I've been eating nothing but salads this week for dinner. I'm actually alright with that.

I go to my local Giant every night on my way home and make myself a little salad from the salad bar. I start with a bed of Romaine lettuce. Top it with a pile of shredded carrots. Then top the carrots with some shredded cheese. Very colorful in its simplicity. I swing around to the other side of the bar and grab some Fajita chicken strips. Maybe a pinch of real bacon bits for garnish and color. Top it all off with a light splash of Thousand Island dressing and, voila! We have salad.

Once my salad is made, I go over to the beverage aisle and pick up a bottled water or a tea or something like. That. Not because it's any healthier than anything else. Just because I like it. Now that I've got dinner and a beverage, I'm out.

This has been perfect for me. Not only is it better for me than the shit that I usually end up eating for dinner, but it's very cheap (only like $3-4), and it's surprisingly enough food to satisfy me up and keep me filled. The chicken is enough protein to keep my carnivorous bloodlust at bay. The lettuce and carrots are just enough filler to keep me full and not attempt to go out and find dinner #2 like a damn Hobbit. (I know, LOTR reference. I don't even like those movies. Shoot me now). There are enough components in my salad that I like that outweigh my argument for not eating salad in the first place; which is there are too many things I don't like.

I usually don't eat salads because of the three primary ingredients, lettuce, tomato, and onion, I despise two of them and merely tolerate the third. I can't stand a raw tomato. Not on anything. Not ever. No hoagies, not zeps, no salads, no nothing. If they're there, I pick them out or off. It's something about the consistency of a cold squishy tomato. I don't like that slimy, pulpy feeling. They even taste different than a cooked tomato. Now a cooked tomato. I'll eat a cooked tomato in nearly anything. Tomato soup (my favorite meal), Tomato sauce, Tomato paste, Salsa (Yes, with the exception of Pico De Gallo, salsa uses cooked tomatoes), Chili (stewed tomatoes), Pizza sauce, etc. Nearly anything. I even put diced tomatoes into most of my own culinary delights. I feel the same way about onions. Raw: eccchh!!! I can stand that acidic, acerbic crunch. God they taste just as bad as they smell. P-U! But a cooked onion. Especially sauteed. A little caramelized. Ooh, baby. I could eat them bitches by themselves. Some dishes I make, like a good steak for example, start with some frozen onions that I sautee in butter with some button mushrooms. Oh, god I just want to eat that part before the steak is even done.

Anyway...

You might be asking yourself why I've been eating like this. A couple of reasons, actually. First, the 15 pounds I lost in the last month, I found them. They were orbiting my ass. So that was a big shock to my system. Plus I've seen the pattern of what, or more importantly how much, I've been eating and it's not good. I've also gotten lazy about lifting in the morning, and noticed that my arms have turned into jelly. So I'm trying to eat better this week because I know I'm going to eat like shit (or at least drink like a fish) both Thursday and Friday of this week. I'm trying to preemptively counter-balance that. I've also gotten back on the stick with lifting in the mornings now. Plus, even though I'm not doing a weight-loss bet with a coworker like we planned, then cancelled, I'm still tryin to lose as if we were. So I figure, let's keep it pushin'. After all, that was my motto for the New Year.

The salads are ok with me. I could probably still eat them for another good while. They're tasty enough not to bore me for a little bit. In a week, who knows? It's just funny. Me eating salad with no prompting. This from they guy who cosigned on, "Why ruin a perfectly good barbecue with salad?" The guy who usually says, "Skip the rabbit food." Who'd a thunk it? My mother thinks there's something going on, like I found a new woman and I'm trying to slim down for her. That's just how she thinks. I should be so lucky. :)

Labels: Fitness, Food, Health

God Dammit!

Vadim and I went to Wrongway (Subway) for lunch today. Jeff and RC were trying their gym-during-lunchtime thing, so it was just us.

I was excited about trying their pastrami sandwich for the first time. Yeah, throw some swiss cheese, mustard and pickles on there. make it like a real deli sandwich. And toast that bitch, too.

I sat down to eat my sandwich. I took one bite and ... Ecch! Pbbtt! Phooey! That shis was nasty. My God, it was like where there should have been flavor in the meat, there was nothing but more salt. Uccch! A huge fucking salt sandwich! I couldn't even eat half of that.

