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Marrickville Council rocks. Over the past week the Snook and I have noticed a drain behind the Abbey (the local backpackers’) that’s been backing up. Yesterday morning I stepped out to go to work and saw that it was literally *gushing* sewage into the street. Yeah, toilet paper, poo, everything. (Luckily it was flowing away from our place.) The Snook called the Council that morning and by the time I got home from work they’d inspected it and put up barriers. This morning we woke up to the sound of jackhammers breaking up the concrete around the drain. A 24-hour turn-around time for local government? I never would’ve believed it.

McDonalds’ New “Salad Plus” Line: A Review

First things first – I love McDonalds. I grew up as a typical American kid who thought Happy Meals were the greatest meal ever. I cheered when I moved to England and discovered that my beloved back-catalogue McChicken was still available there. I also got pretty damn chunky. Not long after moving to Australia I had one last burger and decided, “This is it.” I quit cold turkey. For a year and a half, I never even went into the restaurant.

Recently McDonalds Australia, in an attempt to defuse any possible litigation, announced that they would be adding salads and low-fat items to the menu permanently. (Unlike in the US, salads here were strictly a novelty item that would only be available for a limited time.) They call the new line Salads Plus. It consists of two salads, a veggie burger, a chicken wrap, two muffins, a yoghurt, and apples. New commercials show kids rejoicing that now their mothers will bring them to McDonalds more often, and mothers rejoicing that now there’s something for them to eat at Macca’s. (I find it funny – and telling – that they don’t actually show any of the kids eating the healthy stuff.) Anyway, I decided it was time to give McDonalds another try.My first stop was the new nutritional information cards. Zeroing in on the various carb counts, my jaw dropped. Sure, they advertise the stuff as being low-fat and healthy, but you wouldn’t believe how much sugar is in this stuff. (As all good Atkins pod people know, fat provides flavor, so when you take it out you have to make up the difference with sugar.) The yoghurt alone had over forty grams. The veggie burger, muffins, and chicken wrap were also out. That left two salads and the apple.

Ignoring the apple (because, really, what could Mickey Dee’s do to an apple?), I first went for the roast chicken salad. It still had a disturbing number of carbs (over twenty), but I chalked that up to croutons and dried cranberries. I chucked the croutons. The dried cranberries, however, were really good. So those stayed. I also chucked the provided salad dressing and used my own low-carb stuff. The end result was all right, I guess. There didn’t seem to be enough chicken to justify the higher price (as compared to the garden salad) and the salad mix was mostly iceberg lettuce. Verdict: It would do in a pinch, if I hadn’t brought my lunch to work and I was desperate for something healthy.

Yesterday I tried the other “garden” salad. This had a much better lettuce mix but fewer tomato slices. The carb count was only two grams! though, so I’m not complaining. (No croutons included this time.) I used the provided Italian dressing, which was better than expected. Again, it wasn’t much better than the crappy tossed salad you could get at any other restaurant, but for McDonalds it was a definite improvement.

One last semi-shameful admission: My willpower crumbled on the second visit and I bought a single cheeseburger. I justified it to myself by chucking the bun (as Dr. A. suggests) and just eating the inside, but man. Tossing aside that sweet, fatty roll was the hardest thing I’ve had to do in ages. I guess that’s the whole problem though, right?

Friday Annoyances:

• Some misguided fool at my office thought it was a great idea to designate Fridays “No Lift Day”. This means that the elevator is turned off and we’re all supposed to use the stairs. (As expected, all of us on the second floor* are grumbling, while those damn lucky ground dwellers don’t mind at all.) This policy is supposedly designed to “make us healthier” and “save the environment”. I think it’s because they’re “cheap bastards.”
• Further evidence for the cheap bastard theory: It’s frickin’ freezing in here, Mr. Bigglesworth. Is the lack of central heating also due to health and environmental concerns? I think not.
• I have nothing to do.
• Some stupid big power outage in New York has knocked out half the sites I normally read, so I really have nothing to do.
• The clowns got eliminated. 🙁

* In US terms, we’re on the third floor, and this damn office has high ceilings. Just wanted to explain that lest you think I’m unduly complaining here.

