tasty little chopses

Man, I was sore in the arms today because of rock climbing.  I did stuff around house, thought about playing disc golf, realized it was 32 degrees outside.  Called Charlie and invited myself over for cuddles.  We did, in fact, cuddle, as well as eat leftover noodles and get lucky.  Came back to my place where we had pork chops, trader joes stuffing and peas for dinner.  The chops were pretty good, great flavor but I overcooked them a wee bit.  The stuffing smelled SO GOOD in the pan, but upon eating it the flavor was not up to snuff.  A case of not enough seasoning packet to excessive breadcrumbs, perhaps?  Or maybe just not the right seasonings that I like in stuffing.  Charlie agreed it wasn’t up to stovetop standards.  Then we acquired C. and went to the gym, where they played basketball and I ellipticalled.  Then back to my place to shower, after which we were going to go to SnS but instead ended up at Mi Ranchito with Mac and CW.  I had chimichangas which were delicious, although I’m going to try to remember to order them without sour cream, because I don’t eat it and it just melts into a mess everywhere.  After that we went to Mac’s place to hang out, chat, watch a Phish tour DVD, and play mario cart.  That Phish DVD did an excellent job of convincing me the members of Phish are not people I’d ever want to hang out with.  Back to my place, where I did dishes and read and went to bed and Charlie worked.  A rather pleasant day, all in all.

 

tire=dead, golf=fun, of montreal=bouncy

Got up early to take car in for oil change, went back to bed. Talked to them at noon and found out that I had an irreparable puncture. Charlie called shortly thereafter and invited me to play real golf with him and C., since C. wanted to practice before thanksgiving vacation.  I figured I might as well give it a shot, we made a quick run to Jimmy Johns to get some sustenance and they put mayo on my sandwich after I requested none.  I was more annoyed later when I looked up the nutritional info and it adds about 250 not tasty calories.

We golfed at Ruth Park, I did great on the first hole and thought I was perhaps a golf natural.  It went somewhat downhill from there but it was fun anyway.  We had some random dude join us halfway through who was really good.  Afterwards Charlie dropped me off at home so he could go shower.  I was supposed to go over there to play some FIFA but he didn’t answer his phone because he was asleep on the couch.  Bum.

He picked me up for the Of Montreal concert and we went to M.’s for social hour/drinking and then headed to the Pageant for the concert.  It was a really fun show, we all pretty much bounced around for two hours straight.  During the last couple songs some drunk girl kept banging me in the head, but whatever.  We found out later that she’s the daughter of a professor everyone knows.  Our hippie friend ended up wearing women’s panties as part of some kind of dare/bet, which was quite amusing.  Lots of photos were taken.  Everyone else headed to the Halo bar and Charlie and I went to steak n shake to get dinner, as we hadn’t really eaten.  We went back to his place and found C. there playing some shoot em up video game, so we cuddled on the couch and spectated and eventually went to bed.

 

food commentary and so much drunky

So I’m eating lean cuisine for lunch, not because I think they’re a healthy part of a diet plan but because I like having frozen meals on hand for those times when I need to eat RIGHT NOW because I am SO HUNGRY and the alternative is going out to eat, again. And honestly, most frozen meals? Not so appealing. These ones are pretty good because they have veggies that crunch, modest amounts of meeeeeeeeeat and come in interesting flavors other than meat’n'potatoes. Like right now, butternut squash ravioli.

But the thing I’m thinking about is how they are portioned between about 230 and 350 calories and clearly marketed as something resembling diet food. (I am also not ashamed to admit that I just dropped a couple peas on the floor….and then ate them). So, at 350 calories a pop I could eat 2 of them for lunch and 2 for dinner and something for breakfast to end up with a reasonable for my size 1600 calories a day. So at 4 a day, I look at the nutritional info and I’m not exceeding daily allowances of anything other than, you guessed it, sodium. I do not really like salt. I was not raised on a salty american diet. I rarely put salt into anything I cook, even when recipes call for it. I buy low sodium stuff when I can find it. And these meals don’t taste super salty, it just bugs me to know it’s in there and if I were to get most of my calories from these healthy/diet meals, I’d be consuming too much salt. I suppose it’s because most people want/like that salt flavor, and if they were less salty they’d lose sales due to the food being “bland”. Why not affix a label saying, this is a lower sodium dish, if you want to change the flavor salt it yourself.

Anyway, for me it’s a moot point because I don’t eat enough of them but I’m sure people do and if I wanted to never cook and eat fairly healthily, I’d consider it.

