The Drudgery Report

Another week down with lots of time to kill. Everyday is pretty much the same. I spend them eating, sleeping, and playing Call of Duty working. I also spent a lot of time reading the internet. In fact, I finished it yesterday. It was okay.

Anyway, now that I’m done that I have time to write a post about the tedium that was life this past week. You don’t wanna read about that shit? Too bad.

That Time of The Month

A Faustian Lunch

I was hoping to have a blockbuster blog update this week. Several days ago I got an email from the guy who I thought was the Northline-Guy-What’s-In-Charge-Of-Deciding-What-To-Offer’s boss. He told me that he’d left that job and that company a little while ago but he put me on to the secret (at least to me) US Army approved, 28 day menu plan the DFACs are supposedly following. I figured I’d download it and post it here somehow. I even asked M if he could enhance the DFAC-O-Matic to include a function that would allow you to see the menu for whatever DFAC it commanded you to go to. Turns out the menu is a fucking huge PDF document that, although I managed to convert it to Excel, is still pretty fucked up. Plus, I have no idea what day of the 28 day cycle each DFAC is on. And, frankly, I don’t see a hell of a lot of correlation between the menu and what I’m actually being fed. All that to say, if any of you Supreme catering division folks are reading this (as my source alleges you are) throw me a bone here. Tell me what day you guys are on at each DFAC. You Sodexo dudes could do the same. I mean, I’m sure I’m not the only one who wants to be able to avoid Vegetable Curry night or the soul destroying Deviled Oven Fires.

Folly Old England

We ate breakfast at the Cambridge several times this week as I usually had to spend an hour or two in the morning on this side of the airfield navigating the new, improved, highly efficient and..er…stupid KAF badging procedure. Seriously, the level of bureaucracy involved in proving a bunch of oldish, khaki wearing, ex-military Canadian and Aussie technicians are not Al Qaeda operatives seems a little over the top. I count 9 separate steps…all in different offices,  just to get the two badges they need to do their job. It would make a Soviet apparatchik proud. But I digress.

Unfortunately, with the Omelet King on leave, breakfast at the Cambridge really isn’t worth having to listen to D bitch about the silly way they slice the tomatoes but we go there anyway because that’s where we go when we eat breakfast on this side of the airfield. The fried and poached eggs are still good but I’d stay away from the construction grade pancakes if I were you.

I’d rather eat the one on the right.

Oh, hey, you know those kitchen sponges you can get that are usually mainly yellow but have a green scrubby layer on one side? You know how they get if you leave them in the sink for about a week after scrubbing out the pot you fried up hamburgers in…that layer of brown stinky goo that forms on the green part? Yeah? Well, for some reason, Cambridge had those available on the salad bar last week. Like, what the fuck, Cambridge? I’m not gonna do your damn dishes. I just wanna eat dinner.

It is what it is…i.e. shitty

So D and I have been here longer than anyone on our team but he still makes the occasional rookie mistakes. Just last week he tried to eat a Cambridge scone for dessert. How’d that work out for ya, D? Then, yesterday (or was it in July 2011…who the fuck knows?) he got the carrot and pineapple salad and remarked “It’s just fucking carrot and pineapple” “What did the sign say?” I asked knowingly. “Carrot and Pineapple Salad”.  I see the light go on. “Oh yeah, it didn’t say it was ‘delicious Carrot and Pineapple Salad’ or ‘Carrot and Pineapple Salad with some fucking dressing or flavour’. Fuck”. Yup, the “RandomlyThrownTogetherStuffWeFoundInTheFridge Salad” is making a comeback.

The Good, The Bad and the Monti

Now, that’s a napkin!

We’ve all developed a love/hate relationship with the Monti. We love the comfy chairs and spacious table layout. And, just when I start to complain about the Kleenex-like tiny napkins, they provide giant, high quality ones. The food is sometimes  pretty good too. D commented just last week that “this brown stuff is a lot better than the brown stuff we had at the Northline for lunch.” Often, however, our greaseless hands and grateful asses are drowned out by our screaming gall bladders.

A metaphor for KAF life.

