hearing nothing. It was awesome. The farther I got the more I hurt. My legs were aching and my lower back was complaining but I kept on trudging. Of course it got to a point where I had to stop and eat some trail mix and more water. After finishing the trail mix from several stops I was almost there. I also had to sit down a few times to rest my legs. Eventually I made it to the to of springer mountain. There was one point where I crested a hill and was looking at the summit from below where I thought “that cannot be the summit its too far”. But of course I was wrong and walked up it anyway. After resting at the top I started down the actual Appalachian trail. I was beat so I decided to set up camp near the shelter 100 yards from the summit. It didn’t take long and it was well marked. I set up my hammock and put my sleeping bag and pad in to weigh it down as it likes to flip over when empty. Then I got my med kit out to put some mole skin on some parts of my foot that were getting rubbed. After that I got my food out and heated up some water to cook it. Tonight was chili with beef dehydrated by my loving mother so all I had to do was boil water and pour it in there. While it was cooking I started to shiver as the wind picked up and a drizzle started. I had on my gloves and my long johns and my fleece and my rain gear but I was still cold. Wishing I had my ski jacket but knowing that it would be way too bulky and heavy. Once the water was boiling not even a minute later I poured it over my food and let it sit in the food cozy my mom sewed together herself. She treats me well. There were lots of other people at the campsite and one of them even had a dog but it was very protective and would growl at you if you got near the owner. Still a good boy. I ate my chili after it had rehydrated and then climbed into my hammock because everyone else was retreating to their sleeping bags to get out of the cold. I laid down inside and just felt my body slowly warm up but the wind kept chilling my butt and I wished I had an under quilt. I’ll buy one maybe at the next town and see where I can fit it. The rain slowly tapered off until it was only drops falling from the trees blown by the wind. It was after dark then and I slipped into a warm cold sleep.

Day 2: This morning sucked. I was woken at midnight by a cold wind that sent shivers up and down my body. I also had to pee really badly but I didn’t want to get out of my sleeping bag knowing it was much colder outside it. I tried to fall asleep and I must have been successful because th next time I woke up was at 4 am. I noticed that all the condensation that happens from you breathing with a rain fly above your head was frozen to the ceiling of my hammock. You see my hammock is basically a floating coffin with an insulated bottom and a rain fly that encloses me in a protective cocoon from wind and rain. Unfortunately it was way below 32 and it doesn’t protect me from sheer cold. My sleeping bag is rated for 20 degrees so it must of been below that as well. At 4 I begrudgingly got myself out of the hammock tiptoed to a tree and pissed on it. Then I scurried back into a relatively warmer hammock except it wasn’t warm enough for me to fall back asleep. I just lay with my eyes closed trying different positions trying to get warm. I put my rain pants on and put my rain jacket over my sleeping bag to protect it a little from the eventual drops of the frozen condensation when it warms up in the morning. I changed my alarm from 7 am to 8:30 thinking I could get a little sleep after sunrise instead of getting up at sunrise. So when 8:30 comes around i tell myself there’s no reason to stay inside any longer. I start to unzip my bag as my brain is telling me “WHAT ARE YOU DOING ITS COLDER OUT THER YA DINGUS” but I ignore him. As I get outside I look around and everything is frozen. Every branch is covered in ice and even my hammock is covered too. I quickly put my rain coat on to warm myself up and do some exercises to get warmer. I jog in place and stretch before starting to pack camp. I even make some tea to help with the cold. I try to eat my breakfast of cliff bars but they were frozen solid so I put them in my inner pockets to warm them up. I pack everything back into my pack and set off knowing I’ll warm up faster from hiking. While I’m hiking the wind is blowing the ice off the branches in wood chip sizes. It was like walking past a wood chipper when it spews the wood out. But ice was falling on me instead. Sometimes it hurt but mostly it just fell on me harmlessly. I had most of my clothes on including my long johns and fleece and rain gear. It surprisingly didn’t become uncomfortably hot until mile 4. I had descended quite a bit from starting on top of spring we mountain and it was just raining from the branches down here. I passed many people and even several doggies. When I was changing out of my warm clothes a bunch of day hikers with their children came by asking how far I was going and when I replied they said to their children, “wow he’s better than all of us combined”. It brought a smile to my face. As I kept hiking along I stopped at one point to eat my breakfast and some beef jerky and just listened to nature. I was surprised no one passed by during that moment since there was so many people today. There was a pair of guys with a dog that kept playing leap frog with me. I asked them where they were headed and they said the same place as me but they didn’t know if they’d make it at their pace. I kept going knowing I’d see them again. Then I found a glorious sight. A big tent with oodles of food and water underneath it. A group of adults who had thru hiked before had set up a table and rain tarp and were handing out goodies. A bunch of other hikers were there already and while I was munching and drinking more hikers stopped by as well. We all talked about different things and at one point a guy asked me about my future and I said I was going to grad school for robotics. He replied, “Robotics?!?!?, you mean you wanna be responsible for sky net?” And one of his friends said, “Oh Terry shut it with that trash”. I chuckled and responded with, “No I want to help make sure skynet doesn’t happen”. That brought a few chuckles and the subject was changed after that. As soon as I was done I thanked them all and headed on my way determined to go 15 miles before sundown. But as it turns out that was a mistake. At around mile 8.5 my knee started giving out going down a hill so I stopped took it easy and rested. Then when I thought it was better I kept going. It wasn’t better and I gingerly limped hoping maybe taking some weight off it would be good but still gaining ground. Eventually it came to the point where I was limping painfully and after a frantic text to my mom and dad (I was lucky for any cell service) I staked camp at a little tent site about 4.5 miles from my destination. It hurt to put any weight on the knee so i just sat and elevated it on my sleeping pad. A couple hikers passed by and when they asked if I was camping here I told them of my predicament and one of them handed me an instant ice pack. It helped reduce some of the swelling and made it so I could get to work on setting up my hammock again. Before I set in for the night I had to put my food into a bear bag using the pct method. The method involves pulling your bag full of food up all the way to the branch then tying a stick in the middle of the rope so when you let go, the stick keeps the bag suspended and the bear can’t cut the string to get your food which they had now learned to do. It took me a while to find a branch suitable to carry my food since my food weight about 10 pounds and all the branches around here looking pretty flimsy. Eventually I found one and with a little difficulty, since it was my first time doing it, I had my food suspended in air. Afterwards I went back to my hammock jumped in and enjoyed the music of nature. I even took a video because there was a really loud bird of some sort making some weird noises. I thought it was an owl but let me know what you think. Then since it was going to rain again I closed up my rain fly just as the sun was setting. Before going to bed fully, I read my book a little bit until sleep took taking me by the hand into dreamland.

Day 3: Today I tried to hike on my hurt knee today but had no luck. I got myself to Horse Gap where the trail crossed a road. There many hikers passed me making sure I was okay with one hippie looking girl offering me some pot to ease my pain. I of course said no. I had called a cab company to come pick me up and take me to a drug store so I could pick up a knee brace. Luckily a local who helped thru hikers with their problems had happened by and agreed to let me hitch a ride with him. We drove to Coopers gap where he handed off some packs back to some other hikers who asked him to carry some weight for them. After meeting them and talking with other hikers that stopped to get some water from his truck we drove down to the town of Dahlonega. There we stopped at a Rite aid so I could get a knee brace and then to a motel where I got a room for the night since I wasn’t capable of getting back on the trail with my knee in this condition. It was a cheap motel called the Mountain Inn and I got a room for 65 dollars. So I cooped up and watched some TV and read a book to keep my knee healing. I iced it as well to reduce the swelling. I also got to hang my stuff over the shower to dry since my hammock and sleeping pad were wet from this mornings rainstorm. Hopefully the rest will help and I’ll be back on the trail tomorrow I already have a shuttle service booked to get me back to the trail so I can try again and this time take it slow. That’s all today I’ll update you on my progress tomorrow hopefully it won’t be bad enough to go back home.

[shebe67]

Acceptance

This is the first thing I have written and posted in a while. It’s been years since I applied to a college and I will admit I know nothing about the acceptance process or even if a college will offer a scholarship on acceptance like this, but we’re just going to pretend they do...enjoy and please let me know what you think.

She held the envelopes in her hand, five of them in all. One from each of the colleges she had applied to. They had come in the mail over the last week and she had rushed home every day after school so she could be the first person to check the mailbox. The only person that knew was Lucas and this was part of their plan.

Her relationship with Lucas had only gotten stronger over the years of high school and they had decided that they didn’t want to go to different schools in different cities, they wanted to be together for college. Of course, this was bound to upset their parents, but this was something they wanted and since they were both over 18, they felt they could make their own decisions. She and Lucas were both excellent students, two of the top students in their class and hadn’t given their parents any problems. They both worked summer jobs all thru high school, saving whatever money they could and Lucas had always abided by any ridiculous rule her father could come up with. They only real problem Riley could see that they faced was Maya. It was always assumed that she and Maya would attend college together, but in the last few years, Maya had been looking at different art schools around the country and Riley wholeheartedly supported her. It was something they hadn’t discussed since the beginning of senior year, but they needed to have a long talk. Riley had been researching different schools and thinks she found one that was perfect for her.

After she got the last letter that afternoon, she texted Lucas to see if he had gotten his last one and sure enough he had. The set a time to meet on the roof of her apartment building later that evening after they had both had dinner with their families. Riley only hoped she could contain her excitement until she saw him and that her parents didn’t suspect anything. There were still six weeks until graduation, but her dad had heard all the students talking about college acceptance letters and he had asked Riley a few times if she had heard anything yet. She told him that she hadn’t and that she should get something soon, she hated lying to him, but she wanted to open the letters with Lucas as they had promised each other.

She had come back to the kitchen to get a bottle of water and an apple when she heard the front door open, it was her Dad.

“Hi, Riley. I see you beat me home again, that’s the third or fourth time this week. Why is that?” Cory asked his daughter.

“Hey, Dad. I’ve been coming home early because Lucas and Zay have baseball practice, Maya has her art club and Farkle and Smackle have their young genius’ thing so, I’ve been coming home to get a head start on my homework. Is that a problem?” she asked.

“No, honey, it’s not a problem. Have you checked the mail yet?” he asked her.

“Dad, the mail is in your hand, so obviously I didn’t check it. Are you okay?” she walked over to him and felt of his forehead checking for a temperature.

Cory grabbed her hand and held it for a moment, “I know, Riley, but some of it was on the ground. I figured maybe you were checking for college acceptance letters.”

“No, wasn’t me. We need to have a talk with the mailman. He needs to be more careful with the mail.” She said trying to cover her tracks. Her dad lets go of her hand and sits down on the couch to go through the mail.

“Yea, maybe I should call the post office and lodge a complaint against him. This just isn’t like Ted. He’s been delivering mail here for years and has never been so careless.” Cory said while trying to watch his daughter’s reaction.

“No Dad! Don’t go to the post office. I was thinking we could just leave a nice note for him in the box and maybe a couple of muffins from the bakery. Maybe he was just having a bad day. I wouldn’t want him to get in trouble for dropping a couple of pieces of junk mail.” She said. She didn’t want Ted to get into trouble for something she did.

Cory couldn’t help but smile. It was just like Riley to think about the good in people and to think someone was just having a bad day. Cory suspected she was trying to check for those college acceptance letters and he felt bad that she hadn’t gotten any yet.

“Why don’t we do that then, Riley. Maybe old Ted was just having a bad day. A couple of those muffins from the bakery will make his day for sure.” Cory told her.

Riley just took a big bite of her apple and smiled at her father. She turned to leave the room and headed back up the stairs to her bedroom. She’s afraid her dad is on to her, she’s a terrible liar.

Two hours had passed when Riley was startled by a knock on her door. She was reading Pride and Prejudice for her English class and didn’t realize how much time had passed.

“Come in,” she said from the bay window.

“Hi, Riley. I just wanted to come let you know dinner will be ready in 10 minutes.” Topanga told her daughter.

“Thanks, Mom. How was your day?” Riley asked. This was the first time she had seen her mother since this morning before she left for school.

Her mother walked over to the bay window to sit, “My day was okay. That big case I’ve been working on was settled out of court. How was your day, sweetie?”

“Oh, you know, teachers are trying to pile on the work with graduation only six weeks away. I think some of my teacher’s think that their class is the only one I have,” Riley explained.

“I can’t believe you’ll be graduating in just six weeks, it seems like only yesterday you were in kindergarten,” Topanga said, trying not to shed any tears.

Riley saw the way her mother was looking at her and the way her eyes glistened, “Mom, please don’t be sad. I’ll always be your little girl.”

Topanga took the hand Riley offered her and put on her best happy face, “I’m really glad you won’t be so far away for college. If you get into NYU or Columbia you’ll be able to live at home. Pennbrook will have you in Philly, so that’s not too far away. I can live with that.”

Riley squeezed her mother’s hand, “That’s good, mom. It won’t be bad, you won’t even have to miss me.”

Riley looked away from her mother to the drawer on her desk that held the college letters. She loves her family and didn’t like the deception, but it was her life. She just hoped that they would be proud of her for making the best decision for her future, a future that included Lucas.

Her mother stood and pulled Riley to her feet, “We better get to the kitchen before your dad and Auggie start without us. No Lucas or Maya tonight?”

“No, they promised their parents that they would eat at home at least one night this week,” she said.

They walked downstairs and were surprised to see an extra place set at the table and her uncle Josh, sitting on the couch with Cory and Auggie.

“Josh, it’s good to see you. I take it you're joining us for dinner?” Topanga asked.

Josh hugged his sister in law and said, “I don’t think I have much choice, Cory and Auggie decided I needed to stay. I hope that’s ok.

“Of course, it is, family is always welcome at this table,” Topanga said as she set glasses of water on the table.

Josh eyed Riley setting the dishes of food on the table, “Hey niece, let me help you with those.”

Riley smiled at her uncle, “Nope, your company and company doesn’t have to do any work.” She set the last bowl on the table and walked over to her uncle and hugged him.

“Nah, I haven’t been company for four years now. This is my second home,” Josh said.

Riley realized he was right. He’d spent more time in this apartment than he had in his dorm room on the NYU campus.

“So, how does it feel to be near the end of your high school years, Riley?” Josh asked her.

Riley smiled, “No, how does it feel to know that in six weeks you will be a college graduate? Have you found a job or a place to live yet?”

“Good job, Riles. Taking the focus off you and putting it on me. I see what you did there, niece,” Josh said with a wink.

“Okay you two, that will be enough! Sit and eat!” Cory told them.

Riley didn’t realize how hungry she was and inhaled her dinner. She had to sit and wait for everyone else to finish eating before she could start cleaning up, thankfully Josh offered to help her.

Josh had never seen Riley be so eager to clean up after dinner. They knocked out the dishes in record time.

“Riley, why are you in such a hurry tonight, do you have homework to finish? Or, is it a hot date with Lucas?” he asked.

“No hot date, just in a hurry to finish my book for my English class,” she said as she was wiping off the table. “What are you doing after you leave here, headed to Maya’s?” Josh’s face turned several shades redder than Riley had ever seen it before, but she just kept right on doing what she was doing.

Once Riley was done wiping the table off she told her parents she would be in her room if they needed her and headed that direction, with Josh following closely behind.

“Maya is my best friend, we have no secrets,” Riley said, with a smile. Maya hadn’t told her anything, she just knew that Maya had been smiling a lot more lately and anytime someone said Josh’s name she blushed a little.