Just goes to show, if you want real deli, fucking go to Michael's. Fuck all that other shit.

Labels: Food

That'll teach me to eat 4 Cheddar-Wurst for dinner at 11 at night.

Labels: Food

Went to Arby's tonight, because dad gave me coupons. Tried their new cheesecake bites. Awesome.

Hot little cheesecake nuggets with a raspberry dipping sauce. Schweet. Although...

I looked in my bag and there was a little tub of some sauce called Bronco Berry Sauce. I read the fine print on the label which mentioned high fructose corn syrup, red peppers, jalapenos and garlic. Something didn't sound right. Berries and peppers?

I have to admit I was curious. I cracked the seal on it and the smell was just fucking horrendous! God damn, that shit was awful. Of all the smells I could have expected when combining those two particular flavors, that was just fucking wrong! I put a tiny dab on my tongue and it was just as bad as I expected. Eww, eww, eww! I actually started to gag from the taste.

Whose fucking idea was this? What planet did you come from where you might have thought this marriage made in hell would have tasted good. Come to find out that Arby's has even more revolting demonically-inspired sauce flavors launching, like Peachapeno. What the fuck is a Peachapeno?

That shit ain't right.

Labels: Food, Rants

Hehe. :)

Aight, so you know by know, that I take my moms out to breakfast at the O'Grady's Restaurant every Saturday.

I just thought this was funny.

There was this new girl there hostessing. We could tell she was real brand new. Silly girl went to seat the two of us at a six person booth. There were several two-person booths available. We're big people, but we're not that big. We tried to get her to turn around. If she did, whe would have seen the manager frantically waving at her to seat us over in the smaller booths. Duh, silly girl.

Later on, we found her running around trying to refill people's coffee with an empty pot. Even later she was running around with a decaf pot and didn't know it. Yes, sweetie, the orange ones are decaf.

I'm just making fun of her. She was a nice girl. She'll get it.

Labels: Food

Ecch! I've been eating like shit the past week. I've had so much crap.

Usually I eat like this very unconsciously when I'm stressed. This past week was a combination of stress and circumstance. So far I've had the following:

1. An entire Franzone's pizza
2. Half a Franzone's pizza
3. Buffalo Chicken Fajitas at Chili's
4. A Bleu Cheeseburger from Bennigan's
5. Catered pasta from Little Sicily
6. Catered pizza AND stromboli from Amedeo's
7. A giant Cheese steak omelet skillet at O'Grady's
8. A 12" Chicken Parm. sandwich and 2 cheeseburgers from TD Alfredo's
9. To top it all off I had like 4 Entenmann's donuts in the span of a couple of hours.

Now some of these were unavoidable. Catered lunches at mandatory meetings. The group I go to lunch with decided they wanted to go to certain places this week.

The rest was me stress eating. Truthfully I cant even identify what the stressor is. I'm sure you can't tell it to look at me, but I don't usually eat like this. There's something subconsciously bothering me, but I don't quite know what it is. The conscious stressors I have aren't enough to make me eat like this.

What the deal?
This week I'll be eating salads for dinner. Seriously. No bullshit.

Labels: Food, Life, Work

I should get shirts made.

They would read:

I AM NOT HER HUSBAND!!!


See, every Saturday, my mother and I go out for breakfast. It's kind of our weekly tradition. Only because she looks so young, people always seem to mistake us for husband and wife. People are astonished when we tell them that we are mother and son. It's also kind of unexpeted. Who takes their mother out for breakfast every week?

It's just funny, that's all. Since I've been an adult it's always been that way. It's either a huge compliment to how young she looks or it's ... OK let's not go there.

Labels: Family, Food, Life, Rants

Had lunch today at Coyote Crossing in Conshohocken.

That place is really really good.

We were celebrating Gina's birthday which was actually like 2 weeks ago, but it was an excuse to get everybody together.

We took two caravans to meet up with the girls and some people from Unreal. No one actually knew exactly where it was, but since I knew that immediate area, pretty well, I knew exactly how to get there. Kel couldn't understand how I knew how to get there, but didn't know where it was. Trust me. look it up on a map. What's 2 blocks from there? Need I say more?

