1st Five Guys

After our Vulture Peak Hike last Thursday, Nathan Jr and I stopped in Surprise AZ at the new Five Guys hamburger restaurant that opened up there several months ago.  We'd heard rave reviews, and while my son had tried Five Guys at the Washington Airport on a layover a few years ago, I'd not sampled this famous food that I'd previously heard so much about.

We arrived at Late Late lunch, nearly 3pm, usually a lull point in most hamburger joints.  There were only 2 people in line ahead of us.  Copious peanut containers were available, if we wanted to deshell our own peanuts, but we chose not to.  We'd heard the "fries are amazing!" but they're also coated in peanut oil and laden with superfluous carbs.   Since a "single serving" is about 1 gallon of fries, we opted to just get bacon double cheeseburgers, and drink our left-over hiking water out on the veranda.  Total wallet damage was $15.23 (or $6.89/burger + draconian & regressive AZ sales tax).  The cook your burger and make it to order as you wait, to your specifications, so there's no burgers "under heat lamps".  I had them put lettuce, pickles, and mushrooms on my burger.  Nathan Jr had lettuce, tomato, mushrooms, jalapenos and green peppers.  They'll put however number of toppings you want on your burger, no questions or arguments.  If you want 4 slices of cheese, they'll slab on 4 slices of yellow "American Cheese".  You want triple jalapenos?  triple jalapenos it shall be. 

While this is an interesting and alluring aspect that "goes beyond" the "special orders don't upset us" motto of  Burger King, most Americans apparently have no editing mechanism, and go "hog wild" on multiple extra toppings at Five Guys.  While eating adjacent to the parking lot, we were witness to a 1/2 dozen SUVs ooze out their baleen-like (baleen is French for "whale") denizens.  Normal sized teenage girls, with middle aged +180 lbs mom, and +200 lbs grandma with a knee brace, massively bulging cankles, four pointed cane, and severe physical exertion to struggle the 30 feet from SUV parking space to Five Guys door, which she barely fit through.  Young teenagers... your genetic future awaits you, predictably.  My son and I were - by visual evidence - the lowest body fat percentage humans in the whole place, which probably had about 80 people in it by the time we left. 

I enjoyed my burger, but there was no forks or knives available with which to eat the cheesy, bacon-y, mushroom-y contents and discard the buns, so I ate about 1/2 the top and bottom buns, and all the juicy goodness in-between.  I watched customer after customer get massive bags of fries refilled (free refills, I've been told), and most large customers gorged on peanuts while they waited the 5 to 8 minutes it took the 4 cooks to rapidly grill and make their made-to-order burgers.  Nathan Jr enjoyed his as well, and agreed that it 'hit the spot' after a long hike and climb, as a late lunch.  If I go back to Five Guys, I'll take my own knife & fork, and try not to focus on the morbidly obese fellow customers shuffling, zombie like, all around me.

Football Season Is Over For Me

Da Chicago Bears had a lack-luster 2011 season, rife with injuries, where they struggled against mediocre teams, and were obliterated by highly skilled teams.  For me, the NFL football season is done.   I hear that there's still some play-off games coming, and some kind of media extravaganza in early February in Frozen Indianapolis.... but I don't have details. 

I will be halfheartedly cheering - in futility, most likely - for the underdogs: Cincinnati, Detroit, and Atlanta. If / when that proves futile, later in January I'll be rooting for San Francisco, New York, and Baltimore... but it will probably be the Packers (of Fudge) against New England, with Aaron Rodgers showing that he leads an unbeatable juggernaut, again.  Oh well.   At least Da Bears might get a good draft pick?

Unappreciated Spiders 8

Vulture Peak Hike & Climb

Vulture Peak as viewed from the parking lot.

The 940 foot ascent to the saddle gets steeper.

So last Thursday, we planned to drive 43 miles outside of Phoenix to Wickenberg to the Vulture Peak Trail.  Vulture Peak is actually 7 miles South of Wickenberg, wonderfully remote.  We never would have known about it if not for Mahtab's "60 hikes within 60 miles of Phoenix" book.  Nathan Jr and I were to meet Mahtab at 10am at the tail head's gravel parking lot.  There were 4 other cars, and we saw 9 other people the whole hike, over the next 4 hours. 

