WUMF: December Edition

Another year has ended and once again, I bring you WUMF!

I had planned on having this in on New Year's Eve, but unfortunately forces were working against me.

Guards On Slicers Not Just Suggestions
I said forces were working against me.   My wife got a new Slicer/Chopper for Christmas and decided to bust it out in order to cook up New Year's Eve dinner for midnight.  It's called a Genius chopper and apparently, we were unqualified to operate it. 

My wife said, "Well how do I get the onions to be slivers for the pierogis?"  I said, "Look, it's simple."  I added in the slicer attachment and then proceeded to slice up an onion and then a small chunk of my finger.  "Way to go, dumbass."  It was just a little bit, not even noteworthy.  So, I said, "Well, that's why you use the guard.  You stick it on the onion and slide it back and forth."

As I went into the bathroom to get a bandage for my finger I hear, "OW!" and then some four letter word.  "What happened, genius?"  Turns out, my wife couldn't stand to be showed up by me and took an even bigger chunk out of her right ring finger.  We couldn't get it to stop bleeding.  We tried everything.  At one point, I thought we were going to end up at the ER, which is typical for us around the holidays.  Most people use the holidays to get together with family and enjoy the company and the event.  We use it as an excuse to try and max out our medical deductible. 

Well, my father-in-law came over and was able to properly dress her finger, cause I left with a light bulb looking bandage which quickly soaked up a lot of blood.  After she was settled down, the festivities needed to continue, so, the second string came in to cook the food and get everything ready.  That would be me.  I should have tried harder to get out of work. 

Christmas
My kid's fourth Christmas was apparently her 14th.  This year she sat among the boxes and made two piles of gifts.  I asked her what each pile was.  She said, "One is the presents I wanted and the other is stuff I didn't want."  I asked her which was which.  She said that the one with the toys was the pile she really wanted.  She then proceeded to say, "See, Daddy.  Even when I'm bad I get presents.

Work
As I close in on a full year at my new job, it's hard to realize that it has been a full year.  I left nearly ten years of service, over three weeks of vacation and a lot of friends.  And you know what?  It was the right decision.  Even though there are challenges in my new job, some good, some bad, I know that it was time for me to go.  Not saying why, just that my later mother-in-law would have approved of the change.

WDVE shakeup
WTF?!?  Last year, Randy Baumann suddenly disappeared from the morning show.  He was brought back about a month later.  Now, Jim Krenn, who has been the long time morning show host, has disappeared from the air since December 6th.  No word on why or if he'll be back.  There isn't a contract to be negotiated and even though I only get to listen to about an hour of the show, I've noticed that Krenn hasn't been on between 6 and 7am all year.  The running gag was always that Jim only works two weeks out of the year, so speculation is only set to run wild.  

In the long run money is probably a factor here.  Money and ratings.   Regardless, if he is gone, it's a big change to morning radio for me.  I was a bit uneasy about Randy Baumann taking over for Scott Paulsen 12 years ago but I've adjusted to it.  I don't know if it will be the same here.

Free Time
For Christmas I got Uncharted 3, Dead Island, and Call of Duty MW3.  The only thing I forgot to ask Santa for was free time.  I've been playing Dead Island and it's pretty sweet and sometimes a tad unsettling.  Most of the zombies are Romero speed but the Infected, as they are called are more like Zack Snyder or Danny Boyle speed zombies.   In fact, there are a tons of pop culture nods to all things zombies and other stuff.  One sign painted on a wall says, "Don't Open.  Dead Inside"   At another point, the main character has to go look for a crashed plane from Oceanic Air, a nod to lost.    It's fun and sick and gory and I'm finding it hard to do anything else, like cook New Year's dinner because my wife sliced up her finger.  lol.

Happy New Year!

It's Amateur Night, Oh What a Night

St. Patrick’s Day is upon us as well as March Madness. But then again, that is what March Madness is around the bars today and tonight.

Let’s face it, anytime you designate a holiday as a reason to go out and drink, you run the risk of inviting all of the people not field ready to participate and cause problems.

I was a bartender in a former life and absolutely hated working on New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day. Why? It wasn’t because of the crowds and the busy bars. It was because regular, everyday people tried to imitate the professional drinkers, like a bunch of kids who just watched Jackass and thought it would be cool to light off a firecracker placed between their ass cheeks.