Just by simple force of habit, I went the way I knew, which was to come down South Gulph and then down Matsonford into Conshohocken. If I actually thought about it, I should have went down River Rd. which would have spat me out at the Conshy Bridge with no turns. Oh well. Jeff, as usual starts to freak out when he doesn't know where he is. This is the conversation that went on going down 8th Street:

"Where are we!?!?!?!"
    "We're ... here."
"Oh, I know where we are! THIS PLACE IS AWESOME!!!!!"

Coyote Crossing had a really pleasant atmosphere. There was a bar up front, but then there was the big dining area for tables of like a dozen or more. It was really good Mexican food. Not like other Mexican places I've been to where it's just been some slop that they throw on a tortilla or so classy that it loses all authenticity. I highly recommend it. It would actually be a good place to take a date. They had a really nice wine selection. Not that we had a liquid lunch or anything. :)

Labels: Bars, Food, Night life, Work

I had dinner with my mother Friday night at Chili's Friday night. We met a very quick-witted little server, who my mother made friends with instantly. I have dubbed this kid her new boyfriend. :)

Mom was busy slamming down a margarita the size of your head. Good meal.

On Saturday, we went to breakfast at O'Grady's, our typical Saturday morning run.

Saturday night, our greedy asses went to Chili's again for an early dinner! Only this time we went to the one in Wayne, so as not to be spotted by anyone working at the one in KOP the night before. Yes our silly greedy asses were back at Chili's to grub two consecutive nights. We should be ashamed of ourselves. :S

I noticed a lot of girls wearing Villanova jumpsuits. I thought to myself, "There sure are a lot of people wearing Villanova stuff today." It didn't occur to me that d'uh, it might be the fact that we're only a couple of miles from the stadium and it's game day. D'uh, they might be uniforms. Oh, yeah. Cheerleaders. D'uh.

This time, we both pounded margaritas. They weren't that string, but damn, they were tasty. :)

Labels: Bars, Family, Food

So of course, it's Black Friday, and we ain't doin' shit.

Bump dat. I'm not getting up at 5AM to go sale shopping. After the night I had last night. You must be joking.

So we decided that we were going to have leftover day. Since my father had to work Thanksgiving (that shit's about to stop), he couldn't make it down to Cranny's. We decided to make a second meal just for us; Mom, Dad, and myself.

Typical shit only in lighter doses. yes, we're making brand new dishes just to have leftovers, hehe. :) Mom made a turkey breast and a giant pan of stuffing, some greens, carrots, and cranberry sauce. I of course brought the closer, my slammin' "Smack Yo Momma" Macaroni & Cheese. Of course I had to go shopping for all the ingredients on black Friday. Fortunately I found everything I needed at my local Giant. It was pretty empty in there, though.

I ran into Becky McCarron & Josh Tay in the store. We talked for about an hour in the meat section. I think I may have to get back together with the Audubon Symphony Orchestra. It's a possibility.

Anyway, we had a little post-Thanksgiving mini feast for just ourselves. Watched Ocean's 13 on DVD. Mom went to bed at 8:30, and Dad fell asleep on the couch shortly after. Nice. Dad woke up just in time to see the ending credits and fell back asleep.


That was fun.

Labels: Family, Food, Holidays, Movies

Alright I know I'm late as hell posting this, but deal with it.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I drove down with my mom to the city to my uncle Cranny's house for dinner.

Cranny's was a blast. Just about everyone was there. Mom brought Hors D'oeuvres and her famous pineapple upside down cake. I of course, brought my slammin' "Smack Yo Momma" Macaroni & Cheese. It was such a relief for both of us to not have to cook this year.

We all had a great time. We watched tapes of old music videos from the 90's all day. We ate and drank and ate some more. Philosophized and talked shit. You know how we get down.

Wayne and Oronde brought my little 9-month old baby cousin, Micaiah. Everyone fell in love with her. Especially Cranny. She's so cute.

I love my family. I love the sense that I have a family. A lot of people are not so fortunate. Yes, my family is a big ole' ball of crazy, but I love them just the same. My Uncle Cranny is so giving. He would give you the shirt off his back and be happy to do it. In fact, he gave my mother a set of $100 Bose earphones for no reason at all. These aren't just some old dollar store ear buds, these are Bose. You know, Cranny doesn't make a whole lot of money, and for him to give a gift like that is no small thing. That's love, y'all.

