My name is Pax, and I have lost all feeling in my legs....

Well, it's the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Everyone is prepping to wear their maternity pants tomorrow to stuff in the largest amount of food you can possibly eat in one sitting. Then, a few hours later, create leftovers and do it again. It's a ritual, and I love it.

In preparation for the food orgy to come, I went to my first spin class last night. For those that don't know what spin is, it's a class at the local gym where two midgets wearing Gene Simmons' spiked KISS boots jump up and down on your legs for an hour. No, I'm kidding that's not what it is, but it feels like it. It's like a bicycle sprint into Hell set to cheesy music. I've been running 3-4 miles every other day since February. I also do about 100 push ups every other day (on average). I thought I was in pretty good shape. It took maybe 10 minutes in the spin class to realize that I was mistaken.

Thanks to spin class, today, I'm a complete wreck. I am so sore. Everyone of my muscles is a useless slab of spent flesh. Sammy Sosa could come in here and start beating my legs with a baseball bat and I would just laugh at him. When I walk, I look like some kind of spasming, freak show. People throw coins at me when I walk by. I actually heard someone yell, "For the love of God, put it out of its misery!" when I was walking to the bathroom. Some people are so cruel.

Time to pop 6 Extra Strength Tylenols and make a visit to No Pain Town. Despite my grumbling, it was a great workout and I'll most definitely do it again.

Happy Turkey Day everyone!

Technorati Tags - random personal exercise spin spin class Thanksgiving

My Compulsion to Collect

I have a weird compulsion to collect things. Nothing outlandish like naval lint, body parts or other people's souls, but things more under the pop culture umbrella. I've tried to collect things since I was a little kid. I remember having a bottle/can collection in our garage when I was 8 or 9. I was made to throw it away because my parents thought it was just "taking up space". What the hell does that mean anyway? Doesn't the car take up space? Or the hundred pounds of crap I push under my bed when I clean up my room? That takes up space, too. Hey, what do I know, I was just the innocent child permanently scarred by my uncaring parents (I see an episode of Oprah in my future). After that I collected Garbage Pail Kids for a few years. Those were AWESOME. I collected them in 5th and 6th grade. I think I still have them at my dad's, but they may have been thrown out because...that's right...taking up space.

In seventh grade I started my first big collection; comic books. From seventh grade through twelfth grade my friend Steve and I collected comics hardcore. We frequented this comic shop in Hoover called Curious George Comics and Arcana. It was run by this guy who I think is crazy, but I KNOW is a dirty hippie. I have no idea if his name was in fact, George, but Steve and I called him Curious George anyway. Years after his store closed I saw him at the mall. He was working as a telemarketer (surprise, surprise) and he was wearing a suit and tie carrying a briefcase....and he worked as a telemarketer. That's what I'm talking about. I still called him Curious George when I talked to him. What a wacko (him, not me). But I digress (I do that a lot), I still have my comic collection in my garage. I thumb through it every once in a while. Looking through my hundreds of comics takes me back to a simpler time, a time before I was married, with a mortgage, and a job, no cat and no car. Damn, it certainly WAS a simpler time, I didn't have anything.

Comic collecting faded for the most part when I went to college. Partly because I didn't have the time nor the room to do it (nor the money). The only thing I could say I collected in college was books. I frequented a used book store and bought a ton of used books very cheaply to read. That's the closest I came to a collection until my last year at Auburn; 1997. That is the year I started collecting Star Wars. That particular collection would consume me from 1997 until the end of 2004. I realize this may label me as a dork, but I'm sure I was labeled that before some of you knew this (haha). Many of you had seen my Star Wars Room back when I lived in Birmingham. It was a spectacular site, but it is no more. I stopped actively collecting Star Wars stuff when I moved to Jacksonville in Feb 2005.

So, what am I collecting now? Odds and ends. Kool aid packets and soda cans (stop laughing, that was serious). I enjoy finding oddball sodas you can't find in a lot of places. I have old cans of Pepsi Free, Crystal Pepsi, Mountain Dew Pitch Black and New Coke. I have a can of Russian Pepsi Ice Cream and Taiwanese can of Pepsi Gold. Crazy ass things like that. It's something to do. I'm weird, what can I say? I'm glad Steph married me when she did, I have her completely fooled (well, probably not). I'm also glad she puts up with it.