Hey, I like grease as much as the next guy, even if that next guy really fucking likes grease, ok? But, come on, Monti, you really can’t be calling something “Rotisserie Chicken” if you cooked it in a goddamn deep fryer. Who are you trying to fool? No, the fact that I opted for that chicken is not evidence that you fooled me. It’s just that, after a full walk around looking at your offerings, I passed M, also dejectedly carrying around an empty plate, who intoned “I have nothing on my tray but unfulfilled dreams”. At that point I thought, “What the fuck. Give me the breaded, deep-fried rotisserie fucking chicken”.

Rotisseried…yeah right.

I got back to the table and, as I was snapping a picture of the aorta clenching mess on my plate, I observed “It looks like I got all the ‘red’ low performance foods tonight”. “Well, it’s not like you have any activity planned for the rest of the day, right?”, D prophesized. His ESP is getting downright fucking creepy.

No. Corn.

You Just Made That Up

Ok, Northline, there is no bloody such thing as “Calico Corn”. If it’s just plain old, boiled yellow corn it is just called corn. Don’t make me tell you again. Oh, and for all you people who think this DFAC corn is good, take a fucking trip to southern Ontario and eat some real corn sometime in your pathetic life, okay?

On the bright side, Northline, your onion rings rock. Can you tell the Monti/IH folks that using real onions rather than extruded onion mush is the way to go? They seem to value uniformity over taste.

Force Feeding

This has gotta help my dysentery, right?

At the insistence of M and J, we went to Far East for dinner tonight. M attempted to sell D and I on the idea with the KAF-think “If nothing else, they almost always have those little sausages. They’re crappy but I like them.” As usual, the only decent thing was the stir fry and it was kinda the shits. It was, essentially, ramen noodles with .0004 ounces of chicken in it. Think Mr. Noodle without the flavour packet. Gobs of sweet chili sauce made it tolerable. In the interest of journalism, I tried some Sambar (I know, that’s not even a fucking word, right?) and Manchurian Chicken. Sambar is, apparently, lentils (ick!) and mushy zuchini (double ick!) in what turned out to be a pretty decent curry sauce. The Manchurian Blandidate was adequately un-rubbery chicken in a slimy breading covered in an inoffensive water-flavoured sauce. Dipping the chicken in the Sambar sauce served to combine the two least yucky parts of these two dishes into something that was extraordinarily mediocre.

The meal was saved, however, by the excellent desserts. Unlike the Cambridge, the Far East actually bakes their baked apples and they were deliciously soft in a light syrup. The peach pie was also pretty good despite being unround. 

Reaching a Millstone

Me: “Hey D, we’re coming up on our fifth anniversary of working in KAF. What should we do to celebrate?”
R: “Cry.”
D: “How about we go to breakfast at the Cambridge, go to work, eat lunch at the Northline, go back to work, then go eat dinner at the Monti and call it a day?”
J: “You should celebrate and go to TGI Friday’s for their special of NOTHING”.

What’s a Key Low Meeter?

Idiot or asshole…you decide.

J and I got stuck behind a Ford full of US soldiers doing 30 kph in the 40 zone of the perimeter road. What the hell possesses someone to decide 30 kph is a reasonable speed? Is 40 kph really too scary for ya? The only thing I can figure is that it was an American made vehicle with a miles per hour only speedometer and Bubba figured 40 kph equals 20 mph. In other words, he was a fucking idiot. Sure, there’s a slight chance he was doing it just to piss me off but one should never ascribe to conspiracy or malice that which can be attributed to laziness or stupidity.

Of course, I didn’t pass the guy because that would be a violation of COMKAF driving regs but, once I was in front of him, J sternly waggled his finger out the window, indicating the 40 kph sign…for all the good it’ll do.

Oh For Christ’s Sake!

Hey, you holy rollers I hear screamin’ Jesus incantations from the chapel near the wash rack, we have heathen shift workers trying to sleep over here. Try reading Matthew 6:6, goddammit!

Bottom Line

Well, that was exciting.

“This is the curse of our age, even the strangest aberrations are no cure for boredom.” – Stendhal