“Oh,” he couldn’t believe Maya had told Riley, they had agreed to keep it just between them.

“I’m just kidding, Maya didn’t tell me anything. I figured now that she’s 18, the two of you had started to spend some time together. Besides, the way she smiles anytime someone says your name is a dead giveaway.” Riley said, trying to reassure her Uncle.

“So, Riles, when are you going to tell everyone about your college plans? I think your parents and Maya would find it interesting to know that you haven’t exactly been truthful with them,” he could see she was surprised that he knew.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Riley said as convincingly as she could.

“Give it up niece, I was here in your room trying to get some studying done for a test while you were working at the bakery last night. My roommate has been a bit loud and I was having trouble concentrating.” Josh started explaining.

“My pen quit working so I looked in your desk drawer and instead of a pen, I found four letters from four different colleges, none of which are the colleges you told your parents you had applied to. What about NYU and Pennbrook?” Josh asked, dying to know how she was going to explain this away.

Riley had been caught and there was no way to explain it other than to tell Josh the truth and hope he would keep her secret.

“If I tell, you can’t say anything to anyone, especially my parents. Promise?” She asked holding out her hand for Josh to shake.

He looked from her hand to her face and back to her hand and finally shook it. “Fine, I won’t tell anyone, but you better tell them soon, got it?”

“Got it. So, Lucas and I have decided to attend college together. I don’t want to stay in New York and I don’t think I can handle being away from him, Josh. Lucas and I have applied to four of the same schools and we are going to decide where to go, together.”

“Riley, your parents think your schools of choice are NYU, Columbia, and Pennbrook. Did you even apply to one of them?” Josh asked, not sure how Cory and Topanga would take this news.

“I applied to NYU but not the other two,” Riley answered.

“I only saw two of the envelopes, Riley. UT Austin and UC Davis, what are the other two?” Josh had a feeling they were all out of state.

“We applied to UT Austin, UC Davis, Colorado State University, Texas A&M together and separately we applied to NYU and Cornell. Lucas applied to Cornell.” Riley felt a weight lift off her chest.

“Your parents are going to flip, Cory may not have to fake this heart attack,” Josh said.

“Don’t joke about that, Josh!” she didn’t want to even think about her dad having a real heart attack.

“Riley your parents expect you to stay close by and Maya still believes the two of you will end up at NYU together. How can you disappoint any of them?” Josh was laying on the guilt a little thick.

“I don’t want to disappoint anyone. I love my parents and I love Maya, not one word has been said about us being at NYU together since the beginning of the year. When do I stop living my life for them and doing what is expected of me? When does my life become my own? Lucas is a part of my life too, a very important part. My future is with him, I’m sure of that. Besides, I don’t even know if I’ve been accepted to any of them yet, I’m meeting Lucas in about 15 minutes on the roof and we’re opening our letters together,” Riley said through tears.

Josh could see how much all of this upset her. She always wanted to make everyone happy, she deserved to put herself first for once. He took his niece in his arms and just held her.

“Riley, you’re right it’s your life and all any of us should want is for you to be happy,” Josh told her. “I’ll support whatever decision you make. I love you, niece.”

“Thanks, Uncle. That means a lot to me, Josh,” she told him, happy that someone was on her side.

He let go of her and handed her a tissue. She wiped her tears and picked up a hoodie he very much recognized as being Lucas’ and she pulled the college letters out of the drawer and slid them in the pocket of the hoodie.

Just before she opened the door she turned to Josh, “You never answered my question, are you going to see Maya?”

“Not that I need to tell you what my plans are, but no, I’m not going to Maya’s tonight. I promised Auggie I’d stay and watch the game with him and your dad.” Josh answered.

“Good, just be good to her, you may be family, but she’s my best friend and I’d kill if someone hurt her,” the look on her face told Josh that she was serious.

They headed back out to where her parents were. Josh plopped down on the sofa next to Auggie. Topanga had gone down to the bakery to help Katy close.

“Hey, just in time! Riley, you want to join us guys?” Cory asked, not noticing the hoodie she was wearing.

“Not tonight, Daddy. I’m going up to the roof to meet Lucas,” with that she said her goodbyes, promising her dad she would be in by 11 p.m.

Lucas knew he was early, he sat on the bench to wait for Riley. He glanced around the roof thinking back to all the memories this place held for him and his friends. Most were good, but there was one that stuck out as being bad. It was the New Year’s Eve party when Farkle outed Riley. Lucas had been shocked to hear that Riley still had feelings for him, it was one of the happiest moments of his life, but also one of the worst. It was the beginning of the dreaded triangle that Lucas thought would never end. He can smile thinking back on it now. Here he was four years later waiting for Riley to walk through that door, this is where they would decide where to spend the next four years together.

He pulled the letters the letters from his back pocket and thumbed through them. He was so nervous his hands were shaking. They were taking a big risk keeping the letters a secret from their parents. He knew they would all be disappointed in them, along with all their friends. He figured Farkle and Isadora would understand, they were going to be together at Princeton and would certainly understand why the two of them would want to be together. It was Zay and Maya that worried him the most. They had certain expectations about all them going to school to NYU together and Lucas didn’t think that would be where he and Riley ended up.

He was brought out of his thoughts by a slamming door. He looked up to see that Riley had arrived and judging by the look on her face, she needed to be over with and soon.

“Riley are you ready to do this?” he asked her. “If you aren’t, we can wait a few more days.”

She pulled her own letters from the pocket of Lucas’ hoodie and walked over to the edge of the roof, “No, I’m ready. I’m just nervous is all.”

Lucas pulled his letters from his back-jean pocket and held them up for her to see. “Let’s do this then,” he said, trying to sound enthusiastic.

She gave him a half smile and asked, “Which one first? New York, Texas, California or Colorado?”

“I think New York, Lucas answered. They sat down at the table in the center of the roof. Riley opened her letter from NYU as Lucas opened the one from Cornell.

Riley’s hands were shaking as she unfolded the letter. This was more nerve-racking than she ever thought it would be. She started reading the letter out loud, “Dear Miss Matthews, I am delighted to inform you that the Admissions Committee has admitted you to the Class of 2024. Please accept my personal congratulations on this achievement.”

“NYU, good job, Babe. You made it!” Lucas said, smiling at his girlfriend.

“Thanks, Lucas. Your turn,” she said as she handed him the letter with the Cornell University logo on it.

He took the letter from her; his hands were shaking too. He ripped the corner and slid his finger under the sealed flap. He pulled out the letter and read it silently at first.

“Well?” Riley asked,

“Mr. Friar, as Dean of Admissions I’m pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Cornell University Class of 2024…” he read aloud.

“Lucas that’s amazing, Baby! I’m so proud of you!” she said smiling.

“Well, these letters will make our parents happy. We could be staying in New York.” Lucas was excited at the prospect but knew which school he wanted to attend, he only hoped Riley would agree and that they both got accepted.

Riley was happy about NYU and knew that her parents and Maya would be excited, but there was one school she preferred over all the others.

Neither one of them had voiced which school was their favorite but Riley expected Lucas was excited for either A&M or UT Austin. They had always been his dream schools and the more Riley checked into UT Austin, the more it had become her idea school. It seemed a perfect fit for her. Of course, she hadn’t said a word to anyone else either.  

“Which one next?” she asked.

“How about we do this alphabetically,” Lucas suggested.

“That’s fine with me,” Riley said picking up the UC Davis envelope. She’s not sure why they decided to apply to a school in California, but at the time it seemed like a good idea. They opened their letters at the same time. Lucas was accepted and Riley wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Riley. They don’t know what they are missing, by not accepting you.” Lucas said as he rubbed her back.

“It’s ok, I didn’t figure I’d get accepted to all of the schools we applied to. I’m glad they accepted you though. Let’s look at the Colorado letters now,“ she said.

They each picked up their respective letters and opened them. Lucas scanned his letter and Riley could immediately see he was upset. She read her letter and couldn’t help but smile. l

“You got accepted, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Yes, and I’m judging by the look on your face, you didn’t.” She said.

“Nope, I was wait-listed, though. Who needs all that fresh mountain air, anyway?” Lucas asked.

“Lucas, can I be honest with you?” she asked

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted from you, Riley. We agreed, remember?” he told her.

“Yea, I remember…” she said.

“Riley, what’s going on? Have you changed your mind about going to college together?” he asked, wanting to know what was on her mind.

“No, that’s the one thing I’m sure of, but there is one school that appeals to me more than any of the others,” she explained.

“NYU?” he asked.

“Nope,” she said, popping the p. “I think the school I want to attend is in Texas.”

Lucas, being overjoyed to hear that, hugged her and picked her up and twirled her around in a circle.

She put her arms around his neck and held on for dear life. By the time he put her down she was laughing and couldn’t help the smile on her face for his excitement.

Lucas stopped spinning and held her for a bit before he set her back on her feet. “You’re not just saying that because you think it’s what I want are you? I mean I’m more than happy to stay in New York if that’s what you want.” He would do anything she wanted because he couldn’t imagine being apart from her.

“I knew you’d do that. I’m not just saying it because that’s what you want to do. I’ve done my homework. Remember when you and Zay went for that college visit in Texas last year?” she asked him.

“Yea, why?”

“That’s when I realized that it was a very real possibility that you would probably leave New York for college. So, I started doing a little research on UT Austin and A&M. I loved everything I read about UT Austin and I think that school is a perfect fit for me. You know I love Austin and the vibe of the city, if you get into A&M they are only 104 miles apart.” She explained.

“Can we talk about this after we open the Texas letters, please? He didn’t want them to get ahead of themselves.

“Which one do we open first?” she asked holding up the last two envelopes.

“A&M first.” He picked his letter up off the table. “Let’s open them at the same time, OK?”

“Okay, I’m a little nervous about this one.” She said as she held the letter.

“No need to be worried. On the count of three, ready? 1…2…3…” he opened the letter with little effort and unfolded the piece of paper.

Riley did the same, neither one of them looked at their letters, they just stared at each other.

“Babe, we have to look at the letters,” she said, smiling at him.

“I know, ready?” he asked, all he could hear though was his heart beating in his ears. A&M was his parent’s alma mater.

“Yea, ready.” She said.

They each looked at their letters and both had smiles on their faces.

“You got in, didn’t you?” Riley asked Lucas, she knew what this one meant to him.

“Yes, I did. Me being able to show this to my parents is going to be awesome and I’m guessing from the look on your face that you got in too?” He told her.

“They’ll be really proud of you. Do you think my parents will be proud of me for getting in?” she asked.

“Riley, they’ll be proud of you no matter what. They love you.” He knew they would be upset about her not applying to their alma mater, but they would be proud she had been accepted.

“I hope you’re right. I still think they’ll be mad about Pennbrook though. My mom had her heart set on me applying there and so did dad. Oh, Lucas what have I done,” her eyes filled with tears as she spoke.

“Riley, remember what you told me when you decided not to apply. You didn’t feel like the school was right for you and that they would have to understand,” he was trying to make her feel better.

“I know, but does it make me an awful daughter?” she asked as a few of those tears escaped.

“Riley this is your choice to make. You can’t let anyone make it for you, we can’t let anyone make it for either one of us,” he knew their plan wasn’t perfect, but they were doing things on their own terms.

She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand and took a deep breath, “final letter,” she said as she held up the letter from UT Austin.

This was the letter Riley was most excited to open and her hands were shaking badly as she tried to open the envelope. Lucas saw her struggling and took the envelope out of her hand, “Here let me,”

He handed her the opened letter and proceeded to open his. He was nervous as well, this was the school that could very well bring him back to his hometown and close to the one place on this earth that meant the world to him, Pappy Joe’s ranch.

Riley unfolded the letter and held it away from her, waiting for Lucas to do the same. Once he had removed the letter from the envelope, she spoke, “Ready?”

Lucas swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat, “Yes, are you?”

“Yea,” she managed to answer.

Lucas looked at his letter and began reading. He couldn’t help but smile, he had been accepted to UT Austin, and they were so impressed with his high school resume and the fact that he used to be a citizen of Austin that they offered him a scholarship for half of his tuition and housing costs. He couldn’t believe it. He looked at Riley and saw that she was just watching him. She hadn’t even read her letter yet.

“Riley, are you going to read your letter?” he asked.

“I’m too nervous to do it. It looks like you got good news though, what’d they say?” she asked.

“I got in, Riles and they even offered me a scholarship, just based on the resume and letter I sent,” he didn’t want to sound too happy, it was hard.

She reached for him and gave him a hug, “That’s awesome Lucas! I’m so proud of you!” She didn’t sound as enthusiastic as she usually did.

“Riley, do you want me to read the letter?” he asked.

“Would you, please,” she said as she handed him the letter.

He unfolded it and started reading aloud, “Dear Ms. Matthews, Congratulations! Based on a review of your current academic credentials and personal achievements, I am pleased to inform you that you have been accepted for admission to the University of Texas at Austin Class of 2024. I also want to inform you that you have been chosen to receive a scholarship to help with your tuition and housing costs. The amount you will receive will be one half the cost of tuition and housing and that the scholarship is renewable as long as you maintain a grade point average of 2.5 or higher…”

“I got in? I really got in and they’ve offered me the same scholarship as you?” she asked, trying to reign in her excitement.

“Yes, and I’m so proud of you!” he couldn’t help but envelope her in a big hug.

“Lucas, I can’t believe we both got in! Are you as excited as I am?” she was jumping up and down with excitement.

“I am excited, can’t believe we both got offered scholarships,” he answered, now came the hard part, they had to decide. He just hoped she wanted the same thing as him. “It’s time for us to make our decision, though.

“I think I’ve already made my decision, what about you?” she asked him, offering up a silent prayer that they were on the same page.

“I know exactly where I want to go, Riley,” he told her, offering a smile. “I think we’re going to be Texas bound next fall.”

Riley looked up at him and saw the smile, “Please tell me you chose UT?”

“I choose UT, there never really was any other choice for me,” he watched as the smile lit up her face.

She was so excited, she could barely contain herself. She launched herself at Lucas and as usual, he caught her. They spent the next two hours deciding how to tell their friends and families.

They decided to call everyone together at the coffee house the next night, figuring they should break the news to Maya and Zay first. Riley was a bit more nervous about things than Lucas was. His family always thought he’d head back to Texas for college.  Hers, on the other hand, had always expected her to stay in or near the city.

“Lucas what if my parents freak? What if my dad doesn’t have to fake a heart attack? What if Maya and Zay never speak to us again?”

“Riley, calm down! You’re getting ahead of yourself, don’t you think? Yes, your parents will freak and will need some time to get used to the idea, but once they have all the facts and find out about the scholarship, they’ll learn to accept it. As for your dad having a heart attack, that’s not going to happen. He’ll be upset at first and think this is my idea, but he’s going to have to listen to us this time. You’re not a child anymore and he’ll have to accept your decision. As for Zay and Maya, they haven’t talked about our college plans all year. We aren’t even sure what they want to do. It’s all going to be okay, Riley.” Lucas had his own worries but did the best he could to calm her fears.

“I hope your right. I’m going to text Maya and ask her to come over in the morning so we can talk,” she said, pulling her phone from her pocket.

“It’s also time for me to go back downstairs. Don’t want to get in trouble before we tell them our plans.” with that she stood on her tiptoes and placed a chaste kiss on his lips and gave him a hug.