So I had lunch and in the late afternoon I went over to Charlie’s to do yoga.  The he went to basketball and I ate more food because for some reason I was very hungry today.  He came over after basketball and we had dinner, the 3meat/veggie/fruit stew.  Then after some coming and going we went out to a bar that has a $5 cover and then $2 drinks of anything involving liquor, name brand no less.  Unless you want a white russian and then it costs more for some reason.  We hypothesized it’s because cream is expensive.  I had perhaps 2 margaritas and 3 vodka gimlets or perhaps vice versa or perhaps 3 of each and the end result was me = wasted.  Afterwards we went to the City Diner and I ate 1 pancake and probably accidentally insulted people.  Went home, lapsed into unconsciousness.

 

wednesday, featuring music

Slept at Charlie’s, got up around noon and ran some errands.  Did not get out of PJs before errands, resulting in lunch at panera while wearing said PJs.  I’m sure I look enough like a college student that it wasn’t that awful, everyone probably figured I’d been pulling an all nighter.  We’ve concluded that the panera in the loop is of dubious quality, my sandwich was ready about 10 minutes before Charlie’s was and his had very little meat in it.  Went back to my place to get dressed for disc golf.  We started heading north before realizing we actually wanted to go to Collinsville.  Took the very roundabout way, 170 north to 70 east to a minor detour in downtown after we missed the 64 east exit to 55 to Collinsville.  Whew!  The sun was getting low in the sky so we played a very brisk round, I think it took us about 1:15.  Not bad and we were done before the sun set.  I didn’t keep score because I did fairly well but I also took quite a few do-overs.

Charlie dropped me off at home and told me to come over to his place whenever for the concert this evening.  I had some of Upstairs Neighbor’s meat for dinner, it was pretty good.  Got dressed up slightly slutty-like but I’m not sure anyone noticed.  Didn’t make it over to Charlie’s til 9:30 or so and then we headed avec carpool with the usual suspects to the Atomic Cowboy.  It’s a pretty cool place, one side is a standard bar with food available earlier in the day and the other side is live music/lounge and there’s a nice backyard with a giant firepit.  We hung out in the yard for a while but it was a bit cold even with the fire.  The band was bluesy/honkey tonk and rather enjoyable.  We were there for quite a while and then headed next door to a conveniently located diner.  The service was horrible but the food was quite good, especially the tater tot-esqe items.  Headed home with Charlie, we slept at my place.

 

concert day

Charlie and I woke up somewhat early for us, he worked and I putzed around and made us lunch.  We acquired C. and went to play disc golf at White Birch, which was really pretty this time of year – lots of festive trees.  I shot a +8 for real, which was great, except I was a little bitter that it wasn’t a +6, which it would have been if not for an unfortunate double bogey right at the end.  We went to qdoba for dinner and got burritos.  I devoured most of mine because I was SO hungry and then convinced myself to stop so I wouldn’t explode.

Charlie came over a couple hours later on his way back from the gym to shower and pick me up for the evening’s concert.  We went back to his place to wait for stragglers who needed a ride and then went to Blueberry Hill’s duck room to see the Fiery Furnaces.   They were decent but nothing super fabulous, I had a couple beers and danced with Charlie and it was a jolly time anyway.

Afterwards we went to steaknshake with M. and then I swung home to feed the cat and such and then I went to sleep at Charlie’s.

 

10.28

Had a not exceedingly interesting day, did a lot of cleaning and such.  Charlie called to say hi and let me know that he was coming home this evening.  Was supposed to play tennis with R. and some other people in the evening but it was cancelled because they were having a cookout instead.  R. invited me to go along and I ate a burger for the first time in ages because I didn’t want to be rude.  There was also an amusing incident where the resident of the apartment we were at discovered one of her radiators was leaking and causing mushrooms to grow in her carpet.  Had a good time with them.  Ate gooey butter cake for the first time ever, it was OK but I don’t think I’d make any special effort to seek it out.

Made it home in time to watch the second half of the 4th game of the world series, Red Sox won, woohoo.  Charlie got home just after the end of the game, he’d been listening to it on the radio and getting a play by play from his mom at the end.  We hung out and chatted about the weekend and put the winter duvet on the bed and fell asleep early-ish.

The summer insects have stopped making noise in the last week or two, the trees are about as colorful as I think they’re going to get, winter is on its way.

 

yay! happy thursday.

