PB &Ugh!

I always knew this day was coming, but I tried not to think about it, hoping that the inevitable would somehow become evitable*, even though deep down in my heart, I knew that it wouldn’t. Now that it's happened, I’m left with a giant, proverbial question mark hovering over my head, and I’m really not sure which way I can turn to try and bring order to what was once my sane little world.

It happened last week. I was innocently eating lunch when I took the first bite of my sandwich. That’s when something went terribly wrong: I hated it. It tasted horrible. At that moment, I wanted to eat anything but that sandwich, and that includes Mushroom Surprise**. I stared in disbelief at what once had been a trusty, reliable friend, and I realized the unthinkable: I was finally sick of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

I can’t remember how long I’ve been eating PB & J’s for lunch. I’m talking years, here. I’ll admit that once in a while I’d switch it up with turkey or corned beef, but it wasn’t because I was sick of peanut butter, and instead just for a change. However, it would never last long. I always came back to the trusty PB & J’s, my Old Faithful of sandwiches.

Except now I can’t stand them. The very thought of them make my stomach churn, kind of like what happens when I hear any reference at all to the cast of Jersey Shore. I hoped it was just a phase that would only last a day or two, but no dice. It’s been a week, and I still hate them. In fact, I now find myself not looking forward to lunch at all, which is about as low as you can possibly sink if you’re not on an all beet and prune diet.

Now, you may wonder why this is such an ordeal for me. It’s just one type of sandwich, after all. Well, I’ll tell you: One reason is that PB & J’s make up a good seventy-five percent of my cooking repertoire. What else am I going to eat? Secondly, it’s less about having to make different types of sandwiches and more about the loss of P B & J feeling like a permanent break in what once was a perfect relationship. It’s heartbreaking, really.

But I’m not going down without a fight! I’m going to try using extra jelly. I’ve always liked jelly more than peanut butter, and by really slathering it on, maybe I’ll be able to regain my taste for P B & J’s, even if it’s at the expense of a large, daily caloric increase. If that doesn’t work, maybe I’ll find a different brand of jelly. You don’t just give up on something this important so easily.

Still, I’m not optimistic. This has really thrown me for a loop. If P B & J’s can stop tasting good, is nothing sacred? What if I suddenly decide that I don’t like pizza? (Ordering pizza accounts for another large chunk of my cooking repertoire.) What if I stop liking tacos? Where will it all end? Where!!??

Dang it, all of this drama has made me hungry. Ugh.

*Yes, ‘evitable’ is indeed a word! At least according to the internet.

** Shout-out to Wayside School Is Falling Down.

Thoughts On Being Hot (Pun Intended?)

In light of the string of recent ridiculously muggy days, in which it feels like the entire Twin Cities has been placed inside of the armpit of a sumo wrester, I have compiled some thoughts on the subject:

On several occasions I walked out of a building and my glasses fogged up. That had never happened before in my life. There’s nothing like wandering around the Target parking lot with your arms outstretched like a zombie, not able to see, and bumping into parked cars and other similarly blind shoppers.

If I had a mustache, it would probably be curling up.

It reminds me of delivering newspapers in my childhood. It would be as sweltering day, and some little old lady would be sitting in her lawn chair in the shade, sipping on a glass of iced tea. She would see me coming, drenched in sweat, and sweetly ask, “Hot enough for you?” Grrrrrrrrrrr…

Speaking of my childhood in the U.P., we were quite hearty back then. It would be 72 degrees, and we’d be running around, ecstatic because it was what we termed “swimming weather.”

I should try to fry and egg on the sidewalk. If it doesn’t work, I could enlist the help of a magnifying glass.

An overnight low of 78 tonight. Be still, my beating heart!

I haven’t even checked to see how many people are at the pool at my apartment complex. I assume that it’s packed. However, maybe everybody else assumed the same thing, and it’s completely empty. (Except for, of course, a little old lady, sitting in the shade in a lawn chair, who’d ask me if it was hot enough for me.)

Finally, a poem I just composed:

Hot. Hot.
It’s so crazy hot.
Hot enough to melt
The spots off of Spot

The Bigfoot Principle

So, I’ve been thinking, as I often find myself doing, of how life changes as you grow older. Today, I’m mulling conversation matter, and how the conversations of a twenty-year old and the conversations of a thirty-year old are drastically different. Take me for example. When I was twenty, conversations would be about the following: girls, sports, girls, music, sports, food, girls, and girls playing sports. Now, however, I find myself talking about many different things, such as work, politics (Ew! I know!), work, religion, travel, and many other things that would make a twenty-year old scoff, assuming that they weren’t listening to an iPod and could actually overhear somebody else’s conversation. What’s weird is that this doesn’t feel odd at all. It seems strangely normal, and I’ve grown to accept it as a part of growing up.

(For the record, however, the topics of a twenty-year old are still batted around on occasion, lest you think I’ve turned into some sort of uppity, high-class snob.)

Luckily, however, there is an exception, a time when speaking like a twenty-year old is still appropriate. This is when you’re with the friends who you were once twenty-years old with, people of your own age whom with you grew up. Sure, you still discuss the thirty-year old things with them, but you can occasionally regress to topics of great foolishness or non-importance, and it doesn't seem strange at all.