Vulture Peak starts off deceivingly slow and gradual, as the trail meanders through washes and very gradual inclines with no shortage of weaponized "teddy bear" cholla fields..  After a mile and a 1/2, the trail reaches the foot hills and climbs steeply to the saddle crest between the peaks.  Upon reaching the saddle, the "maintained trail" ends, and you get to blaze your own path up narrow crevices and sheer rock faces to reach the summit. 

Chartreuse lichens thrived at the summit

Nathan Jr scampered up to the summit well ahead of Mahtab & I. We consumed the apricots, almonds, and more than 1/2 our water.  The trekking poles were a serious encumbrance when scrambling over massive rocks.  Nathan Jr secured my old walking staff "Donatello Style" into the back of his camelback. 

At the peak there were USGS markers, and an old ammo box with pens and notebooks.  We each wrote our names and dates in the books and put them back in the ammo container.
 
Nathan Jr said "this is what I wanted to do the whole trip!".  Mahtab said it was the most fun hike & climb she'd ever been on.  I thought it was great.  Highly recommended for anyone looking for a challenging trail that is sparsely populated, and that provides beautiful 360 degree views at the summit.

At the summit, looking NE (the White Tank Mountains are out of frame to the right).

Nathan Jr scrambled up the the secondary peak, and snapped this photo of me, 240 feet below.  The primary peak, that we had just climbed, is behind me.

Crowded Pinnacle Peak

Last week while Nathan Jr was still here, we went on 2 hikes as a follow up to the pre-Christmas Grand Canyon and South Mountain hikes.  Dr Desert Flower had to work last Monday, so we planned a Tuesday hike to Pinnacle Peak in Scottsdale.  It was a 3 mile round trip hike with just a few hundred feet elevation change in a very affluent Scottsdale neighborhood.  The trail is incredibly "well groomed" with flora labeled, hand railings, well maintained steps, and "trail rangers" hiking along the small mountain.  Our friend Mahtab who made the incredible de-boned turkey on Christmas Eve went hiking with us.  We met her at 9am along with 2000 other valley residents.  We were way over-prepared with water, almonds, dried apricots, camelbacks, and nalgene bottles.  We had to shuffle past hundreds of other hikers and trail "runners".  After 90 minutes we consumed about 20% of our water and none of the food, finished the hike and called it a day.  Perhaps Pinnacle Peak is a much nicer hike on a week day that is not on a holiday week... but I don't think I'll be trying it any time soon.  Seeing 2 or 3 hikers the whole day is a good day - like South Mountain.  Crossing paths of 2 or 3 groups of hikers every minute, heading in each direction, is less than enjoyable.  And the opulent displays of Dolce & Gabbanna eye wear, North Face active wear, and various perfumey scents wafting from passing hikers took all the "rustic" and "ruggedness" out of the hiking experience.

The kid in the hoodie was sporting a mullet, 70s style. Nathan Jr said we should send in the pic to "mullet sighting dot com" ( http://www.mulletsighting.com/ ) but I was not fast enough on the photo to capture the pure mulletude clearly.

Google Earth Captured Yoga

As mentioned in the previous post, the Winters here in Phoenix are very pleasant indeed.  On the Job's Device, Dr Desert Flower showed me last week how Google Earth shows our home - and the image currently on Google Earth is from January or February of 2011 (lack of leaves on westerly the neighbor's deciduous trees, progression of landscaping improvement in our southerly neighbor's backyard).  For those followers who got a Christmas Card, you can look it up too.  For those who didn't (you can email me your address if you want one next Christmas - international may take some time), the snapshot / screen capture is below:

The narrow dark rectangle next to the pool is my yoga mat. It's not wide enough to be a pool deck chair, and the 2 deck chairs and umbrella are visible in the image, adjacent to the mat.  From the shadow positions, this image was taken around 1 or 2pm on a cloudless Winter day (about 330 cloudless days a year in Phoenix).  It appears that I'm doing some kind of standing pose (Warrior [AKA "Land Ho!"] or Sirasana [AKA "The Reason..."] maybe? I don't know).  I don't think I've ever been "captured" on Google Earth before, but there's a first time for everything.

Come And Visit

It's weeks like this, that help to remind me why we moved to the desert 4 years ago.

And for skeptics and critics, yes, the air quality in the Phoenix valley is sub-optimal right now, with millions of inhabitants feeling entitled to burn "holiday fires" our drive home on Christmas Eve resembled air quality similar to February 1945 Dresden.  We could not see the bases of the Estrella mountains and only the peaks this week, but more on that later...

