The Glass is Too Big - Home

I'm trying to break what's become a bad habit the last few weeks: sleeping in on the weekends. Back in the fall, when I first started getting up at 5am, I realized that doing so 7 days a week was where the real benefit sat. It lends consistency and gives the most raw available extra hours from making such a change.

However, over the last few weeks, I've been finding myself staying up later and later on Friday and Saturday nights only to sleep in until 7:30 or 8. Often, I'll actually wake up at 5:00 (in large part due to the spike in air temp that a "dumb" programmable thermostat brings), feed the dogs and be drawn back to bed by some sort of deeply addictive behavior.

I pretty much universally regret this every weekend. A few hours later, I look at a clock and realize it's noon and wonder where the day went. Next thing I know, Monday morning rolls around and I'm back in a sport coat wondering where the whole weekend went.

So, this morning, I'm up. I'm catching up on Boston Legal and My Name is Earl (2 shows Shelly doesn't like, but I find compelling, well-acted, well-written and funny without laughtracks). And, I'm writing a meandering blog post.

On Friday night, we had our monthly poker game, with mostly regulars and a new addition, who in her second time playing doubled her money. I couldn't catch cards to save my life, but only lost $0.55 despite that. I have a single hand to thank for that, with a pair of 10's in the hole that matched up nicely with a 3rd on the river and even better with the 4th that dropped as the last card. The couple of bucks that hand brought in compensated the run of hole cards that ranked at the absolute bottom of the available permutations.

Yesterday, FedEx delivered my new fluidized bed filter for the big aquarium. I embraced my deep-seated need to unpack boxes, even if I am not ready to actually use the merchandise and it's now sitting in the ever-increasing aquarium "staging area" in the garage.

Last night, we decided to try somewhere we hadn't been for dinner: Boston's. They're all over the country, but only recently in Minnesota. And, I have to say, I was quite pleased with my meal. While I frequently find "chain" food disappointing, I don't have the big grudge against chain restaurants that some have. I'm all about the food and service. If what you put on my plate is worth eating, I'm in. I don't care if it's identical to what they're putting on plates in 300 other places in the country. It usually is the case that to make the food acceptable to enough people to justify 300 locations, they usually need to remove much of the character. Last night's food didn't bear the marks of that kind of homogonization.

I ordered a basic pizza with smoked ham and tomato slices, a subtle enough combination that it usually reveals how well or poorly a place makes pizza. The crust had just the right combination of crunchy exterior and chewy interior, a hint of yeasty tang and was topped with separate, but complimentary tastes. They used a little more sauce than I would, but that's pretty much universal and is more about me than the cook. I'm sincerely looking forward to the leftovers that will constitute today's lunch.

I'm also looking forward to eating there again as their menu had several other things I'm intrigued by, including Asian-influenced pasta and pizza selections. I'm guessing my next meal there will be their Thai pizza which uses a peanut sauce and will, I hope, live up to the description on the menu. I only chose a less daring entree last night because it was late, I was hungry, and I avoided the risk of not liking my meal.

Speaking of peanuts, after listening to a recent Garrick Van Buren podcast where he interviewed the founders of local peanut butter company: P.B.Loco, and subsequently seeing it on the shelf of the store while shopping for the poker food on Friday, I bought a jar of their Cinnamon and Raisin peanut butter.

That led to a 700 calorie mistake last night that was entirely worth it. Should you feel like making such a mistake yourself, you might consider what you'd get if you put graham crackers around the edge of a bowl, filled the middle with vanilla ice cream, heated up and drizzled a couple of tablespoons of the aforementioned peanut butter on top and followed that with chocolate syrup. The combination of crunch with the cracker, chewy with the occasional frozen raisin, creamy ice cream, peanut butter, chocolate, cinnamon and vanilla flavors was pretty much as good as I imagined and capped off a fantastic evening of food.

Now back to Boston Legal. Enjoy your Sunday.

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