Twelve Days of Christmas

The holidays have come and gone in the last twelve days since I've been at home. The hustle and bustle of the season has kept me from the blog for the most part, so here's little summary of the twelve days of Christmas.

* One duet of "Me and Bobby McGee" with Mom
* Two Grill Milkshakes (both strawberry)
* Three hours watching old SNL on YouTube
* Four new pairs of shoes
* Five days of shopping!
* Six outfits selected for Baby Dillon
* Seven new CDs
* Eight furry relatives visited - including Anna's puppies
* Nine hundred miles traveled
* Ten late nights reading
* Eleven times listening to Wintersong on repeat
* Twelve extra pounds

Question

If you eat sushi, which is by all accounts quite healthy, and a pear for dinner, but drink beer with it, is this just total caloric equillibrium? Is this dietary stalemate?

List of Items Preventing Weight Loss

* Remaining 26 Starbursts on the coffee table

* Vase filled with Dove Milk Chocolate squares (also on the coffe table)

* The couch

* Two unopened cans of Pringles (Regular & Salt & Vinegar)

* Sort of stale Chex Mix that I plan to crisp in the oven

* Pint of Haagen Daz Strawberry Ice Cream in the freezer

* Cable TV

* Almost-finished bag of Tostitos Scoops

* Buy-one-get-one-free Nestle Quik Chocolate & Strawberry Milk

* 17 beers leftover from this weekend

* Bag of Snack Size Oreos

* 2 unopened bags of cookies that I forgot to offer guests this weekend (Fudge Stripes and Chips Ahoy!)

* Seemingly unlimited supply of Hershey's Miniatures at the office

* Sam's-size container of Atomic Fireballs in the conference room

* Kudzu (who sets a very bad example of general laziness)

Will hereby commit to taking at least one walk this weekend (not including walk from couch to bathroom or couch to fridge). Otherwise will have to start buying elastic-waist pants so that I will stop outgrowing sizes at current pace.

Thoughts for Saturday

It's almost 7:30...here are the things I've thought about today:

1) Taking a walk (but not taking one)

2) The gay man at the office came out yesterday - and admitted that he doesn't love my haircut. I'm officially growing it out.

3) How long it will take my hair to grow back out

4) Going to the grocery store (but not going)

5) Sadness over the plate I knocked to the floor off the couch arm and broke into several sadly irreparable pieces

6)How everything in my house that is edible seems to be stale

7) Having seen two drunk college students almost have sex on Front Street last night between the post office and a lunch-only cafe called Betty B's

8) Amusement at Kudzu's new habit of laying on the window sill and sleeping with his face smashed up against the pain or the frame

9) How wonderful it is, sometimes, to have not talked to anyone all day

10) Going to the library to get a book on tape to listen to while cleaning (and not doing either)

11) My hair looks best on Saturdays when no one is going to see it

12) That if I put all the things back in the corner where the ceiling leaked, someone will show up to spackle, paint and sand the ceiling - all over my stuff

13) Why the new Killers album isn't coming out until October

14) How to lose 12 pounds before I have to wear a bridesmaid dress without really trying (or giving up chips, cookies and ice cream)

15) Why I can find time to blog, make my way through 96 episdoes of S&TC, eat, drink, sleep, work, and make a gigantic mess of my apartment, but I can't find time to read a book

16) That I kind of missed taking the new car for a drive today while I was busy staying in

17) Sometimes Kudzu knows just when to come and get in my lap

18) Where to get to dinner from (refrigerator not included)

19) Whether or not I should start the 6-hour Pride & Prejudice, which I suddenly have a yen to do

20) The list of things I should be doing is growing longer the longer I sit on this couch and blog

Nesquik-licious

Every once in awhile, I encounter one of those products that I enjoyed as a child and decide to trip down memory lane and recapture the magic. More often than not, I find that my childhood memory of something is usually better than the real thing. But I've found an exception to the rule.

I rediscovered Nestle Nesquick Strawberry Milk while at Disney World back in October. As a kid, I drank the chocolate counterpart to this on a day to day basis under the name "Choc-Choc." On occasion, my brother and I would branch out and drink the strawberry. I picked it up on whim in one of the food courts at Disney and it was delicious! But that was after a long day in the amusement park, and I'm pretty sure that lighter fluid would've been delicious. I saw it again in the grocery store last night and had to have it. Verdict: the bunny still satisfies.

Great Balls of Fire

According to the official website, the Atomic Fireball was invented in 1954 by Nello Ferrara, son of Salvatore Ferrara, founder of Ferrara Pan candies. (Lemonheads! Cherryheads! Boston Baked Beans!) The Atomic Fireball starts as a single grain of sugar that is "panned" over a two week period until it is the right size, then flavored, colored and packaged. About 15 million are eaten each week worldwide. And thanks to the cravings of the pregnant lady in the office, who went to four stores and bought five pounds, I'm eating about 10 percent of those. Seriously. I'm pretty sure I'm working toward an atomic hole in my stomach.