Happy Halloween

Place: Taco Bueno
Lunch: Taco Deluxe (no tomato), Cheeseburger Taco, Chicken Tortilla Soup, Coke

The Cheeseburger Taco is a flour tortilla half-wrapped around a flame-grilled taco-shaped hamburger patty with cheese and special sauce. And tomato, but I always skip those. You can add lettuce and onion upon request. It's...kind of odd. Not bad. Certainly unique.

What's better is Bueno's new Deluxe Taco. It's the normal taco with a new sour cream salsa sauce. The sauce makes all the difference. Brilliant.

It should be a beautiful evening for trick-or-treaters in Wichita (aka "home away from home"...where I am today). Iowans, being the weird know-it-all's they are, hold "beggars night" on the 30th. NO idea why. I had zero trick-or-treaters. Possibly due to the weather. It was nasty out last night, and there didn't appear to be any groups out at all. But the KWCH Eyewitness News (in HD) weather guy is proclaiming a perfect evening for Wichita.

Why does Wichita have a news channel with an actual HD newscast while Des Moines stations can't be bothered? I know, I know...But spending that kind of money might affect the general sales manager's bonus!

Whatever.

WHO-TV occasionally jury rigs in a report shot in HD and even the occasional news promo, and they do have some HD graphic overlay capability they use for sports and weather alerts, but otherwise they and KCCI shoot in anamorphic SD to fill the screen. Or, as I like to call it, "Fake-D".

KWCH is so awesome that they end their weekend newscasts with a dog occupying the fourth news desk chair.

Millie the weather dog.

Really.

Full Circle

Place: Hardee's
Lunch: French Dip Thickburger, onion rings, orange Hi-C

Less than ten years ago, Sonic Drive-In debuted their first area location on this very lot. They had to staff people on the frontage to handle the traffic flow. Across the intersection to the northwest sat an abandoned Hardee's, one of ten (out of twelve) locations to have closed in the metro around that time.

Now Hardee's has demolished that very Sonic and built their first new store in the metro in nearly two decades. The lot that used to have the old Hardee's building, itself long since demolished, is now parking for Family Dollar. The new Hardee's is doing a solid amount of business.

We've come full-circle.

Sonic is still in the market, but with only half the stores they originally opened with, and a completely different franchisee.

I can't believe how fast Autumn is flying by. High school football is in the playoffs. Colorado and Utah have snow aplenty already. None here yet, but the holiday Utah trip is just around the corner.

And we'll have it by then too, I'm sure.