If you are tired of your cold weather in the rest of the US, come & visit us in Arizona. 

Unappreciated Spiders 7

Job's Device

I refuse to call the $800 superfluous iPad thing that Dr Desert Flower bought for "Christmas" an "ipad".  It's a "Job's Device".  It's not MY Christmas present, as I hate the damn thing.  It won't let me log into my Gmail without wanting to LEAVE ME LOGGED IN on the "cloud" eternally, which confuses Gmail when I try to log in on the desktop.  It wont let me type, since I do not have the pre-requisite feminine touch required to type on a touch touch screen.  It will not let me search without auto-completing my entries, leading to wrong, sometimes hilarious, usually annoying mis-directions.

OK, the "voice recognition" works adequately for SIMPLE searches, that do not involve polysyllabic words.  But anything colloquial, or polysyllabic or technical and it freaks out.  I THOUGHT Steve Jobs (peace be upon him, ie Allah) was supposed to create "experiences" that "enhanced" the user's interface, and "differentiated" his products from the rest of the pack.  The 64gig  Job's Device needs to ADAPT to my masculine heavy handed touch, my voice patterns, and my vocabulary.  Otherwise, it was a colossal waste of $800 at the "I store".

Unappreciated Spiders 6

Poorly Executed Blog Spam

The interwebs are prone to spamming, and push-marketing that tries to get eyeballs onto web pages to generate advertising revenue or "buzz" or exposure.  I understand that.  It's a necessary "evil".  Sometimes the adverts are actually interesting, legitimate, well placed, and useful... but the majority of the time, they're out in left field, irrelevant, barely germane in the more remotely tangential sense.

It appears that JustJoeP's web traffic visitor stream (up to about 150 hits a day now) has somehow gotten the attention of many inept spammers, who make a weak attempt at posting veiled comments that embed their advertising links. I discard most of them, but here's a few (unedited) so you can see what I mean:

"jasmin" on the "Delicious Bird Awaits" 
"I'm not going to profess to being that good with grammar. I don't know the ins and outs of it and go mainly by experience. Wine Gift "
where "Wine Gift" linked to a 'wine of the month' annoying membership. "

No thanks "jasmin", I don't want someone else deciding randomly for me, based upon whatever mass inventory they've gotten that month, to send some wine I don't like when I can go to the store and buy it MUCH LESS expensively myself.  perhaps you are not so good at "grammar" because English is not your first language?  The posting had nothing to do with "grammar". It was about an upcoming delicious feast.  You've failed "jasmin".

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"plusclothingexpert" on the sarcastic & violent "Job Interview Coaching"
"That's funny. Well, you can get help for Interview Coaching Calgary and get the job that you desire. "

"P.C.Expert", the posting had nothing to do with what to wear or not wear or how to write a resume, it focused on a fictitious scenario wherein an interviewer asks a dumb question and the interviewee responds with an overt threat of massive physical violence.  It's not really about "coaching" per se.  So no, sorry, I will not embed your Canadian link.
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"BOSS" has left a new comment on your post "How To Clean Your Own Hayward Pump Cartridge Filte...":
"thanks for provided a nice information
We Manufacturers and Suppliers of Single Spring Mechanical Seal, Dry Mechanical Seals, Reactor Mechanical Seal ,Cartridge Mechanical Seals, Mechanical Shafts Seal Manufacturers."

Now "Boss" is apparently affiliated with "Ashish Industries" which makes automotive seals.  So you see, "BOSS", a Hayward Cartridge Filter for a backyard pool has NOTHING to do with automotive seals, so you fail on context.  You've incorrectly conjugated the irregular verb "to be" by leaving out it entirely and then using the plural of "Manufacturer" and "Supplier" when you really MEANT (I think) to say "We are Manufacturers and Suppliers of..." or perhaps "We Manufacture and Supply...".  I cannot give you any credit or leniency for having English as a second language, because the British installed English & Hindi as the uniting language of India more than a century ago, and all of my Indian colleagues (and I have spoken to 100s of them) have repeatedly told me that BOTH English and Hindi are their country's national languages and everyone must speak one.  If you are not proficient in writing in English "BOSS", you need to find a new vocation, or use better grammar and spell checking software.
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Much earlier in December,
nr has left a new comment on your post "The Beauty of Prandtl-Glauert Singularities":
"Thank you for sharing this information.
It will really helpful to solve my confusion
Process $ Chemical Engineering "

Where the P&C Eng was an embedded link to a push marketed engineering website, that had nothing to do with Prandtl-Glauert Singularities. You've failed, "nr".
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Back in November
seo help online has left a new comment on your post "Re-Using Delicious Marinade":
"You have nice blog.
Aluminium Foil Pouch,Zipper Pouch,Aluminium Foil Zipper Pouch, Jumbo Bags, Gusseted Pouches."