On the way back home, Mom and I had a relaxing drive back up to the 'burbs, listening to Gershwin the entire way up. Who does that?

This is how Thanksgiving is supposed to be, y'all. Blessed Be.
Happy Thanksgiving

Labels: Family, Food, Holidays, Life

Met the girls for lunch today, sans Jeff. We met up at Subway. Ordinarily, at Subway I usually get the same thing every time. It's pretty much the only thing I like there. I get a 12" roasted chicken breast sandwich on Italian Herbs & Cheese bread, with swiss cheese, Southwest sauce and nothing else. For some reason, I decided to get it toasted. Boy, what a mistake that was. I took a mediocre thing and made it worse. Yes, tasting it ensured it was hot. So hot in fact, that all the flavor just kind of evaporated. I bit into this sandwich and couldn't taste anything. I mean I knew there was food in my mouth, but what was the point?

Since I had gone to the bother of ordering it, and paying for it. I toughed it out. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't ... anything. I was too hungry to care.

Labels: Food, Work

Had a lot of fun last night at Lucky Strike in Philadelphia.

YellowBook had a Internet Team outing last night. Every once in a while they like to get out of the office. Of course this happens to coincide with a release day, so we all could use the stress release.

Funny story about release day. My team and I went out to lunch yesterday. Jeff gets a call on his cell phone while we're in the restaurant. He doesn't recognize the number and assumes it's an unimportant call, so he ignores it. Shortly after, I get a call on my cell and I assume it's a recruiter. It so happens that it's the office desperately trying to get a hold of us. Something went wrong with the release. We got back to the office after lunch and walked into a total surprise melee. All this the day after Jeff made a big stink about everybody having our cellphone numbers. D'oh!

Anyway...

Busy day at work. Everyone was struggling to get out of the office in time to get down to Center City. Of course, I was like the last one because I had to make a playlist for on the way down. Something with some speed and aggression. If I'm going to be driving down the Schuylkill with the rest of the rush hour dumbasses, I'm going to need to channel my homicidal urges.

So I'm headed down 76 and it's pretty slow, as would be expected. Between Belmont and City it gets really slow. A goddamn U-Haul truck stalls out right in front of me in the left lane. Razzafrazzin brickafrikkin rat bastard summumabitch! After that silly shit, I get around him and make my way into the city. So now I get off the Vine St. Expressway at 15th street and I have the incessant gridlock to look forward to. People wonder why I don't want to work in the city.

Spending time looking for a place to park downtown is like masturbating with a cheese grater. It may be exciting and different for a minute, but ultimately painful. I didn't want to park in a garage. The prices are nuts. Although finding a spot on the street is almost futile. After taking a few circuits around City Hall, I made my way over to Chestnut Street in the hopes of finding a spot. Nevermind the fire truck right outside of Lucky Strike that traffic couldn't get around, what about the SEPTA bus stuck behind me, blocking the entire intersection at 13th and Chestnut? Once I got around the fire truck, I found a spot only a couple of blocks from the place. OK, so it was a loading zone, but you know what? The cost of a ticket would probably be about the same as parking in a garage, so fuck it.

I made my way into Lucky Strike, and it was kind of a cool joint. Multiple floors of bars/restaurants/bowling alleys. Swank. I saw that there was a private event on the second floor. That must be us. So I made my way up. Nope. Evidently it was an event for PhIMA. What the hell is PhIMA? I stuck my head in just to make sure. Guess who's there? Oh, shit. It's Gina. :) Before I can say boo, she swept me in and was showing me around. Guess who else is there? It's Desirea. :) They assumed I was there for PhIMA. I didn't even know what that was. It just so happened that not only were Des & Gina members, but so was Jeff's wife, Tara. Gina & Des introduced me. I told her that when Jeff comes home at night and goes, "That son of a ..." , that's me! (Just kidding) I hung around for a few minutes, but I really wasn't supposed to be there, so I politely excused myself and went and found my people.

My group was up on the third floor. Most everybody was there. Andy, James, Ilmer, Alex & Anton, Jeff, and Michelle were already there. Dessi and Tina showed up a little later than me. Tina encountered that same stalled out truck on 76. She must have been not too far behind me. So we're all chatting (and drinking). Having a good time. Andy ordered this moderately interesting-looking blue drink called a Lucky Strike. It looked like a big blue martini. You know me, I stuck to Yeunglings all night.

