Flip Flop: Winter Holidays Edition

I am, by nature, a food flip-flopper. I have many times reversed decisions about whether or not I still like a certain food group or not. I have spent several entire summers not eating corn on the cob, only to (wisely) reverse my stand the next year. I flip-flop almost monthly in my feelings about citrus. On one occasion, I decided that I didn't like watermelon at all, which in my present state of mind is an absolutely ridiculous stance.

Most recently, I have flip flopped my stance on eggnog. It's getting to be the end of eggnog season, but I decided on one of my first shopping trips after the New Year that I should get some eggnog. After all, I had insisted that we have eggnog pie at Christmas Dinner (a very popular decision, I might add). Additionally, over Christmas, we twice had eggnog shakes while enjoying such diverse pastimes as reading the Christmas story and playing Dominion. If it had been delicious then, why not now, I reasoned.

How I reasoned wrongly!

I don't know if it is just the brand that I got at Meijer's or something else that turned me off. It's cloyingly sweet and thick, and I just don't like it. At all.

I have once or twice had some of it straight, but I can't take very much of it that way, so I've taken to cutting it with milk. Unfortunately, this process forces the eggnog to last longer. I've had to begin masking it with other things, which as it turns out is a very effective method to increase my eggnog consumption to the point where I don't feel like I've wasted the entire half-gallon.

Some highlights:

1- Eggnog French Toast. Turns out, eggnog and french toast were made for each other. Just swap out the milk for the 'nog, and you barely have to season.

2- Eggnog Hot Chocolate. I tried this one this morning. Of course, I had to cut it with milk, but chocolate and eggnog seem to compliment each other.

One (extremely) lowlight:

I thought that the general success of the Eggnog Shakes over Christmas was a general indicator that eggnog mixed with any type of ice cream would be heavenly. Not so, my friends, not so. I had some left over ice cream cake from my birthday. It involved red velvet cake and cake mix ice cream, and was not improved at all by being blended with eggnog. In fact, it was the opposite of improvement. Do NOT ever try this. Not ever. Unless you have swallowed some poison and are trying to get it out of your system. I can think of better ways though.

So, now I'm on the outs with eggnog. I still have most of that half-gallon left, and fortunately, it's just about at its expiration date, so I don't feel bad about throwing it out now. I wonder if I'll like it again next eggnog season. Anyone else have a food flip flop for Christmas?

32 Short Statisics

I've compiled a list of 32 statistics which I believe describe my experience in 2009 quite nicely. Did I miss any vital statistics? Do you have any statistics about your year that you'd like to share?

