All Quiet on the Wontpower Front

This weekend was tons of yardwork. I moved 4 cubic yards of woodchips and 2 cubic yards of loam (that's expensive dirt for my urban readers). I planted grass seed in the areas where I used the dirt... Then it was Pizza Time! Unfortunately I'm kinda burnt out on pizza since we have it every Friday, mostly because the kids will ALWAYS eat it without complaining. Unfortunately for my wife I won't ;-) Since I didn't want pizza I had a dilemma. Like a true overeater who is hiding his habit I can't just go grab a bucket of KFC and show my wife and kids what an addict I am (I don't really like KFC but you get the point). I remembered a place that had a mean spinach salad. Now spinach salad is deceptively bad for you even though it is a salad so I thought I could get away with it. I mean a salad of spinach drowned in bacon grease and hard boiled eggs... everybody salivate! Anyway the place I was thinking of was OUT OF BUSINESS! I had no time left and no where else in mind to go at that point so I just went nextdoor to D'Angelos and grabbed a large BLT with Cheese. Hey it had bacon and lettuce. That's almost the same. Well it was good and it didn't get me in trouble with my family.

I realized the other night (as I was drinking a beer) that I had had quite a bit of beer over the last week. I think I had 4 pints of beer on 3 different nights and probably a single beer or two on each of the other nights. This realization caused me to abstain on Friday night to give my liver and gut a rest... but I had a family wedding party to go to on Saturday so that was a 4 beer night once again. I need to take it easy this week.

The other a totally-NOT-poor-and-homless guy came up to me and begged me for money that he needed "to take the train". Not only was I sure - mostly from the way he asked - that this was a total lie, but something about this guy not being dressed in rags and clearly hurting made it downright scary. 10 years ago I would have said anything I wanted to this guy and not thought twice about it. But lately for some reason - especially when the beggars are younger kids or well dressed older folks - I wonder if I'm going to get my ass kicked and my wallet stolen if I turn these people down. I think this is probably not likely since the place the begging occurs is pretty public but still. Things change I guess.

Workout update for last week - 1 day. How useless am I? And the only reason for the one day that DID happen is that I found out my grandfather has advanced cancer and I couldn't concentrate at work without blowing off some steam. I NEED to do better this week.

In terms of eating, it wasn't a great week but it certainly wasn't one of the worst. I had a burrito for lunch one day. I had a pastry for breakfast another day. I had a couple of bagels for breakfast at various points - with creamcheese. Oh by the way Finagle a Bagle kicks the pants off of Breuggers in terms of straight up bagel texture and flavor. They have pretty kickass coffee too but they make it in a goddamn blast furnace. I have a permanent birth mark looking red spotch on my hand to proove it. Here's a story of my cheapness. Bagles at Finagle are $.93 or something. A bagle with cream cheese is $2.10-ish. "This is crazy!" I'm thinking. So I turn around and buy a small tub of cream cheese from the fridge and get the bagels plain. I also buy the aforementioned coffee which is also kinda pricey - a large is 2.10-ish. What's with these wierd prices 93 cents? I'm surprised coffee isn't like 2.13 or something. Anyway the whole deal: 2 bagles, cream cheese, coffee is like 7 dollars and change. Doesn't sound like my scheme worked. The cream cheese was 3.19 i think (there's those prices again). I used it for approximately 5 bagles over the course of the week. It was a pretty small tub (my local bagel shop's are larger and less money but that's not in the city). Plus I had to haul it around with me in order to take advantage of having it (or eat my bagles in work which I eventually smartened up to doing). Anyway I'm a loser who doesnt want to pay 2 bucks for a bagel with cream cheese but would gladly spent almost 8 dollars and inconvenience himself as well as probably eat more instead. Loser.

I also had a Starbucks DoubleShot on Ice which as far as I can tell is just an iced Americano with some sort of substance that looks like cocaine mixed in and some frothy milk on top. Since I don't know what's in the pixie dust, AND I like iced Americano, AND it's 30 cents more, I think I'll stick with the standard octane. Americanos, hot or iced, are sublime by the way. There's no reason to drink anything else at Starbucks unless you want one of their dessert type beveredges. Also I think you get the most caffeine ounce for ounce in a grande Americano which is great if you want to wolf down a bucket of Original Recipe KFC on the ride home from work. Just remember to keep some of those wet napkiny things in the center console so your drumstick greasy ass hands dont result in a tragic accident. On second thought maybe you should just eat that chicken at the rest stop.

Go be big in Japan,
Wontpower

Spicy Nacho Doritos - Wontpower in a Bag!

First off I think I fell off the caffeine and food wagon without making a conscious decision to do so... and apparently I've also fallen off of the blogging wagon.