I'm a lucky man with a garage full of comic books and soda cans.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Technorati Tags - random personal collecting Pepsi Coca Cola comic books

Decadence: Ice Cream Orgasms

Sooooooooooo, even though today is Thursday, I am taking tomorrow off, so you bitches can SUCK IT, today is my Friday. I think I'll spend today talking a little bit about indulgences. There are a few things my wife and I love to indulge in, ice cream being numero uno. Recently a flavor of Haagen Dazs was released that knocked a few of my planets out of orbit. It's called Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Like I just told you in the first paragraph, the wife and I adore ice cream. If we could, we would adopt a little ice cream baby and care for him and love him like the real thing. The only problem is, we'd only last so long before his ice-creamy goodness would lure us into eating him and then we'd be labeled cannibals, which would force us to go on the run. Authorities and bounty hunters would chase after us Fugitive-style until a violent and bloody shootout at an old abandoned warehouse ends the entire ordeal. Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Michael Hall would portray us in the TV movie and..........wait, where was I....oh, ice cream. As far as flavors, Steph loves chocolate (the more you can cram into the container the better). Me, I gravitate towards regular vanilla and it's variations (cherry vanilla, chocolate chip, etc).

Earlier this year, Steph and her mother saw a show on Food Network called Scoop which was a reality type show that had people developing the next great Haagen Dazs flavor. The winner turned out to be a British desert called Sticky Toffee Pudding. I was skeptical but Steph convinced me to try it. The verdict? Might be the best ice cream I've ever had. It's tied with Graeter's Chocolate Chip ice-cream at the top of my list of "Ice Creams to Kill Your Parents For" (Just kidding, Mom and Dad.........or am I?). This stuff is phenomenal. If they had it, I'd buy it in giant tubs. I'd purchase extra refrigerators just to be able to hold the giant tubs of Sticky Toffee Pudding I'd buy. My wife said she would bathe in it. I use it as cologne and bathroom spackle. IT'S THAT GOOD. Try it, you'll thank me. Pretty soon you'll be frequenting dark alleys looking for your next STP fix.

Welcome to my world.

Have a good weekend.

Technorati Tags - random personal food ice cream Sticky Toffee Pudding Haagen Dazs

Seasonings Greetings

No, that title is not a typo. I got a random little entry today as I'm feeling a bit sassy and I thought I would take you along for the ride. Someone brought in donuts to work today and I had two, so I may be just in the midst of my sugar high, but let's see where I can steer this entry.

I've been thinking about my favorite food seasonings recently. Don't ask me why, it just happens. I don't question it, I just acknowledge and move on. Anyway, my family has always loved pouring extra seasonings onto food for flavoring. It doesn't matter if the food actually needs more flavoring, they do it anyway. You could have Emeril or Wolfgang Puck make the tastiest porkchops or top sirloin steaks and place them right in front of my dad. Without missing a beat, my dad will dumptruck on half a shaker of salt and six cups of seasoning salt. It's something that has been conditioned into me like Pavlov's dogs;

1. Place food in front of me
2. Apply copious amounts of seasoning salt
3. Taste food
4. Add more seasoning salt


In light of my familial brainwashing, there are two seasoning salts that get it done for me and I have used them since I was a kid. The first was introduced to me by my mother and its called Nature's Seasons by the Morton Salt company. This is used on lots of things but the best is to sprinkle this over cottage cheese as a side dish. I always thought it had a weird name though. Nature's Seasons. What's that supposed to mean? This seasoning salt consists of seasonings you can find in nature? Whatever. If one could find this bottle's kaleidescope of tastes in nature, I wouldn't need it in the first place. Maybe the title means that Mother Nature herself uses it on her own food? How awesome is that?

Seasoning number two is Lawry's Seasoning Salt. This one is the far more versatile salt of the two. I use it much more frequently. Like Nature's Seasons, it's also good on cottage cheese, but Lawry's can also be used on beef, veggies, chicken, pork, pizza, mac&cheese, squash, kittens, midgets, those rubber bouncy balls you can buy for a quarter, breakfast cereals, the French and, last but not least, deviled eggs. Lawry's didn't try to get too cute with their name like Morton. Lawry's Seasoning Salt. That's pretty much all you need. This stuff is so good that you could sprinkle a little bit on the table in front of me and I'd spend the next hour trying to lick every last speck off the tabletop. Yes, it's that good. Try it on popcorn, too. I didn't realize that this seasoning comes from an actual restaurant in Chicago. Click the Lawry's bottle to the right to go to the restaurant's website.

Anywhose, hope everyone has a good weekend. Enjoy the time off.

PEACE.

Technorati Tags - random personal food salt spices Lawry's Nature's Seasons