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• 10Ks: 1 (plus 1 5.7mile almost 10K)
• 5Ks: 5
• Blog Posts: 150 on three different blogs
• Books purchased about Writing: 6 (two of which were Stephen King’s On Writing. Oops)
• Complete Television Series watched: 3 (Jericho, Battlestar Gallactica, Pushing Daisies)
• Devices purchased which contain GPS devices: 4
• Emails forwarded to the Hill Street Ward List: 249 (Interesting fact: First and last email forwarded this year had to do with Chapel Cleanup)
• Favorite Books read this year: The Book Thief, The Shadow Gate Series, The Alchemist, The World Without Us
• Favorite New Games: Dominion, Bohnanza
• Favorite New Music Groups: Jack’s Mannequin, Blind Pilot
• Games I play on Facebook: 3 (Mousehunt, MythMonger, Mafia Wars)
• Geocaches found this year: 58
• GPS devices left underwater within one week of purchasing: 1
• Great Lakes which I skipped rocks into: 3 (Huron, Michigan, Superior)
• Half-Marathons: 1
• Least Favorite Books read this year: Little Brother, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
• Maximum Consecutive Days Skipping Rocks into Great Lakes: 5
• Miles run: 245 (Per Nike+ iPod) Stopped using in July
• Miles run: 342 (Per Garmin GPS) Started using in April
• Months in which I ran a race: April, May, June, August, September, October, November, December
• Movies I actively hated: The Seeker
• Movies which I unexpectedly liked: Hoop Dreams, East of Eden
• New Year’s Resolutions that I actually completed: 1 (Run a Half-Marathon)
• New Year’s Resolutions that I can still remember: 3 (Run a Half-Marathon, Write Something Every Day, Do 100 Pushups)
• Number of Pages that constitute my Grad and Undergrad degrees, once scanned: 3,796
• Pairs of Black Shoes I bought: 3 (and still haven’t really found one I like after the first few weeks)
• Places visited for the first time that I’ve been meaning to get to: 5 (Kirtland, The UP, Charlevoix, Mackinac Island, Michigan Renaissance Festival)
• Songs with highest play count on my iPod: Good Christian Men Rejoice (Traditional) – 28; The Black Hawk War, or, How To Demolish An Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience But You're Going To Have To Leave Now, or, "I Have Fought The Big Knives And Will Continue to Fight... (Sufjan Stevens) – 13; A short reprise for Mary Todd, who went insane, but for very good reasons (Sufjan Stevens) – 13; Go On, Say It (Blind Pilot) – 12;
• Text Messages (Sent and Received): 863
• Weight of Thanksgiving Turkey: 23 lbs
• Woot! T-shirts purchased: 2
• Writing Classes: 2

The Symphony of Science

I've been trying to decide if I should post a navel-gazey blog about my alarm clock. Instead of making hard decisions, I'll just post this video which I recently stumbled across. Who knew Auto-tune could make such miracles possible?

Things for which I am thankful

Being Thanksgiving, I thought I would compile a list of things for which I am thankful. Here goes (This list is by no means ranked. Watch out for stream of consciousness! )

- Genre Fiction

- LOST

- Watching Heroes with friends

- The Internet

- Adorable nieces and nephews

- The Fall in Michigan

- Farmer John

- Hot Chocolate

- My 10 year old alarm clock

- The ability (and desire) to run

- My Fusion

- All of my Ann Arbor Friends

- All of my Utah Friends

- All of my Wyoming Friends

- Having survived three rounds of layoffs at Ford

- A meaningful job

- The Michigan Department of Natural Resources

- Metroparks

- Ford Lake

- Mormons, in general.

- Emo-pop and Alt-pop music

- Pandora.com

- A very specific rainbow

- Arguments about poetry

- Gchat and Gmail

- Pencils

- Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan

- Spellcheck

- Small acts of kindness

- Drinkable yogurt

- Rules about prepositions

- Having a washer and dryer in my apartment

- The Upper Peninsula

- Having Wyoming roots

- Being a Cowboy and a Ute

- Eyes that see and ears that hear

- Pablo Neruda

- The Huron River

- Seeing a window at work

- Spring

- National Public Radio, in general, and Michigan Radio, specifically

- Cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes

- Sharing with friends

- Mingles

- Game Night

- My own specific challenges and trials

- Did I mention the Internet?

- Amazon Prime

- My bike

- A dry sense of humor

I'm absolutely certain that I am thankful for other things, but I've run out of steam. What are you thankful for?

Pushups Update

I thought I should probably post a really quick update on my 100 pushups challenge status.

Last week, I did the final workout of week 6. I repeated several weeks. I haven't tried the final test yet. I don't think I'm really ready for 100 pushups, I think I could use one more week. So far this week hasn't been a pushups kind of week for me. This daylight savings time change is supposed to be the easy one, but I've been struggling all week to adjust.

So there you have it. I didn't quite make my goal, timing wise. But that's ok, because I consistently put the effort into the goal, I just didn't gain strength as fast as the program suggested I might. Perfectly acceptable, because I can now do 45+ pushups at the end of a workout that includes more than 140 pushups. I couldn't have said that 8 weeks ago.

I'll keep you posted as to when I actually get to 100 pushups.