1-31-2012

It was nearly sixty degrees on the last day of January in Cleveland. To celebrate this rare and incredible meteorological event...I got tacos. Honestly though, I frequently get tacos to celebrate lots of things.

1-30-2012

Apparently, the world is full of all kinds of dummies...and one pink geek.

1-29-2012

We often use our Sundays to go out for breakfast and to run errands. Hopefully this picture is from the second part not the first.

1-28-2012

We went to strange and exotic places with this guy like here (I'm not sure they should be advertising being high in/on anything) to buy this thing and ended up in an even stranger and more exotic place with this guy.

1-27-2012

1-26-2012

It's no secret that I tend to exhibit obsessive compulsive traits. If you know me at all this is pretty much accepted and no longer a surprise when I do crazy things. What is surprising and strange is that my cat Sienna groups and organizes her toys throughout the day while we're at work. I frequently come home to find configurations like this when I know they were scattered all around the house the night before.

1-25-2012

I remember for a long time, I would always see Sonic commercials on TV, but there wasn't actually one within a three state radius. I always thought they were mysterious and weird since they would spend all that advertising money on a product that I couldn't buy if I wanted to. Naturally this inaccessibility made me want it even more. When I heard they were finally going to open one locally, Nicole and I were both very excited to try all the exciting food we had seen advertised for so long. When they finally opened and we enthusiastically tried everything...it wasn't very good. At all.

This happened a few years ago now, and we never went back since that first time. Well, recently they've been playing commercials for deliciously shot chili cheese things and well...I'll just say that their advertising is still far superior to their food.

1-24-2012

Believe it or not, that crazy looking floaty stuff is a drink. A drink called Chia Iskiate. Supposedly it's an Aztec superfood that's high in Omega-3 and other "good for you" nutrients. It's also made from the same chia seeds as Chia Pets, so how could it possibly be a bad thing?

Speaking of superfoods, I recently heard in the news that Hostess has filed for bankruptcy, and the future of these magical glowing golden cakes is in grave danger. They aren't full of Omega-3, but they're full of cream filling, so how could they possibly be a bad thing?

1-23-2012

This many.

1-22-2012

As far as I know, my dad doesn't read this blog. I did however tell him about the dumplings I wrote about on here two weeks ago, so he wanted to go eat them now that he's out of jail. Besides it's appropriate to go to a Chinese restaurant on Chinese New Year's Eve, even though I was disappointed by the lack of fireworks and people dressed up as dancing animals.

1-21-2012

Don't be so pessimistic, traffic sign. Things aren't so bad. We can still have fun. As much fun as you can possibly eat in one sitting.

1-20-2012

I'm willing to wager that my day will not improve past this level of happiness. This brownie was huge. Like took two hands to eat huge. I hastily ate it before thinking to picture it until the last bite. Even that is gone now. See, my day is already declining after eating the giant brownie now that it is gone.

P.s. I just found out that the brownie came from a TV show that we're shooting right now. I ate a famous brownie star.

1-19-2012

This is the story of my life right now.

1-18-2012

I don't think I've ever posted anything about politics on here ever before. Probably because I'm the most apolitical person ever, but I would encourage you to watch this and possibly even sign this. I really think that whatever happens with this situation will have a great deal of impact on the shape of American culture in the future.

P.s. this "picture" is the lovely view of the inside of a lens cap that my camera sees all day while I'm not using it.

1-17-2012

It's still my birthday as long as I'm still receiving presents in the mail.

1-16-2012

I have a stupid habit of running without socks. I like how it feels better, but I do it just infrequently enough, that I always give myself blisters whenever I do. It probably wouldn't be a problem if I just did it all the time...but I don't. As a result, I keep a little kit with a needle in a tin, a lighter and an icepack. It feels like I'm doing drugs or something.

1-15-2012

My mom wears rapper jewelry to brunch. She's quite stylish really, even her tongue matches her outfit.

1-14-2012

This is how I look after running 8 miles in 18° and snow. To make sure I don't shrivel up and die, Nicole took me to go get fat. We've been doing birthday stuff all week, but bringing me here was a surprise since I've never been here before, but always wanted to whenever I saw the X-wing fighter parked outside. The whole place is weird, and they even sat us in a bus. Nicole isn't too sure about eating breakfast in a bus. I'm not too sure about eating all of this but I'm doing it anyway. Even more unsure, Nicole got pancakes with eggs and gravy. I think it's kind of like chicken and waffles, but not really. After breakfast, I got to drive us around in the bus.

Not everything we do is exciting or photogenic, so here's something that is. I found out recently that the kid that wrote that obnoxious but catchy "pumped up kicks" song about kids shooting each other went to my high school. I guess he was two years younger than me and knew Nicole's brother. It's kind of weird to think he's an internationally famous rock star now when he just as easily could have freaked in algebra class down the hall from me.

1-13-2012

Snowy roads means eating Pop-Tarts and watching movies about the respective lives of Steve Prefontaine and Biggie Smalls. At least we're diverse with our documentary interests.

1-12-2012

Twenty-Nine. If you look back at the previous pictures on this date, it kind of looks like I'm aging backwards.

I don't normally post this many pictures of myself because I think I'm funny looking, but Nicole took pictures of me opening presents. The wrapping paper has glittery octopus on it. My new running watch asked me a silly question. We run almost every day...even birthdays. The site I use to track my miles lets you make little avatar characters and give them outfits. Here's another picture of me. I'm wearing my shiny Christmas jacket, my new birthday watch, and badly need a haircut...just like real life.

After running, Nicole said I could eat anything I wanted. This is what I always want. I also wanted this lemon bar cake. I didn't really want another picture of me looking weird, but that's what happened.

