I'm Back and I'm Mad as Hell!

My super cute little iMac and I have been reunited and, like a couple of teenagers just off a break, we're thrilled to be together again. The hard drive just fell apart one day and I've learned that this is one of the most common computer failures out there. I absolutely cannot believe that I only backed up my data for the first time a few months ago, how lucky can I be? From here on out, regular and stringent backups will be par for the course. Because I backed up my data, including thousands of photos and songs as well as documents written through the years, all I had to do was drag them over to my old iMac with the new hard drive. Easy peasy. Big sigh of relief!

What is not a relief is going to a pretty decent restaurant and finding misspellings on the menu. I absolutely don't get this. I'm ok with misspellings in emails or on grocery lists or in text messages and the like, but when a professional business goes to the trouble of creating, keylining, printing and laminating a menu, how on earth does the process not include several people to proofread it?! Case in point, Mad Jack's in Vadnais Heights. Yes, Vadnais Heights. You know, that one suburb north of St. Paul? I know, I feel the same way. But friends meet where it's convenient so that's what we did. A good tap beer list couldn't make up for the spelling errors on the menu, though the actual beers did make them easier to take.

One of the most maddening to me is the common misspelling of "chipotle." I know it's a foreign word, but it is ubiquitous now that the burrito restaurant that bears its name has deliciously taken over America. In fact, the Mad Jack's in Vadnais Heights is just across the way from a strip mall with a Chipotle restaurant. All the managers would have had to do was step outside and gaze across the parking lot to know how to spell the word correctly on their menu. So sad, but so not alone. On the same Mad Jack's menu was a description for "Filet Appetizers" (they really dug deep to name this one) that included not one, but two misspellings. "Tomatos" are served alongside "gorganzola" for the fancily named menu item. And please don't even get me started on the capitalization of "filet" in the description, the use of the number two rather than the word two, and the lack of a comma between "garlic" and "tomatos." There's more, but I'll stop. If you'll look carefully, you'll notice that they spell "tomatoes" correctly in the Jacked Up Nachos description above the Filet Appetizers. I don't get it.

Ok, apparently my recent computer crisis has turned me into Andy Rooney. I'll settle down before I post again, though I'll admit to now having plans to continue to document the lack of spell-checking of the American restaurant menu. That's my promise to you, America.