For whatever reason, I really wanted Lasagna tonight. And, with nothing special to do, I figured I’d even go on an adventure to find it, if need be.

So I googled “Best Lasagna Phoenix.” The results were disappointing. There was no info that was recent, and nothing that looked trustworthy. So, instead we went to an Italian place right by our house and gambled on whether they would even have lasagna.

“Which Italian Place?” you ask. That Italian Place. On 40th. Over here in Ahwatukee.

And they had lasagna. And it was good. Very good. Actually, everything was good. Good Bread. Good Service. Good Salad. Good Chicken Parmesan.

So, I am ready to declare Lasagna from That Italian Place the best Lasagna in Phoenix. Never mind that it’s the only Lasagna that I’ve ordered since moving here. It was good.

And yes, the phrasing of this post is intentional, so’st to raise me toward the top of the “Best Lasagna Phoenix” or “Best Lasagna Ahwatukee” search results.

Oh, and we had a coupon too. So even better!

Not new to me (as I’ll explain below), but probably obscure enough to my generation that I’ll put it out there anyway.

The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1913, changed the way that US Senators are elected.

Today, they are directly elected by the voters in each state, just like US Representatives. Prior to the 17th Amendment Senators were selected by the state legislators in each state. The specifics on how to select the Senators were appropriately left up to the states to decide.

I discovered this fact unsurprisingly not in public school, but during a visit to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The Park Ranger there (it’s a national park) explained it this way: The Senate was there to represent the interests of the States, and the Representatives were there to represent the interests of the people.

In my opinion it is unfortunate that we’ve gotten away from that set up. George Will agrees with me.

Russ Feingold, unsurprisingly, does not. He wants to make sure Governors can’t appoint Senators when vacancies occur. John McCain agrees with him. I think we should have a law preventing McCain and Feingold from teaming up in the future, since they haven’t come up with a winning idea yet.

Will does a way better job of articulating the argument for repealing rather than amending the Seventeenth Amendment than I can, so I encourage you to read his article.

I don’t get Craig’s List. I think it’s annoying to look at, hard to navigate, and has the worst design ever. But since they have a peace sign as their little icon, I don’t think I’m exactly their target audience. The peace sign is really more of a hippy thing. And I don’t think I’d ever be confused for a hippy.

But, it’s free to list stuff, and it’s widely used, so I put some stuff on Craig’s List today. 2 Items were free- an old water heater and an old gas grill. Both were spoken for within an hour of posting them. The grill was gone within an hour and a half. The water heater is a longer story, but it will be going to a charity tomorrow morning.

I also listed 2 things to sell. Those got less interest. I got one offer on one item (a treadmill), but it was half what I listed it for. No nibbles yet on the couch. But it’s only been a few hours.

It’s been awhile since I’ve given a stat update.

We’ve now passed 2,500 visits and 5,000 page views, with over 800 posts. Woo Hoo!!

via This is Why You’re Fat…

1170% of your daily Cholesterol though.

I just went on a wild wild journey through wiki. I could honestly do posts on each of these topics, but in the interest of time, I will share a fact or two on each as I go. Our story begins when I was researching the double fish-o-filet at McDonalds. So I looked up the wiki for Filet-o-fish.

The normal Filet-o-fish at McDs has only one HALF of a slice of cheese on it. The filet was increased by 50% during the Deluxe line of sandwiches.

That lead to the wiki on the Arch Deluxe. Turns out the Deluxe line of McDs sandwiches (including the Arch Deluxe) is considered one of the most expensive flops of all time. There was a comparison made between its advertising style and that of OK Soda.

Which lead me to the OK Soda wiki. Not my first time here, but what I did notice was that apparently the same time as OK Soda, there was something called Obey Giant (didn’t look this one up) which was using the same color and font as OK. The creator made several custom AG stickers (short for Andre the Giant) and plastered them over OK Soda ads.

This leads me to Andre the Giant. I could say a lot about the guy including the fact that he was French, his last name was Roussimoff, he weighed over 540 pounds, and growing up, he was a neighbor of Samuel Beckett.

Samuel Beckett was an Irish writer, dramatist and poet. I only stayed on here long enough to see if there was any reference to the Quantum Leap character (like Sam from the show was named after this real life icon). Not finding one, I moved on to Quantum Leap’s Samuel Beckett.

Samuel “Sam” Beckett was a really cool character. I knew that, but it turns out I don’t remember a lot of QL episodes. He was much more of a child-prodigy then I remembered and it turns out Sam fixes his future wife so she doesn’t stand him up at their wedding. He also changed the funding for Project Quantum Leap from public to military, then later installed a new head of the project (by getting a girl to pass her legal exams), saves his brother’s life (at the expense of freeing Al from POW camp), and has a child…

Also, it is stated that in the last episode, Sam was subconsciously picking where he lept, and never did make it home.

I had to end there… I’m sure I could have kept going. God bless the Hitchhiker’s Guide… I mean Wiki.

Even Weird Gary. No joke.

This is one of those posts that will only matter to a few people, but still something I learned.

This is a second-hand account, but still shocking. Gary apparently tried Internet dating… I don’t know what site he used. He said he didn’t have any luck because all the girls, “wanted to know how much money was in his bank account.” When pressed to see if they really asked that, he abruptly changed the subject.

Weird.

For a limited time engagement. According to the guy behind the counter we’re talking 3-4 weeks.

At the food court, The Wife^® had Subway. But she gets her Diet Coke from McDonald’s. (The mix is better there, don’tcha know.)

Because The Wife^® is the best wife out there, she brought me back a McRib with her Diet Coke. That was awesome, but it did guilt me out of making fun of her for going to multiple places to assemble her meal.

The McRib was every bit as good as I remembered it. And as a bonus, I didn’t have to suffer through that poorly named Cheesesteak Mignon.

So don’t bother asking what I’m doing this weekend. You already know.

With a name like Cheesesteak Mignon, it’s got to be good, right? Yeah, not so much.

We went to the mall tonight, so it was a food court dinner. I know, I know – classy! I wandered off to Steak Escape, where they were pumping the Cheesesteak Mignon. It’s cheesesteak with bacon, A1, onions, and cheese.

I’m not sure where it went wrong, but it did. If I had to guess, I’d say the cheese. I’m thinking it is some type of pasteurized processed cheese food product vs. real cheese.

I wouldn’t recommend it. But, despite the Cheesesteak debacle, I ended up having the best dinner ever. Why? Read on to the next post to find out…

AZ is all about hiring young guys to stand on street corners and twirl these signs around to get your attention to move into an apartment building or visit T-Mobile or something. They are very flashy and very fast spinners. They are kind of like the color guard, but use cardboard signs instead of flags on poles.

Today while driving out to the mall, there was a whole group of them practicing together.

So there you have it. They have to practice to make it look cool. I just thought they got bored and were having fun with it but it turns out that they have to work at it.