"You have a nice blog" ... really, that's the best you can do?  And you did not put a single space after a comma, instead running your words together and misspelling "Aluminum"?  Is this really your company's best foot forward?  No, total failure.
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And whoever this "SEO" company is, they really do a consistently poor job
seoshivakumar has left a new comment on your post "Mountains of Salt Beneath Us":
"Thanks for sharing with us
V.S. Forgings: Salt Tablets Manufacturers, SOFT Salt Tablets, Water softening salt, Industrial salt, Raw salt."

An Indian company pushing salt products.  Why would I want to import salt from India to the US?  Why would anyone, when nearly every country in the world can cheaply make their own?  And salt is water soluble, so transporting it over vast oceans, where it COULD get wet, is not the brightest of ideas.  Sorry seoshivakumar, you fail.
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Back in September, I previously pointed out "Asian Bridal's" freakishly funny ineptitude:
asian bridal has left a new comment on your post "Toms Toms & Furs":
"Asian wife dines into a seventh whistle. Our analyst soils the interview on top of a spotted buss. The brown freak disputes the lady. The amateur mates the utility variance. The turning basis clears Asian wife. Beside Asian wife recovers the fun fraud.

asian bridal "
...shows it is not just India who doesn't understand push marketing.  The Chinese are hilariously poor at trying to execute it as well.
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Now, "Geopeach" gets it right.  So Geopeach's comment, was pushlished.

Geopeach has left a new comment on your post "Gluten Free Beer - Redbridge":

"Hey Just Joep,
If you are looking for another substitute to Redbridge, check out Daura, by Estrella Damm. You'll be happy to know it doesn't come from a large US corporation, but is imported from Barcelona, Spain. I work for the importer here in the US, so just let me know if you have any questions. It will have a different taste than Redbridge because Daura is made with barley malt instead of sorghum.

-Georgia (ghomsany@usbev.net)
http://www.estrelladamm.com/en/daura_gluten_free_beer/ "

There's a host of others who have tried, the above examples are just a small sample.  The volume is increasing, noticeably in the last month.  So I will be leaving the comment moderation on, going forward.  And as a word of warning to the inept, the stupid, the "in a hurry", and the misguided, when your comment is dumb enough, irrelevant enough, or just plain silly enough, I will post it here to mock you and point out your failure.  Maybe your manager, or the company that hired your firm will see the posting, and you can find a vocation that better fits your skills - perhaps one that doesn't require you to push market ads in English?

Montaudon Brut Champagne

For our family Christmas meal Dr Desert Flower baked a ham and sweet potatoes and a corn pudding where she used ground flax instead of wheat flour, ad well as organic spinach salads and organic dressings.  We'll be feasting on the leftovers for the rest of the week. But paired along with the food, I broke out a real bottle of Champagne - not a California knock-off that claims to be Champagne (and is priced like it too) but is just sparkling wine.  We'd picked up the bottle of Montaudon Brut Champagne Reserve Premiere (www.champagmonaudon.com) (bar code 6 575582 00001 2) at Trader Joe's some time ago for less than $20, and it's been chilling in the fridge all weekend.  Our family meal and long discussion lasted from 1/2 an hour before dusk until just before the Packers began to mop up Lambeau with what's left of the Bears this season (21 to 35, bleh. Go Lions, Saints, and 49ers!). The champagne was gone before night had fully fallen.

If you're looking for a delicious, inexpensive bottle of Champagne for New Years, it is hard to beat Montaudon.  Dr Desert Flower's and my palates are not "refined" enough to differentiate in a blind taste test between a $20 and a $80 or $180 bottle of Champagne, so the Montaudon fits the bill quite nicely.  Highly recommended.  Not too fruity.  Not so dry it knocks you over.  Excellent in the nose & on the palate.  It did not disappoint.

