The Adventures of Krystal Kid: Fleeing Burgatory

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Fleeing Burgatory

Tomorrow morning, early, I get up and get on the road to Brunswick, GA. It's a 6 hour drive. Hotel check in time is 1pm. The concert isn't until after 8, depending on if they have an opening act. Why am I leaving so early, you ask? Well there's a Krystal next door to the hotel, of course.

My plan is to drive down, skipping the Krystal in Pooler (because trying to get to Krystal at that exit when coming south is impossible) and hitting the Krystal in Brunswick. Then checking into the hotel. (A man must have his priorities.)
As for the Krystals I bring back, I have gotten two very good peices of advice. First, of you hop down to my post yesterday and check the comments, you'll find that the person who reviewed the VacuWare product, Erik Sherman, posted a comment. I had forgotten to credit his blog or link to it, and I apologize. We had storms rolling into Wilmington yesterday and I wanted to get done and off the computer quick. I had forgotten how those coastal Carolina storms can be. (Big, ugly, and fast).
Here's Erik's first post reviewing VacuWare, and here is the follow up where the company admits the bags don't work. Thanks for the comment, Erik! (He's got a good blog in a kitchen-geek sort of way. It's worth a peek!)
Also, Jarrett's parents, Jackie and Mario (my middle GA surrogate parents), offered to try the "freeze first, seal second" method for me. They have a foodsaver and love it. No sense in going through all that trouble. No sense in torturing poor defenseless Krystals for me, either. But THANK YOU for the offer!
I have come to the conclusion that Krystals will survive the trip home just fine in zip lock bags (double bagged perhaps) in a cooler with ice packs. Once I get them home I will then have to determine my next stage of attack. That will be Tuesday.
Currently, my plan is to just stick with the freezer bags only and not go with the Foodsaver. I am trying to avoid that purchase if I can, for two reasons.
Reason #1, is I frankly don't have enough kitchen space as it is. This kitchen is half the size of my old one and has 1/3 of the cabinet space. There will be no flambe or pizza dough tossing in this kitchen! You can't open the pantry and oven at the same time. Since I don't have enough space for all of the applicanes I currently have, I'd rather not add another one. (I'll give you a kitchen tour next week. I am now trying to figure out how I can steal the Krystal Test Kitchen and bring it back to NC without them noticing.)
Reason #2 is my cash flow currently isn't so great. When I left my last job, they begged me to stay an additional week. I agreed. In return they screwed me. They owe me a LOT of money for my saved annual leave (I had about 7 weeks saved up because I never take time off). Well due to that extra week I worked, I wont get my leave balance check until the end of AUGUST! ARGH! It would have been better for me to have just put in a leave slip for 7 weeks starting July 6th.
Anyway, while a foodsaver (or Seal-A-Meal by Rival) would be awesome, I do not know if I can afford the space or money for one currently. Now, if a company wants to send me one to "review" like they send to Erik, then please contact me directly for my mailing address! (HINT HINT!!)
If something goes horribly wrong with my Han Solo style Krystals, I do have an emergency option. I can still get down to Murrell's Inlet and grab Krystals. I do not technically start working until August 14th. But since classes start August 17th, I'd be an idiot to wait until the 14th to "start working." So next week I will begin "volunteering" to go to campus and start prepping. But if something goes wrong I can make a run down to SC for some steamers.
In reality, once the school year gets started, I can go down on Friday to pick some up if I want to since I don't have Friday classes. (Yes you read that right.)
Since I am leaving early tomorrow for GA, I need to get some laundry and packing done tonight. ETB will again be on the Sloppy Joe webcam tonight and I can't pack and watch at the same time.
I also realized that I never posted pictures from my last trip down to see ETB last March, so if you miss me tomorrow, just come back to look at these pictures and hit the band's MySpace page: