Do you know the muffin man?

After I had just finished eating a cookie for dessert at lunch yesterday:

Friend: Eat that last muffin.

Me: I can't.

Friend: It's yours. Eat it.

Me: Can't.

Friend: You can't let it go to waste. Eat it.

Me: I can't. I'm too full. Besides, it'll ruin my chocolate chip cookie mouth.

Friend: That might be the gayest thing you've ever said.

What the world needs now

I called my sister last night to talk to her about a favor she'd asked of me. After she answered my questions about that we ended up talking for quite a while. She mentioned that someone had stopped by her house and dropped off some cake, then called as they left to let her know it was sitting on her porch. When she got home, her cat had eaten a good portion of it.

Weak minded as I am, her simply mentioning the word 'cake' put a craving inside of me. I couldn't let it go, so, while I continued to talk to her I drove to the store to purchase a cake mix. Of course, then I had to purchase a few other things to go along with it (frosting, eggs, etc.). Once I had everything I needed I headed for the check out. As I did so, some Hershey's chocolate syrup caught my eye.

Me: Oh, I guess I need to get some chocolate syrup too.
Her: What do you need that for?
Me: To put on my ice cream.
Her: Ice cream? I thought you were making cake.
Me: I have some ice cream at home too, but I ran out of chocolate syrup to put on it.
Her: You're having cake and ice cream? What, do you think it's your birthday or something?

Waiting for the dinner bell to do the bell thing, dinner bell dinner bell ring

Last night I went to dinner with a couple of friends. The meal was delicious, and when we finished with our entrees, one of my friends and I decided to take a look at the dessert menu.

Him: I'm going to get the key lime pie. Are you getting anything?
Me: I think I'm going to have to get the warm chocolate pineapple upside down cake.
Him: Does that sound good?
Me: You tell me. According to the menu, it's a warm, rich, chocolate cake with a chocolate molten center, topped with caramalized pineapple raspberry sauce, butterscotch brandy sauce, and fresh whipped cream. Does that sound good?
Him: That depends on what Brandy looks like.

When the server came back, we both ordered desserts. By that time, a few other people had joined us. One of them heard my order and said, "That sounds good. Bring some extra forks."

Me: No extra forks!!!

So, are you ready to go my lady?

There was a wedding at the hotel we stayed at on the first night of the workship. While we were sitting around the lobby talking, leering at babysitters and such, people kept coming in and out of the ballroom where the wedding was taking place.

I mentioned to one of my friends that it was very tempting to go in there to try and get some wedding cake. She encouraged me to do it, and had I been wearing something other than shorts I might have.

Me: But I can't go in there dressed like this. It'd be too obvious.
Her: I'll give you $50 if you go in there and get some wedding cake.
British Scientist: And I'll give you another $100 if you go get one of the bridesmaids.
Other Friend: Really! What more could you ask for? There's a wedding. There's alcohol. There are bridesmaids with nowhere else to go, and you've got a room upstairs. It'd be just like shooting fish in a barrel.

How can I convince you it's me I don't like?

Yesterday was a long day for me. I went to a symposium put on by many of my fellow grad students, and afterward had a couple of parties to go to. The first party was a going away party of sorts for a friend of mine. He's not actually moving until January, but he's leaving in a couple of days to get married, and won't get back into town until a lot of people have already left for Christmas. The second one was a birthday party for a friend of mine. There seem to be a lot of those these days.

Of course, each of these events had a lot of food that was just begging to be consumed. And who am I to turn down food that is begging to be consumed? If there's one thing that graduate students everywhere have in common, it's that we take full advantage of free food whenever it's available. I ended up eating about twice as much food as I would normally eat in a day, maybe even more, and as a result I began to feel a wave a nausea. It hit me at the birthday party while I was talking to the birthday girl:

Me: I've eaten so much tonight that I feel like I'm going to puke*.
Her: Are you serious?
Me: Yeah, I'm bulemic.
Her: I can't really see you as a bulemic.
Me: What, are you saying I'm fat?




*I puked

Candy Candy Candy I can't let you go

Is it just me, or have things gotten a little out of hand on the candy front? Every time I'm at a drugstore or a gas station it seems as if there's a new candy bar variety. Ok, so it seems to be highly concentrated in the candy that comes to us from Hershey, Pennsylvania, but still.

I believe it began quite some time ago when Hershey's first introduced their cookies 'n creme candy bar (or maybe it was the mint - I can't remember which came first). But things have escalated recently with the introduction of Hershey's caramel, extra dark, strawberries 'n creme, raspberries 'n creme, and almonds 'n toffee. All of which have gained the Native Minnow nod of approval (with the exception of extra dark, I haven't tried that one yet).

They have introduced almost all of these changes to Kit Kat bars as well. You can now get Kit Kat bars in milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, chocolate fudge, strawberries 'n creme and orange creme (I'd stay away from the orange creme if I were you - consider yourself warned).