Trivia Update: Fourth place, then third, and now – inevitably – second. We lost on a tiebreak. My own personal highlight was knowing the names of the actors who played Bill and Ted. Other memorable questions included the nine European capitals that have hosted the Summer Olympics, the name of the spellbook on Charmed, and the medical name of the four bones fused at the bottom of your spine. Can you get any of them?

Congratulations to our friends Major and Steph, who just announced their engagement tonight. (This is disturbing. It’s only been one week since I made my anti-marriage proclamation and already our ratio of married-to-single friends is shifting.)

Geek or Serial Killer? I am ashamed to admit that I only got three correct out of ten! No wonder slashdot meetups are so intimidating for me; I subconsciously think everybody’s a murderous psychopath!

I’ve been pretty discouraged with the diet lately. After the vacation I went back to hard-core induction but no matter what I did I just couldn’t get into ketosis. That stupid Ketostick just refused to turn pink. Without that encouragement I found myself unable to resist the siren call of carbs. (Last weekend alone I had french fries, eggs benedict, and two burgers with buns!) I decided to give it one last try this week. Again, no ketosis. Finally in desperation I went to the chemist and got some new ketostix. Eureka! It turned pink immediately. I have renewed faith and willpower. Moral of the story: When the packet says “Discard six months after opening”, believe it. The darn things just stop working.

Problems With Having an American Accent in Australia That I Never Noticed in England:

• I regularly get twice as much hamburger from the butcher as I request. Seriously. You see, we Yanks pronounce “have” and “half” almost identically. The vowel sound – at least in my Midwestern experience – is the same. Australians, though, pronounce that second word more like “hoff”. So when I approach Dobsy, our local butcher, and say, “Can I have half a kilo of mince, please?” he inevitably gives me a full kilo. It’s like he thinks I’m an idiot and I’ve repeated the “have” twice, because he doesn’t hear the “hoff.” After the first couple times I finally figured out why, but I feel like an idiot over-enunciating and saying, “Could I HAAAV HOFFFF a kilo…” So now I just get the big bags and split them up when I get home.
• Everyone thinks I’m Canadian. Well, they don’t actually. It’s just that everyone assumes you are because apparently Canadian backpackers get way annoyed when you assume they’re American. So Aussies always start off by asking if you’re Canadian. Which is fine, but it’s getting to the point where it annoys me. Why Canadian backpackers have to be so sensitive, I have no idea.
• Whenever I ask a shopkeeper for something they don’t carry, they think I’m making it up. Exhibit A: the spaghetti squash. When the Snook and I gave up pasta, I thought this would be a great replacement. The only problem is that not a single greengrocer I talked to had ever heard of the damn thing. They’re all like, “It’s like a pumpkin? And you eat it like pasta?” You’d think I was describing some strange Narnian vegetable. I finally gave up on that one. Exhibit B: Since I’m trying to cut down on the beer consumption, I’ve been drinking more cocktails. I saw an ad for Absolut Vanilla recently and I thought, “Man, that sounds good! Mix it up with a little Diet Coke and you’ve got a Vanilla Diet Coke With Kick!” Unfortunately none of the liquor stores in Newtown carry it. Which is fine, except for the fact that the guy at the last one was like, “Are you sure it exists?” Me: “Yeah, I saw it advertised in a magazine.” Him: “In Australia??” Me: “YEAH, IN AUSTRALIA. I’VE BEEN LIVING HERE FOR ALMOST TWO BLOODY YEARS, YOU TOOL!” Maybe I’m the one that’s getting oversensitive.
• Some people are just mean. The old lady at the laundrette was asking me about my holiday recently (since we had so much clothing to wash) and asked where I was from. After assuring her that, no, I wasn’t from Canada, she asked how long I’d been in Australia. “A year and a half!” I proudly announced. She turned and sniffed, “Haven’t really lost the accent yet, have you, love?” Beeyotch.

I’m sure I’ll think of more.

I always thought using “they” or “them” to refer to a singular person was a grievous grammatical sin. Instead it turns out that it’s actually not so bad! We English-speakers have been doing it since the 14th century, in fact. So the next time someone tries to correct you on it, tell them to stick it up their bum.