10,000 CFS at 4 mph

If you've ever wanted to see what 10,000 cubic feet per second of water looks like, moving at 4 mph, about 20 feet below you on a 4 foot wide steel rope suspension bridge, the video above gives you a good idea.  Sure, many people have all seen video on the news of destructive floods taking out houses, or tsunamis, or other water borne destruction... but to see a river like the Colorado, just going about its normal business, up-close, moving recent snow melt & rain water fluidly along just a few meters below you, is a powerful experience that leaves a big impression.  On a tiny screen, with limited audio, the effect is greatly reduced, but walking over the bridge with a steel grate bottom, is an altogether moving experience.

During Spring Floods, the Colorado River  can reach 100,000 CFS (links here and here). It's amazing that ALL of that water is diverted to NV, AZ, and Southern California before it reaches the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, in a teeny tiny little tickle.

Organic Saladini Pilastri Rosso Piceno, 2009

We had a meat & pasta dish last week where I wanted to pair it with a nice Italian red.  This organic selection from Saladini Pilastri, which we picked up at Total Wine for less than $10 a bottle, complimented the spicy sauce quite nicely.  The Piceno region is on the "calve" of the Italian boot peninsula, as you can see from the map in the lower right.  this wine did not disappoint.

Organic wines often have a negative reputation that precedes them with many wine snobs.  To me, when I am looking for a tasty, inexpensive, healthy wine to compliment the food served in my home, I am not dissuaded or put-off by an organic label, and instead, will always give it a try.  Saladini Pilastri did not disappoint.  This will not be our last bottle.

Recoleta Malbec Rosé

Fresh & Easy sells a variety of Recoleta wines from Argentina.  $4 or $5 a bottle, they are delicious, light, wonderful table wines.  Last week's South Mountain hike was capped off by a bottle of Recoleta Rosé (pairing link here).  I did not realize it was a Malbec until after Nathan Jr read the back of the label to me - I did not have my reading glasses, and with the sun setting, the dim light makes it much harder to read.  Thank goodness iPhones come with a BRIGHT reading light ap... I use it each time we go to a dimly lit restaurant to be able to read the menu.

I picked up this Recoleta Rosé at the local Fresh & Easy the week before.  While in much of the US it is too cool to drink a chilled Rosé, here in Phoenix, it is still appropriate with a warm sunset or a sunny afternoon on the patio.

Delicious Bird Awaits

We've been invited by our friend Mahtab to partake in a holiday dinner in north Phoenix.   I'm salivating at the description of the turkey that Mahtab said in email:  "The bird is stuffed with raisins in white wine, mango, almond, sour dough bread, onion and saffron and the sauce is with white wine, saffron and curry."

Major Yum!  We've had Mahtab's cooking before, and it's always been a delicious, exotic blend of German, Persian, and other European and middle eastern influences.   I'm bringing the wine.  There will be white wine pairings - Bordeaux Entre deux Mers - as well as a Loire Valley Chinon.  And while reds don't typically go with poultry, the Loire Chinon and, Saumur as well as the white Sancerre compliment poultry very well. 

Both Chinon and Saumur are very mild, non-aggressive wines that I like to use to "introduce" to people who do not typically like red wine.  I've never had anyone outright reject a Chinon or Saumur - maybe they were just being nice, and didn't want to disappoint me.

The Domaine De La Semellerie Chinon, 2006, is an Alfio Moriconi Total Wine selection.  Moriconi has good taste in wine, and he's Total Wine's European wine buyer.  I've not had a bad bottle yet (and that's many dozens of bottles, from a wide variety of regions) that has borne his label.  We enjoyed this bottle (pictured above) last weekend with a meal of crab stuffed chicken breast that Dr Desert Flower felt compelled to prepare for our son's visit.  It paired nicely, and didn't last through the desert =)  I picked up another one of these yesterday at Total Wine yesterday, and it will be enjoyed tonight, along with the savory bird.

Caleo Primitivo & Salice Salentino

One nice aspect of having our son visit, is that he likes a good glass of red wine almost as much as his father does.  So with each dinner, we've been polishing off a bottle between the three of us.  As I blogged much earlier this year (link here), Caleo makes good quality wines at reasonable prices.   Along with the Salice Salentino, they make a wonderful Primitivo that has paired deliciously with meat & cheese heavy salads, pork tender loins, steaks, and other family meals.  Bright on the pallet without being over-whelming.  Currant and cherry notes without being too fruity.  Good quality table wine for less than $8 a bottle (from Total Wine, who've opened a new store in Goodyear, 1/2 the distance from the Arrowhead Store we used to go to).

