time to do some reflectin', loyal eat!drink!snack! readers! loyal readers, you're SO loyal that i'd feel bad if i lied to you & said that 2009 hasn't been the most exhausting year thus far in my 35 year existence. i think it was that way for a lot of people, so at least i'm not alone, but man, i am so ready for 2010 to begin so i can implement some sort of calendar based-psychological shift & let the happiness start rolling on in again. as that shift approaches, i definitely have a lot to be thankful for, but there's a lot going on in my world & the world at large that calls for the use of a rather large frowny face, one with non-true blood or twilight inspired fangs.
at the start of the year, when we were inaugurating the new hope & saying goodbye to eight years of bush hell, i tried to be optimistic that obama & democratic congressional majorities would turn the country around, but twelve months later, i can't say that i'm impressed. guantanamo's still open, the health care debate is off-the-rails & the current bill is disgustingly compromised. ten percent of my friends still can't get married. we're upping the troop count in afghanistan, but that was expected, since obama did say that he would do that in the campaign. i didn't vote for him though, so i have a right to be disappointed by him.
...but there are a bunch of bright spots. despite the music industry's shortcomings, i'm as excited about music as i've ever been (year end bests to come!). the same goes for tv. for the first time in a long time, i can't count the shows i follow on my fingers alone. i need toes too! i wish i could say the same about film. as for the world of literature, 2009 marks the first year in my life that i didn't read one book...not one. instead, i spent the time that i would've usually spent reading books on the internet, reading blogs & news sites. i can't say i'm sad about the lack of books in my life this year though, because i've consumed enough media & info that my curious nature has been sufficiently sated.
i've also had an unquantifiable mess of fun in '09. there was my summer chicago trip for the pitchfork festival, where 1% of the calendar year equaled 10% of my 2009 fun. there were bunches of concerts, including multiple bday week dirty projectors shows, this summer's phish shows & ac/dc from the second row. there were the occasional visits from out-of-town friends, from the periodic todd martin visit to drop-ins by now-new orleans resident mike weber to a long weekend visit from my childhood friend & strong proponent of portland, chris dorin. as a bonus, when chris visited, he brought me a booyah amount of snacks from oregon, which will soon be featured in a january series i'm putting together on portland & their mostly-awesome snacks.
the thing i'm most thankful for at the year's end is the fact that i still have a job & as of jan 1, will have been at my job longer than any other in the past. as of november's numbers, 10% of the nation's still unemployed & throughout the course of the year, i've lost a number of co-workers to job cuts. having a job means having a roof over my head & that's something i've reminded myself of all year long. it also means that i can maintain a constant flow of tasty snacks & drinks into my belly. it means that at night, when i'm tired & done with people for the day, i can return to my abode, sit down with a snack & drink & engage with my best friend, this here blog.
2009 was the year when this here blog & writing in general became one of the most important aspects of my life. 2009 was the year where folks started introducing me as "a writer" as opposed to "some guy who does some music industry thing." 2009 was the year where i penned thirty something columns for the amazing fuckedinparkslope, which is run by ms erica, just one of the amazing people i met this year & someone who, just a few weeks back, elegantly captured the reasons why having a blog both totally fucking sucks & totally fucking rules.
for eat!drink!snack!, 2009 was the year where i introduced a new column that's now helped me reconnect with journalism (my initial college major). it was the year where twelve folks (& my bro) blew me away with hilarious/insightful guest columns. it was the year where i OD'd on pumpkin beer for a month. it was the year where i finally decided to sort of think about what i was eating. for eat!drink!snack!, it was a good year. for me, it was meh. i'm already way optimistic about 2010 though. if nothing, we'll get the final season of LOST, a show with a title that's quite fitting for the times. once that's done though, i'm not sure what we'll do. hopefully we'll learn something about how to reset time or something.
#140 - ...the end of the year as we know it & i feel meh.
snack: blue diamond habanero bbq almonds
drink: tröegs dreamweaver wheat ale
as i sit here reflecting on the past year, i'm snacking from a can of blue diamond habanero bbq almonds that i came across this holiday season up at a nh wal-mart. i have a long & colored history with blue diamond, from their lime chili flavor that i tried out way back in january as an accompaniment to college football's '08-'09 championship game to their wasabi & soy sauce flavor, which was my #1 snack of 2008. the habenero bbq ones are one of a few slightly-new blue diamond almond flavors & from what i can tell, they're so new that they haven't had the resources to add them to their website yet. stupid economic downturn. here's to them making it onto the website in 2010.
they're aight & definitely live up to their name, with sufficient bbq flavor & sufficient spicy pepper flavor on blue diamond almonds. a year after declaring them my #1 snack, i'd still pick the wasabi & soy sauce ones over any other nuts. i don't think i could say the same thing for the habenero bbq ones, but they're still pretty damn good. they have a taste akin to a good bbq chip (which, btw IMHO is hard to find) & the habanero flavor adds a nice kick to the mix. plus, with blue diamond almonds, as long as you're a fan of nuts & near-excessive flavoring, you really go wrong. they're tasty & relatively ok to consume, with their fiber & low carbs & whatnot. if you can find them wherever it is that you live, they're definitely worth checking out.
since i started dreaming of a more-promising 2010 months ago, i'm pairing the almonds with a bottle of tröegs dreamweaver wheat ale, made by harrisburg's tröegs brewing co. tröegs has been brewing out of PA's capital for the last decade plus & at the moment, they offer over a dozen beers, all with puntastic names & interestingly-designed labels. i've tried out a couple of their beers, including their sunshine pils, which i tried out back in april. although the sunshine pils was one of three tröegs beers that won a medal at this year's GABF & promised the sunshine of pils, i still felt pretty meh after drinking it. overall, from what i've sampled of their beers, they've been good but nothing special.
as for the dreamweaver, it promises dreams but was also fairly meh. the flavor's fine & all, but it's pretty much your average, everyday wheat bear with less of a cloudy, wheaty consistency than you'd expect from a good, quality wheat beer. i drank it relatively quickly & when i was done, i had trouble thinking of anything unique about what i'd just drank. their website mentions that is has a slight banana taste, which would have been unique, but i didn't notice it at all. it's also only 4.8% ABV, so if i was looking to get shnookered (fuck it, i'm on vacation!), i'd need to down a bunch of them to reach my goal. in this economically-challenged, post-9/11 world, having to do that somehow seems wasteful.