• The lure of stimulants, revisited

    They say that the effects of alcohol are greater if it is consumed on an empty stomach. Does the same thing apply to caffeine consumption? If your day was really dragging, would you get more bang for your buck by taking your caffeine before you eat rather than after?

    Maybe it’s time for a little experiment. No control group for comparison? Heck, no ‘group’ to speak of, other than yourself? Who needs scientific method when you’ve got a bottle of pharmaceutical grade caffeine and a willingness to use it?

    Someone is bound to ask whether I’ve been leaning on a caffeinated crutch a little too often lately. One too many trips to that well is bound to leave someone high and dry, and I may not have to look very far to find him. Well, let this be the turning point. Let this be where we face down the encroaching darkness, draw our line in the sand, and defiantly declare, “THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER!”

    “Anything worth doing today will still be worth doing tomorrow.”
    – excerpt from the procrastinator’s creed.

  • Little green ninja man

    Everyone has their quirks. Me? I feel compelled to share my life with anyone who cares to read about it (which, admittedly, probably isn’t very many). By all accounts, Beth seems to be a budding conservationalist. Nothing she acquires, no matter how mundane or inherently disposable, can be thrown out without great deliberation. No resource, no matter how consumable or desired, may be finished off without gnashing of teeth. I don’t know how many times I’ve found cheap trinkets lying around, previously won for good behavior at a doctor’s visit. Then there is Beth’s love of M&M cookie ice cream sandwich treats. There are six such treats in a box, five of which disappeared in so many nights (they would have gone faster but her ogre like parents wouldn’t let her have more than one a night). The last one has been in our freezer for more than a week. Why, you may ask? Well, I asked Beth that question not too long ago. Her reply? “If I eat the last one then I won’t have any left.”

    I am ashamed to admit that we have left Beth woefully unprepared for siblings. I am torn between my desire to respect Beth’s things and my sense of obligation to teach her the skills necessary to cope with a brother or a sister. If I don’t eat the last one, how will she learn that the early bird gets the worm, that if you snooze you loose, that the last one there gets a stale cookie for desert instead? Will she be the last kid her age on the block to learn that all important lesson: “the ice cube bin is always the first place they look.” Just what kind of example will she be for her younger sibling? Further complicating matters, that damn thing looks like it tastes REALLY good.

  • Are you going to eat that?

    Yogurt is the most disgusting substance that I purposefully put in my mouth on a routine basis. It beats out things like cottage cheese and brie because, as Nancy Reagan says, I, “just say no.” Pre-mixed yogurt isn’t too bad. You remove the cover and you see a substance that looks a little bit like pudding. Pudding is good! Contrast this with the look and feel of the fruit on the bottom variety; well, it’s enough to loose your appetite. Stirring it up, if anything, makes matters worse. After a good stirring, my yogurt looks like a culture from the lab run amok. Then you read the label, proudly proclaiming that your lunch contains “live and active cultures”, and suddenly you’re waxing sentimental over those peanut butter sandwiches that perpetually appeared in your school lunch, oh those many moons ago. No matter how much you stir, you can’t quite eliminate those disturbing white lumps. Is that the part that is “live and active?”

    Please don’t answer that. I don’t really want to know.