Eat West

The Hotdogman is branching out! In the next week or two, I will begin authoring a new food blog on Wicked Local Framingham called Eat West. The blog will be hosted by the Wicked Local folks and feature photos, videos, and reviews of restaurants in the Metrowest Boston area (with the occasional jaunt into Boston).

I won't be critiquing hot dog joints on this blog- it will be mostly reviews of sit down establishments with a fast food type place thrown in here and there. We are setting the blog up this week and I am actually making my first visit to an old local favorite a bit later today.

Once the site is up and populated, I will link it here. You'll also be able to find it on Rob's Hot Dog Tales.

As always, stay tuned!

Where the Heck has the Hot Dog Man Been?!?!?

Frequent readers realize I haven't been posting much the past 2 or 3 weeks. Heck, I haven't even done any PPP whoring for cash!

The reason: Little League Baseball. As the season winds down, I tend to be at the fields every night, even when my team doesn't have a game. We begin our playoffs Saturday and will be finished with the season by the end of next week.

Coaching Little League is an all consuming endeavor for me at this time of year and it has taken me away from the blog for the time being.

Once the playoffs are over, I will return to the blog with a vengeance and hopefully some good baseball stories!

They haven't all been eaten!

Regular readers know about my daily stop at the ditch near my truck to check on the frogs. Today I got a pleasant surprise! No snakes and this little guy sunning himself!

click on picture to enlarge

All is right with the world!

New Layout

New stuff at the Hot Dog Truck!

I just finished switching up my template. This layout is easier to organize and I like the look of it better. Plus there's more dancing hot dogs!



I have also joined ReviewMe! so you'll be seeing some more paid reviews on this site. If that offends you, sorry. I try to make my reviews "story-like" so they aren't like the vanilla reviews you read on other sites. (See yesterday's post)

I figure if I can get paid to write some of this silliness, WHAT THE HECK?

Let me know what you think of the new layout.

Hot Dogs, Blogs, Snakes and Frogs

When I started this blog, I wanted to chronicle the "life and times of a hot dog man." Even though I make the best hot dogs, I simply can't write about my day every day because it would bore me and anyone reading this to tears. Most posts would read like this:

"Today I got to the truck, turned on the grill, chopped onions while the water and beer started boiling, refilled the soda coolers, stocked the chips, filled the condiment bottles and then sold the best hot dogs. Today was (hot/ cold/ rainy/snowy/ cloudy/ sunny). Some funny people stopped by to eat and I made a (lot of/little) money. Then I cleaned up and went home."

Yawn.

Don't get me wrong, its a really cool job but not if I want to write about it every day. That is why I expound on other subjects, post cool videos, etc. That's also led me to start up other blogs. I don't want to bore people, but I still want the "Hot Dog Truck element" alive in this blog.

So here's a little tidbit of my day every day around this time of year:

As some of you know, I have two signs that I put out to let passing motorists know about my fabulous lunch special. I put each sign about 100-200 yards from the truck in either direction each morning at about 10:15. This also lets people know I am open for business.

One sign ends up in front of the office building and the other ends up down the road where there is a wooded hillside on one side of the road and wetlands on the other.
See the sign near the telephone pole?

This in itself is not a thrilling part of my day, but when I am walking back from putting that sign up, I pass a series of small ditches that are filled with water from road and storm drain run off. In the ditch nearest my truck, there is always a family of frogs! Two weeks ago I saw a bunch of tadpoles in the water-some ready to "become" frogs. Here is one that's already turned into a frog (he's in about the center of the photo-see his eyes?




There are still a bunch of tadpoles, but their pictures didn't come out. These are common green frogs, the kind you'd find in any pond or swamp in New England. Each spring I "adopt" my little frog family in the ditch and I stop by each morning to check on them. Last year the most I saw at once was 8, but I am sure many more than that are spawned in this ditch each spring. The other morning I saw several garter snakes prowling the "shores" of the ditch. I snapped a picture (see below-if you double click the photo to get the full sized pic, you can make out the garter snake-its black and yellow- amongst the sticks just below the rock).

I saw three different garter snakes around the edge of the ditch the day I snapped this picture. Garter snakes EAT frogs so it will be interesting to watch the frog population this year!

I always liked frogs and snakes as a kid and our family has a 5 foot long Ball Python as a pet. I also like to observe nature. Even in spots most people would overlook-like roadside ditches-nature is abundant.

I have seen deer, racoons, turkeys (the bird kind AND the people kind), turkey vultures, all kinds of hawks, and even coyotes near my hot dog truck. I hope to be able to snap some pictures of more wildlife, but for now I'll enjoy my family of frogs and their arch enemies the garter snakes.

Hangin' Out at the Hot Dog Truck

If you'd like to have your Blog in my "Hangin' Out at the Hot Dog Truck" spot at the top of the second column for 3 days, leave a comment and a link. If you have an image of your page I'll put that up too! Why pay rent when you can just hang out at the Hot Dog Truck?

Book Blog

I got this from some crazy cat lady at the end of the block, looked like fun so here goes...

* Look at the list of books below.
* Type "READ" beside the ones you've read.
* Type "WANT TO" beside the ones you'd like to read.
* Type "AGAIN AND AGAIN" beside the ones you could read again and again.
* Type "TRIED" beside the ones you gave the ol' college try and then gave up on.
* Leave blank the ones that you aren't really interested in.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) READ
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) READ
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) READ
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) READ
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) AGAIN AND AGAIN
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien) AGAIN AND AGAIN
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien) AGAIN AND AGAIN
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) READ
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) READ
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) READ
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving) READ
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Rowling) READ
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) READ
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling) READ
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) AGAIN AND AGAIN
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) READ
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) READ
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel) READ
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) READ
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) READ
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) READ
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) READ
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom) READ
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) READ
34. 1984 (Orwell) READ
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) READ
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) READ
45. The Bible READ
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) READ
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) READ
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt) READ
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) READ
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver) READ
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) READ
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens) READ
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) READ
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) READ
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) READ
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky) READ
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) READ
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy) READ
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller) READ
69. Les Miserables (Hugo) READ
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) READ (in French no less-Le Petit Prince)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell) READ
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett) READ
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving) READ
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White) READ
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck) READ
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams) READ
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) READ
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) READ
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) READ
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton) READ
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) READ

Wow, I feel really smaht. Lotsa good books on that list!

Blogger's Affinity Group

I have been swirling an idea around in my head for weeks. I am experimenting with a new, organic means of generating traffic to my site and others. Check out the Bloggers Affinity Group and become part of the experiment!

The Big Schill gets a Blog

As of yesterday, Curt Schilling now has his own blog. There are only a couple of posts but he has over 100 comments on each one! If only I could get that kind of traffic! Check Curt out here.