The most wonderful time of the day

I think breakfast has been hogging the spotlight as "the most important meal of the day" for far too long. It's a new morning in America. And as the sun rises on this new morning, we skip breakfast and go straight to the rightful holder of the title: Lunch.

There are a couple things I look forward to everyday as I make my scenic, freeway-free commute to work. One is the end of the day, and the other is lunch.

Neither ever gets here fast enough.

There's a strange phenomenon in advertising agencies I've talked about before here and here. People take themselves way too seriously. They think they're contributing something—shall we say, more meaningful—to society than they really are.

One way that kind of thinking reveals itself is by not going to lunch.

Apparently some agency people have talked themselves into thinking the work they're doing is too important to stop for lunch (it isn't), if they take a lunch break they'll fall behind (you won't), and that they can't go to lunch because what if the client calls? (News flash—the client's out to lunch).

You see these people in the kitchen between 11:45a.m. and 1p.m., loitering in front of the bad coffee, next to the dirty microwave waiting for it to ding. Then they're back at their desks, typing that Powerpoint presentation with one hand and eating Stouffer's Lasagna, again, with the other.

From where I sit, at the restaurant down the street waiting for my food to be brought to my table, it's a sad existence.

A few agencies I've been at cater lunch in every day. It's positioned as a nice, money-saving perk for the employees. But don't be fooled. Their intentions aren't that altruistic. They knows people take shorter lunches if they don't go out, so they can get more work hours out of them. As if just being there actually equalled productivity.

Anyone who's ever worked with me can tell you that's not true.

Personally, I have to make a break from the compound everyday. I spend too much time there already, and if I don't get out, feel the air, the sun and walk around a bit, it just feels like I'm biding time until my parole hearing.

I understand not wanting to spend money eating out every day. By the time you've split the check with the person who had a three-course meal while you had a cup of soup, and add tax and tip, you feel like you need a co-signer just to pay the check. But I think the more important thing to ask is what's the psychological cost of not going out for lunch at least once in awhile?

I have no idea either, but I'll bet it's pretty high.

Money down the drain. (Or what a glass hole).

Garbage disposals are great for grinding up leftover food off dirty dishes, eggshells, broccoli the kids don't eat, orange peels, things like that.

Glass? Not so much.

Two nights ago, while hand-washing a large, expensive, Pyrex glass storage dish in soapy water, my wife lost her grip on it and it shattered into a bazillion pieces in the sink.

I was in the next room when I heard it shatter, and immediately went running into the kitchen screaming the one question any concerned husband would ask, "Did the dog get hurt?"

Unfortunately, it broke over the side of the sink with the disposal, and a ton of glass went in.

I know what you're thinking: hand-washing? Downright primitive, right? What's next? Pounding laundry on rocks? You're preaching to the choir.

Next thing you know we'll get rid of our microwave and start cooking hot dogs in a toaster oven.

Oh, wait, we did that. Crap, I thought I dreamt it.

Anyway, after I cleaned all the shards of glass out of the sink, I decided reaching into a disposal full of broken glass to get the pieces out might not be the best idea. I also thought grinding it up and washing the glass down the drain probably wasn't much better.

But with Plan B I got to keep my fingers. So I turned on the disposal.

Besides Gilbert Gottfried and Fergie there aren't a lot of things that sound like glass being ground up by a garbage disposal. It jammed up almost instantly, and I knew we'd have to get a new one.

So today, Raphael the plumber was here to install the new Insinkerator. I would've done it myself, but as I've said before the only tool I know how to use is the Yellow Pages.

Raphael has been here before. When the faucet on our bathtub sounded like we were going to need a crucifix and Father Karras to fix it, Raphael did his magic - not with an entire new pipe and stem like we thought, but with a 99 cent washer.

An honest plumber. A man of integrity. There's a lot of love for Raphael in our house.

Our new glass-free Insinkerator is awesome. More compact than its predecessor, we now have room to lose old sponges and store more almost-empty cans of Comet under the sink. It's also considerably quieter, and not just because it's not grinding glass.

So, what can we take away from all this?

Don't hand wash the dishes. Nothing good comes from it. Ever.

There are honest plumbers in the world. Well, at least one.

And finally, don't ever trade in the microwave on a toaster oven. Making hot dogs is okay, but you won't have popcorn nearly as often as you used to.