“I love you, Riley,” Lucas said as he wrapped his arms around her.

“And I love you, Lucas.” She turned and headed for the door that would take her back down the stairs to her apartment. She gave him one last look before she opened the door and disappeared.

Lucas went back to the edge of the roof and took the ladder back down to the fire escapes that would take him to the street below. As soon as he hit the pavement he pulled his phone out and sent a message to Zay, asking him to come over in the morning, he got a reply before he could even put his phone back in his pocket. Zay said he would be there and asked what was going on, Lucas decided not to answer. He pocketed his phone and turned in the direction of his own apartment building a few blocks away.

Riley woke the next morning, her nerves were going to get the better of her today, she just knew it. She decided that she and Maya would go to the park to have their talk. Afterwards, she would send out a text asking her parents, and friends to meet her at Topanga’s.

Riley had just stepped out of the shower and gotten back to her room when she heard a knock at the bay window. She had forgotten to open the shades and unlock the window. When she raised the shade, there standing on the other side of the window was Maya. Riley waved at her friend and unlocked the window so she could come in.

“Good morning, Peaches!” Riley said with a big smile.

“What’s good about it, Riles, why did you need me here so early on a Saturday morning?” Maya asked because she wasn’t a morning person at all. She was making the effort today because Riley had asked her to.

“Maya it’s 10 a.m. Besides, I told you there was something we really needed to talk about,” Riley said with a hint of nervousness in her voice.

Maya had come in and fallen across Riley’s bed, she was curious about this little chat that Riley wanted to have. She had too had something she wanted to talk to Riley about.

“Okay, but after you have your say, there��s something I need to tell you,” Maya said while sitting up. “Is this a bay window conversation?”

“Yep, bay window, bay window right now,” Riley was already seated in her usual spot and pointed to the seat next to her for Maya to sit in.

Maya got up and took her spot in the bay window and looked at Riley with anticipation, “so what is it, Riles?”

Riley was wringing her hands and couldn’t look Maya in the eye, she really didn’t want to do this but knew she had to.

“This is pretty important news; Peaches and I don’t know how you will take it,” Riley said as she grabbed for Maya’s hand.

“Just say it, Riley,” Maya said, suddenly seeing the worried expression on her friend’s face.

“Well, something happened with Lucas last night and I’m not quite sure how you’ll react,” Riley told her.

Maya’s eyes got wide and a grin crossed her face. “Riley, something like this was bound to happen sooner or later, I mean you and Huckleberry have been together since freshman year and you are in love with him…”

Riley was blushing at what Maya was saying and had to stop the direction she was heading, “No! Not that Maya, no way! Lucas and I made a decision, about our future and it affects you and me.”

“Riles, nothing that happens between you and Lucas will affect us, remember we promised each other, thunder and lightning,” she said.

“Maya, it’s about college,” Riley was trying to look for a reaction from Maya but there wasn’t one.

“About that Riles, I have news of my own about college,” here we go Maya thought.

“Oh, what news?” Riley was worried.

“You first Riley, you’re the one that called me here this morning. You should go first.” Maya said.

“Well, I got accepted to the University of Texas at Austin and they’ve me offered me a scholarship for half off my tuition and all and I’ve decided to accept it. Lucas and I are going together, they’ve offered him the same deal,” Riley was looking for some sort of reaction from Maya, but the blonde was surprisingly calm.

“Wow, Riles, that’s just great, amazing even. It also makes what I’m about to say even easier, I’ve been accepted at Pennbrook in Philadelphia and I’ve decided to go,” Maya looked at her friend and thought for sure there would be tears shed, but all she was a happy smile.

“Maya, that’s wonderful, I’m so happy for you!” Riley was truly happy for Maya.

“Riley why were you so worried about telling me?” Maya asked.

“Because it was just always assumed that the two of us would end up at NYU together, or at least that was what I thought you assumed.” Riley could feel more of the weight she had been carrying around with her fall away.

“Riley that was when we were freshmen, one or both of us was bound to get different opportunities for college. I’m choosing Pennbrook because Josh is planning on going back to Philly after he graduates and I want to be close to him,” Maya said. They had never discussed her blossoming relationship with Josh, but she had a feeling Riley knew.

“I’m really happy about you and Josh too, even though neither one of you ever told me about going to Philly.” She looked up at Maya and saw the tears in her eyes.

“Riles, we won’t be together, I don’t know if I can handle it. I thought for sure you’d stay in New York and we wouldn’t be that far apart. But I’m happy that you’ll have Lucas,” Maya said as the tears started falling.

Riley took her friend in her arms, “I know, Maya. It will be hard, but remember me and you are forever!”

“Yes, we are! Hey, how did your parents take the news? I’m sure Lucas’ parents already expected him to go to Texas, did Matthews freak?” Maya asked as she wiped away the tears

“I haven’t told them yet, they don’t even know I applied to schools other than NYU and Pennbrook. I never applied to Pennbrook,” Riley said hanging her head.

“Riles, Matthews is going to freak! Can I please be there when you tell him?” Maya was going to enjoy this.

“Yea, you can be there, Lucas and I have asked everyone to meet us at Topanga’s tonight.” She answered.

Riley picked up her phone to see if she had a message from Lucas, there was nothing.

“Waiting on a message from Huckleberry?” Maya asked.

“Yea, he’s at his place having this same conversation with Zay, I hope it’s going as well as this one did.” Riley gave Maya one last hug. “I think my parents said something about pancakes for breakfast, want to join us?”

Lucas’ parents were out running errands by the time Zay arrived so they had the place to themselves, Zay had helped himself to a bowl of cereal and was just finishing up when he felt Lucas’ eyes on him. They were both sitting at the island in the kitchen.

“Thanks for the cereal, man. The bacon and eggs my mama fixed weren't nearly enough for me this morning.” Zay said, making small talk.

“You’re welcome. You know my mama only keeps that kind of cereal here for you, no one else will eat it,” Lucas answered.

“So, what is it you needed to talk to me about? It’s not anything about Riley, is it?” Zay asked.

“It has a bit to do with Riley, but nothing bad. I want to show you something.” Lucas said as he took out the letter he received from UT Austin.

“I have something I want to show you too,” Zay said as he too pulled something from his pocket.

“What’s that Zay?” Lucas asked him when he saw the letter.

“This came in the mail yesterday. What’s that in your hand?” Zay asked laying his own envelope on the counter.

Lucas did the same as Zay, only he pushed his letter toward Zay, “read it for yourself and see.”

Zay handed his letter over to Lucas, “you do the same then.”

Lucas turned the envelope over in his hands and he couldn’t help but smile as he saw where the letter was from. He removed the letter from the envelope as he watched Zay do the same. The two boys looked at each other and just smiled as they read each other’s letters.

Zay had been accepted to UT Austin. Just like him and Riley, “Zay, I thought you were only applying to NYU?” Lucas asked.

“That was the plan, but I only applied to UT Austin to see if I had a shot, the offer of a scholarship just sealed the deal. Can’t turn that down. Are you going to accept and go back to Texas to college or are you staying here?” Zay knew Lucas what Lucas wanted to do but thought he might stay in New York for Riley.

“I’m going to Texas. Riley will be there with us, man, she got in too.” Lucas told him.

Zay couldn’t believe what he was hearing, there was no way, Mr. Matthews was going to let Riley leave the state with Lucas.

“Mr. and Mrs. Matthews are okay with this? Is Maya okay with this?” Zay asked, thinking a huge meltdown would be coming from the blonde.

At that moment, Lucas felt his phone vibrate in the pocket of his hoodie, he took it out and saw that he had a message from Riley.

Just found out Maya is going to Pennbrook for college. She’s happy for me and I’m happy for her. Sad that we’ll be apart, but it’s all going to work out fine. How is Zay taking the news?

Lucas read the message to Zay, “Hey, is it okay if I take a picture of your letter and send it to Riley? She’ll be so happy!”

“Yea, go ahead. Tell her I’ll be at the café tonight for moral support and of course to see her dad freak out.” Zay was smiling at the thought.

Lucas took a picture of Zay’s letter and sent it to Riley with the message:

Look what he got in the mail yesterday, looks like it’ll be the 3 of us together in Texas! Tell Maya that we said congrats about Pennbrook and Zay is looking forward to seeing a Cory Matthews freak out! See you at the café tonight, Love you!

Riley was a nervous wreck the whole afternoon. She couldn’t figure out why her parents weren’t curious as to why she asked them to meet her at the café later.  They probably just think she wants to spend some time with them because she’s been so busy lately. They had been out with Auggie since breakfast and she had to stay behind to finish up some homework. They were going to drop her brother off at his friend Doy’s for a sleepover then go to dinner then meet her at the café.

She was just finishing her book for English class when she heard a knock at the window. She put the book down on the bed and went to open the window. It was Lucas and he held up a bag from their favorite deli, with the offering of food, she had to let him in.

“Hi!” He said with a smile, he bent to give her a quick kiss. “Did you finish the book?”

“Yes, I always enjoy a good book. Please tell me you have a huge turkey sandwich in that bag for me?” she had missed lunch and was starving.

“You don’t think I’d let my best girl starve, do you? Of course, I brought you your favorite and come cheesecake,” he held the bag open so she could smell the contents.

“Have I told you lately what an amazing boyfriend you are and how much I love you?” she said before she kissed his cheek.

“You have, but it’s always nice to hear,” he gave her a quick hug and took her hand to pull her along with him to the kitchen.

They sat at their usual places on the bench and laid out all the food. Riley got a couple of bottles of water from the fridge. While they were eating they made small talk about their classes and preparing for graduation. It didn’t bother Riley to talk about it now that she knew where she would be attending.

“So, how did Zay take the news about me getting into UT Austin? I bet he was surprised,” she asked.

“He’s happy for you and happy that the three of us are going to get to experience it together,” he answered between bites of his sandwich.

“Me too, I know I’m going to miss Maya, Farkle, and Isadora but, I’m ready for this,” she said.

“How are you feeling about telling your parents our plans?” He figured she was a wreck.

“I’m not sure. I’ve been a bit of a wreck this afternoon, but now with you here I’m feeling much more confident. Your parents are coming, right?” she was hoping maybe with his parents there, her dad wouldn’t freak, but he probably would.

“Yep, they’ll be there. They asked me why I wanted them there and all I said was that we wanted to spend some time with them. My dad is all about the chocolate cake though.” Lucas said with a smile.

“How about we watch a movie after we eat? It’ll be time to go to the café when it’s over. I just need to relax for a bit.” Riley suggested.

“Whatever you want to do I’m in,” Lucas agreed.

Riley had enjoyed the movie with Lucas, it was so rare that they got to have a few hours alone. It always felt like her dad had someone watching them.

Once the movie was over, they got ready to head to Topanga’s. Riley could feel her nerves returning as she went to her room to get the college letters from her desk drawers. Before she rejoined Lucas, she sent up a silent prayer that her parents would understand. This was her future and she was going to do what she wanted with it.

She put the letters in her purse and grabbed her sweater. She rejoined Lucas in the living room and took the hand he offered, he gave her a reassuring smile.

“You got this, Riley. I know you're nervous, but they will understand,” Lucas said in a calming voice.

“Well whatever happens, please don’t leave my side. I need you for all the moral support I can get,” she said trying to reign in her nerves.

Maya, Zay, Farkle, and Smackle were already at the café, waiting to see what was going to happen. Of course, Maya and Zay knew. They hadn’t said anything to the genius’ yet.

Maya smiled when she saw Josh walk through the door with Shawn. Yea she had her parents come so she could tell them her plans for college. She watched as Josh headed her way and Shawn made his way to the counter to talk to her mom.

Riley and Lucas made the short walk to the café and claimed their usual seats on the orange chairs. They looked around for their parents but they weren’t there yet. Riley spotted the gang sitting in a booth so they headed over to them.

Once they got to the counter Riley was stopped by her Uncle Shawn, “Hey kiddo, how are you?” he said as he hugged her.

“Hi, Uncle Shawn, what are you doing here?” Riley asked.

“I honestly don’t know. Maya asked me here, I was hoping you would know,” he said.

“I know why Lucas and I are here, we’re meeting our parents, I’m not sure why Maya would have asked you here,” she told him.

“Okay, I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Shawn was really puzzled.

Riley left Shawn and headed over to join Lucas and her friends. “Maya, did you invite your dad here so he could watch my dad have a freakout?” Riley asked.

“No, yea, well sort of. I had asked him here so I could tell him and mom my college news and thought maybe we might need him for after you tell your parents, your plans,” Maya said with a smirk.

“That may be the best idea you’ve ever had Peaches if anyone can get through to my dad it would be Uncle Shawn,” Riley told her.

“Looks like we’ll find out soon enough, Riles, they’re here,” she said pointing in the direction of Cory and Topanga. They walked in the café with Lucas’s parents, James and Kelly.

Topanga scanned the crowd and saw Shawn before she saw the kids. She and Cory went to say hello to their friends and James and Kelly found seats on the bench next to the orange couches.

“Looks like it’s time, Riley. You ready for this?” Lucas asked as he took her hand.

“Now or never, I guess,” she answered.

“Riley, do you mind if Maya and I tag along? Maybe it’ll help,” Josh asked his niece.

Riley gave him a smile before answering, “Yea, thanks, Uncle Josh.”

Farkle and Smackle realizing they were not in on whatever was happening looked at each other. Smackle was the first to speak.

“Riley, what’s going on? Is everything okay?” she asked.

“What Isadora said, Riley what’s up?” Farkle asked, as well.

“Sorry I haven’t said anything to the two of you, I made a decision about college and I’m getting ready to tell my parents,” she explained.

Lucas leaned over and whispered something to Farkle and he then whispered to Smackle. Both geniuses couldn’t help but smile.

“Riley, you have our full support,” Smackle said.

Zay was not about to be left out, “I’m just here for Mr. Matthews reaction…and moral support!”

Riley stood up straight and put a big smile on her face, “Well, Lucas, let’s do this.”

They walked past her parents and reclaimed their seats on the orange chairs with Maya, Josh, Zay Farkle and Smackle standing behind them.

Cory and Topanga noticed the group of kids and decided they better take their seats. They were surprised to see all the kids there. They were only expecting Riley and Lucas as they had walked in with his parents.

Topanga took a seat next to Cory on the bench farthest from the door. Cory curious about what was going on decided that someone needed to speak.

“Hi honey, is everything okay? What is everyone doing here? I thought it would just be us here with you and Lucas. We met James and Kelly outside and they said they had been asked to meet Lucas here, we thought we were here for dessert,” Cory said.

“Everyone can get dessert if they want. The café is empty and it’s closing time,” Riley suggested nervously.

James Friar could see that they weren’t just here for Topanga’s chocolate cake and looked at his son and asked, “Luke, what’s going on, why did you ask me and your mama here?”

“Dad, everything is fine, just get a piece of cake and relax, Mom do you want some cake?” Lucas asked.

“Sure, thanks, Luke,” Kelly Friar answered.

Topanga watched as Katy and Maya got everyone some cake. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she was sure whatever it was would be something that she wasn’t going to like.

Once everyone had their cake and had found a seat or place to stand, Riley, started to speak, “I want to thank you all for coming tonight, I have something I want to share with all of you and even though some of you may not be happy about it, I am and my mind is set.”

“Riley, honey, what is this about?” Topanga asked her daughter.