Now, New Year’s Eve is a time for joyous celebration and revelry. But if you feel that you have to go out and get shit faced just to say, “I went out on New Year’s Eve and got shit faced” then you are part of the problem. You get all loaded and then you get all belligerent and start fights.  Then you go and wreck your car or worse.  The real drinkers are not a two night a year partying type. They do it on any day that ends in ‘Y’. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Super Bowl or Arbor Day. They don’t need a holiday to find an excuse to drink, but for the most part, they understand the boundaries.

Granted, there are plenty of drunks out there that cause problems regardless of the occasion and I’m not trying to glamorize or romanticize their lifestyle.  I simply mean that there are people who realize what they are doing and don’t need to go out to a bar and wear a stupid green Styrofoam hat or blow into a noise maker to enjoy some libations.  I am not a heavy drinker and I am quite comfortable sitting in my own home and having a drink on New Year’s Eve, during the Super Bowl or during a holiday meal. But I also know that anybody who comes to my house to do the same and will either spend the night or be cleared for departure at the end of the evening.

But I am not without fault.  I, too, felt the need to be a part of the celebration.  I finally realized how silly it was to go out for going out's sake when my wife and I decided that we just had to go out for St, Patrick's Day and did everything we could to find a place to go drink at.   Yet, all we were met with was busy and overcrowded places that held ridiculous amounts of drunk people.  Then, just to say we did go out, we stopped at a local motel bar and had  drink, then left.  It was at that moment I said, "Eff it!"  No more going out on holidays for stupid reasons.  But my life was checkered with doing such things for the sake of doing them.  I was an amateur in my youth.

When I was in my teens, I thought that if I didn’t go out and party on New Year’s Eve, then I was missing something important.  I had no intentions of drinking at that age, but mandated to myself that I had to go out, regardless.  I simply stated, “It’s New Year’s Eve. We HAVE to go somewhere!”  One particular year involved me organizing a trip to the nearby ski resort, just hoping that something spectacular would happen. My friend came over and we decided that we were going to drive the 45 minutes up the mountain to participate. I didn’t have a license, and technically he didn’t either, though he claimed he could drive a stick shift.  That bit of information was important because the only vehicle available to use was my brother's old Plymouth Horizon.  He was at college, my parents were out and so were his.   The Horizon had seen better days and at this point, I didn’t even know whether or not it had tags or insurance on it, let alone gas in the tank.

I had all these grand visions of showing up to the resort and immediately being thrust into an adventure of epic proportions involving older twins in ski boots. We’d pass for somewhere in our 20s vs. 15 and 16. Maybe we would end up in some kind of spy mission or win a downhill race or at least a hot tub. This would happen by way of improbable yet totally believable 80s movie logic which would only require us to master skiing or spying in the length of a three minute rocking montage. Yes, it would be an epic night involving a stolen sports car, secret microfilm and a bevy of beauties who never bothered to check our IDs. My thoughts were filled with a John Hughes style grandiose plan that would certainly get us a medal of honor and a trip to the White House.

The next morning, my father came up to me and said, “Where did YOU go last night?” He had somehow sensed that we didn’t just stay at home. We were very careful in returning the car to exactly the spot we left it. I was painstaking in returning the keys to the exact same spot on the hooks in the kitchen as to never give anyone reason to suspect we had gone anywhere. But, yet, my father, the master craftsman of bullshit sniffing (He spent 24 years on the board of the Municipal Authority in our town) knew something was up. I had to come up with some cover story as to not risk National Security over our night of decadence and death defying feats of excellence.

I worked out the details in my head. Disavow any knowledge of mischief and instead misdirect his suspicions. In essence I came up with a wonderful lie disguised as the God’s honest truth.

I confessed to my father that we didn’t go anywhere. Somehow, I knew that wouldn’t fly. He knew we at least were in the car. But, how? I then shifted the story to a botched attempt at going somewhere. I told him my friend attempted to drive and ended up stalling the car, repeatedly to the point of flooding it. We managed to make it nearly three feet before giving up. We then threw it in neutral and pushed it back to where it was originally parked, went inside and just watched Dick Clark. That was it. That was the flimflam story I sold my father and he bought it.

Now, I wish I could divulge what really happened that night. Unfortunately, the involved parties are still around and could be in grave danger if I were to reveal any details. Let’s just leave it at the story I told my Dad. I’ve said it so many times it almost feels like the truth anyway. The official record of our actions, that night, is sealed to the public, but let’s just say, America avoided an International incident on December 31st 1990.

