Munday Mosings

For the fifth post with this title…my wonderful wife asked our server, “Is the beef for the taco salad spicy?” He replied, “No, it’s not spicy at all.” He either lied or was misinformed; the beef in my taco salad that was yesterday’s lunch was spicy.

I realize that eating at a “Mexican” restaurant carries the risk–for me–of spicy food, of the vile weed cilantro being used in many dishes. Still, when the server replies that an item is not spicy that should be good enough.

My GI tract has been unhappy since lunch yesterday. Perhaps I should have sent the item back after the first bite, but figured the sour cream would at least partly mitigate the spiciness. In terms of mouth feel it did, but the sour cream didn’t fool my stomach.

I recognize, of course, that here in Arizona the Latin American influence in food is significant. I also know that, in general, American restaurants have been making their food spicier for a long time.

My first experience with this was while I was working for the Baltimore Orioles. Not far from Memorial Stadium was a grocery store, with which I shared a name, that also made sandwiches and other “prepared” food items. Every Thursday was taco salad day.

I went almost every Thursday, either with friends or by myself. One Thursday the sauce that one could pour over the salad was much spicier than it had been previously. Of course, I didn’t know that until I had returned to the stadium. I ate very little of the salad that day.

Figuring that experience was an aberration, I dutifully returned the following Thursday for taco salad day. Much to my chagrin, the sauce was very spicy once again. I asked someone at the store about the taco salad sauce and they said they had recently changed the recipe. I never ate the taco salad again.

If you like spicy food, then by all means eat it. DON’T assume that everyone else likes it or should like it. Using Pareto as a guide, I would estimate that about 20% of Americans don’t like and/or can’t tolerate spicy food. Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny. OK, maybe tyranny is too strong a word in this context, but those of us in the 20% should still be able to dine out.

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Speaking of the Baltimore Orioles, for whom I worked from 1988 to 1994:

 

 

These are the first two pages of the annual statement for the pension plan that pays me every month and has since August, 2015. I also receive this statement from the San Diego Padres. Yes, I find it odd that for 2019 and 2020 the funding target attainment percentage was 100% while last year’s was 107%.

I could not live on my pension alone, but it’s a nice income supplement. As to why I started receiving it almost as soon as I was eligible, I spent months calculating the Net Present Value (NPV) of the pension stream at age 55–the first age I could begin collecting–and assuming I live to 80 using all sorts of fixed and variable discount rate models. The NPV hardly varied regardless of when I would start receiving the pension. As I have recounted, I decided to begin collecting on the day that most closely matched my last day as a full-time baseball operations employee and that I wanted to make MLB make nearly as many payments to me as possible until they put me in the ground or in an urn.

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I am reluctant to make generalizations, but I strongly suspect that many wives would ask, “Why do you need another car?” or “Why don’t we have just one car?” if their husband indicated he wanted to buy a car and a less than practical one, at that. My wonderful wife, however, is encouraging me to buy one and even suggested one I had sort of dismissed.

 

 

From Mecum Auctions a picture of a 2007 Cadillac XLR offered at their Houston event in 2019. I must admit that I was in awe of the looks of this car from the first time I saw one at the annual Dallas Auto Show.

I was put off by the price, which is why I bought my second Corvette in February, 2007 instead of an XLR. While they’re not really cheap used, I can almost certainly buy one in the $25,000 range.

With my Z06 still in the shop, having only one car at our disposal has been an inconvenience. As for a grocery car/taxi being more practical, the number of days in a year when we might want to “carry” passengers is in single digits and, believe it or not, the Z06 is more than adequate as a grocery car especially considering we buy a lot of our groceries on Amazon.

My wife is wonderful, indeed.

 

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