though my official termination date is march 31, i had earned a lot of vacation time during my 7 1/2 years here, so i'm using it up and taking the rest of march "off work", or in other words, leaving early. that will give me more time to work on outplacement training, job hunting, and creative projects.

there's not a lot to do here other than clean out my cube and meet with HR to go over last-minute departure information (i guess about rolling over my 401k, company stock, etc), so i went out to grab my last lunch from burger king. bk has been my default lunch place when i don't bring a lunch, because it is close and it is usually not crowded, as opposed to the mcdonald's at 96th & merdian, which gets so busy by 11:30 that it causes traffic jams. it doesn't make sense to me, as the restaurants are mere blocks from each other, but i guess most people who work in the area haven't figured it out. unless people really do prefer mcdonald's over bk that strongly (which i can't believe, because mcd's food is not that good.)

so i was driving south on meridian at around 50mph (which is the speed limit north of 86th street), and a goose suddenly swooped out of the sky and landed on the road mere feet in front of my car. fortunately there was an unoccuped left-turn lane next to me so i was able to swerve and avoid killing the stupid thing. running over a goose would not have been a very good addition to my last day at work. i can understand why so many people hate them—most birds fly away when a car is coming.

then i drove through bk and ordered a whopper combo, instead of my usual original chicken sandwich combo. but when i got back to the building, i discovered that i had been given the wrong order! instead of my whopper with cheese, mayo, mustard, and ketchup only, i had received a tendercrisp chicken sandwich with lettuce only. after much deliberation, i decided to go ahead and eat the food i'd been given. after all, i'd never tried a tendercrisp, and tendercrisps are more expensive than whoppers anyway. i was a little afraid that they'd also given me the wrong drink (iced tea instead of coke), but they got that part right.

the sandwich was okay. it was perfectly satisfactory. but i didn't think it was as tasty as the original chicken sandwich—which virago calls the "ambrosial chicken sandwich"—despite the fact that the tendercrisp is a "premium" sandwich made with "whole muscle chicken" as opposed to whatever extruded parts-is-parts chickenstuff goes into the original sandwich. and it wasn't tastier because of a higher fat content, either: the nutrition facts show that the tendercrisp is actually higher in fat, calories, sodium, and sugar than the original chicken sandwich... not that either sandwich is anything close to healthy. ¶

dang. i'm gonna miss seeing "pearsontc.com" on my sitemeter. :)

hey, do they have chick-fil-a's up your way? if you don't mind giving money to an overtly evangelical organization that only allows franchise locations to be run by christian men (no women, for obvious southern baptist convention reasons), their chicken sandwiches are rather tasty. and for a while there they were giving away audio cassettes from some cartoon based on william bennett's "the book of virtues" with their kids meals. and just like everything else i find at a thrift store, i'll snatch it up thinking "wow, i can sample this!" and i never do... ¶