“Mom, please just listen to what I have to say before you say anything, please,” Riley said.

“Okay, I won’t interrupt, go ahead,” Topanga had a bad feeling.

Riley thanked her mother and grabbed Lucas’ hand, she needed to know he was there with her.

“As most high school seniors do, my friends and I have applied to colleges and right now we are just waiting for those letters that will tell us if we’ve been accepted or not. My dad has been asking me for a couple of weeks now if I’ve heard anything and I’ve been telling him no and that’s not the truth.” Riley looked at her father and could see a disappointed look on his face.

“I wanted to get all of my letters before I said anything to anybody, Lucas was the only one that knew and he was doing the same thing,” she looked at Lucas who smiled at her and then looked at his own parents.

“Luke, is this true? I’ve been asking you about those letters for weeks now,” his mother said very clearly disappointed.

“I know Mama and I’m sorry, but this was something Riley and I wanted to do together,” Lucas couldn’t look his mother in the eye.

“So, you have gotten the letters?” James Friar asked.

“Yes, Dad. They’re right here,” he said as he pulled the letters out of his jacket pocket.

“Riley, where are your letters?” Cory asked.

She pulled the five letters from her purse and held them up for her father to see. Before she knew what was happening her mother reached over and took the letters from her hand.

“Mom, what are you doing?” Riley asked, surprised her mother did that.

“I want to know if you got into all three of your top schools,” Topanga told her as she looked through the envelopes, quickly noticing there wasn’t’ a letter from Pennbrook or Columbia.

“Mom, can I please have those?” Riley was on the verge of tears.

“Calm down Riley, I just want to…Riley why is there no letter from Pennbrook or Columbia? I see ones from schools we’ve never talked about before,” Topanga was clearly upset.

“Mom, this isn’t how I wanted to tell you about this,” Riley got up from her and seat and sat between her parents on the bench.

“Riley, what did you do? Her father asked.

“Can I please finish what I was going to say?” she asked, ignoring her father’s question.

“Of course, Riley, go ahead.” her father was surprisingly calm.

Riley was just about to speak, but Lucas beat her to it, “Look, Riley and I made some plans for our futures. We are the ones that will be attending whatever schools are chosen, for the next four years. This is our decision and we can’t let our parents make it for us. But for the record, Riley and I have decided to attend college together. We don’t want to be apart for even a little while.”

“Riley is this true?” Cory asked Riley.

Still unable to look her father in the eye, she nodded her head yes.

The atmosphere in the cafe had changed and everything was too quiet.

“Lucas, your mother and I would like to have a word with you, Topanga is it alright if we use the kitchen?” James asked her

Topanga heard the question, but the only answer she gave was a nod of her head.

Lucas followed his parents to the kitchen, but not before giving Riley a smile of encouragement.

Topanga waited until Lucas and his parents were out of the room and looked at Riley, “I think we need to have a more private conversation as well, Cory?”

“Of course, Topanga. Riley, you heard your mother,” Cory said.

Like the well-behaved child that she is, Riley followed her mother out of the room and back to the office with her father following behind her. She suddenly felt like she was 8 instead of 18.

Once inside the office Topanga sat in her chair behind the desk and pointed to a chair for Riley to sit in, leaving Cory to sit on some milk crates stacked up against the office wall.

Riley sat and waited patiently for her mother to say something. That’s usually how things went when she was in trouble, her mother always spoke first. But as she sat there the only thing she could hear were papers rustling. Riley looked up and saw that her mother had taken all the letters out of their envelopes.

Reading each one and then passing them to Cory. After they finished, her dad just held her mother’s gaze for what felt like hours, when it was only a couple of minutes. Topanga cleared her throat signaling that she was ready to speak.

Riley raised her head and wasn’t expecting the look on her mother’s face. It was a look of pride and her mother had tears in her eyes.

“Mom?” Riley said, barely above a whisper. Her mother just looked at her and smiled.

“Riley, I’m sorry I grabbed these letters out of your hand, I was just so excited to see them. Why didn’t you apply to Columbia and Pennbrook like we originally discussed? They’ve always been on your list of schools,” Topanga was trying to hold it together.

Riley didn’t want to be mean, but what she said was true, “Mom those are the schools you’ve always thought I wanted to go to. I applied to NYU and was accepted, but I found some schools that I think are a better fit for me. I don’t want to stay in the city for college.”

Topanga picked up the letters and said, “So what, UC Davis, Colorado State, A&M and UT Austin are a better fit for you?”

“Not all of them, no. One more so than the others and they even offered me a scholarship,” Riley answered.

“Was this Lucas’ idea, Riley?” Cory asked.

“No, it was a decision we made together. He got the same offer from UT Austin as me, so did Zay. This is something I want to do, Dad.” Riley answered.

“This isn’t like you, not to talk to us about these things. We expected you to go to school here and you let me go on and on last night about how glad I was that you weren’t going away for school. I don’t know what to think right now,” Topanga was crying.

Riley walked over to where her mother stood and hugged her, “I’m sorry mom, I shouldn’t have done that, I just want you guys to be proud of me, I’ve always done what everyone else has wanted me to do, I put everyone ahead of myself, for once, I’m putting me first, is that so wrong.”

Cory watched the mother and daughter embrace and got a little misty-eyed himself, when did Riley grow up? He was unbelievably proud of her but wasn’t ready to let go.

“You have to put yourself first sometimes and I’m proud of you for doing that, Riley. You should live your life on your own terms and it’s up to the rest of us to accept it. I’m very proud of you for getting accepted to four out of the five schools. UC Davis is a terrible school for not accepting you,” Topanga said through the tears.

“Thanks, Mom. You know if you want me to, I will go to NYU, Lucas will be alright without me,” Riley couldn’t believe the words coming out of her mouth.

Topanga looked at her daughter, “Riley don’t stay here just because you think that’s what your father and I want. You know, when I was trying to decide whether to go to Yale or not, I went to Mr. Feeny for advice and he told me that unless I have a very good reason for not going to Yale, I should go. I had a very good reason for not going.”

“Dad?” Riley asked.

“Yes, that and I wanted to be with all of my friends. So, Riley, unless you have a very good reason not to go you should go to Texas,” Topanga told her daughter.

“Dad?” she looked to Cory.

“Riley, I won’t lie, we’ll miss you like crazy, but you need to follow your heart,” Cory answered.

“I think my mind is made up, there are a lot of really great reasons to stay, and a lot of new and exciting reasons to go. I’ll miss the two of you and Auggie like crazy, but I want to do this,” Riley said hugging them both.

“Then, it’s settled, you will be going to Texas with Lucas and Zay in the fall,” her father said.

“I think we better get back out there and check on things, hopefully, everyone is still here,” Riley was ready to share the news.

Lucas was relieved that all his parents wanted was to read over his letters. They were extremely proud of him for being accepted to A&M but also understood that the scholarship to UT Austin was hard to pass up. Lucas and his parents had walked out of the kitchen and he noticed that Riley and her parents were still talking. He walked over to Maya to see if she knew anything.

“Maya, is Riley still in the office with her parents?” he asked the blonde.

“Yes, Lucas and it’s all your fault! You just had to go put all of these ideas of Texas into her head,” Maya knew she was being ridiculous, but she had to give Lucas some sort of trouble.

“Maya, that’s not it at all. This is something we talked over and thought long and hard about,  we didn’t make the decision lightly,” he didn’t know why he was trying to reason with her.

Maya was about to say something else but was saw Riley before she could.

Riley walked over to Lucas and asked, “Is everything okay with you and your parents?”

Lucas nodded his head, “Yes, what about you and your’s?”

“Everything is fine. Let’s make this announcement.” Riley told him.

“I’m pretty sure everyone has a probably figured out what’s going on, Riley,” he said as he took her hand.

Riley made her announcement and got a round of applause from everyone present. Surprisingly there was no Cory Matthews freak out or fake heart attacks.

Maya told her parents about being accepted to Pennbrook, her mother cried and Shawn beamed with pride at the fact his daughter was going to attend his alma mater. Of course, once Josh told them about his plans to return to Philly after his graduation, Shawn did his own freakout, that Riley would love to see again someday.

Riley and Lucas decided to head up to the roof before he had to head home for the night. They stood close to the edge of the roof, Riley leaning against Lucas as he stood behind her with his arms wrapped around her waist. The starts were a little brighter tonight than they usually were.

“Are you happy Riley?” Lucas whispered against her ear.

“I am, what about you?” she asked.

“I’m happy knowing that we’ll be together for the next four years,” Lucas answered.

“I’m glad my parents didn’t fight me on it, they were really understanding. My mom told me that unless I had a really good reason to stay, that I should go. I have lots of reasons to stay, buy being with you was the best reason of all to go,” She turned in his arms and put her arms around his neck.

“I’m glad that our parents have accepted that this is what we want. It feels like the next chapter of our lives is about to start and I know that facing it with you is the right thing,” he told her.

“Good, cause you’re stuck with me. This is just the start and the only thing I know for sure is that with you by my side it’s going to be an amazing ride.” Riley stood on her tiptoes and closed the distance between them with a kiss.

She slept good that night knowing that her parents accepted her plans and that her and her friends were all on the right paths for the future.  

[easyfoodnetwork]

Fast-Food Buffets Are a Thing of the Past. Some Doubt They Ever Even Existed.

A McDonald’s breakfast buffet. An all-you-can-eat Taco Bell. This isn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but a real yet short-lived phenomenon.

When we think of buffets, we tend to think of their 1980s and early ’90s heyday, when commercial jingles for Sizzler might have been confused with our national anthem. We think of Homer Simpson getting dragged out of the Frying Dutchman, “a beast more stomach than man.” I think of my parents going on buffet benders resembling something out of Hunter S. Thompson’s life, determined to get their money’s worth with two picky kids.

What we don’t typically think about, however, is the fast-food buffet, a blip so small on America’s food radar that it’s hard to prove it even existed. But it did. People swear that all-you-can-eat buffets could be found at Taco Bell, KFC, and even under the golden arches of McDonald’s.

That it could have existed isn’t surprising. The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake. It was the physical manifestation of the American id: endless biscuits, popcorn chicken, vats of nacho cheese and sketchy pudding — so much sketchy pudding. Why, then, have so many of us failed to remember it? How did it become a footnote, relegated to the backwoods of myths and legends? There are whispers of McDonald’s locations that have breakfast buffets. Was there, in fact, a Taco Bell buffet, or is it a figment of our collective imaginations? Yes, someone tells me — an all-you-can-eat Taco Bell existed in her dorm cafeteria. Another person suggests maybe we were just remembering the nachos section of the Wendy’s Superbar.

The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake.

The fast-food buffet lives in a strange sort of ether. You can’t get to it through the traditional path of remembering. Was there actually a Pizza Hut buffet in your hometown? Search your subconscious, sifting past the red cups that make the soda taste better, past the spiffy new CD jukebox, which has Garth Brooks’s Ropin’ the Wind and Paul McCartney’s All the Best under the neon lamps. Search deeper, and you might find your father going up for a third plate and something remaining of the “dessert pizzas” lodged in your subconscious. This is where the fast-food buffet exists.

The history of the buffet in America is a story of ingenuity and evolution. Sure, it originated in Europe, where it was a classy affair with artfully arranged salted fish, eggs, breads, and butter. The Swedish dazzled us with their smorgasbords at the 1939 World Fair. We can then trace the evolution of the buffet through Las Vegas, where the one-dollar Buckaroo Buffet kept gamblers in the casino. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese immigrant families found loopholes in racist immigration laws by establishing restaurants. They brought Chinese cooking catered to American tastes in endless plates of beef chow fun and egg rolls. By the 1980s, buffets ruled the landscape like family dynasties, with sister chains the Ponderosa and the Bonanza spreading the gospel of sneeze guards and steaks, sundae stations and salad bars along the interstates. From Shoney’s to Sizzler, from sea to shining sea, the buffet was a feast fit for kings, or a family of four.

And of course, fast-food restaurants wanted in on the action. As fast-food historian and author of Drive-Thru Dreams Adam Chandler put it, “every fast food place flirted with buffets at some point or another. McDonald’s absolutely did, as did most of the pizza chains with dine-in service. KFC still has a few stray buffets, as well as an illicit one called Claudia Sanders Dinner House, which was opened by Colonel Sanders’ wife after he was forbidden from opening a competing fried chicken business after selling the company. Wendy’s Super Bar was short-lived, but the salad bar lived on for decades.”

How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.

In a 1988 commercial for the Superbar, Dave Thomas says, “I’m an old-fashioned guy. I like it when families eat together.” A Wendy’s executive described the new business model as “taking us out of the fast-food business.” Everyone agrees the Wendy’s Supernar was glorious. And gross, everyone also agrees. How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.

���I kind of want to live in a ’90s Wendy’s,” Amy Barnes, a Tennessee-based writer, tells me in between preparing for virtual learning with her teenagers. The Superbar sat in the lobby, with stations lined up like train carts. First, there was the Garden Spot, which “no one cared about,” a traditional salad bar with a tub of chocolate pudding at its helm, “which always had streams of salad dressing and shredded cheese floating on top.” Next up was the Pasta Pasta section, with “noodles, alfredo and tomato sauce…[as well as] garlic bread made from the repurposed hamburger buns with butter and garlic smeared on them.” Obviously, the crown jewel of the Superbar was the Mexican Fiesta, with its “vats of ground beef, nacho cheese, sour cream.” The Fiesta shared custody of additional toppings with the salad bar. It was $2.99 for the dining experience.

Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet.

The marriage of Wendy’s and the Superbar lasted about a decade before it was phased out in all locations by 1998. Like a jilted ex-lover, the official Wendy’s Story on the website makes zero mention of Superbar, despite the countless blogs, YouTube videos, and podcasts devoted to remembering it. At least they kept the salad bar together until the mid-2000s for the sake of the children.

Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet. Googling the existence of such a thing only returns results of people questioning the existence of this McMuffin Mecca on subforums and Reddit. Somebody knows somebody who passed one once on the highway. A stray Yelp review of the Kiss My Grits food truck in Seattle offers a lead: “I have to say, I recall the first time I ever saw grits, they were at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet in Alexandria, Virginia, and they looked as unappetizing as could be.” However, the lead is dead on arrival. Further googling of the McDonald’s buffet with terrible grits in Alexandria turns up nothing.

I ask friends on Facebook. I ask Twitter. I get a lone response. Eden Robins messages me “It was in Decatur, IL,” as though she’s describing the site where aliens abducted her. “I’m a little relieved that I didn’t imagine the breakfast buffet since no one ever knows what the fuck I’m talking about when I bring it up.”

“We had traveled down there for a high school drama competition,” she goes on to say. “And one morning before the competition, we ate at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet. I had never seen anything like it before or since.”

I ask what was in the buffet, although I know the details alone will not sustain me. I want video to pore over so I can pause at specific frames, like a fast-food version of the Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot footage. Robins says they served “scrambled eggs and pancakes and those hash brown tiles. I was a vegetarian at the time so no sausage or bacon, but those were there, too.”

McDonald’s isn’t the only chain with a buffet whose existence is hazy. Yum Brands, the overlord of fast-food holy trinity Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut, is said to have had buffets at all three restaurants. I confirm nothing, however, when I reach out to the corporate authorities. On the KFC side, a spokesperson offers to look into “some historical information,” but doesn’t get back to me. My contact at Taco Bell tells me, “I’ll look into it. Certainly, nothing in existence today. I’ve never heard of it. Looks like there are a couple threads on Reddit.”

