trinacriabob

Every place I've worked had different restaurant hangouts - at one place, it was a pizza place some of us liked, at another place, it was a Mexican hole in the wall that had an incredible enchilada platter and, at another place, it was a Greek restaurant where the lunch pricing was much more reasonable than the dinner pricing. When I was in college and worked at a few hospitals part time and during summers, it was the cafeteria. You couldn't beat the prices. It seemed hospitals tend to be big gossip grapevines; however, the business side of the house tends to be buffered from the medical side, so we were able to figure out that the goings-on might be entertaining but weren't connected enough to get the details. I guess that, if a person wanted details so badly, they could watch soap operas as a surrogate.

I don't know ... it's something about the way they grill their chicken, meat. When EPL put out coupons, it would incentivize me to go there for some tacos and whatnot ... and I also liked putting their very tasty mild to medium green sauce on my food. Touche'. This is called "nichemanship" in marketing jargon, IIRC. It's seeing an unmet need ... and filling it!

Right, now that I think about my '92 Regal coupe with a deep shelf or cowl, not to mention the unique "ravine" dash it had from 1988 to 1994, before it took on the more conventional 3 zone dash with the bigger glove box seen in other W-bodies, such as the very last Cutlass Supreme with the blacked out C-pillars. I'm undecided as to whether I prefer the long shelf or the short cowl, which is really apparent in the current Chevy Malibu where the dash starts a downward descent right from the windshield.

Ha. I was organizing and purging photo files and it seems I hadn't uploaded these. I couldn't believe how this played out: there was a wait to see the sales reps so it was soft sell and this dealership had Citroen C3s on display, not to mention these hanging chairs I remember seeing in my childhood and teenage years, which were ideal for hanging from the beams on an outdoor wooden patio in a warm climate. Inside a Citroen dealership in another land: This one was spoken for (sold tag somewhere on it): One of the current odd pastel colors that's popular across the pond ... "Why?" I ask ... I got a kick out of this chair:

Cheap chain Mexican food: Del Taco. Period. Slightly less cheap chain Mexican food: El Pollo Loco.

It's a head scratcher because, when you look at them and now even see them in so many cars at lower price points, you wonder, "Why didn't they think of this sooner?" I'm going to guess that something along the lines of a Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham or a Lincoln Town Car type vehicle would have been the first (?) I remember that, in minivans, the dual sliding doors was a big deal ... and I remember the ads for the rear seat passenger TVs in Oldsmobile Silhouette minivans. Once they lost the long snouts, the GM minivans seemed like decent vehicles, even though they were probably reliable enough when released with the more unusual looks.

Updated

PHOTOS - Exterior and mechanical Here's a sleek looking Dodge Charger with the Tampa Sunshine Skyway Bridge in the background, taken from Fort De Soto An angled rear three quarter view of the Dodge Charger Great lines ... and the latest rear light bar is the best design to come along The latest grille looks clean, sort of merges with the headlamps, and works well blacked out An "aerial view" of the Dodge Charger Engine bay: 3.5 Pentastar V6 - 292 hp - in RWD set up ... big air intake, small battery area (unless they've stashed it elsewhere), strut towers (with black grommets at the top) ... more or less symmetrically laid out, with room to reach things Driver's side view of the engine bay - oil fill cap, coolant recovery bottle, brake fluid (and master cylinder?) under the black rubber lid (at the right) ... but I couldn't find the transmission fluid dipstick (not sure if this is a sealed unit) Passenger's side view of the engine bay ... looks like 3 direct injection ports on this side of the engine bank, battery hookups here, up front (but the battery may be elsewhere since it looks shallow, just like they did with the last-gen Pontiac Bonneville) ... what was surprising was that the engine sat higher and more forward than in old school RWD cars ... maybe that is because of the rack and pinion system (not sure) Touche'. Just in case you don't know the brand and model of car whose hood you were raising up ... - - - - - End of exterior and mechanical photos

I got back from Arby's drive-through with a sandwich and their twin pack of triangular potato cakes. The potato cakes seldom make it through the entire ride back home. I've yet to meet a potato I don't like.

