Fruit Salad

Who puts marshmallows in fruit salad? That was the thought as I sat down for my first "meat and three" meal at a local joint. Of course, the fruit salad was also a mayo (or some white sauce) based item that I was left to conjure up a potential taste. It was tasty but I'm pretty sure that any nutritional value that I had hoped for was long gone as was any taste in the long overboiled peas that I got as one of my other "3" sides for my meat. I've had plenty of tasty meals here and I've already become rather partial to collard greens but the availability of vegetables cooked in a way to preserve their natural goodness is sorely lacking....on the flip side I'm sure I could more easily find these vegetables fried in one way or another. I may be embellishing a bit here but fried is certainly the weapon of choice on many meals.

Oh, and by the way, boiled peanuts....awesome.

202 14 35 17

That was the number that flashed across the screen as I exited a local establishment. "What are those numbers" I was thinking. Above the digital screen was a chalk board with some words including "Roll Tide". Now "Roll Tide" is the most common phrase uttered around this town....the Univ of Alabama are the Crimson Tide for those of you who may not have known and the saying is rally cry for the sports teams....and when I say sports teams, that is 95% football. So the numbers you may ask?....202 days 14 hours 35 minutes and 17 seconds....until the next game. This town is obsessed with the team and shuts down when the team plays a game. Someone asked me what was the most shocking thing about moving to the deep south and Tuscaloosa and I must say that the cult following of the football team is easily at the top. I know this goes on at many other schools, but I've never experienced it. It's slightly overwhelming when I got into a football conversation and should have known something about the assistant coaches. Who the f cares about assistant coaches? They're just these nameless guys with wires sticking out of them on the sidelines.

New favorite word

There is quite an array of accents here in town.....some are much stronger than others but for some reason I can get enough of people saying July. I don't even know why it's come up so much since it's not even close to July....but it's pronounced Joo-lie....the "Joo" rhyming with the sound a cow makes..."MOO".

Oh man, it's crazy.....but I'm certainly hoping that I can find some radio station or something in July....excuse me....JOOOO-lie, that tells the day, every day.

In fact, now that I think about it, I believe that a character (Charlie, the pugilist) was pronouncing it that way in the movie Young Guns.....maybe I can dig through the movies and play that scene a few times.