Take my friend Lurch. Just recently we were discussing an upcoming trip to Washington state, where the topic of Bigfoot naturally came up. (“Hey, I just figured out that we’re going to be in Bigfoot country!”) At some point, a completely non-mature idea came to me, which I revealed to him: We should get some sort of fake Bigfoot, strap him to the roof of our rental car, and drive around like that the whole time, all while acting completely casual about it. Lurch’s response: “I was just thinking the same thing!” We then proceeded to laugh hysterically and make follow up jokes for quite a long time afterwards.

This was obviously not a mature conversation. If I tried to have this discussion with anybody else, such as my dad or a co-worker, it would have been strange, but with a close friend of my own age, it seemed totally normal.

I’m sure that there is already a term for this, but for my own intents and purposes, I am going to call it the Bigfoot Principle. I urge you all to start using it. I’d like it to catch on.

Now, does anybody know the easiest way to construct a fake Bigfoot? It’s kind of important.

Adventures In Soda Procurement

Every office has one. You probably know who I’m talking about, the guy who’s been there forever and has an employee number of something like 000004. He’s seen just how inefficient and incompetent the company is for way too long, and it’s left him jaded to the point of no longer really caring about anything. He’ll do work only if he wants to, and when he does, he’ll do it his way, regardless of how outdated his methods are. He’ll come in when he feels like it, most likely still in his pajamas. His lunches will be several hours long. He won’t change for anybody unless he has to, and even then he still might not.

Now, I want you to think about this guy, visualize him in your mind, and then picture his vending machine equivalent. Seriously. If you have a hard time doing so, don’t worry, because I’ve met this vending machine, and I’m here now to tell you all about it.

You see, near our cafeteria squats an old pop machine, and it’s become very cantankerous as of late. It’s almost as if it’s feeling underappreciated and has gotten sick of doing its job, leaving it disgruntled to the point of wanting solely to mess with anybody that tries to get a beverage from it. (If it had legs, I’m pretty sure it would try to trip people as they walked by.)

Example 1: A week or so ago, craving an unhealthy mixture of caffeine and sugar, I went up to this machine with two one-dollar bills. I fed them both in and made my selection. Nothing happened, and I realized that the ‘exact change’ light was on. I retrieved my money and returned to my desk, where I picked out two quarters and a nickel. (Soda costs $1.55 for those of you who struggle to score at home.) I returned to the machine, deposited a dollar, and then dropped in the two quarters, bringing my total to $1.50. I then dropped in the nickel, and it fell straight through to the coin release. I tried again and again and again. It would not take the nickel. Annoyed, I went back to my desk a second time, where a co-worker informed me that the machine usually spits out nickels. So, leaning heavily on my third grade math skills, I collected fifty-five cents without using a nickel and returned to the machine. Finally, I was able to get it to yield a soda. I was happy to have gained the victory, and I walked away with a little bounce to my step, feeling pretty good about myself. I think this made the machine angry at me. (As I was walking away, I’m pretty sure it muttered something like, “Getting cocky, huh? I’ll teach you….”)

Example 2: I’d smartened up, and this time I brought $1.55 exactly, without nickels. However, the machine was ready and decided that it wasn’t going to accept dollar bills. Thinking quickly, I tried to use the change machine next to the soda machine to get a dollar’s worth of change, but that machine wasn’t taking bills either. It was almost as if the pop machine was being a bad influence on the change machine, and had corrupted it into doing no work. (“Hey kid, why are you such a sucker? Where is it written that you have to work all day long? What do you get out of the deal, anyway, huh? I don’t see you getting overtime, and you’re always here!”) So I had to go back to my desk to get a dollar’s worth of quarters. I was then able to feed in $1.55 in change, without using nickels, and I got my soda. I imagine that the machine was not amused by my resourcefulness. (“So you wanna play dirty, huh?”)

Example 3: I had $1.55, all in change, without nickels, all ready to go. However, this time the machine stopped taking coins. Not just nickels, all coins. Each one I dropped in failed to register, and I swear I could hear the machine chuckling at me. Basically, it had rendered itself so that getting a soda was impossible, short of tipping it, which isn’t a great idea unless you get a signed and notarized waiver from your boss saying that it's okay. Anyway, no bills, no change, no pop, game over. I walked back to my desk empty-handed, as the machine snickered at me. (“That’ll wipe that smirk off your face!”)

So yes, I’ve been defeated by a pop machine with an attitude problem. However, it’s probably all for the better, as I shouldn’t be drinking the stuff anyway. Still, I think I can outlast it if I really want to. The machine has to be ready to retire soon, and it’ll most likely be replaced with a young, shiny version, one that is eager to make a good impression. It’ll probably take both dollar bills and coins, and give back proper change. Heck, it might even hand out compliments, too. (“You’re looking trim, sir! You must be drinking our diet brand!”)

Still, I’m kinda going to miss the old machine, whenever it does go. It had character. It made getting a liquid refreshment an adventure, which spiced up the day, not to mention it helped me to brush up on my math skills. (“Okay, I need fifty-five cents without a nickel. Oh boy, I don't have enough fingers for this...I’m gonna need a whiteboard, and maybe a spreadsheet…”) Plus, someday I want to be that jaded old guy at work, and it was good to get a few pointers.