Reddit, of course, speculates a possible Mandela Effect — the phenomenon of a group of unrelated people remembering a different event than what actually occurred — in the existence of Taco Bell buffets. But I have a firmer lead in Payel Patel, a doctor who studied at Johns Hopkins, who tells me there was a Taco Bell Express in her dorm that was included in an all-you-can-eat meal plan option, though it only lasted one fleeting year. “You could order anything, like 15 nachos and 11 bean burritos,” she says, “and they would make it and give it to you, and you walked off without paying a cent.” A Johns Hopkins student newsletter published in 2001 corroborates the existence of the utopian all-you-can-eat Taco Bell, saying, “you can also gorge yourself on some good old Taco Bell tacos and burritos. Don’t forget, it’s all-you-can-eat. Just don’t eat too much; you don’t want to overload the John.”

There are some concrete examples of fast-food buffets that still exist today. When a Krystal Buffet opened in Alabama in 2019, it was met with “excitement and disbelief,” according to the press release. Former New Orleans resident Wilson Koewing told me of a Popeye’s buffet that locals “speak of as if it is a myth.” When I dig deeper, I come across a local paper, NOLA Weekend, which covers “New Orleans Food, things to do, culture, and lifestyle.” It touts the Popeye’s buffet like a carnival barker, as though it is simply too incredible to believe: “The Only Popeye’s Buffet in the World! It’s right next door in Lafayette! Yes, that’s right: a Popeyes buffet. HERE.”

Somehow, the KFC buffet is the most enduring of the fast-food buffets still in existence. And yet everyone I speak with feels compelled to walk me through the paths and roads leading to such an oasis, as if, again, it were the stuff of legends. There are landmarks and there are mirages, and the mirages need maps most of all.

To get to the KFC buffet in Key Largo, Tiffany Aleman must first take us through “a small island town with one traffic light and one major highway that runs through it. There are the seafood buffets and bait shops, which give way to newfangled Starbucks.”

The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.

New Jerseyan D.F. Jester leads us past the local seafood place “that looks like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship has been transported 50 miles inland and plunked inside the dining area of a 1980s Ramada outside of Newark.”

Descriptions of the food are about what I would expect of a KFC buffet. Laura Camerer remembers the food in her college town in Morehead, Kentucky, as “all fried solid as rocks sitting under heat lamps, kind of gray and gristly.” Jester adds, “for all intents and purposes, this is a KFC. It looks like one, but sadder, more clinical. The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.”

Then Jessie Lovett Allen messages me. “There is [a] KFC in my hometown, and it is magical without a hint of sketch.” I must know more. First, she takes me down the winding path: “the closest larger city is Kearney, which is 100 miles away and only has 35K people, and Kearney is where you’ll find the closest Target, Panera, or Taco Bell. But to the North, South, or West, you have to drive hundreds of miles before you find a larger city. I tell you all of this because the extreme isolation is what gives our restaurants, even fast-food ones, an outsized psychological importance to daily life.”

The KFC Jessie mentions is in North Platte, Nebraska, and has nearly five stars on Yelp, an accomplishment worthy of a monument for any fast-food restaurant. On the non-corporate Facebook page for KFC North Platte, one of the hundreds of followers of the page comments, “BEST KFC IN THE COUNTRY.”

Allen describes the place as though she is recounting a corner of heaven. “They have fried apple pies that seem to come through a wormhole from a 1987 McDonalds. Pudding: Hot. Good. Layered cold pudding desserts. This one rotates. It might be chocolate, banana, cookies and cream. It has a graham cracker base, pudding, and whipped topping. Standard Cold Salad bar: Lettuce, salad veggies, macaroni salads, JELL-O salads. Other meats: chicken fried steak patties. Fried chicken gizzards. White Gravy, Chicken Noodle Casserole, Green Bean Casserole, Cornbread, Corn on the Cob, Chicken Pot Pie Casserole. AND most all the standard stuff on the normal KFC menu, which is nice because you can pick out a variety of chicken types or just have a few tablespoons of a side dish.”

In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed.

Then she adds that the buffet “is also available TO GO, but there are rules. You get a large Styrofoam clamshell, a small Styrofoam clamshell, and a cup. You have to be able to close the Styrofoam. You are instructed that only beverages can go in cups, and when I asked about this, an employee tells me that customers have tried to shove chicken into the drink cups in the past.”

In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed. The chains folded. The senior citizens keeping Ponderosa in business have died. My own parents reversed course after their buffet bender, trading in sundae stations for cans of SlimFast. Fast-food buffets retreated into an ethereal space. McDonald’s grew up with adult sandwiches like the Arch Deluxe. Wendy’s went on a wild rebound with the Baconator. Pizza Hut ripped out its jukeboxes, changed its logo, went off to the fast-food wars, and ain’t been the same since. Taco Bell is undergoing some kind of midlife crisis, hemorrhaging its entire menu of potatoes, among other beloved items. At least the KFC in North Platte has done good, though the novel coronavirus could change things.

In the age of COVID-19, the fast-food buffet feels like more of a dream than ever. How positively whimsical it would be to stand shoulder to shoulder, hovering over sneeze guards, sharing soup ladles to scoop an odd assortment of pudding, three grapes, a heap of rotini pasta, and a drumstick onto a plate. Maybe we can reach this place again. But to find it, we must follow the landmarks, searching our memory as the map.

MM Carrigan is a Baltimore-area writer and weirdo who enjoys staring directly into the sun. Their work has appeared in Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and PopMatters. They are the editor of Taco Bell Quarterly. Tweets @thesurfingpizza.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/33e4Z8k https://ift.tt/30jEUmf

A McDonald’s breakfast buffet. An all-you-can-eat Taco Bell. This isn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but a real yet short-lived phenomenon.

When we think of buffets, we tend to think of their 1980s and early ’90s heyday, when commercial jingles for Sizzler might have been confused with our national anthem. We think of Homer Simpson getting dragged out of the Frying Dutchman, “a beast more stomach than man.” I think of my parents going on buffet benders resembling something out of Hunter S. Thompson’s life, determined to get their money’s worth with two picky kids.

What we don’t typically think about, however, is the fast-food buffet, a blip so small on America’s food radar that it’s hard to prove it even existed. But it did. People swear that all-you-can-eat buffets could be found at Taco Bell, KFC, and even under the golden arches of McDonald’s.

That it could have existed isn’t surprising. The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake. It was the physical manifestation of the American id: endless biscuits, popcorn chicken, vats of nacho cheese and sketchy pudding — so much sketchy pudding. Why, then, have so many of us failed to remember it? How did it become a footnote, relegated to the backwoods of myths and legends? There are whispers of McDonald’s locations that have breakfast buffets. Was there, in fact, a Taco Bell buffet, or is it a figment of our collective imaginations? Yes, someone tells me — an all-you-can-eat Taco Bell existed in her dorm cafeteria. Another person suggests maybe we were just remembering the nachos section of the Wendy’s Superbar.

The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake.

The fast-food buffet lives in a strange sort of ether. You can’t get to it through the traditional path of remembering. Was there actually a Pizza Hut buffet in your hometown? Search your subconscious, sifting past the red cups that make the soda taste better, past the spiffy new CD jukebox, which has Garth Brooks’s Ropin’ the Wind and Paul McCartney’s All the Best under the neon lamps. Search deeper, and you might find your father going up for a third plate and something remaining of the “dessert pizzas” lodged in your subconscious. This is where the fast-food buffet exists.

The history of the buffet in America is a story of ingenuity and evolution. Sure, it originated in Europe, where it was a classy affair with artfully arranged salted fish, eggs, breads, and butter. The Swedish dazzled us with their smorgasbords at the 1939 World Fair. We can then trace the evolution of the buffet through Las Vegas, where the one-dollar Buckaroo Buffet kept gamblers in the casino. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese immigrant families found loopholes in racist immigration laws by establishing restaurants. They brought Chinese cooking catered to American tastes in endless plates of beef chow fun and egg rolls. By the 1980s, buffets ruled the landscape like family dynasties, with sister chains the Ponderosa and the Bonanza spreading the gospel of sneeze guards and steaks, sundae stations and salad bars along the interstates. From Shoney’s to Sizzler, from sea to shining sea, the buffet was a feast fit for kings, or a family of four.

And of course, fast-food restaurants wanted in on the action. As fast-food historian and author of Drive-Thru Dreams Adam Chandler put it, “every fast food place flirted with buffets at some point or another. McDonald’s absolutely did, as did most of the pizza chains with dine-in service. KFC still has a few stray buffets, as well as an illicit one called Claudia Sanders Dinner House, which was opened by Colonel Sanders’ wife after he was forbidden from opening a competing fried chicken business after selling the company. Wendy’s Super Bar was short-lived, but the salad bar lived on for decades.”

How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.

In a 1988 commercial for the Superbar, Dave Thomas says, “I’m an old-fashioned guy. I like it when families eat together.” A Wendy’s executive described the new business model as “taking us out of the fast-food business.” Everyone agrees the Wendy’s Supernar was glorious. And gross, everyone also agrees. How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce.

“I kind of want to live in a ’90s Wendy’s,” Amy Barnes, a Tennessee-based writer, tells me in between preparing for virtual learning with her teenagers. The Superbar sat in the lobby, with stations lined up like train carts. First, there was the Garden Spot, which “no one cared about,” a traditional salad bar with a tub of chocolate pudding at its helm, “which always had streams of salad dressing and shredded cheese floating on top.” Next up was the Pasta Pasta section, with “noodles, alfredo and tomato sauce…[as well as] garlic bread made from the repurposed hamburger buns with butter and garlic smeared on them.” Obviously, the crown jewel of the Superbar was the Mexican Fiesta, with its “vats of ground beef, nacho cheese, sour cream.” The Fiesta shared custody of additional toppings with the salad bar. It was $2.99 for the dining experience.

Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet.

The marriage of Wendy’s and the Superbar lasted about a decade before it was phased out in all locations by 1998. Like a jilted ex-lover, the official Wendy’s Story on the website makes zero mention of Superbar, despite the countless blogs, YouTube videos, and podcasts devoted to remembering it. At least they kept the salad bar together until the mid-2000s for the sake of the children.

Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet. Googling the existence of such a thing only returns results of people questioning the existence of this McMuffin Mecca on subforums and Reddit. Somebody knows somebody who passed one once on the highway. A stray Yelp review of the Kiss My Grits food truck in Seattle offers a lead: “I have to say, I recall the first time I ever saw grits, they were at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet in Alexandria, Virginia, and they looked as unappetizing as could be.” However, the lead is dead on arrival. Further googling of the McDonald’s buffet with terrible grits in Alexandria turns up nothing.

I ask friends on Facebook. I ask Twitter. I get a lone response. Eden Robins messages me “It was in Decatur, IL,” as though she’s describing the site where aliens abducted her. “I’m a little relieved that I didn’t imagine the breakfast buffet since no one ever knows what the fuck I’m talking about when I bring it up.”

“We had traveled down there for a high school drama competition,” she goes on to say. “And one morning before the competition, we ate at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet. I had never seen anything like it before or since.”

I ask what was in the buffet, although I know the details alone will not sustain me. I want video to pore over so I can pause at specific frames, like a fast-food version of the Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot footage. Robins says they served “scrambled eggs and pancakes and those hash brown tiles. I was a vegetarian at the time so no sausage or bacon, but those were there, too.”

McDonald’s isn’t the only chain with a buffet whose existence is hazy. Yum Brands, the overlord of fast-food holy trinity Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut, is said to have had buffets at all three restaurants. I confirm nothing, however, when I reach out to the corporate authorities. On the KFC side, a spokesperson offers to look into “some historical information,” but doesn’t get back to me. My contact at Taco Bell tells me, “I’ll look into it. Certainly, nothing in existence today. I’ve never heard of it. Looks like there are a couple threads on Reddit.”

Reddit, of course, speculates a possible Mandela Effect — the phenomenon of a group of unrelated people remembering a different event than what actually occurred — in the existence of Taco Bell buffets. But I have a firmer lead in Payel Patel, a doctor who studied at Johns Hopkins, who tells me there was a Taco Bell Express in her dorm that was included in an all-you-can-eat meal plan option, though it only lasted one fleeting year. “You could order anything, like 15 nachos and 11 bean burritos,” she says, “and they would make it and give it to you, and you walked off without paying a cent.” A Johns Hopkins student newsletter published in 2001 corroborates the existence of the utopian all-you-can-eat Taco Bell, saying, “you can also gorge yourself on some good old Taco Bell tacos and burritos. Don’t forget, it’s all-you-can-eat. Just don’t eat too much; you don’t want to overload the John.”

There are some concrete examples of fast-food buffets that still exist today. When a Krystal Buffet opened in Alabama in 2019, it was met with “excitement and disbelief,” according to the press release. Former New Orleans resident Wilson Koewing told me of a Popeye’s buffet that locals “speak of as if it is a myth.” When I dig deeper, I come across a local paper, NOLA Weekend, which covers “New Orleans Food, things to do, culture, and lifestyle.” It touts the Popeye’s buffet like a carnival barker, as though it is simply too incredible to believe: “The Only Popeye’s Buffet in the World! It’s right next door in Lafayette! Yes, that’s right: a Popeyes buffet. HERE.”

Somehow, the KFC buffet is the most enduring of the fast-food buffets still in existence. And yet everyone I speak with feels compelled to walk me through the paths and roads leading to such an oasis, as if, again, it were the stuff of legends. There are landmarks and there are mirages, and the mirages need maps most of all.

To get to the KFC buffet in Key Largo, Tiffany Aleman must first take us through “a small island town with one traffic light and one major highway that runs through it. There are the seafood buffets and bait shops, which give way to newfangled Starbucks.”

The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.

New Jerseyan D.F. Jester leads us past the local seafood place “that looks like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship has been transported 50 miles inland and plunked inside the dining area of a 1980s Ramada outside of Newark.”

Descriptions of the food are about what I would expect of a KFC buffet. Laura Camerer remembers the food in her college town in Morehead, Kentucky, as “all fried solid as rocks sitting under heat lamps, kind of gray and gristly.” Jester adds, “for all intents and purposes, this is a KFC. It looks like one, but sadder, more clinical. The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.”

Then Jessie Lovett Allen messages me. “There is [a] KFC in my hometown, and it is magical without a hint of sketch.” I must know more. First, she takes me down the winding path: “the closest larger city is Kearney, which is 100 miles away and only has 35K people, and Kearney is where you’ll find the closest Target, Panera, or Taco Bell. But to the North, South, or West, you have to drive hundreds of miles before you find a larger city. I tell you all of this because the extreme isolation is what gives our restaurants, even fast-food ones, an outsized psychological importance to daily life.”

The KFC Jessie mentions is in North Platte, Nebraska, and has nearly five stars on Yelp, an accomplishment worthy of a monument for any fast-food restaurant. On the non-corporate Facebook page for KFC North Platte, one of the hundreds of followers of the page comments, “BEST KFC IN THE COUNTRY.”

