Feastin' at Famous Dave's and dreaming about trackball steering wheels

Pete feasting on ribs at Famous Dave's


My "early bird" special


Pete gazing at all the interesting decorations on the walls, his hands and face covered in meat and sauce


The carnage


A view of the barbecue sauce on Pete's chin, right under his lower lip, as Pete drifts off into slumber land, to dream about...


...the infamous trackball, and how to incorporate it into a steering wheel design.



Pete was really hungry after work today, and apparently couldn't wait til we got home to eat, so he was on the lookout for somewhere to eat early on. We stopped at the Starbucks in Addison to pick up a jacket I accidentally left there the other night, and Pete quickly spied the Famous Dave's across the street. He began to openly salivate, and within a few minutes we were being seated at the restaurant.

I decided to get the combo "early bird" platter that consisted of catfish fingers, pulled pork, a side of beans, and a corn muffin, complete with a Diet Coke. Pete was fighting back an enormous appetite, so he succumbed and ordered a full slab of barbecue ribs, a piece of chicken, two sides, a beer, a shot of tequila, a root beer, and a huge piece of key lime pie with whipped cream on top. I finished my meal about a good twenty minutes before Pete even got halfway through his, but I must say the sheer volume of the food he consumed was impressive. He was covered in bits of rib and chicken meat, and a shiny coating of grease and barbecue sauce coated his fingers, arms, mouth, and chin. He looked around at the decorations on the wall and talked about random topics while I watched in amazement as he inhaled the food before him. Pretty soon he was polishing off the last bit of pie and slurping the rest of his root beer, so it was time to head home.

We paid the bill and got back on the road, where we soon got into a lively discussion about steering wheels. Pete was describing some sort of weird concept wheel that he thought would be a better invention than the steering wheels we know today. He described it as a large spherical object that you could steer the car with by gliding your fingertips over the surface of the sphere. I scoffed at this image and countered that the steering wheel still looks the same because it works. It's easy to use and grip, and provides the driver with good control of the vehicle. And no one likes those stupid track ball mice (mouses?) that were popular in the 80s because they're hard to use and the cursor never goes where you want it to. So to make a steering wheel out of such a device was a ludicrous idea.

Pete then back peddled and said what he really meant was it should be a dome, not a sphere. I promptly shot back that a dome is still too hard to grab, and it's pointless to make a steering wheel like this because it'd just be a rounded steering wheel, which is stupid. Pete then sheepishly suggested that the dome would have hand grips cut out, and I laughed and said that then it's pretty much the same thing as the average steering wheel! So he demurred and said I got it all wrong, but it was too late, it was open season on teasing Pete about his trackball steering wheel. I was merciless in my teasing of him, but he was a good sport and laughed right along with me. We got pretty silly about it, and even now, hours later, I only need to mention trackballs and he cracks up.

This is the goofy fun part of being with someone, and I adore it. And to think that we were just arguing in the car this morning on the way to work....

(Photos taken with my iPhone; trackball image courtesy of garysavage.com)