Charlie came back today and I was pretty happy to see him. He flew in and out of the tiniest airport ever, it had a grand total of two gates and at most 2 flights a day, one in and one out. One can only get to/from Vegas on sundays and thursdays, I think the other days have flights to Orlando. But for all I know, there may be days where the airport is closed entirely. We decided to go play disc golf in Collinsville and were hoping to get some lunch first, but the parade of McD’s and KFCs and such was pretty depressing. Charlie spotted a greek/italian place called Fazzi’s and wanted to go there, I was a little skeptical but he was hungrier than me so I complied. It was remarkably good food. We both had salad and the lunch size versions of chicken kebab and chicken parmesan respectively – and the lunch size portions were plenty big enough for dinner and cost perhaps $6.95. We could have had approximately twice as much food for $10. Charlie said his parmesan was as good as any he’s ever had anywhere and my kebabs were delicious. Great deal and really good food, we’re definitely eating there if we ever eat another meal in Collinsville.

Disc golf went well, I scored a +11 (note that’s a real +11, not a bogeys +11) which is far and away the best I’ve ever done. That was with a triple bogey and a missed birdie putt, so I definitely could have done better. I like that course, it’s not so long that it’s too hard for me but the holes have enough variety to keep it interesting. Charlie got a -3 which I think is the best he’s ever done there.

He went to play basketball and I had some dinner and then a sizeable group of people got together to drink beer and play poker at B. and Mac’s place. Poker was so-so, people were there more to socialize than focus on the game, which was slightly annoying at first but then I decided not to care. I stayed in longer than about half the people and after we busted out we played Mario Kart, which I killed everyone at. Good times. Fell asleep on their couch and eventually made it to bed late late late.

 

venturing to the east side

I woke up early and called Charlie to find out when he needed to go to the airport, he had been up all night working so he came over here and napped with me. He was flying from the Mid-America airport of all places so I drove us 40 minutes to middle of cornfields, IL. For whatever reason they claimed he had to check in 2 hours ahead of time, so we did that and then drove to Belleville IL to get some lunch. We drove by the USAF base to get there and saw new subdivisions going up – behind barbed wire fence. What a bizarre life that would be. Had lunch at a subway where a cheerleader type was being diagnosed with a pulled quadricep (at noon on a sunday) and went back to the airport to ship Charlie off to Vegas, baby.

Drove home and putzed the rest of the afternoon, R. called later on wondering if I wanted to play racketball but I had L’s birthday party in an hour so it was too late for that. Went to the party and mostly socialized with P&A and W. We talked about Vegas and how A. had gone to a show there without realizing that it was going to be topless and how she was mesmerized by boobs as far as the eye can see. Things went downhill after that, with P. telling us how he once had a girlfriend with ‘torpedo shaped’ boobs and A. telling us about her first boyfriend and how he only had one testicle. Food was excellent, especially the eggplant salad considering that I don’t like eggplant but this was delicious. I was completely not recognized by a girl I hadn’t seen for about a year (because I look so different), I guess that’s a good thing. L. made us all belly dance at the end, which was amusing, and then I gave Mac and B. a ride home.

 

11th

Today featured the running of errands, the going to value city for the purchasing of some winter clothes for Charlie, the evaluation of and disappointment in the local dollar store, the playing of FIFA soccer, the playing of racketball with R., the eating of quiche, the talking to the mother on the phone, the going out drinking with T., the late night Friends reruns, the being woken up at 2:30am by the Charlie coming over. Cheers!

 

i always thought calling wednesday ‘hump day’ was lame

Slept in late, played some video games at Charlie’s place, went to disc golf (at Endicott) with him and Matt. Sucked hard at disc golf, got irritated, stopped keeping score after being at bogeys + 7 at about hole 15. Came home, he went to provide transportation to needy souls. Met up with him and M. and P. later to go to yet another C. concert. 1st band – bluesy, pretty decent, not a great choice of songs, girl singer had an annoying voice. 2nd dude – wanted to be the illegitimate offspring of Ben Harper and John Mayer. All songs sound the same. C.’s band was good. 4th band – low quality metal-ish. But you know, other people bought me beer, so it was a good time overall. Had a weird encounter with a girl who was vaguely a friend of a friend of a friend, she wanted to talk to our group about her love for the Birdman (of NBA fame) and kept touching my knee. Strange. Charlie and I went for late night steak and shake in a very intoxicated condition, the fries were exceptionally good.