So from one amateur to another, stay home tonight. Enjoy a beer at home or at least make it look like you never went anywhere. The safety of the American people is your hands.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

The Lesser Man Project: Week 9

Sorry for the hiatus on the updates. I was caught up in the D-Bag Award posts and the holidays, along with some other news that will show up in, possibly, my final post????  Time will tell on that one. In any case, I hope you didn’t think I abandoned the project, because I didn’t.  In fact, I surprised myself with being off of work for the last two weeks of the year.  I figured boredom would have set in and I’d be reaching for the cookies and egg nog. Fortunately, there is some rule that any behavior for 21 days constitutes a habit. Well, at the time I went on vacation I had been at this for almost six weeks, which is twice as long.  I guess I have a habit now.

Speaking of habits, let’s go over the last four weeks. I’m not going to get into what all I ate, but I will share some. Let’s just say, I didn’t skimp on the holiday meals.

I started off week five having already lost 10 pounds from my heaviest weight. Then two weeks later I was head long into being off of work and around all kinds of bad food. I was doing my Christmas shopping and eating on the fly which is always a bad idea. I was hitting Starbucks because I was able to and taking in a few more Caramel Brule decadence than I should have in my position. I was eating at malls and going through the drive thru.

However, when I did stop at my favorite spot, Wendy’s, I managed to keep to my reduced meal plan with the value sized burger, fry, and drink. That was a plus. Being able to be satisfied by a very small amount of food is a good step towards winning the war.

Christmas Eve was filled with meat and cheese trays, ham and roast beef sandwiches, and various cookies. I tried to be good but I know I had one or two more chocolate covered Oreos than I should have. Christmas Day was just leftovers for lunch and turkey sandwiches for dinner at my parents. My Dad’s birthday was a couple days away and I was digging this dip my sister-in-law made and downing shrimp left and right. New Year’s Eve and Day were my worst meals. We had pierogies, pork, sauerkraut, hot dogs, and kielbasa. More cookies, more meat and cheese.

I did try some a new dish at one of our regular eateries.  I had fish and pierogies and loved it. At Fat Zackel’s in Claridge, they make an awesome Russian Cod and accompany it with three pierogies. It’s enough to get your gnosh on, but it won’t kill you. Skipping my daughter’s fries also helps.

Now to the biggest help over break.  I had, what has been called, around here as, The Pittsburgh Puke and Poop.  Actually, I never puked. My kid woke up the morning of the 19th with it but had stopped vomiting by noon.  My wife had a small bout with it and I was showing signs around mid week.  Like I said, I never threw up, but I wasn’t taking any chances and was pretty much eat toast and drinking ginger ale, because I was constantly nauseous.  Now, I would have expected to gain all that weight back after I felt better, but I am proud to say that as of a weigh in on the morning of January 5th, I had lost almost [drum roll] [paradiddle] [LOL]



18 pounds.

Now that’s a habit!

I’m back at work this week and have had one small indulgence, a tiny Frosty after my lunch on Tuesday.  Otherwise, I have been eating less and I am actually starting to feel like I’ve lost weight.  People have said I look like I've lost weight.  "Yeah, your face looks thinner."  Great.  If only I wore my pants around my nose, I'd feel like I had accomplished something. My knees still groan at me when I go up steps, but I’ve been finding pairs of pants, I was ready to throw out, fitting once more, which is a bonus. No more exploding buttons.

To summarize:

• Apparently getting the flu has benefits but don't expect all results to be the same.  I wouldn't go licking the Lincoln Logs at your kids' daycare, just yet. 
• If you plan on doing anything like this, do it a few weeks out of a big meal holiday like Thanksgiving. 
• Don’t call it a diet. It’s a change in habit.
• Most important, keep going. 

Now, I’m not going to get all caught up in the psychology of it all, just like I didn’t get caught up in all the counting and monitoring of what I did.  I’ve made all these changes in an effort to have them become an automatic thing. The subconscious mind will reach for a bowl of chips just as easily as it will walk past the kitchen at 11:30 at night, despite the cries of Ben and Jerry telling you to eat them. You simply have to train yourself, in small increments.

It’s nice to know I haven’t hit that plateau, yet, but my next challenge occurs starting January 10th. More on that later. Peace out!