More Trouble At Bread Co.

I am a regular patron of St. Louis Bread Company, and will continue to be, but there are a couple of things I've noticed each time I've been there that are a bit irritating. (You can read my original Bread Co. rant here.) First, I know they are trying to be nice by putting a couple of napkins right on the tray with my food, but this is just a waste of good napkin. My soup or the condiments from my sandwich always drip on the napkin, making it unusable. This is something that has bothered me since my first visit there years ago. Why put the napkin on my tray if I'm only going to have to get a different (clean) one anyway?

Also, the particular Bread Co. that I usually go to seems to be a bit disorganized with their system for alerting the customer when their food is ready. Or maybe they are just trying to cover all of the bases. Let me give you an example from last night. Jon and I walk in and place our order: bowl of soup, half salad, crispani, a couple of drinks. They ask for a name. Jon gives them his (but they always spell it with an 'h', which bothers me but not him). They hand us a receipt which has Jon's name and an order number, a tall number on a stick to place on our table for the crispani (because it comes out 10 minutes later), and a beeper. I assume the beeper is to alert us when the first part of our order is ready, but before the beeper ever goes off, the guy at the counter just yells out, "Jon!" So the beeper and order number are entirely unnecessary if the guy is just going to call out a name, but I guess they like to have a backup method for getting in touch with people to tell them their food is up. We haven't really been able to figure out the logic or pattern in this and it is always a little humorous.

Hawaiian Minute
This next item won't be of great interest to the other participants in this blog, but every once in a while someone googles "hula" or "hawaii" or "merrie monarch" and ends up here and this is for them. Kumu Hula Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu, from the Academy of Hawaiian Arts in Oakland, CA, has a new podcast called Hana Lima. You can watch it on YouTube, subscribe via iTunes, or access it directly from the AHA website. According to the AHA newsletter, Hana Lima is "a series of instructional videos...showcasing the art of Hawaiian craft-making." The first episode is about how to make a pahu (Hawaiian drum). Some of you may remember that I sorta kinda got to meet Kumu Mark during my trip to Hawai'i in June. Here's the link to that story if you are interested.

New Links
There are a few new links on the left that I'd like to draw your attention to: a new blog or two, my Kaboodle wishlist (ladies, you should make one, you can add things from anywhere on the internet), and a couple of live webcams (Waikiki Beach and a watering hole in South Africa - thanks for the heads up on that one, Rach!). Enjoy!