Allen describes the place as though she is recounting a corner of heaven. “They have fried apple pies that seem to come through a wormhole from a 1987 McDonalds. Pudding: Hot. Good. Layered cold pudding desserts. This one rotates. It might be chocolate, banana, cookies and cream. It has a graham cracker base, pudding, and whipped topping. Standard Cold Salad bar: Lettuce, salad veggies, macaroni salads, JELL-O salads. Other meats: chicken fried steak patties. Fried chicken gizzards. White Gravy, Chicken Noodle Casserole, Green Bean Casserole, Cornbread, Corn on the Cob, Chicken Pot Pie Casserole. AND most all the standard stuff on the normal KFC menu, which is nice because you can pick out a variety of chicken types or just have a few tablespoons of a side dish.”

In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed.

Then she adds that the buffet “is also available TO GO, but there are rules. You get a large Styrofoam clamshell, a small Styrofoam clamshell, and a cup. You have to be able to close the Styrofoam. You are instructed that only beverages can go in cups, and when I asked about this, an employee tells me that customers have tried to shove chicken into the drink cups in the past.”

In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed. The chains folded. The senior citizens keeping Ponderosa in business have died. My own parents reversed course after their buffet bender, trading in sundae stations for cans of SlimFast. Fast-food buffets retreated into an ethereal space. McDonald’s grew up with adult sandwiches like the Arch Deluxe. Wendy’s went on a wild rebound with the Baconator. Pizza Hut ripped out its jukeboxes, changed its logo, went off to the fast-food wars, and ain’t been the same since. Taco Bell is undergoing some kind of midlife crisis, hemorrhaging its entire menu of potatoes, among other beloved items. At least the KFC in North Platte has done good, though the novel coronavirus could change things.

In the age of COVID-19, the fast-food buffet feels like more of a dream than ever. How positively whimsical it would be to stand shoulder to shoulder, hovering over sneeze guards, sharing soup ladles to scoop an odd assortment of pudding, three grapes, a heap of rotini pasta, and a drumstick onto a plate. Maybe we can reach this place again. But to find it, we must follow the landmarks, searching our memory as the map.

MM Carrigan is a Baltimore-area writer and weirdo who enjoys staring directly into the sun. Their work has appeared in Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and PopMatters. They are the editor of Taco Bell Quarterly. Tweets @thesurfingpizza.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/33e4Z8k via Blogger https://ift.tt/36lO2KT

[wineanddinosaur]

Innovative Partnerships Are Helping Wine, Food, and Hospitality Firms Stay Afloat

The Covid-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on the wine, food, and hospitality industries and as most businesses remain closed until further notice, these industries are finding creative ways to work together in an effort to generate revenue and stay afloat. Wine brands are partnering up with restaurants, retailers, purveyors, and hotels to offer consumers unique experiences and deals they can enjoy at home and in the future.

“I think that it is so important for us all to come together during this time to support each other,” said Katy Wilson, owner and winemaker of LaRue Wines in Sonoma, Calif. “Wineries, restaurants, and the whole hospitality industry are all connected. I want to do everything I can to help because I know that every little bit matters.”

Looking Local

Many wineries are looking no further than their backyards to find partners within their local communities. Round Pond Estate in Rutherford, Calif., for example, worked with the Bodega Bay Oyster Company to create a BBQ Oyster Kit for Memorial Day Weekend, which included wine pairings and a virtual cooking class. In partnership with local farms and purveyors in the Seattle area, Matthews Winery in Woodinville, Wash., has been curating weekly Family Meal boxes for its customers. Each box comes with a bottle of wine and ingredients for an at-home dinner. Bryan Otis, proprietor of Matthews, said that they’re averaging 120 to 160 meals a week.

The MacArthur Place Hotel & Spa in Sonoma partnered up with 10 local boutique wine brands for a Sip Now, Stay Later promotion. For every case purchased through one of the wineries, MacArthur will provide a complimentary night stay (on a two-night minimum booking). Three Sticks Winery reported selling more than 20 cases since the promotion launched the second week of May. “It’s a win-win for all sides,” said MacArthur Place general manager Ruben Cambero, who added that he expects the promotion to drive several hundred thousands of dollars overall. “This incremental revenue — roughly $350 to $800 per case — helps to offset the lack of tasting-room revenue during the wineries’ closures. For MacArthur Place, this partnership spurs future hotel bookings to balance an otherwise lean reservation book.”

On May 12, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced reopening guidelines under which wineries would only be allowed to serve wine in Stage 2 if they offer sit-down meals, though this is subject to approval in each individual county. As of now, Sonoma, Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, and El Dorado wineries are allowed to welcome guests if they serve these sit-down meals outdoors. Those that don’t have an in-house culinary team are seeking assistance from local restaurants or catering companies, like Three Fat Guys Wines in Sonoma,  which has hired the local Picazo Food Truck. Sbragia Family Vineyards in Geyserville, Calif., has partnered with Sonoma’s famed restaurant, The Girl & The Fig, to provide a selection of lunches for two on its expansive outdoor terrace. “John Toulze [executive chef and managing partner of The Girl & The Fig] has been speculating that wineries, especially those with expansive outdoor spaces, would be the new restaurant space, that folks would be more interested in eating outdoors than indoors, and they have the ability to socially distance tables,” said Steven Cousins, CEO of Sbragia. “We were planning on launching The Girl & The Fig at Sbragia by next weekend, but little did we know that we would be required to provide a meal as part of wine tasting per the orders coming from the county health department.”

Reinventing an Old Concept

While events and experiences cannot be held in-person, wine brands are finding ways to recreate their offerings for the home. For years, DeLille Cellars in Woodinville, Wash., has offered DeLille Date Nights, consisting of a wine dinner at its tasting room. It has since pivoted to a takeout menu with its catering partner but, seeking a way to reach its fans in the city, it also teamed up with Metropolitan Grill in Seattle. The Metropolitan sold more than 140 takeout dinners (which included a bottle of DeLille wine) over the first weekend and it was so successful, it recently did a second promotion.

Another popular tactic is going virtual. Gran Moraine in Yamhill, Ore., got creative with a national account partner to host a three-course virtual wine dinner on National Chardonnay Day. The promotion was offered at 10 restaurant locations and approximately 50 households tuned in to a live Zoom discussion about the food and wine. Malibu Beach Inn in Malibu, Calif., offered a four-course Virtual Winemaker’s Brunch in partnership with Champagne Henriot, broadcasting live from Burgundy.

Supporting a Good Cause

The most rewarding partnerships are those that drive revenue, but also support a charitable cause. Noah Dorrance of Reeve Wines in Healdsburg, Calif., recently kicked off a grassroots effort called Drink Cali 4 Good that encourages wineries to partner with restaurants for one-day, online promotions, and then pledge a portion of wine sales to their respective employee relief funds. Dorrance tagged several other vintners on Instagram to join in, including Wilson of LaRue Wines. Wilson teamed up with New York City’s Anton’s, a new cafe and wine bar that opened its doors a mere six months ago and had just picked up LaRue Wines for its list. Thirty percent of proceeds were donated to Anton’s employee relief fund and Wilson added some extra incentive to the promotion by offering 1-cent shipping and entering any order of three bottles or more into a raffle to win a magnum of Pinot Noir. A total of eight cases of wine were sold, resulting in a $2,000 donation to assist Anton’s employees.

In a similar vein, Press Restaurant in St. Helena, Calif., created a Wine Thru as part of its takeout program, which offers 5-ounce samples of new releases from local winery partners. Priced at $5 per sample, proceeds go toward Press’s Employee Fund for furloughed employees (the restaurant is selling between 40 and 125 samples a week). Press is also buying full bottles to sell through the Wine Thru; a total of 330 have been sold six weeks into the promotion. “The Wine Thru has allowed us to support both the sales efforts of wineries in a small way, but, most importantly, guests can taste new-release wines in a way that isn’t being done anywhere else right now,” said Samantha Rudd, owner of Press.

Aperture Cellars in Healdsburg was nearing its grand opening when the pandemic hit and so winemaker Jesse Katz decided to turn the food and wine pairing experiences he was busy curating with local chefs into at-home offerings, including chefs’ recipes and cooking classes. Proceeds from these experiences are donated to a variety of local charities and Aperture has been able to distribute over $30,000 in donations thus far. “We are lucky to be in the era of the conscious consumer,” said Katz. “People want to put their money toward a product or experience that they can feel good about.”

The article Innovative Partnerships Are Helping Wine, Food, and Hospitality Firms Stay Afloat appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-food-hospitality-covid-19/

[johnboothus]

Innovative Partnerships Are Helping Wine Food and Hospitality Firms Stay Afloat

The Covid-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on the wine, food, and hospitality industries and as most businesses remain closed until further notice, these industries are finding creative ways to work together in an effort to generate revenue and stay afloat. Wine brands are partnering up with restaurants, retailers, purveyors, and hotels to offer consumers unique experiences and deals they can enjoy at home and in the future.

“I think that it is so important for us all to come together during this time to support each other,” said Katy Wilson, owner and winemaker of LaRue Wines in Sonoma, Calif. “Wineries, restaurants, and the whole hospitality industry are all connected. I want to do everything I can to help because I know that every little bit matters.”

Looking Local

Many wineries are looking no further than their backyards to find partners within their local communities. Round Pond Estate in Rutherford, Calif., for example, worked with the Bodega Bay Oyster Company to create a BBQ Oyster Kit for Memorial Day Weekend, which included wine pairings and a virtual cooking class. In partnership with local farms and purveyors in the Seattle area, Matthews Winery in Woodinville, Wash., has been curating weekly Family Meal boxes for its customers. Each box comes with a bottle of wine and ingredients for an at-home dinner. Bryan Otis, proprietor of Matthews, said that they’re averaging 120 to 160 meals a week.

The MacArthur Place Hotel & Spa in Sonoma partnered up with 10 local boutique wine brands for a Sip Now, Stay Later promotion. For every case purchased through one of the wineries, MacArthur will provide a complimentary night stay (on a two-night minimum booking). Three Sticks Winery reported selling more than 20 cases since the promotion launched the second week of May. “It’s a win-win for all sides,” said MacArthur Place general manager Ruben Cambero, who added that he expects the promotion to drive several hundred thousands of dollars overall. “This incremental revenue — roughly $350 to $800 per case — helps to offset the lack of tasting-room revenue during the wineries’ closures. For MacArthur Place, this partnership spurs future hotel bookings to balance an otherwise lean reservation book.”

On May 12, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced reopening guidelines under which wineries would only be allowed to serve wine in Stage 2 if they offer sit-down meals, though this is subject to approval in each individual county. As of now, Sonoma, Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, and El Dorado wineries are allowed to welcome guests if they serve these sit-down meals outdoors. Those that don’t have an in-house culinary team are seeking assistance from local restaurants or catering companies, like Three Fat Guys Wines in Sonoma,  which has hired the local Picazo Food Truck. Sbragia Family Vineyards in Geyserville, Calif., has partnered with Sonoma’s famed restaurant, The Girl & The Fig, to provide a selection of lunches for two on its expansive outdoor terrace. “John Toulze [executive chef and managing partner of The Girl & The Fig] has been speculating that wineries, especially those with expansive outdoor spaces, would be the new restaurant space, that folks would be more interested in eating outdoors than indoors, and they have the ability to socially distance tables,” said Steven Cousins, CEO of Sbragia. “We were planning on launching The Girl & The Fig at Sbragia by next weekend, but little did we know that we would be required to provide a meal as part of wine tasting per the orders coming from the county health department.”

Reinventing an Old Concept

While events and experiences cannot be held in-person, wine brands are finding ways to recreate their offerings for the home. For years, DeLille Cellars in Woodinville, Wash., has offered DeLille Date Nights, consisting of a wine dinner at its tasting room. It has since pivoted to a takeout menu with its catering partner but, seeking a way to reach its fans in the city, it also teamed up with Metropolitan Grill in Seattle. The Metropolitan sold more than 140 takeout dinners (which included a bottle of DeLille wine) over the first weekend and it was so successful, it recently did a second promotion.

Another popular tactic is going virtual. Gran Moraine in Yamhill, Ore., got creative with a national account partner to host a three-course virtual wine dinner on National Chardonnay Day. The promotion was offered at 10 restaurant locations and approximately 50 households tuned in to a live Zoom discussion about the food and wine. Malibu Beach Inn in Malibu, Calif., offered a four-course Virtual Winemaker’s Brunch in partnership with Champagne Henriot, broadcasting live from Burgundy.

Supporting a Good Cause

The most rewarding partnerships are those that drive revenue, but also support a charitable cause. Noah Dorrance of Reeve Wines in Healdsburg, Calif., recently kicked off a grassroots effort called Drink Cali 4 Good that encourages wineries to partner with restaurants for one-day, online promotions, and then pledge a portion of wine sales to their respective employee relief funds. Dorrance tagged several other vintners on Instagram to join in, including Wilson of LaRue Wines. Wilson teamed up with New York City’s Anton’s, a new cafe and wine bar that opened its doors a mere six months ago and had just picked up LaRue Wines for its list. Thirty percent of proceeds were donated to Anton’s employee relief fund and Wilson added some extra incentive to the promotion by offering 1-cent shipping and entering any order of three bottles or more into a raffle to win a magnum of Pinot Noir. A total of eight cases of wine were sold, resulting in a $2,000 donation to assist Anton’s employees.

In a similar vein, Press Restaurant in St. Helena, Calif., created a Wine Thru as part of its takeout program, which offers 5-ounce samples of new releases from local winery partners. Priced at $5 per sample, proceeds go toward Press’s Employee Fund for furloughed employees (the restaurant is selling between 40 and 125 samples a week). Press is also buying full bottles to sell through the Wine Thru; a total of 330 have been sold six weeks into the promotion. “The Wine Thru has allowed us to support both the sales efforts of wineries in a small way, but, most importantly, guests can taste new-release wines in a way that isn’t being done anywhere else right now,” said Samantha Rudd, owner of Press.

Aperture Cellars in Healdsburg was nearing its grand opening when the pandemic hit and so winemaker Jesse Katz decided to turn the food and wine pairing experiences he was busy curating with local chefs into at-home offerings, including chefs’ recipes and cooking classes. Proceeds from these experiences are donated to a variety of local charities and Aperture has been able to distribute over $30,000 in donations thus far. “We are lucky to be in the era of the conscious consumer,” said Katz. “People want to put their money toward a product or experience that they can feel good about.”

The article Innovative Partnerships Are Helping Wine, Food, and Hospitality Firms Stay Afloat appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-food-hospitality-covid-19/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/innovative-partnerships-are-helping-wine-food-and-hospitality-firms-stay-afloat

[isaiahrippinus]

Innovative Partnerships Are Helping Wine, Food, and Hospitality Firms Stay Afloat

The Covid-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on the wine, food, and hospitality industries and as most businesses remain closed until further notice, these industries are finding creative ways to work together in an effort to generate revenue and stay afloat. Wine brands are partnering up with restaurants, retailers, purveyors, and hotels to offer consumers unique experiences and deals they can enjoy at home and in the future.

“I think that it is so important for us all to come together during this time to support each other,” said Katy Wilson, owner and winemaker of LaRue Wines in Sonoma, Calif. “Wineries, restaurants, and the whole hospitality industry are all connected. I want to do everything I can to help because I know that every little bit matters.”