1-11-2012

Yes, that's me wearing compression tights and a flannel shirt. My bad fashion sense isn't the point. The point is that Nicole went to get coffee today and came home with a foot massaging robot. It pairs nicely with the robot back massager we already own. We're kind of huge nerds about that type of stuff. Speaking of nerds...here's tonight's dessert.

1-10-2012

Dessert every night for a week isn't easy. Conveniently, I'm not picky when it comes to junk food. We initially went for Pop Tarts, but decided that we like Toaster Strudles better. Here's Nicole preparing for the rest of the week.

Really though, Toaster Strudles are a great dessert. They even come with little pouches of crack for kids. Nicole was telling me stories about how she always used to "make them" for her brother so she could just put half of the icing on his and put the extra on hers...or just eat the icing packs raw. Regardless, they make for a happy bday.

1-9-2012

This is in observation of a weeklong national holiday which is traditionally celebrated by eating dessert every night.

1-8-2012

After being spoiled in Toronto, Nicole and I decided to seek out the closest excuse for Chinese food as we could find locally. It ended up being pretty close. We went out for Dim Sum, which is like tapas style small plates that come around on a little cart. You can pick whatever you want, and they rate your gluttony on a little card. The more X's you get, the more they are secretly judging you. Needless to say, with carts full of tasty things like this, they judged me a lot. To our great surprise, we even found these. More X's.

After brunch we went wandering around to try and walk off the gluttony. Chinese people sell super weird stuff like it's no big deal (like tanks of live frogs in grocery stores). If you're ever looking for a robot Michael Jackson clock, or a random poster of JC, I can tell you were to find one. Speaking of weird Chinese things, My dad is still in his vacation home celebrating the new year.

1-7-2012

Unless you've memorized our lives from the past two years, look at 4-19-10, 4-21-10, and 3-22-11. Today Nicole saw these for the first time ever. It's pretty exciting seeing her desings as actual products (even though they gave the parrot four stick legs instead of bird feet).

Continuing the theme of creative process, we went to my friend's new gallery, to hang out and see my other friends' paintings get little red dots.

1-6-2012

I've come to the realization that by getting Nicole a mixer for Christmas, I may have accidentally made my running goals for the new year significantly more difficult. Nicole likes baking and making cakes. A lot. When she's not baking cakes to make me fat, she's making bitty little cakes as annual tradition gifts.

1-5-2012

When I was a little kid, I had a silver bomber jacket with an eagle patch on the sleeve. I called it my "astronaut jacket," and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Like I would probably still wear it if I still had it. Regardless of the fact that it wouldn't fit even one of my arms. Belive it or not, I now own a jacket cooler than even the astronaut jacket. For Christmas, Nicole's parents gave us running jackets made entirly out of 3M reflective magic stuff. This picture doesn't really even show how crazy bright they reflect when headlights are on you, but they're so bright that they literally stop traffic so you don't get run over by soccer moms texting eachother while drinking Starbucks in her SUVs.

1-4-2012

This is my attempt at making my evening look interesting and exotic. We really just got takeout and sat on the couch.

1-3-2012

This is self explanatory.

1-2-2012

It's the end of mini-vacation and my time off of work. Pretty soon I'll have to go back to the lifestyle where doing shots of whiskey at 8 in the morning is no longer socially acceptable. This is unfortunate. Time to leave the hotel and start the long trip back home. But first, a pit stop to use up the last of our Canadian currency. Canada was great and I even convinced a new friend to come back home with me. Say goodbye to Niagra Falls and hello again to America, land of the road tripping cat.

P.s. The above picture is of my good friend Victor driving back home the opposite way.

1-1-2012

So in 2012, I'm pretty sure this blog is going to have a lot of posts about running (and food), so please be prepared. To start the year off, I ran 10 kilometers (in honor of the metric system) along Lake Ontario (in honor of Canada). I'm kind of glad that I don't have pictures of me running very often because I tend to wear a lot of spandex and think I look pretty funny. The only thing worse would be pictures of me wearing spandex doing things other than running. That would really look funny.

Then we went to a creperie which reminded us of when we went to Paris last year. Look, another picture of Nicole eating. Here's a picture of Nicole showing us where we are. This is the kind of graffiti that I can agree with.

Look at this fancy building. It's full of funny looking men who sing strange songs to dinosaurs. Clearly, this is applicable to my interests. Also applicable to my interests were...pretty much everything in this museum. I mean really, if you know me at all you probably know what kind of embarrassing squealing came out of my face when I saw this. There was so much cool stuff everywhere that it was totally overwhelming. Nicole said it was "like they came into our lives" and it really was. I'll let you find at least three things in that picture that I've posted about before in great detail on my blog. Here's a clue. The puffball and fly agarics are two of them since they're mushrooms I've found and taken pictures of. I've never found this kind of magic mushroom before. I've also taken a picture of one of these before, but he's not as big of a deal this far north. They're more patriotic about this guy and these guys.

Nicole got to be a bear and meet a nice beaver. This is more cool stuff. I like looking at bones. These were creepy live lamprey. Speaking of bones...get ready to be really excited in...

Three...
Two...
One!!!

Saber tooth kitty. Freakin' dinosaurs! This is very exciting to nerdy people like me. I think I took pictures of all of the dinosaurs in the room, but I'm only posting some of them here. How can you not think this is the coolest thing ever though? I wish I was rich enough to have dinosaurs all around my house. Nicole wishes we were rich enough to have real silver for kitten tea party. Unfortunately, we're only this rich.

We've been a few places and seen a lot of museums, but The ROM is easily one of the coolest and best museum experiences I've ever had anywhere.

Awe, our time here is winding down and this is our last dinner in Canada. Every single thing I ate here was delicious.