My Trip to In-N-Out Burger

My wife is a very caring, thoughtful and loving woman. She is so thoughtful that when it came time for our family vacation she took the time to look online to see if there were any In-N-Out Burgers in the area near our destination (Portland, OR). Let me explain why that is so thoughtful.

I have the best wife ever!

One thing you need to know about me is the fact that I love cheeseburgers. Now, when I say that I love cheeseburgers, I mean that they are the greatest food ever created. I have a theory that the manna that God provided to the Israelites to sustain them for forty years of wandering the desert was in fact cheeseburgers. This may be in part why, by the end of the forty years, none of the original Israelites were alive to enter the Promised Land.

Thank you God for the cheeseburgers!

Secondly, In-N-Out Burger is the greatest burger chain in the United States, and dare I say, the world. So to anyone who loves cheeseburgers In-N-Out Burger is like the mother ship calling you home. This is why it was so thoughtful when my wife took time to look it up for me. Not only did she look it up, but she found one in Salem, OR and another in Olympia, WA.

God bless America!

For the next three weeks I salivated every time I thought of that delicious double-doubswe… sorry, my finger slipped from the drool. Finally the day came. On the third day of our vacation I woke up to a beautiful partly cloudy day and decided to skip breakfast, so I would have more room for cheeseburgers, loaded up the family and drove three hours to the nearest In-N-Out Burger which happened to be in Olympia, WA. Don’t judge me. A man has to have a good cheeseburger!

Anyway, back to the story. When we finally arrived in Olympia and I pulled out my Blackberry to find the restaurants in the area and almost dropped it because I was so hungry. Oddly enough I could not find any In-N-Out Burgers in the area. Frustrated I called the In-N-Out corporate office, don’t ask me how I have that number on my phone, and asked where the nearest restaurant was. Two states away!

Why God why?!?

I slowly hung up the phone and turned to my beautiful wife, who I could hardly see now because apparently my body was now eating my eyeballs for sustenance and calmly asked her where she got the idea that there was an In-N-Out Burger in Olympia. She turned to me with a worried look and said that there was a map on the website that had stars over those cities.

Hey look!  There's also an In-N-Out Burger in Boise and Sacramento.

Even in my now half starved state I started to put the pieces together. Stars on the map. Salem is the capital of Oregon. Olympia is the capital of Washington. Stars on a map mean a capital city! Yes, she had mistaken the star marked capitals of Oregon and Washington as locations for In-N-Out Burgers.

Kaaaaaaaaaaahn!

For the next two days of our vacation the only words my wife could get out of me were, “Stars on map” and “capital city” as I laughed and talked to myself in the corner of my hotel room.  When I regained my ability to make a coherent sentence I told my lovely wife that she could make it up to me by flying down to California to get me a cheeseburger. As I watch her reading her magazine I don't think she took me serious.

Luigi

Last night I was sitting on my back porch and looking up at the night sky, as I often do, observing God’s awesomeness. I love to look at a constellation and wonder how many trillions of stars and galaxies make up each one. As I looked up I saw my favorite constellation Orion, the hunter, I remembered the many stars that make it up; Betelgeuse, Rigel, Bellatrix, Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak and Saiph. Every little dot one sees as they lift their eyes to the heavens has a name, even if it is just a number. There is Capella, M42, Castor, Pollux, the moon, Sirius… wait… the moon?

Someone named all of that... every star

I was shocked that I did not know the real name of the moon.  I must have forgotten it.  At this point in my night I walked inside and looked on the internet; because the Internetz knows all. Well, it turns the official name of the moon is… get ready for it… The Moon.  Mankind has spent millions of hours documenting and naming everything in the sky and they haven’t name the really big bright circle that outshines everything else in the night sky? Every other moon in our solar system has name, all 167 of them. Jupiter has 63 moons… all named. Saturn has 61 moons… all named. Earth, the planet that holds the really smart people who name everything, has one moon… named The Moon. Did we run out of ancient Roman gods? That’s like naming your child The Boy because he is the only one your have.

One of Jupiter's moons is named S/2003 J 12, so don't worry about picking a bad name, they already did.

The ancient Romans called it Luna, the Greeks called it Artemis and Selene. Many, many other ancient civilizations and tribes have names for it. Modern man? The Moon.  I would have thought the name would have been Luna because that's where we get the words lunar and lunatic. I discussed this conundrum with a friend at work today and he suggested we call it Fred. He always like that name. I like the name Luigi. That would make for a good name for a moon.  Here is my logic:  All the planets are named after Roman mythology, Luigi sounds like the Roman god of pizza, Romans are Italian and so is Luigi.  There you have it.

We have made The Moon cry.

I say we start a movement to name the moon. Who’s with me? Let me know your suggestions.

I feel we have done a good service to the residents of Earth today. Now all the objects in the sky have been given a name. I think I will celebrate by going outside and enjoy myself under the warmth of The Sun… wait…

Its the big shiny thing that hurts my eyes!