Looking Local

Many wineries are looking no further than their backyards to find partners within their local communities. Round Pond Estate in Rutherford, Calif., for example, worked with the Bodega Bay Oyster Company to create a BBQ Oyster Kit for Memorial Day Weekend, which included wine pairings and a virtual cooking class. In partnership with local farms and purveyors in the Seattle area, Matthews Winery in Woodinville, Wash., has been curating weekly Family Meal boxes for its customers. Each box comes with a bottle of wine and ingredients for an at-home dinner. Bryan Otis, proprietor of Matthews, said that they’re averaging 120 to 160 meals a week.

The MacArthur Place Hotel & Spa in Sonoma partnered up with 10 local boutique wine brands for a Sip Now, Stay Later promotion. For every case purchased through one of the wineries, MacArthur will provide a complimentary night stay (on a two-night minimum booking). Three Sticks Winery reported selling more than 20 cases since the promotion launched the second week of May. “It’s a win-win for all sides,” said MacArthur Place general manager Ruben Cambero, who added that he expects the promotion to drive several hundred thousands of dollars overall. “This incremental revenue — roughly $350 to $800 per case — helps to offset the lack of tasting-room revenue during the wineries’ closures. For MacArthur Place, this partnership spurs future hotel bookings to balance an otherwise lean reservation book.”

On May 12, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced reopening guidelines under which wineries would only be allowed to serve wine in Stage 2 if they offer sit-down meals, though this is subject to approval in each individual county. As of now, Sonoma, Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, and El Dorado wineries are allowed to welcome guests if they serve these sit-down meals outdoors. Those that don’t have an in-house culinary team are seeking assistance from local restaurants or catering companies, like Three Fat Guys Wines in Sonoma,  which has hired the local Picazo Food Truck. Sbragia Family Vineyards in Geyserville, Calif., has partnered with Sonoma’s famed restaurant, The Girl & The Fig, to provide a selection of lunches for two on its expansive outdoor terrace. “John Toulze [executive chef and managing partner of The Girl & The Fig] has been speculating that wineries, especially those with expansive outdoor spaces, would be the new restaurant space, that folks would be more interested in eating outdoors than indoors, and they have the ability to socially distance tables,” said Steven Cousins, CEO of Sbragia. “We were planning on launching The Girl & The Fig at Sbragia by next weekend, but little did we know that we would be required to provide a meal as part of wine tasting per the orders coming from the county health department.”

Reinventing an Old Concept

While events and experiences cannot be held in-person, wine brands are finding ways to recreate their offerings for the home. For years, DeLille Cellars in Woodinville, Wash., has offered DeLille Date Nights, consisting of a wine dinner at its tasting room. It has since pivoted to a takeout menu with its catering partner but, seeking a way to reach its fans in the city, it also teamed up with Metropolitan Grill in Seattle. The Metropolitan sold more than 140 takeout dinners (which included a bottle of DeLille wine) over the first weekend and it was so successful, it recently did a second promotion.

Another popular tactic is going virtual. Gran Moraine in Yamhill, Ore., got creative with a national account partner to host a three-course virtual wine dinner on National Chardonnay Day. The promotion was offered at 10 restaurant locations and approximately 50 households tuned in to a live Zoom discussion about the food and wine. Malibu Beach Inn in Malibu, Calif., offered a four-course Virtual Winemaker’s Brunch in partnership with Champagne Henriot, broadcasting live from Burgundy.

Supporting a Good Cause

The most rewarding partnerships are those that drive revenue, but also support a charitable cause. Noah Dorrance of Reeve Wines in Healdsburg, Calif., recently kicked off a grassroots effort called Drink Cali 4 Good that encourages wineries to partner with restaurants for one-day, online promotions, and then pledge a portion of wine sales to their respective employee relief funds. Dorrance tagged several other vintners on Instagram to join in, including Wilson of LaRue Wines. Wilson teamed up with New York City’s Anton’s, a new cafe and wine bar that opened its doors a mere six months ago and had just picked up LaRue Wines for its list. Thirty percent of proceeds were donated to Anton’s employee relief fund and Wilson added some extra incentive to the promotion by offering 1-cent shipping and entering any order of three bottles or more into a raffle to win a magnum of Pinot Noir. A total of eight cases of wine were sold, resulting in a $2,000 donation to assist Anton’s employees.

In a similar vein, Press Restaurant in St. Helena, Calif., created a Wine Thru as part of its takeout program, which offers 5-ounce samples of new releases from local winery partners. Priced at $5 per sample, proceeds go toward Press’s Employee Fund for furloughed employees (the restaurant is selling between 40 and 125 samples a week). Press is also buying full bottles to sell through the Wine Thru; a total of 330 have been sold six weeks into the promotion. “The Wine Thru has allowed us to support both the sales efforts of wineries in a small way, but, most importantly, guests can taste new-release wines in a way that isn’t being done anywhere else right now,” said Samantha Rudd, owner of Press.

Aperture Cellars in Healdsburg was nearing its grand opening when the pandemic hit and so winemaker Jesse Katz decided to turn the food and wine pairing experiences he was busy curating with local chefs into at-home offerings, including chefs’ recipes and cooking classes. Proceeds from these experiences are donated to a variety of local charities and Aperture has been able to distribute over $30,000 in donations thus far. “We are lucky to be in the era of the conscious consumer,” said Katz. “People want to put their money toward a product or experience that they can feel good about.”

The article Innovative Partnerships Are Helping Wine, Food, and Hospitality Firms Stay Afloat appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/wine-food-hospitality-covid-19/ source https://vinology1.tumblr.com/post/620102298905067520

[elisekw4-blog]

A Bad Fall

Being home was surreal and yet I was 100% ready to be back on trail as soon as our time there was up. We left Seattle on a hot Sunday morning and headed to Snoqualmie where my parents sent us off. We hiked uphill for seven miles and cowboy camped at Ridge Lake, one of many beautiful alpine lakes in the area. I woke up at five am to the strong smell of smoke. We were suddenly in a cloud of smoke, covered in ash. The next day was full of ridge walking with these spectacular views which were now hidden in the smoky abyss. As bummed as I was about the smoky curtain, I tried to make the best of it anyhow. About five miles into my day, on a downhill section of the ridge walk, I stepped on a rock at the edge of the ridge, and immediately turned my ankle in the worst way. My full body weight and some serious momentum were both working against me. As I lay in the middle of the trail, pack straps choking me, knee skinned, I began to sob. I wasn’t crying because I was hurt, although I knew I was badly injured. I cried because the first thought I had was ‘my thru hike is over.’ Devastation flooded me. I’ve come so close, and this is how it ends?! I started to cry out for DB, but he was too far ahead and couldn’t hear my cries. I couldn’t stand. I continued to cry and soon enough another thru hiker came along. I had met Bobby Hill a few weeks back, but didn’t really know him. He immediately took off his pack and sat down with me. He gave me something for the pain and told me he would stay with me for however long I needed. I was SO grateful to have him there with me. We talked about my options. As the tears subsided, the reality sunk in. This was a real injury. I was on the side of a steep mountain, miles from water, and there were no easy exit points. I could hike back to the last water five miles, or continue north to the next water three miles ahead, where DB would be waiting for me. If I couldn’t hike at all, I needed to seriously consider pressing my SOS and get airlifted out. For anyone who knows me, the last option wasn't one I would give into unless it was life or death. After more tears of frustration, some pain killers, an ace bandage wrap, and lots of motivation from my peers, I decided to hobble the three miles north to the pond where I would meet up with DB. Bobby Hill patiently walked behind me and made sure I was okay. About half way to the pond, we turned around a bend to find DB, hiking south to find me. "Honey, I'm broken" were the first words out of my mouth. I've fallen so many times on the PCT and I've never been hurt. Why this time?! DB walked behind me just as Bobby Hill had, and we slowly made the other mile and a half to the pond. I soaked my already grapefruit size ankle in the cool water and we ate lunch and talked about our options. I didn't want to turn around and so we decided to hike the next three miles to the waterfall and camp. It was the slowest three miles of my entire hike (including the Sierras). Along the way we met a hiker named The Mayor, who gave me some extra food and offered to carry my pack for a while and give DB a break. Of course DB said he didn't need the help....my night in shining armor ;). When we arrived at the waterfall, camping was limited. There was already a hiker posted up and just enough room for us to squeeze onto a semi flat rock on a cliffs edge. Not ideal, but we had no other options. There was a small note at the campsite reading, "resident rat. Do not camp here! Will chew through ANYTHING to get to food". We didn't take this too seriously. We've been living out here for five months and have never had any issues with rodents. Our friend Tissue showed up shortly after, and we all made dinner together. Tissue gave me a great ankle brace and some pain killers. We set up our cowboy camp and went to bed shortly after eating. It had been a long day and I needed some good sleep. DB and I decided to use our food bags as pillows to ensure the rat would stay away. We've always been under the impression that animals will smell us first and be scared off. Well, this nasty little bugger had some balls. No sooner than five minutes after laying my head down did I hear the pitter patter of rat feet on my thermarest neoair. Omg!!!! The rat had crawled right up to my head! We shooed it away, only to have it return as soon as we settled in again. This was an ongoing issue for a while. Finally we decided to flip over so that our heads were towards the cliff and we stashed all our food between us and cuddled it. That damn rat finally left us alone and we got some much needed sleep. However I did fall asleep with my tent poles in one hand and my head lamp in the other, ready to swat the bugger if he was brave enough to return. The first thing most of us do when we wake up is pee (sorry, but I have no filter anymore). On this morning, my ankle was so swollen and so painful, I could barely preform this task. We were 20 miles from any road and I couldn't even pee on my own. This was bad. I crawled back to my sleeping bag and began to cry. I cried and cried and cried. When I thought I was done crying, I cried again. I was so frustrated with my body and so fearful that this was the end of my PCT adventure. DB told me I had to make a decision. We would either commit to the 50 miles to Stevens, with a high probability of running out of foods and a chance of doing more damage to my ankle, or hike back 20 miles with enough food to take it easy and have a better chance of making it safely. This was one of the hardest decisions for me. I've never hiked south bound. I'm a north bound thru hiker. This was a time where I had to put my pride aside and make a smart decision. I made the choice to hike back to Snoqualmie after trying to walk 50 ft from the campsite to trail in utter agony. DB insisted on carrying my pack and we ever so slowly made our way up the many switchbacks we descended the evening before. Along the way we ran into many familiar faces of hikers we had met along the way but hadn't seen in a long time. Everyone stopped to make sure we were okay, offering help carrying my pack, made sure we had extra food and meds. It was amazing to feel so much support from my thru hiking peers. We even met a section hiker named Janis, who was a massage therapist. Janis gave me a treatment right there on trail! My gratitude was overflowing. We arrived at the pond after three hours and spent the rest of the day soaking my foot, elevating it and simply resting. DB was so supportive. We are used to being on a sort of schedule and meeting these goals we set for ourselves each day. My injury threw a wrench into our plans, and of course I felt guilty for being the reason we had to turn around. DB didn't make me feel guilty about it for a second. Be was 100% supportive in my decision to turn around and did every single thing he could to make sure I was okay. He reminded me to drink water and elevate my foot at each break. He carried my pack the entire way out....which had to have been extremely hard. He had his own pack on his back and mine on his chest, climbing mountains to our exit point. Many hikers who passed by us commented on how strong he was and what a champ I had in a hiking partner. Of course I fully agreed with each of them, yet each time he would tell them they were wrong. He told them that I was the strong one and the champion for hiking on my injured foot. I honestly couldn't be luckier to have him as my hiking partner. Our friendship makes the hiking more enjoyable, but it most certainly makes situations like these far more manageable. We hiked fifteen miles the following day, all the way to the road. We were both exhausted and sore. We weren't sure how we were going to get to Leavenworth where we planned to stay with my friend Erika (an 7ne RN alum) and her husband while I could heal. It was almost seven pm and we had no plan and we were beat. We decided to walk to the Chevron at the pass where hikers get a free beer from a local named Dan who hosts a food truck and figure out a plan there. The moment Dan handed us our beers, my phone buzzed. It was Erika, telling me that her good family friend Donna who lives at the pass had a room and hot meal for us to stay the night. I yelped with utter joy and hugged DB. I called Donna moments later and I kid you not, she was there within five minutes! We couldn't have dreamed of a better scenario. Donna is truly one of the kindest souls we've met on trail. She and her husband provided us with hot showers, laundry, their guest room and two hot meals. My parents (they are incredible) picked us up early in the morning and drove us all the way to Leavenworth to Erika's house. I'm officially resting now and am feeling so grateful for all of the support on and off trail in the last 72 hours. Thank you to everyone who offered to help me. I'm immensely lucky to have a such wonderful people in my life and I don't take it for granted one bit. I'm certain that I'll be back on trail in no time. Until then, I'm looking forward to catching up with my old friend from UWMC here in Leavenworth. Feeling SO much love and sending it right back to all of you! XO -Munch

[mvcr]