Well on with the show. This week will be a low caffeine, low calorie, exercise packed week. I swear. My $30 per month gym membership is gathering dust before my eyes, and $30 a month is enough to buy me one or more board games or a video game (Wii or DS at this point). Hhrmm I smell an upcoming post.

First let me start with an ode to Spicy Nacho flavored Doritos. Doritos are my arch enemy but to be honest they haven't tasted that good in the last several years. I remember the days when the corners weren't cut off and you had to search through the whole bag for the chip with the heaviest faux nacho coating. Now they chips are neutered (assuming tortilla chip corners are akin to man-balls) and they are literally swimming in overly salty, not very cheesy dust. I just don't like em that much. Then as I'm strolling through CVS one day a while back I see a flavor I've never seen before. SPICY NACHO. "Spicy" I think to my self. "Maybe some spice would undo the boring saltiness that has maligned my formerly favorite chip for these past many trips around the sun. So I buy a 99 cent "Big Bag" or whatever they call it these days. These too are tons smaller than they were when they came out years ago but I digress. THE THINGS ARE FRIGGIN' DELICIOUS. They are damned near Mexamerican Snack Food Nirvana. And the thing that makes them so delicious is not just the expected kick in the pants that the extra spice gives the chips. No. There is something in the special dust added to this flavor of doritos that ACTUALLY MAKES THE CHIPS CRUNCHIER! I'm serious. Listen up Frito Lay cus the biggest discovery every to happen to Doritos has come with a test flavor that will probably disappear never to been eaten again like Taco Bell and Pizza Hut flavored Doritos did a while back. What the hell do Taco Bell and Pizza Hut taste like anyway. They never mentioned tacos or pizza on the bag. Anyway those flavors sucked everloving ass but Spicy Nacho f-ing RAWKs. So tell Frito Lay to keep making them and tell them to extract the chunch-enhancing dust and spray it on every train to fatsoville they make. BRAVO!

As you can probably guess I ate a bag of these beauties this weekend. I feel terrible both mentally and physically about it and vow to go to the gym for at least 3 of the next 4 days of this week to do penance for my tansgression.

Cunch All You Want. They'll make more!

Frown,
Wontpower

The Quest for Less Continues and Other Notes from the Wontpower Frontier

The caffeine diminishment plan or CDP as I've taken to calling it is yielding some minor battlefield wins. I'm at about goal plus one Starbucks Tall a day (I'm using Starbucks for sizing. My coffee doesn't come from there any more often than it comes from anywhere else. Truthfully I think Au Bon Pain has my favorite coffee these days: a patented mix of some morning roast type thing with their french roast). So I haven't given up yet but I'm also not not exactly kicking this habit's ass.

Now let me go down another couple of tried and true wontpower paths. Eating and exercising. I have been to the gym exactly 1 time in the last 2 weeks. The $30 bucks a month that the gym is running me is starting to get to me but I'm afraid of what will happen if I cancel the membership. There are couple of things behind this downward trend besides my general laziness. The first is that I recently had what amounts to my worst bad-back-episode in years. Normally I put out my back and then immediately begin a recovery that goes on steadily until I'm right as rain for 6 months to a year but this one just won't leave me. It gets better and then I'll rake my yard or say break down some concrete block steps with a sledge hammer and BAM! it's out on me again. Anyway it has been especially bad in the mornings when I normally work out. In addition to that the weather has finally gotten nice in Boston so I've been walking from the commuter rail station to my office in Cambridge in the morning which burns 30 minutes of my workout time (I know it's exercise but just barely).

As for my diet: food is like a bad-for-you girlfriend who you just can't seem to show the door. Today I ate out all three meals and expended no effort to eat something half healthy. This will be wontpower's next challenge: breakfast at home and lunch FROM home.

Solid.

The Quest for Less Caffeine!

Coffee is one of my closest friends. I love the smell of it, the feel of the cup in my hands, and the tummy-warming first cup experience every morning. My affair with coffee follows an arc whereby I drink more and more of it over the course of several months until one day I realize (usually very late at night) that I'm consuming a relatively obscene amount of the stuff... something like 6 cups of a size comparable to a Starbucks Grande. Between the sheer amount and the fact that I like cream or half and half (sugar too if I'm at Dunkin' Donuts) that's a lot of caffeine and alot of calories.

It is at these times that I undertake to quit the stuff! No, I really don't WANT to quit the stuff but I do need to get the habit under control. So it is now that I will demonstrate an attempt by your humble blogger to have only one, that's right O-N-E one reasonable sized cup of coffee a day. This cup can be a decent sized travel mug of approximately 12 ounces. I will have this coffee in the morning when I need it most. I will savor it. I will make it at home thereby saving several dollars a day. I will consume no other caffeine in the form of tea or soda.

Can it be done? Stay tuned! Tips are welcome.

Yours truly,
wontpower


P.S. I tend not to drink decaf coffee but decaf tea is ok with me for some reason.