duck-shaped pain

Welcome to August. About the only thing of note about August is that the French word for it is Ao�t, [1] which is pronounced something like "oooot", which makes it amusing to say.

Doesn't take much to get me excited.

Because I was suddenly flush with money, I decided to take myself out for dinner. I headed over to the Thai restaurant to see if it was crowded. There were a lot of cars outside, but I knew from experience that this didn't necessarily correlate into it being crowded. All the cars could belong to one family, sitting at the big table, for instance.

But when I went in, it was very crowded. An entire group of kayakers [2] had landed ashore and had a collective urge for pad Thai. Their dustiness, dreadlocks (on white guys) and outdoor smell filled the foyer.

I stood there for a second, and J, the restaurant owner, came over to me. She apologized for the wait, and said it would probably be about 45 minutes before a table opened up.

I was really, really hungry, so I wasn't sure I wanted to wait. There wasn't anywhere to sit, and the only neighbors the restaurant has are a motorcycle store, a Laundromat and a corn field, so it's not like I could do any window shopping while I waited.

"Um, I don't think I'll stay," I told J. "I think I'll come in tomorrow for lunch or something."

"Okay. Hold on though, I get you something," she said, and ran towards the back of the restaurant.

I waited, getting glares from smelly boaters..

J. came out with a big container of something. It was a large foam container, probably used to hold soup or some other liquid. It was enormous - just past Big Gulp size, but not quite to bucket status.

She handed it to me. "Here you go, Thai coffee."

"Oh, wow, thanks," I said. "How much do I owe you?"

"On the house. Come back and eat when the boat people are not here."

I had planned to go to bed early tonight. But 1,000 fluid ounces of Thai coffee (yes, I drank the whole thing. It was free -- it would go against the spirit of the gift to waste it) are working against me.

Spoils from my highly caffeinated trip to the grocery store tonight: mint shampoo, gallon o' chai, salmon fillets, two ears Olathe sweet corn, bunch o' kale, 3 heads garlic, lemongrass and hot pepper instant noodles, strawberry and yogurt bread spread, eggplant, tiny cheese wedges, and olive oil potato chips.

Scary search engine hits this week: "the bras of yesteryear," "can I prove things with statistics?" "how do I make a dog turd?" "duck itch," "Wrinkly Crinkly week."

[1] It's been about six years since I took any French, so I couldn't remember which vowel in Ao�t got the circumflex. So I did a Google search on the word, which helped, but it was depressing that so many of the results were just people misspelling "about."

[2] Alternate words suggested by spell check: "haymakers," "Kay Akers," "kanakas."

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