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CHEAP EATS Hedgehog was going to baseball games before she met me — mostly minor league ones, but anyway she was in it for the hot dogs. And beer. And people-watching. Now that she understands what's actually going on down there on the field, well, it's a whole new ball game.

CHEAP EATS So they have that classic car show every year in Alameda. It's a pretty big deal, and Park Street is closed to traffic. The classic cars park in the parking spots, and the people walk down the middle of the road and look at them, and into them, and under the hood.

My own personal interest in classic cars would best be described as D) Nonexistent. But Boink and his dad like to go. They have a whole tradition around it, which ends in pizza. They look at the cars, they eat the pizza. It's a boy thing. I wouldn't know.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS She's allergic to dogs and cats, and can't breathe in my apartment. Thus all this subletting. By way of a landing pad, we found a quick, couple-week rental until the 15th of the month. It was pet free, but dusty, maybe moldy, and cold. Our kitchen was a hot-plate on a broken washing machine, a toaster oven on a dresser, and a sink.Read more »

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CHEAP One of the first things I did when I got back was I got on the football field.

"Welcome back," said the referee.

"Welcome back," said the other team's captain. And she called "red" and it was red so we'd lost the toss.

"Good luck," their captain said to me.

"Good luck," I said.

The ref said good luck to both of us and just like that — after three months in cars, planes, small dark hotel rooms and foreign countries, but mostly cars — I was back where I belong: on defense.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS Arrgh, the best laid plans of hedgehogs and chicken farmers!

I was so homesick I eventually convinced my love to leave her besoddened home town in the capable (snicker snicker) hands of FEMA and commence via Hyundai toward San Francisco. Mostly I cried. But also I promised to eat her pussy once for every state line we crossed.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS Tell you what I'm not eating this week: I'm not eating funnel cake, Amish whoopie pies, fried pickles, or fried macaroni and cheese. I'm not eating Running Deer potato pancakes, Grotto's pizza, May's barbecue, Mootz's fudge, Hewlett's hot sausages, Bowman's French fries, Cain's chicken and waffles, Top-of-the-Beef's pit-roasted sandwich, or fire-roasted sweet corn. I'm not washing all these things down with three different colors of birch beer.Read more »

CHEAP EATS Ten minutes, she said. I promise you, the line does not take long. She was like a greeter, which seemed unusual for a grocery store, but I am willing to believe almost anything at this point.Read more »

CHEAP EATS First time I went to Criolla was with Coach and company and I was just tickled to death to be eating chicken and waffles within walking distance from my home. Chicken and waffles! I forgave them the dry chicken, even though it was all dark meat and dark meat is of course harder to overcook, because the waffle was good. And they offered real, true Vermont maple syrup for one worth-it dollar more.Read more »

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CHEAP EATS Did you ever have one of those dreams, you know, where you know it's too good to be true and yet there it is, so you decide to keep dreaming, to let it be true for as long as possible, please, because eventually the alarm's going to go off and you are going to wake up and eat your oatmeal and start having to answer to your exact life again, the real one, with mosquito bites and carsickness in it?Read more »