People are so fucking weird on the internet. The way most people handle their social media presence baffles me. Either they somehow resist the urge to share any of their ruminations or photos whatsoever, or they can't resist the urge to share every single thing they're doing all the time, including things you really shouldn't share because it's off-putting or severely boring. Today my friend told me a girl he follows keeps posting these annoying Instagram stories. I'm the last person to criticize someone's Instagram because I'm downright obnoxious on mine, but he said she filmed a video of herself talking to the camera while in line in a McDonald's drive-thru. Something along the lines of her having "slept through dinner", and so now she's going to have McDonald's for dinner for the second night in a row, and Jee, the line is so long, and pouting about putting herself through that again. Oh... my God. I am officially in despair and I cannot go on. First of all, what the fuck does "sleeping through dinner" mean? I have so many questions about that statement. Did your mom cook dinner, but you were asleep at a very random hour and by the time you woke up, the casserole had coagulated in the dish and been reduced to an offering for the hungry ghosts? You slept through dinner? Bitch, are you on a train? Are you in jail? Are you in the fuckin' army? What the fuck does that mean? Why can't you fix yourself a proper dinner yourself at any hour of your choosing? Clearly, that is just bullshit. You slept through the appropriate hour for dinner, and instead of making a late dinner, you're going to eat McDonald's for the second night in a row. Not only that, but you're going to admit it to the world at large and offer it up for public conjecture. And film it while it's happening. Not just that, but film your sad bastard face, talking about, "I slept through dinner because I am a lazy fuck and here we go 'round the mulberry bush with the dollar menu, part 2." Supposing you don't mind people knowing that depressing information, why would you feel compelled to inflict it upon them? Why would you think that they would care? I don't want to know about anyone going to McDonald's unless that person is someone I want to fuck, but haven't fucked yet. If I want to fuck someone and haven't done it yet, I would literally listen to them read me their grocery shopping receipt verbatim, and I'd be fucking genuinely dazzled, like, Wow. That was a beautiful story. You're so brave to have spent $3.79 on that nitrate-infused deli turkey. And some Dijon mustard in a glass jar with a lid, not one of the squeezy deals? Damn, that's exotic as fuck, I bet you're an amazing fucker. Please, fuck me now. Sorry, what? Oh my God, you bought a six-pack of Tiny Bomb? That's so amazing to know what kind of beer is in your fridge. God, I'm so jealous of everything you bought that got to come into your house and be close to you, all chilling in your fridge, like 20-50(?) feet away from where your naked body sleeps. Shit. You're so special. There's only one of you in the universe and I don't even know where the fuck your exceptional motherfucking ass lives. I don't even know what the fuck your ass looks like with your balls all pinched between your legs and kind of sticking out from behind when you sleep on your side. I bet it's glorious. I would give anything to open your fridge and eat some of those grapes you just bought and then get in your bed that probably sits on the goddamn floor without a frame and suck your dick while you watch the Simpsons on your laptop, I don't give a fuck about anything. Don't give a fuck if you have crumbs in your bed and little pieces of weed get in my hair. I don't give a fuck if you smoke weed with seeds in it. I don't give a fuck if you use a Samsung phone. I don't give a fuck if you hate animals. I don't give a fuck if you don't know how to swim. I don't give a fuck if you have a Damien Rice CD in your car. I don't give a fuck if you had a collapsed lung when you were born and they had to fix it and now there's a scar and you act all weird about it. I don't care, I wanna see it. I wanna see you naked and I don't care about anything else in this God-forsaken universe until you let me sit on your dick and smell your hair and kiss your face in the dark. And in the meantime, everything you do is the most fascinating thing in history, every place I know you've been is dusted with gold flakes that spell out '_______ was here.' He was here and his balls were here and he walked his fucking ballsack right over here, then he and his balls turned around and went over there and he waved to someone who was most likely completely oblivious to the fact that they were in the presence of the most special and wonderful person who has ever been alive (and his balls), and that the fibers that hold the universe together are composed of the sounds of what he is doing - dishes, snoring, playing guitar, having an inane telephone conversation, etc. That's the most important stuff in the world, whatever he's doing until I fuck him. Then by some series of events that can only be defined as miracles, I am granted permission to fuck him, say, 10 times. If at that point he's like, "I went to the store, want me to read you the receipt?" I'd be like, "Nah, skip it, did you get grapefruit?" And he'd smack his forehead and grimace and I'd say, "It's okay! No worries, grapefruit are a very forgettable fruit, I can see how you would forget them. They're not very ostentatious. They're sort of camouflaged by the nearby oranges, which are unequivocally the most forgettable fruit. Besides, I know you don't even be fucking all that heavily with fresh fruit in the first place. See, I be knowing shit about you. You like cheese more than anything and now I like cheese more than anything because I like you more than anything even though you won't let me look at your butthole (yet). Oh, what's that, you posted an Instagram story? Aw, it's a huge wheel of cheese you found in the grocery store. Das cute. You and your cheese. I'm gonna hit reply to your Instagram story and tell you how cute you are 'cause I ain't scared of shit anymore, you've already let me hit it 10x. I've already stuck my tongue in your pee hole, you can't take that away from me. Already squeezed your little bellend apart to make your peehole look like it was talkin'. Made your peehole sing 'Blue Moon' and 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' and shit. Made your dick croon and shit. Already did that shit. What's this? Another Instagram story... Now, you're in the drive-thru at McDonald's...? I didn't know this mfer ate McDonald's. Hmm. Not hot. Pretending I didn't see that." If they let me hit it for 3+ years and they post an Instagram story of themselves going through McDonald's, I'm definitely going to be like, "Wtf? Why you went thru McDonald's and didn't go to the store? Talking about 'I slept through dinner.' I was still cooking when you left! Why you posting that anyway, somebody trying to fuck you?" Lolll

[easyfoodnetwork]

A McDonald’s breakfast buffet. An all-you-can-eat Taco Bell. This isn’t the stuff dreams are made of, but a real yet short-lived phenomenon. When we think of buffets, we tend to think of their 1980s and early ’90s heyday, when commercial jingles for Sizzler might have been confused with our national anthem. We think of Homer Simpson getting dragged out of the Frying Dutchman, “a beast more stomach than man.” I think of my parents going on buffet benders resembling something out of Hunter S. Thompson’s life, determined to get their money’s worth with two picky kids. What we don’t typically think about, however, is the fast-food buffet, a blip so small on America’s food radar that it’s hard to prove it even existed. But it did. People swear that all-you-can-eat buffets could be found at Taco Bell, KFC, and even under the golden arches of McDonald’s. That it could have existed isn’t surprising. The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake. It was the physical manifestation of the American id: endless biscuits, popcorn chicken, vats of nacho cheese and sketchy pudding — so much sketchy pudding. Why, then, have so many of us failed to remember it? How did it become a footnote, relegated to the backwoods of myths and legends? There are whispers of McDonald’s locations that have breakfast buffets. Was there, in fact, a Taco Bell buffet, or is it a figment of our collective imaginations? Yes, someone tells me — an all-you-can-eat Taco Bell existed in her dorm cafeteria. Another person suggests maybe we were just remembering the nachos section of the Wendy’s Superbar. The fast-food buffet was inevitable, the culmination of an arms race in maximizing caloric intake. The fast-food buffet lives in a strange sort of ether. You can’t get to it through the traditional path of remembering. Was there actually a Pizza Hut buffet in your hometown? Search your subconscious, sifting past the red cups that make the soda taste better, past the spiffy new CD jukebox, which has Garth Brooks’s Ropin’ the Wind and Paul McCartney’s All the Best under the neon lamps. Search deeper, and you might find your father going up for a third plate and something remaining of the “dessert pizzas” lodged in your subconscious. This is where the fast-food buffet exists. The history of the buffet in America is a story of ingenuity and evolution. Sure, it originated in Europe, where it was a classy affair with artfully arranged salted fish, eggs, breads, and butter. The Swedish dazzled us with their smorgasbords at the 1939 World Fair. We can then trace the evolution of the buffet through Las Vegas, where the one-dollar Buckaroo Buffet kept gamblers in the casino. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese immigrant families found loopholes in racist immigration laws by establishing restaurants. They brought Chinese cooking catered to American tastes in endless plates of beef chow fun and egg rolls. By the 1980s, buffets ruled the landscape like family dynasties, with sister chains the Ponderosa and the Bonanza spreading the gospel of sneeze guards and steaks, sundae stations and salad bars along the interstates. From Shoney’s to Sizzler, from sea to shining sea, the buffet was a feast fit for kings, or a family of four. And of course, fast-food restaurants wanted in on the action. As fast-food historian and author of Drive-Thru Dreams Adam Chandler put it, “every fast food place flirted with buffets at some point or another. McDonald’s absolutely did, as did most of the pizza chains with dine-in service. KFC still has a few stray buffets, as well as an illicit one called Claudia Sanders Dinner House, which was opened by Colonel Sanders’ wife after he was forbidden from opening a competing fried chicken business after selling the company. Wendy’s Super Bar was short-lived, but the salad bar lived on for decades.” How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce. In a 1988 commercial for the Superbar, Dave Thomas says, “I’m an old-fashioned guy. I like it when families eat together.” A Wendy’s executive described the new business model as “taking us out of the fast-food business.” Everyone agrees the Wendy’s Supernar was glorious. And gross, everyone also agrees. How something can be both gross and glorious is a particular duality of fast food, like the duality of man or something, only with nacho cheese and pasta sauce. “I kind of want to live in a ’90s Wendy’s,” Amy Barnes, a Tennessee-based writer, tells me in between preparing for virtual learning with her teenagers. The Superbar sat in the lobby, with stations lined up like train carts. First, there was the Garden Spot, which “no one cared about,” a traditional salad bar with a tub of chocolate pudding at its helm, “which always had streams of salad dressing and shredded cheese floating on top.” Next up was the Pasta Pasta section, with “noodles, alfredo and tomato sauce…[as well as] garlic bread made from the repurposed hamburger buns with butter and garlic smeared on them.” Obviously, the crown jewel of the Superbar was the Mexican Fiesta, with its “vats of ground beef, nacho cheese, sour cream.” The Fiesta shared custody of additional toppings with the salad bar. It was $2.99 for the dining experience. Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet. The marriage of Wendy’s and the Superbar lasted about a decade before it was phased out in all locations by 1998. Like a jilted ex-lover, the official Wendy’s Story on the website makes zero mention of Superbar, despite the countless blogs, YouTube videos, and podcasts devoted to remembering it. At least they kept the salad bar together until the mid-2000s for the sake of the children. Santa Claus. The Easter Bunny. The McDonald’s Breakfast Buffet. Googling the existence of such a thing only returns results of people questioning the existence of this McMuffin Mecca on subforums and Reddit. Somebody knows somebody who passed one once on the highway. A stray Yelp review of the Kiss My Grits food truck in Seattle offers a lead: “I have to say, I recall the first time I ever saw grits, they were at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet in Alexandria, Virginia, and they looked as unappetizing as could be.” However, the lead is dead on arrival. Further googling of the McDonald’s buffet with terrible grits in Alexandria turns up nothing. I ask friends on Facebook. I ask Twitter. I get a lone response. Eden Robins messages me “It was in Decatur, IL,” as though she’s describing the site where aliens abducted her. “I’m a little relieved that I didn’t imagine the breakfast buffet since no one ever knows what the fuck I’m talking about when I bring it up.” “We had traveled down there for a high school drama competition,” she goes on to say. “And one morning before the competition, we ate at a McDonald’s breakfast buffet. I had never seen anything like it before or since.” I ask what was in the buffet, although I know the details alone will not sustain me. I want video to pore over so I can pause at specific frames, like a fast-food version of the Patterson–Gimlin Bigfoot footage. Robins says they served “scrambled eggs and pancakes and those hash brown tiles. I was a vegetarian at the time so no sausage or bacon, but those were there, too.” McDonald’s isn’t the only chain with a buffet whose existence is hazy. Yum Brands, the overlord of fast-food holy trinity Taco Bell, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Pizza Hut, is said to have had buffets at all three restaurants. I confirm nothing, however, when I reach out to the corporate authorities. On the KFC side, a spokesperson offers to look into “some historical information,” but doesn’t get back to me. My contact at Taco Bell tells me, “I’ll look into it. Certainly, nothing in existence today. I’ve never heard of it. Looks like there are a couple threads on Reddit.” Reddit, of course, speculates a possible Mandela Effect — the phenomenon of a group of unrelated people remembering a different event than what actually occurred — in the existence of Taco Bell buffets. But I have a firmer lead in Payel Patel, a doctor who studied at Johns Hopkins, who tells me there was a Taco Bell Express in her dorm that was included in an all-you-can-eat meal plan option, though it only lasted one fleeting year. “You could order anything, like 15 nachos and 11 bean burritos,” she says, “and they would make it and give it to you, and you walked off without paying a cent.” A Johns Hopkins student newsletter published in 2001 corroborates the existence of the utopian all-you-can-eat Taco Bell, saying, “you can also gorge yourself on some good old Taco Bell tacos and burritos. Don’t forget, it’s all-you-can-eat. Just don’t eat too much; you don’t want to overload the John.” There are some concrete examples of fast-food buffets that still exist today. When a Krystal Buffet opened in Alabama in 2019, it was met with “excitement and disbelief,” according to the press release. Former New Orleans resident Wilson Koewing told me of a Popeye’s buffet that locals “speak of as if it is a myth.” When I dig deeper, I come across a local paper, NOLA Weekend, which covers “New Orleans Food, things to do, culture, and lifestyle.” It touts the Popeye’s buffet like a carnival barker, as though it is simply too incredible to believe: “The Only Popeye’s Buffet in the World! It’s right next door in Lafayette! Yes, that’s right: a Popeyes buffet. HERE.” Somehow, the KFC buffet is the most enduring of the fast-food buffets still in existence. And yet everyone I speak with feels compelled to walk me through the paths and roads leading to such an oasis, as if, again, it were the stuff of legends. There are landmarks and there are mirages, and the mirages need maps most of all. To get to the KFC buffet in Key Largo, Tiffany Aleman must first take us through “a small island town with one traffic light and one major highway that runs through it. There are the seafood buffets and bait shops, which give way to newfangled Starbucks.” The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die. New Jerseyan D.F. Jester leads us past the local seafood place “that looks like the midnight buffet on a cruise ship has been transported 50 miles inland and plunked inside the dining area of a 1980s Ramada outside of Newark.” Descriptions of the food are about what I would expect of a KFC buffet. Laura Camerer remembers the food in her college town in Morehead, Kentucky, as “all fried solid as rocks sitting under heat lamps, kind of gray and gristly.” Jester adds, “for all intents and purposes, this is a KFC. It looks like one, but sadder, more clinical. The buffet adds the feel of a hospital cafeteria, the people dining look close to death or knowingly waiting to die.” Then Jessie Lovett Allen messages me. “There is [a] KFC in my hometown, and it is magical without a hint of sketch.” I must know more. First, she takes me down the winding path: “the closest larger city is Kearney, which is 100 miles away and only has 35K people, and Kearney is where you’ll find the closest Target, Panera, or Taco Bell. But to the North, South, or West, you have to drive hundreds of miles before you find a larger city. I tell you all of this because the extreme isolation is what gives our restaurants, even fast-food ones, an outsized psychological importance to daily life.” The KFC Jessie mentions is in North Platte, Nebraska, and has nearly five stars on Yelp, an accomplishment worthy of a monument for any fast-food restaurant. On the non-corporate Facebook page for KFC North Platte, one of the hundreds of followers of the page comments, “BEST KFC IN THE COUNTRY.” Allen describes the place as though she is recounting a corner of heaven. “They have fried apple pies that seem to come through a wormhole from a 1987 McDonalds. Pudding: Hot. Good. Layered cold pudding desserts. This one rotates. It might be chocolate, banana, cookies and cream. It has a graham cracker base, pudding, and whipped topping. Standard Cold Salad bar: Lettuce, salad veggies, macaroni salads, JELL-O salads. Other meats: chicken fried steak patties. Fried chicken gizzards. White Gravy, Chicken Noodle Casserole, Green Bean Casserole, Cornbread, Corn on the Cob, Chicken Pot Pie Casserole. AND most all the standard stuff on the normal KFC menu, which is nice because you can pick out a variety of chicken types or just have a few tablespoons of a side dish.” In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed. Then she adds that the buffet “is also available TO GO, but there are rules. You get a large Styrofoam clamshell, a small Styrofoam clamshell, and a cup. You have to be able to close the Styrofoam. You are instructed that only beverages can go in cups, and when I asked about this, an employee tells me that customers have tried to shove chicken into the drink cups in the past.” In the end, the all-you-can-eat dream didn’t last, if it ever even existed. The chains folded. The senior citizens keeping Ponderosa in business have died. My own parents reversed course after their buffet bender, trading in sundae stations for cans of SlimFast. Fast-food buffets retreated into an ethereal space. McDonald’s grew up with adult sandwiches like the Arch Deluxe. Wendy’s went on a wild rebound with the Baconator. Pizza Hut ripped out its jukeboxes, changed its logo, went off to the fast-food wars, and ain’t been the same since. Taco Bell is undergoing some kind of midlife crisis, hemorrhaging its entire menu of potatoes, among other beloved items. At least the KFC in North Platte has done good, though the novel coronavirus could change things. In the age of COVID-19, the fast-food buffet feels like more of a dream than ever. How positively whimsical it would be to stand shoulder to shoulder, hovering over sneeze guards, sharing soup ladles to scoop an odd assortment of pudding, three grapes, a heap of rotini pasta, and a drumstick onto a plate. Maybe we can reach this place again. But to find it, we must follow the landmarks, searching our memory as the map. MM Carrigan is a Baltimore-area writer and weirdo who enjoys staring directly into the sun. Their work has appeared in Lit Hub, The Rumpus, and PopMatters. They are the editor of Taco Bell Quarterly. Tweets @thesurfingpizza. from Eater - All https://ift.tt/33e4Z8k

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