The changes to Reese's seemed to be more stepwise. They started off nicely with the introduction of the Reese's Big Cup, which quickly became one of my favorite candy bars. Around the same time they introduced the white chocolate Reese's, which is ok, but nowhere near as good as the regular old milk chocolate one. After the success of those two, they decided to get all kinds of crazy and introduce the inside out version, where the peanut butter was on the outside and the chocolate was on the inside. That one didn't seem to be as popular, and I haven't seen it for quite some time. Maybe that's because it wasn't very good. Next came Reese's with caramel, which is actually decent, but it's still no Big Cup. But the last one is where they crossed the line. If you ever see a Reese's with marshmallow at the candy counter stay away. I repeat, STAY AWAY! You know it's bad when I won't eat another one, because I will eat just about anything that has sugar in it (black licorice, or anything else with that flavor, being the lone exception).

Someone should tell the good people of Hershey, PA that there actually can be too much of a good thing. I understand their plan of trying to dominate the candy aisle with sheer numbers of choices (take a look next time you're at the store, I guarantee you'll see a good portion of the space filled with Reese's orange), but when you're constantly throwing it in my face I'm going to be more likely to go for something else. Perhaps a nice Milky Way instead?

Boy that Mama can cook

I'm one of the best procrastinators in the world. I've got the biggest day of my graduate student career (so far) coming up a week from tomorrow. I should be spending every waking moment reading journal articles and such.

Instead, I decided to bake a zucchini cake.

The recipe called for one half cup of sour milk. Since the milk in my refrigerator is fresh, I had to call my mom to see what to do. The last time I made this cake I had to do the same thing. I remembered her trick of adding vinegar to the milk, but couldn't remember how much vinegar to put in. Luckily she was home so I could finish the cake.

We talked for a while as I was mixing stuff together, and then I got to the point where I had to grate the zucchini, but I couldn't find my grater.

Me: "I hate it when the . . ."
Mom: "What's that?"
Me: "Oh, I was going to say something, but you probably don't want to hear it."
Mom: "What?"
Me: "I was going to say that I hate it when the maid service comes because they always put stuff away in the wrong place and I can never find it."

I don't think my Mom felt too sorry for me.

I swear I'm gonna bite you hard and taste your tinny blood

Lately the subject of my first job has been coming up in conversation. Most recently it was because my roommate's son was talking about how his summer job (also his first) didn't really pay that much because he only got $2000 for a month's worth of work. Now, maybe it's because I'm getting old, but that seems like it's a lot of money for a 15 year old to make. In fact, I know people with families to support that barely make that much in a month, so I told him he shouldn't be complaining and he should just be grateful that his dad had arranged for him to work such a good job (it was doing lab work on campus, which is much better than flipping burgers).

I know that things have changed in the financial world since I was a kid, but I believe I had to work for a couple of hours after school for almost an entire year in order to make $2000. Not only that, but my job was to clean up a meat packing plant after the day's slaughter. Sound like fun? Didn't think so. Looking back it was hardly worth whatever I was making, but it was a job and it put some money in my pocket, so I was glad to have it.

One of the drawbacks of my first job (aside from the fact that I was cleaning a freaking meat packing plant) was that it ruined cherry pie for me for quite some time, the reason being that when they would kill a cow they would have to let it bleed out, and the floor would be covered in what looked just like cherry pie filling, except it wasn't. Not only did it look disgusting, but it smelled disgusting. For any of you who have never smelled death (and I know you're out there from previous comments), there's a very thick metallic smell that comes along with large volumes of blood. This smell had seared itself into my brain, and every time I'd see cherry pie, the smell would come back and haunt me, at least for a while. As with all things, when you see something often enough, you become desensitized to it, and I got back to where I could enjoy all my desserts once again. Whew!

So I know what you're all thinking. You can't believe that I would slaughter an innocent little cow, just so I could take a picture of it's coagulated blood for my blog post. Don't worry. I made it into a nice tasty blood cobbler.

(Ok, fine, it's really just cherries after all)

Leaving Las Vegas

Last night I went to dinner with a friend who is moving away at the end of the week. I've tried to eat healthy ever since I found out my cholesterol was borderline high almost two years ago. I usually try to go with the veggie options on the menu, and it's worked so far. I've managed to bring it down, but don't really want it to go skyrocketing back up again so I'm sticking to the diet. At least most of the time. However, sometimes it's hard to find vegetarian dishes on the menu, or even if they're on there, they might not sound too appetizing at the moment because other options sound better. Especially when the place is called The Cheesecake Factory.

Me: I'm having trouble finding anything healthy that sounds good.
Her: You could go with the chicken, that's healthy.
Me: Yeah, but it's still an animal product, so it's going to have cholesterol. Maybe I should just not worry about it tonight.
Her: True. After all, how many chances do you get to have a going away dinner for me?
Me: Not enough.

She said that another friend of hers gave her a card, and wrote something like "I've been waiting 7 years to say goodbye to you."

I know, we're all such nice guys around here.

Stress Management

Everyone has their own way of dealing with stress, but I think my way might be the worst way possible short of drug or alcohol abuse. I have a million things I should be working on, all school related, but can't seem to focus long enough to start working on any of it. I meant to make some progress last night, but instead baked cookies, watched t.v. and screwed around online.

This morning I woke up early with an upset stomach (a common symptom of stress for me), and thought I should start reading something. Instead, I started messing around with my new camera, and now I'm blogging. Can anyone say ADD? Quick, someone prescribe me some Ritalin.