Pulling out of a parking garage, I saw an incoming last gen, front engine Corvette. It was white with burgundy leather bucket seats. The removable tops (whatever they're called) were off to take in the sunshine. I heard a nice, healthy exhaust note as it drove past me.

cry

I'm going to interpret this along the lines of the 115 comment. My parents had a neighbor where the wife talked for both of them but, when the husband said something, it was usually far more incisive and made more sense. There was a somewhat ornery lady in the neighborhood who was really short and stout, and this guy referred to her as "4 by 4." I still laugh about this. She could be one of those 115ers, as was described in another post. Sometimes, people of few words can come up with some great observations, nicknames, and one liners.

Thank you. This is great. You also put up the flag of Ireland! It seems to like a "pushmepullyu" - about a wash. What's odd in the comparison chart is that lower in glycemic index and lower in sugars are given to one and the other, respectively. I thought those concepts were somewhat the same. I'll go with both as well. Almost all fish that can be filleted works for me. If you land on some good shark, it's delicious ... sort of like a drier swordfish if prepared right. In the realm of seafood, it's clams, mussels, and crab that I can't stand. It's cool that you don't like avocados or salmon. I can count how many glasses of beer I've had in my life on two hands. I get flack for that. It has never tasted good to me. I've had some decent alcoholic drinks in the realm of mixed drinks and wines, but am certainly no connoisseur. I'd rather be on the lookout for bargains in travel.

dingle, or Dingle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingle (Who'd have thunk?)

"A poor Republican is like a cow that is pro-leather" . . . Aw shucks, I already posted this one before.

A retired Northeasterner in FL told me this joke, since it had occurred within his family and created flack ... Q: What do you call a marriage between a Sicilian and a Neapolitan? A: A mixed marriage. (Historically, they're not the biggest fans of each other ... at least across the pond.)

Chips (as in cow chips)

I see "fibre" and "anaemia." What English speaking country does this come from? I like dates but I'm not quite sure about their sugar content. I thought that avocado(e)s (incredible things) were low in everything because they came from a tree. Wrong! But they supposedly help with the good cholesterol or some such medical criteria. It hasn't stopped me from putting them into my salad.

Do you like dates? Not those kinds of dates. Dates you can eat. WTH? No, these kinds of dates. When I was a kid, I thought they were gross, mostly because of the way they looked. My parents loved them. Perhaps it had to do with their growing up in an area where palm trees were normal and the Arab world wasn't all that far away. I came to learn that dates are delicious. This one famous kitsch place for dates is called Shields Date Garden and is in Indio, CA near Palm Springs. I believe Indio is the "Date Capital of the World." And, if you're still thinking about the other kind of dates, they can "sort of" accommodate you: Any family jaunt to the SoCal desert near Palm Springs meant my parents would be buying dates to eat there ... and to eat at home. Not only that, it's kind of funny to connect the dots between Shields ... and dates.

I found this photo taken a while back. Does it indicate GM dominance over Ford? (It was at a GM brand dealership.) That first jelly bean Taurus was sort of weird and possibly the basis of the jargon "jelly bean" styling for cars that followed.

Opera, anyone? . . . Opera window, anyone?

I randomly thought of Pontiac and the simple beauty of their last family of small block V8 engines. Here's what one looks like from a F-bird Formula 350 that was up for sale. With no A/C, look at the ground beneath and all those spark plugs begging to be changed by any teenager with a shop class under his or her belt. And who can forget the simple, clean, classic dashboards of yesteryear, such as the one in this F-bird Formula 350? So damn glad I got to experience this stuff when it was the order of the day.

@oldshurst442 Hey, I know Quebec is definitely awesome. What might NOT be awesome is being in some redneck lumber town way north and east of Quebec City where they don't like Anglophones. I've heard they might look at you much as if you were walking into an unknown town like you'd see in one of those old Western movies. - - - - - Side note: I just called Culver's. They are not participating in National Custard Day. Turds. Maybe it was the FL locations. Thought I'd give you guys the heads up. The flavor of the day (varies by store), however, is Chocolate Oreo Volcano. Let the lava flow!

@balthazar @Robert Hall So, then, powered by the Buick variant of the 350 V8 ?

An out of order spotting, dating back to around 2016. I was driving past a farm in Quebec and saw this: What the heck kind of Buick is that? I know that, even with 3 ventiports on each fender, it is NOT a V6. Amazing that, even with the rigorous Quebec winter, this old Buick is in such great shape.