Exams

I'm in the middle of studying for exams, which is why I haven't posted anything in a while. I've been eating lots of chocolate and drinking lots of coffee, and generally panicking about torts and civil procedure.

Anyway, my friend Harvard sent this to me, and I thought it was too good not to share. I did my darnedest to cut Kevin Spacey out, but alas, he wanted to stay. Anyway, Mena Suvari in a bath of doughnuts? HOT. Especially a bath of assorted doughnuts. They got cinnamon, chocolate glazed, I think I even see a cruller.

The season - Part II

No. I don’t like Thanksgiving either. My traditional holiday glumness has set in, and I’m comforting myself with a strange chocolate covered wafer from Poland (that, incidentally, is made by Kraft).

The only tradition I really have on Thanksgiving is getting drunk before dinner. As I mentioned earlier, the food is not that great. I don’t really like turkey and I HATE HAM. Sweet potatoes are still potatoes – vegetables are NOT dessert. And the first Thanksgiving I spent with my wife, I realized I was totally deprived of the true benefits of the holiday when my aunt sent us to the grocery store for a couple of pies. Apparently, as Heather would explain, they aren’t always frozen.

This year I’m spending Thanksgiving at home, which means I’ll have to channel my mother’s guilt from hundreds of miles away. I’m making dessert, of course. I’ve decided on chocolate chip pecan pie and pumpkin cheesecake. And I’ll give thanks this year for the fact that the holidays do only come once every 12 months.

Chocolate is still good for you

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6490340

I love NPR. Not only because I can listen to the news (as opposed to the propaganda you get from right-wing radio like Neil Boortz and Sean (blech) Hannity). I also love NPR because it makes me feel good about most of the choices I make in life.

This is a story I heard this morning on my way to work. You know, study after study after study has shown that chocolate is really good for you. It's time to consider this common knowledge.

Super Target

Last night, my wife and I decided to go see a movie. We thought we'd go to Target on the way, to pick up a few things we needed, and also some snacks to take to the theater.

This was no ordinary Target. This was a Super Target. And it was fantastic.

A Super Target is like a regular Target with a grocery store added in. The grocery part of Super Target is pretty similar in size to your average grocery store - with about the same number and length of aisles.

Except . . . an entire aisle is dedicated to candy. They have lots of boxed candies, your typical twizzlers and snickers and bubble gum. They also have their own Target brand candies, which aren't that fantastic, but have cute packaging. Nothing like the Japanese candy packaging discussed earlier, but cute, nonetheless.

And then . . . they have about 40 dispensers, with any flavor of Jelly Belly you might desire, and with different flavors of M&Ms. I ended up with just under one pound of raspberry, cappuccino, caramel, vanilla, orange, lemon, marshmallow, and fudge M&Ms.

The movie was exhausting. We saw Babel, which is mostly two and a half hours of watching people making one terrible mistake after another. Very good, but like I said, exhausting. But the M&Ms, they made it totally worth it. So now I'm finishing up my multi-flavor candy-coated chocolates and studying civil procedure. Happy Saturday!

Birthday

Tuesday was my birthday, and HOT DAMN was it a good one. You know what? I'm going to gloat. I'm going to gloat to all my conservative friends. I know it's not the nice thing to do, but frankly, they had it coming. And after all, as Neil pointed out, what other excuse do I have for making conservative friends?

The enabler got me a fantastic present. A t-shirt from Dylan's Candy Bar in New York. I blogged about this place earlier (since he called me while he was there). It sounds simply amazing.

My lovely wife also got me some strange crocheted doughnuts. This was the most bizarre, hilarious, fantastic gift ever. Do I use the change purse as a change purse? Or as a place to put my M&Ms?

Sweet revenge

From aol.com

1) Surprising Answers to Common Health Choices from Real Simple

Eat a Doughnut for Breakfast or Eat Nothing at All?

Better Choice: Doughnut

You race out the door without a chance to eat breakfast, and when you arrive at your morning meeting the only food in sight is a tray of doughnuts. Experts begrudgingly recommend eating a doughnut (the plainer the better). Studies have also found that those who skip breakfast overcompensate by eating more calories throughout the day. But... To offset some of the doughnut's shortcomings (it's loaded with trans fats and sugar and contains few nutrients), drink a glass of low-fat milk with it.

Halloween

Ahhhh, Halloween. That special holiday that all candy addicts and sugar freaks secretly anticipate year-round. I did nothing special for Halloween this year. I went shoe-shopping (to return the shoes that I bought and immediately regretted having bought in Knoxville). I bought another pair of shoes and decided this morning that they, too, must be returned. I have absolutely no idea why or how a person can spend so much time thinking about shoes, but I do.

When I got home, I wanted to watch a scary movie. It was actually hard to watch tv last night without watching something scary. But my girlfriend refused and we ended up watching some gay dating advice show where a really cute lesbian was told that women don’t respond well to hilarious but unsexy pick-up lines. If I’m ever single again, someone remind me of this.

But I called my mom and my brother to reminisce on Halloweens past. My brother and I must have gone trick-or-treating for hours each year, considering the amount of candy we scored. We'd load up in the station wagon and hit the "good neighborhoods," the ones with lots of houses and history of good candy. When we got home from our trick-or-treating marathon, we would put all of our candy in a pillow case (yes – it was that much). Then we’d go to the living room, spread it all out across the floor, and trade with each other for pieces we liked better.

I always liked the chocolate candy best. My brother wasn’t too interested in actually eating candy, but he loved to have something to torment me with. His pillow case still full of candy in late December definitely did the trick. This was during the height of the razor-blade-in-the-apple scare, so fruit was inherently suspect. We always looked on with suspicion when someone tried to pass an apple off as a “treat.” But the real insult for kids was to get a travel toothbrush and tube of toothpaste (I'm not kidding, some dental hygienists with a terrible sense of humor or overly strict parents of three actually did this to me when I was a kid). How dare people ruin our holiday with their sense of dental hygiene?!

So last night, I did get a bag of candy. Just in case, I told myself, even though we’ve lived in our neighborhood for three years and have never gotten a single trick-or-treater. Take 5 – a delicious treat that my friend Rachel introduced me to. It’s a crazy candy bar actually, with pretzel, peanut butter, caramel, and chocolate. Wait . . . it seems like I'm forgetting something. But there’s still some left.

This is my way of giving myself a pat on the back.