DISCLAIMER: this blog is mine & mine alone. Thou shalt not blame family nor friends nor employer for what you may read here.
I'm not in the mood to come up w/something either thoughtful or witty for the subject of this entry, so sue me. I don't really have a salient point to make at this moment in time, but wanna write just cuz I enjoy doing so.
For one thing, really cold beer is good, really cold weather is not. A friend of mine said that 98% of the time Florida weather is like a hairy dude's sweaty armpit. While that's probably true from May through September heat & humidity-wise, I can only be thankful that Florida doesn't smell like that (unless you're near someone watering their lawn w/reclaimed water, but that's another subject). But I gotta say that I much prefer heat to cold. I've said it before, but it's worth saying again: I choose shorts instead of ski pants, tank tops instead of parkas, Teva's instead of snowshoes. If it's not raining, yet the weather is not conducive to me driving around w/the sunroof open, it's way too fuckin' cold for me. I know it's all relative, as most of my family & best friends live where the high temp's have not broken freezing for most of the past week, and the low's have dipped below zero. But for heat misers like myself, waking up to 30 or below is not fun. I actually had to turn on the heat in my house for most of the past week! The good news is that 70 is right around the corner - like this weekend!
I think that sometimes simpler is better. Take pizza for example. I think that sausage & mushroom is far better than goat cheese & truffles as far as toppings go. A nice "plain" beer like Stella Artois or Sam Adam's is preferable to a flavored beer. To qualify this, Sammy does make a good cherry wheat, but I can only drink one or two. Pete's Wicked makes a strawberry blond that's a'ight, but the same limit holds true. While in the liquor store today I saw blueberry flavored beer, among some others. And I'm not talking about malt liquors like the flavored Smirnoff Ice, these were beers. By & large the same holds true for vodka. Give me an unflavored Grey Goose or Level on the rocks - very hard to beat. During the same shopping trip I was perusing the vodkas, and saw one brand that had the following flavored vodka: coffee, chocolate, pomegranate, and tomato. Tomato flavored vodka?! If you want tomato w/your vodka just make a damn Bloody Mary! Don't get me wrong, Grey Goose make a very nice orange flavored vodka that's great on the rocks, but this is starting to go too far. Raspberry-vanilla, cherry, pear, espresso? Zoiks. The same goes w/cheeseburgers. I love a nice bacon cheeseburger, but ground chuck or ground sirloin is fine by me. I've read many stories about restaurants that make $100 burgers, made from ground Kobe beef & some other exotic cuts, and topped w/truffles. I guess it's the novelty, perceived exclusivity, or want to be so drastically different that motivates people/companies/restaurants to try shit like this. But if something like a quality vodka or culinary concept is exceptional in & of itself, why fuck with it?
On a political note, Barack Obama assumed the Presidency this week. I had to work on Tuesday & like an idiot I set my DVR to record the wrong channel, so I missed his inauguration. But no matter, I'm glad to kick off what I hope is a profitable eight years for everyone in the US & the world. Lots of work to be done, lots of wounds to heal & ground to make up. It won't be easy, and it won't happen right away, but I believe better days are to come. I was happy to hear that President Obama basically wiped out or negated all the executive decisions regarding interrogation techniques/practices & detention policies made by the Bush administration over the past 7+ years. Hopefully we as a country will maintain a more principled approach to prosecution of our enemies, adhering to our Consitution & conventions and/or principles of war & treatment of prisoners of war that we have signed off on & championed in years past. Last Sunday's St. Petersburg Times had a piece in the Op-Ed section about Bushism's, one of which was (paraphrasing): "I'll be long gone before someone smart enough ever figures out what happened in this Oval Office." Some may find that funny, but I think it a bit scary: pondering all of what happened in the GWB White House that We the People have no clue about.
On an economic note, as much as I wish I didn't have to work (c'mon PowerBall! C'mon Florida Lottery!), I'm kinda glad I'm not retiring anytime soon. The reason for this was the "statement of account" that I got when checking my 401K this week. Every single fund that I've invested is down (obviously). I think my account value has dropped something like 57%, if not more. I've been contributing to a stock purchase plan as another investment vehicle, and I've taken a bath there too. I think my hit was about the same as the 401K - 50%+ loss. This isn't shocking w/what the market has done, but the feeling was different when I saw my own money (or lack thereof). I understand the figures: something like $23 trillion of value gained since 2004 or so has been lost in the past year. But it's kinda like hearing about someone w/cancer: you empathize & feel for the stricken & their family, but it feels different when it happens to someone you know, or yourself. So anyway, I hope that for everyone's sake the US & global economies start to rebound this year, or at least pull out of the freefall, and hopefully we'll all be in a better spot one year from now. At least I have a good 25 years to turn my own sitch around. God knows I might need all of that time, not so LOL.
I gotta figure out what to do w/the weekend. No football to keep me busy now that the Super Bowl contestants have been determined. BTW, how about that - the Arizona Cardinals in the Super Bowl? Whoulda thunk it? That reduces by one the number of teams that have never played in a SB. I hope AZ wins, but if PITT triumphs I won't be too disappointed. Now I'm just counting the days til Formula One starts, and pitchers & catchers report.
So that's it for now. Have a bitchin' weekend, and make the most of your days. Peace...
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