I smell football

Being a long-distance football fan has it's challenges. My team is (only) a 17 hour drive away. Needless to say, they are not exactly the preferred broadcast in my part of the country. It's even harder during pre-season when only one of the four tames is even getting national coverage.

Regular season is another story. Oddly enough, I live in a football-crazy town. But they are not a PRO-football crazy town. (And few sports bars, but that's a post for another day.)

I spent last season bar-shopping after getting fed up with my previous haunt. I have four criteria for my Sunday afternoon locales.

1. Must actually show my game. Simply having NFL Sunday Ticket is not enough. I've been in a few smaller bars where they have no inclination to change the channel to my game, even if no one is sitting in that corner of the establishment. Or, worse, the self-designated Remote Nazi will dictate which games are on which sets in order to accommodate his multi-game monitoring for keeping track of his various Fantasy leagues' stats (yes, that was plural), and all of this while being oblivious to the fact that the other five patrons all happen to be wearing matching team gear and are craning their necks to see their favorite team. 
2. Other patrons are civil. See above for explanation. Yes, Remote Nazi was a patron, not an employee. 
3. Food is more than edible. This is harder to come by than you think. When I moved to this town, I started with a national franchise restaurant. Except that the salad was brown around the edges, the protein was cold, and the sweet tea had a hint of soapy flavor. Then I found something more locally-owned (though still a chain), and it didn't take long to realize most of their menu was based on pre-cooked, quick prep foods. As in the burger patties were preformed and the grilled chicken pre-sliced.
4. Staff are attentive and friendly. National franchise would be busting at the seams with the post-church crowd, seat me in the bar area, and then completely forget about me for at least a half-hour. Once I did get service, it would be another half-hour before drink and/or food appeared, and I never saw the server again. Hey, I get it that a table for one is not going to generate much of a tip. What they don't realize is that I will reward them kindly for the simple courtesy of not letting my drink go empty. Several times I wondered what would happen if I simply walked out because it took so long to get my ticket. One time I had to wait until the end of the first quarter of the SECOND game to close out. Conversely, local chain had the issue of giving me my ticket by half-time, without giving any consideration to the fact that I would be sitting there another hour and a half. And that was after patronizing them for a year. 

My new favorite place is most definitely local. In fact, fountain drinks are on the honor system.  The cook usually brings out my order himself, and then checks back a few minutes later to see if the shrimp were fried to my liking. The bartender/server doesn't rush your order, and when you ask for the bill you get it within two minutes. Heck, at the start of the 4th quarter she asks if you want anything else from the menu! And as for the other patrons, obviously they all know each other, come and go throughout my game without interruption or changing channels, and are polite enough to engage in friendly banter with this football fan. It only took six years to find this place.

I'm ready for some football!

What ever happened to...

July?

When did August get here?

And when did my garden turn into a jungle?

OK, having a non-functional lawn mower is not helping the situation, but still, whoever saw tomato plants reaching 6+ feet tall? 

But back to the original rant...

August is almost half over? Two more weeks and my job is back in it's seasonal rush mode. While I'm currently in the "down time" period of my job my mind and body are unfortunately still in vacation mode. So when I should be trying to catch up on projects, clean off my desk, and take care of annual and semi-annual administrative functions, I'd much rather be at home on the sofa, unshowered, and watching The View.

And now returning to the tangent...

I was gone for 10 days. It rained while I was gone. The grass grew like a foot. And a half-hour into mowing, the engine blew. Ten more minutes and I would have had the stretch of lawn along the road done. So now I have a long, mostly-cut expanse of grass with strips of  knee high grass seed stems running in parallel lines to my pasture fence. It's like a bad mohawk out there. Like the barber failed to overlap his clipper strokes when shaving someone's head. Or I was too stupid to simply follow the trail. Now it looks even more pathetic because it's been like that for three days, and obviously I'm home and I should have finished mowing long ago. *sigh*

I'm borrowing the neighbor's lawn mower this weekend.