Rusty’s Blog

Outback Bowl, Tampa, Fla. - January 1, 2008



Calhoun, Ga. - February 8, 2008



Greensboro, Ga. - March 8, 2008



Madison, Ga. - March 9, 2008



Baltimore - May 24, 2008



Homer, Ga. - July 15, 2008



Bronx, New York City - July 18, 2008



Miller Theatre, Augusta, Ga. - Sept. 18, 2008



Knoxville, Tenn. - Sept. 20, 2008



Decatur, Ga. - October 31, 2008

Me with my mom when I was a kid. I gave a framed print of this photo to her as a Christmas gift.

The original Waffle House opened in Avondale Estates, Georgia on College Avenue in 1955. It was later sold and converted into a Chinese restaurant, and has since been purchased back and restored as a museum with furnishings very close to what the original restaurant looked like.

It usually isn’t open to the public, but was open today. We were told it will soon be open to the public two days per week.

We learned some other tidbits, like that this sign they have out front isn’t the same design as the original sign:

It’s actually a late 50s or early 60s design. The letters are supposed to look like dripping syrup. The original sign design isn’t up to current DeKalb County code, and they’re working on getting permission to use the original (or a sign with the same design as the original). The original is currently stored in a warehouse.

Also:

• Filet mignon was served instead of T-bones originally. The urban legend goes that the switch to T-bones was made after a Waffle House location ran out of filet mignon and bought some T-bones from an A&P, which proved to be very popular.
• Other menu ideas — such as the code words for hash brown toppings — permeate up to be corporate standards from flourishes of particular Waffle House locations.
• Originally, everything was made fresh on location except for saltine crackers, Coca Cola and Heinz ketchup.
• The founder Joe Rogers was (and still is) obsessed with not wasting movements, space or materials. At the original location, when they were finished with a paper cash register roll, they’d put it back in the register the opposite way and print on the back. Now, this translates into constant efficiency studies that attempt to cut down on the movements that Waffle House employees make.

You can view the full set of photos here.

Amber also has a photo set here and a blog post here.

First, this note was posted in our apartment complex this morning:

Click through to read the full text of the note, it’s hilarious. We have a neighbor who lives on our floor who lets his stupid dog go on bathroom breaks without supervision. This is problematic because he’s breaking leash laws and illegally not cleaning up the dog’s pooh, but is even more problematic because the dog has gotten lazy and no longer walks all the way to the grassy area in the parking lot before dropping a bomb. I’m amazed I haven’t stepped in a pile already.

Next, we saw this license plate on our drive to work today:

That’s going to look pretty stupid if Obama loses. Like getting a Microsoft Zune tatoo. For more fun with license plates, see this thread at Drifting Through The Grift.

And finally, my Florida-Tennessee tickets arrived today!

I wrote some about this game over at Rocky Top Talk.

If you need game tickets, you should buy them from Larry at Take Me Out Tickets. I priced these out at Stubhub as well, and the overall price was $35-40 cheaper for equivalent tickets since Stubhub has extra fees and you pay shipping. Plus he’s local and a lot of you already know him, so you’ll get better customer service. And no, I didn’t receive anything to plug the site.