Southern Italy wine makers are producing some excellent, under-appreciated wines, in and around Puglia.    I think that Puglia wines are some of the "best kept secrets" of Italian wine making.  When I was approached by a Total Wine salesman in Goodyear, and told him I was looking for more of Puglia selections he responded "The Beaujolais are over here...". I cut him off: "I am not interested in an adolescent fruity Beaujolais from central France. I have enough of that at home. I said 'Puglia', as in Italian for 'heel', the South East end of the boot. Arrowhead has a larger selection than the Goodyear store."  The salesman retorted that "we have the same selection, unless they carry discontinued lines" - hmmm, so I better buy up everything at Arrowhead the next time I am up there, before the last of their stock is depleted.

Tonopah Rob's Delicious Eggs

Last Saturday, Nathan Jr and I went and got hair cuts together up at our hair stylist, Natasha Bush on Northern near the 101 in Parkwest.  Little did I know, that there's a local Farmer's Market that is there the 3rd Saturday of each month, from September to April.  Lucky us, it Was the third Saturday. 

While Nathan Jr was getting his hair cut first, I walked around the market and was delighted to find BOTH Crooked Sky Farms and Tonopah Rob's having well stocked, well staffed booths there!  Crooked Sky also goes to the downtown Phoenix market each week, but they've been out of duck eggs this Winter and said they'd resume in March after more ducklings hatch.

Tonopah Rob's booth had several adults and industrious young teenagers working there, selling fresh local produce and eggs.  Before buying 2 dozen truly free range eggs I asked them "how many hens do you have?".  The oldest adult in the large booth said "about 300".  FAR LESS than the 30,000+ that Hickman's industrial factory "farm" has, and FAR MORE Healthy. When I mentioned "Hickman's" to the Tonopah Rob's booth, the adults visibly cringed in revulsion. Yep, my reaction too.  It's impossible to get as many micronutrients in a mass produced, high density caged, hormone & antibiotic fed, anti-organic, industrially gathered chicken egg compared to a truly free range, naturally fed, hormone free, hand gathered, locally sourced chicken egg.  We've been scrambling (for Nathan Jr & I), hard boiling, and "over easy" (for DDF) all week, deliciously.  And the Parkwest location is 1/2 the distance from my home compared to the downtown market, so now I can have a smaller carbon footprint while sourcing my local eggs and vegetables, at least 8 months out of the year.

Nathan Jr also has picked up a penchant for hot sauces, living in Charleston SC as he does.  There were several hot sauce vendors at the market as well, and we are now fully stocked with a variety of hot sauces chez nous.

One note about the Parkwest Farmer's Market, it seemed heavily "Christian Influenced" with multiple church booths proselytizing and preaching their beliefs & selling religious paraphernalia, in between the food and craft vendors.  They were not overly aggressive, and I don't present a "friendly & approachable target" for preachers, especially when I am in a hurry, so they left me alone as I quickly perused the Market landscape.  But I could imagine in a slower, more relaxed stroll through the market, may present multiple chances for me to counter any fundamentalist arguments presented with fact and Biblical references that I picked up during 7 years in parochial school, where I actually paid attention enough to be able to question the dogma that was being taught.  It could make for an interesting (and probably lopsided) Saturday morning religious debate this Spring =)

Unappreciated Spiders 5

A Honey Badger Christmas Miracle

Thanks to my friend Joe M for this most excellent Christmas gift.  He got it from Damn Good Doormats in San Francisco, and it arrived UPS last Monday. Owner Spoon Popkin has a FB page as well, if you want to "like" it.  Honey Badger will now be greeting Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Evangelical Christian Preachers (who often drag their kids around on school holidays to proselytize - how fun for the kids!), carpet cleaning salesmen (we have all tile, no carpets), and huckster scam-artists who are looking to find a new rube to involve in their schemes.  [Seriously, about once a week, someone comes knocking on my door, trying to sell something, ignoring the neighborhood covenants that prohibit door to door sales].  Now I have a new way to respond to them, with a big smile.