Al Butt: Chef compliments – Austin Daily Herald

Echoes from

Meeting of the club of idlers

There is something wrong with this oatmeal.

This is not oatmeal. This is chicken noodle soup.

Oh, that’s very good then.

Drive down Bruce’s driveway

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Everything was almost compatible. Thoughts cross my mind every time I pass his driveway. I visited a friend in Harmony. I had planned to bring him some colorful Asian beetles, but forgot. Fortunately, he already had them.

The stranger waved me to his table and asked me to sit down. He was in the hall the night before when I told some stories from the stage. He celebrated because the doctor told him everything was in the right place. He dined by the light of his cellphone: a hamburger with nothing—no mustard or ketchup. I suspected it was because he sent his seasonings to the chef. He didn’t have fries or salad. Perhaps he was not one to take sides. He was a triangle in the school orchestra. He was responsible for every little thing. Now he played the guitar. I was in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Apparently a lot of Minnesota snowbirds winter there because a man who lived in Alabama all his life told me that when he retired he was going to move to Minnesota and drive slowly.

I don’t know what street I was driving on, but I could see Wrigley Field from my borrowed Prius. I took a river tour in Chicago and loved the history presented. The SS Eastland was a passenger ship that capsized while tied to a dock on the Chicago River in 1915. A total of 844 passengers and crew members died. I looked at The Bean, a sculpture with a reflective surface that embodies the Millennium Park experience. It wasn’t as pretty as the tree next door, which was stunning. I watched a softball game in a 16 inch softball without a glove and ate deep dish pizza at Lou Malnat’s. The pizza was different (not hot, but with hot tendencies) and delicious.

I learned

The inventor of the time machine died the following week.

Most people go through their entire lives.

“Happy birthday” is best sung in the off key.

Everything costs too much until you get used to it.

Halloween originates from the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain. Participants dressed up and offered food to ward off ghosts. This practice evolved into dressing up in costumes and performing a trick to get a treat. The Wunderlee Candy Company created candy corn in the 1880s, and it became popular among farmers who loved candy corn kernels. Candy corn is divisive—people love it or hate it.

Anyone who loves a delicious leg of salmon appreciates genetically modified products.

I’m lucky because

My mother never called me by our dog’s name.

I have never been bitten by a cow.

I walked tall and never tripped over a woolly bear caterpillar.

Department of bad jokes

A visitor who was running away from a grizzly was arrested in the national park. He is accused of running with a bear behind him.

I went to the telekinetic ice cream parlor. They can make root beer float in there.

I wonder if the guy who coined the phrase “one time wonder” came up with anything else?

The man had the Midas touch. Everything he touched turned into silencers.

Notes of nature

There was a lot of commotion. Apparently, it was a series about a squirrel. The little boys were busy in the endless pursuit of food. Birds make my life a little twitter.

Research from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study has found that part of the hippocampus increases in male squirrels during the fall caching season. This doesn’t happen in women’s brains. Women already remember where they put that acorn or where to find a man’s shirt. This seasonal plasticity is necessary for males to think like females in the fall when they hide all those nuts. It is possible that the hippocampus, the area of ​​memory and spatial organization of the brain, increases by 15% in autumn.

The white-tailed deer population in Texas is estimated to exceed 3 million wild deer. If captive deer are included, there are over 5 million deer in Texas. Other states with deer herds are Michigan (1.7 million), Alabama (1.7 million), Mississippi (1.7 million), Missouri (1.4 million), Wisconsin (1.3 million), Pennsylvania (1, 3 million), North Carolina (1.3 million) and four states with 1 million: Minnesota, Arkansas, Georgia and Kentucky. Deer are crepuscular, so watch them during the day.

The meeting was postponed

Look out for the angel on one shoulder, not the devil on the other, and be kind.