You want fries with that?

There was a time, not in the too distant past, when my friend "J" (I disguise her name to protect her identity, but it starts with "J" and rhymes with "Ulie") and I would, every few weeks, treat ourselves to a huge lunch at the local McDonald's. Yup -- the whole nine yards: a Big Mac or Filet-O-Fish sandwich, a supersize order of fries (extra salt, please!), and one of those plastic buckets of soda. The salt and grease tasted so good, but about an hour after we returned to work, we'd call each other, complaining that our stomachs ached.

We eventually got smarter and stopped eating at the Golden Arches - and now when we get together for lunch, we eat at Cafe Asiana, which incidentally is directly across the street from McDonald's. And we laugh about how gluttonous our noontime meals used to be.

Anyway, I saw this post today about an artist in New York who last April purchased a McDonald's "Happy Meal", and instead of eating it, left it uncovered on her kitchen counter just to see what would happen. She's been snapping a photo of the burger and fries every day since last spring, and to her horror, the "food" looks pretty much the same as it did when she bought it.

Sure, says artist Sally Davies, the fries and the burger patty shriveled up a bit, but the bun shows no signs of decay or mold. "And now, at six months, the food is plastic to the touch and has an acrylic sheen to it," she says.

Here's what the food looks like after 171 days on the counter (Sally says that after just 48 hours, the meal no longer emitted any smell -- even her dogs lost interest):

Pretty wild, huh? One more reason to be happy about my break-up with McDonald's. So inquiring minds want to know: why is this food is not spoiling?

Our get-away to the Cape

We escaped to Provincetown, at the tip of old Cape Cod, for the long Columbus Day weekend. Our friends Jan and Phyllis let us borrow their beach cottage (thanks again, ladies!), which is just a few doors down from where we've been spending our last few summer vacations, so the turf was very familiar. October is a great time to visit Provincetown, and this year, the weather was stunning: four days in a row of 65 degrees with a steady breeze. As usual, Otis was in his element on the beach (which makes sense, since he is a Portuguese Water Dog) and like always, he played hard and slept hard. We had no agenda but to drink coffee every morning at The Wired Puppy on Commercial Street and enjoy the beach. I even bought a book (gasp!) -- John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany" and read about 50 pages -- a major accomplishment! Here are a few photos from our get-away. (I also took some video on my Flip camera - but can't figure out how to load them into iMovie. Grrrrr....)

Our view from the cottage.

Who knew Charo was even alive?

She may be the worst lip-syncher in the world, but Charo is still shaking things up at 69 years old! Cuchi, cuchi indeed!

Boston.com features my blog!

The front page of Boston.com, the website for The Boston Globe, regularly features local bloggers on its homepage. And today, when I scrolled toward the bottom of Boston.com, there it was - a link to "Mike's Short Attention Span Theater" and my post about my adventures at the Boston Rock Gym. Pretty cool! Also had 70 visits to the blog today - a new record! Thanks to everyone who visited - and come back soon!

This is what it looked like on Boston.com

I swear this really happens...

Urban rock-climbing

On Monday night, my friend Kim and I visited the Boston Rock Gym in Woburn for a three-hour introduction to indoor rock-climbing. We got geared up with special harnesses and very tight shoes and then spent more than two hours learning safety basics – essential because while one person is enjoying the challenge of climbing the wall, their partner is on the ground as the “belayer”. One end of the rope is attached to the climber’s harness; the other is attached to the belayer, who also wears a harness to which a special pulley system is attached. The rope goes through the pulley, and through a series of synchronized hand movements, the belayer takes up the slack in the rope as the climber gets higher. By keeping the rope taunt, the belayer ensures that if the climber tumbles off the wall, they won’t have very far to fall.

Kim volunteered (well, I “volunteered” her) to be the first person in our group to go up the wall and she did great. We then broke into groups of three to practice climbing, falling, and belaying.

I had actually tried indoor rock-climbing once before, more than 10 years ago, at the Lakeshore Athletic Club in Chicago with my friend Julie. No photos from that adventure!

Have you ever tried indoor rock-climbing? I’d certainly be up for going again!

The perfect Figure 8 knot.

A family urban legend has been confirmed as "true".

There's been a funny story that's been told for years in my family, but I was never sure it was factual. So when I talked with my Mom the other day, I asked her for the "real story". Lo and behold, she confirmed that the story was true. So without any guilt about spreading a falsehood, let me tell you a tale about my Mom, some chicken, and a bag of potato chips.

There was my Mom, a pretty, young housewife living with my dad and three kids in Victor, NY, a little village about 20 miles out of Rochester. One afternoon, she decided to expand her cooking repertoire with a new recipe: baked chicken coated with potato chip crumbs. Sounds pretty good, huh? She got out all of the ingredients and put them out on the yellow linoleum counter in our kitchen. Chicken? Check! Egg? Check! Parsley flakes? Check! Potato chips? Check! But wait...the recipe calls for "potato chip crumbs" and the chips in the bag were whole. What to do?

I'm guessing that several options for turning those chips into crumbs passed through my Mom's head.

"Well, I could pour the chips on to the kitchen counter and then crush them with my hands," she might have thought. "Or better yet," she may have considered, "I could pour the chips into a bag and then crush them with my rolling pin." Her thought process evidently continued. "But wait," she might have said aloud, "I've got an even better idea!"

My mom left the kitchen and walked to our home's front door with two objects in her hands: the bag of potato chips and her car keys. Out the door, she descended the two steps that led to our front yard, and from there, walked over to the family car parked in our driveway.

Perhaps looking up and down the street to make sure our neighbor friends were watching to see how she had solved this particular kitchen issue, ("Look George -- Dorothy figured out how to make crumbs out of potato chips!"), Mom placed the bag of chips on the driveway, squarely behind the rear wheel of the car we affectionately called "The Bomb", stepped inside, and turned the key in the ignition. Perhaps she even snuck a glance of herself in the rearview mirror, smiled, and gave herself a little satisfied wink. My mom then dropped the gear shift into "reverse" stepped on the gas.

It rained potato chip crumbs in my front yard that afternoon. Of course, that vacuum-sealed bag of chips exploded all over the driveway when the back tire of The Bomb rolled over it.

I don’t remember if we ever got our potato chip encrusted chicken that night, and I don’t recall if my Mom actually told us what had happened, or if one of the neighbors witnessed the explosion and couldn't wait to tell us the story. In any case, we always give my mom a hard time about her unique method of using a two-ton vehicle to crush a 16 ounce bag of potato chips.

When I asked my mom if I could tell this story on my blog, she good-naturedly said, "Sure, but people are going to think I'm stupid!". Trust me - my mom is FAR from stupid – we all do silly things once in a while. So kudos to my Mom - one of the most pleasant and fun-loving people I've ever known – for being able to laugh at herself and letting me share this story with you.