After a while we got food. The cuisine at Lucky Strike is kind of interesting. Pretty much what you'd find at like a Chili's or an Applebee's or something like that. But with a couple of twists. They serve breakfast there along with their dinner menu. Not usually two things you'd find together outside of a diner. They even have a breakfast burger, which is a burger topped with a fried egg. That's different.

So we're eating, drinking, chatting, having a good ole' time. We're all done eating and now let the bowling begin! We got two lanes for 10 people. Easy enough, right? God we had so much fun. And evidently a couple of us can actually bowl. James did really well. Alex was crushing pins. I'm glad he was on my team. It was only like his fifth time bowling ever. Ilmer and Dessi were beginners. We all were such cheerleaders for them.

As for myself, I stunk out loud. You know me. All form and no follow through. I use my classic four step drop. Of course I was only using a 14 pound ball, so I was throwing fastballs with zero control. Truly I needed a heavier ball. Once I slowed down my release, I regained some of that control. They actually had speedometers on the lanes and by far, I threw the fastest balls.

That's the cool thing about bowling. You can completely suck and still have fun.

Speaking of suck...Anton. Anton set a bad precedent by rolling a 9 in the first frame. From there, it was all downhill. Gutter, Gutter, Gutter, Gutter... Gutter. Hahah! The first game, he bowled a whopping 29, only to be beat out by quiet little Dessi (a first timer) in the 10th frame. Hehe. I told him the second game was the dignity game. I think his patented stumble-and-chuck method might have been holding him back.

About 9:00, the girls were done with their PhIMA event and came upstairs to join us in the lounge. I would have liked to have seen them bowl a few frames, but they just kind of hung out gabbing the rest of the night. I tore my self away from the lanes for a bit a couple of times and hung out with them until it was my turn again. I didn't want to let them feel neglected. :)

We wrapped up at about 11. We all kind of stumbled back to where we parked, seemingly all over the city. ;) James suggested the next outing be at Fogo de Chão, a Brazilian steakhouse across the street. I got back to my truck and sure enough, there was a ticket. Thirty bucks for parking in a loading zone. But you know what? It's still more preferable to parking in a garage, for about the same price.


So Lucky Strike was a great night. God that was fun. What did we learn?

1. Parking in Center City is like masturbating with a cheese grater
2. Yeungling is bowling fuel
3. PhIMA is the Philadelhpia Interactive Marketing Association
4. I met Jeff's wife, so I guess I learned something
5. I learned that Anton can't bowl worth squat, hehe
6. I learned that Tina and Michelle are a lot of fun. Put those two together and they're trouble. That's OK. I like trouble.
7. Ultimately, I learned that I really like the people I work with directly. They're a group of people that really like to have fun. We work hard and we play hard. Nobody's stuck up or a stick in the mud. That's important to me. These really are my kind of people.

Labels: Bars, Food, Life, Night life, Work

You know I like Hunt's pudding (affectionately referred to as Ka-Hunt's pudding) because it's cheap and it's tasty. But sometimes you get what you pay for. Other brands of pudding, like Jell-O or Swiss Miss are smooth and creamy. Hunt's shit is THINK. Seriously. I mean THICK. You could spackle walls with that shit.

It's still good, though. :)

Labels: Food, Rants

OK, so the 4th sucked ass this year. Not because anything bad happened, but because nothing at all happened.

First, it was rainy and miserable all day. My allergies were killing me. My eyes were nearly swollen shut and they burned and itched all day.

We were planning to have a cookout, but with my father just coming home from the hospital, we decided that it would be in poor taste. Since he's staying with me, I was just going to barbecue for just me and him. Unfortunately with a bleeding ulcer, red meat, spices, and tomato products are kind of out of the question.

I didn't feel like firing up the grill in the rain for just myself, so I bagged that idea.

The rain got worse later on in the evening. I can't believe Phoenixville was going to try to do a fireworks show in a thunderstorm, but you could hear off in the distance, someone was setting them off. Couldn't even see them from my deck, and if you could, they fizzed out on the way up in the rain.

At least I got the day off from work. Suck-ass holiday. :)

Labels: Food, Rants