#41 - F.L.O.R.I.D.A...flo-ree-dah.

back in 97, shortly after college graduation, i moved to pembroke pines, fl, a city in broward county just minutes north of miami. it was the year of the expansion florida marlins' first world series win, a dark year for baseball indeed.

my girlfriend at the time had moved down there to get a masters in o.t. & i really liked her & for the most part, had never left the northeast, so i went with. she was moving down earlier than i & so we flew down there a few months before her school year started to find an apartment, see the school & area, etc. i was 22 & it was the first time that i had flown in a plane & was old enough to actually remember doing so.

prior to that, the only other time i had been to florida was in between junior & senior year of high school, when i rode all the way down from hudson, nh to jupiter, fl in the back of a mostly-empty van that belonged to the father of my (first real) girlfriend at the time. we drove down there with her divorced parents & little sister. one day, the girlfriend & i took her dad's van to the mall & when i was finished purchasing a pair of midnight blue jean shorts at the guess store, we left the mall through an entirely different entrance & got lost. while trying to figure out where i was going i almost ran a red light & slammed on the brakes. the sand on the road caused the van to slide sideways & as we skidded to a halt, i remember a tool box & a jar of change unloosing themselves all over the van. we emerged unscathed other than the tool & change collection duties necessary to do to avoid detection from her parents. a couple days later, hurricane andrew hit. that should have been a clear sign as to the future of that relationship.

...so in august of 97 i moved to florida & lived in a one-bedroom apartment with my girlfriend. from the outset, it was obvious that she was stressed. school was pretty hard, neither of us had long-standing friends in the area & for the most part, things did not go well between us. i know i wasn't happy...hell, i only went to the beach once my entire time there.

my best friend at the time was a girl named michelle, who i worked with at my data entry job. as far as i know, we were the only two college-educated folks in our office, so we naturally gravitated toward each other. as far as i can remember, she was my first ever gay friend (nh & b.u. kept me a bit sheltered up until then). often, when my monthly new issue of playboy arrived (via a gift subscription from my girlfriend), michelle & i would flip on through together. we'd go out to lesbian bars & shoot pool & ramble about our respective relationship issues. she brought a lot of happiness to me at a time when many aspects of life sucked...& it helped that she was totally cute...& then i moved away after only eight months in florida & came down to visit a few months later for new years' eve & then through circumstances, we completely lost touch, even with the recent advent of social networking...friendwise, this is the loss i most regret. she was a really good friend to me & i really hope she's doing well now that we're ten years into the future.

#41 - F-L-O-R-I-D-A...flo-ree-dah.
snack: hershey's all natural extra dark assortment
drink: sobe orange carrot elixir

as i've mentioned previously, i currently have a thing for dark chocolate. recently, it's gotten worse & regular dark chocolate just won't cut it any more. when i go to a store & they only have one or two types of lindt bars & both of them are nothing more than your average dark chocolate, sans any fruits or nuts or geographical cacao branding, i scoff heartily...but i am occasionally a rational man & when my best choice at a local rite aid the other night was a bag of hershey's all natural extra dark assortment, which contains single serving pieces of both the average "pure dark chocolate" & "pure dark chocolate with cranberries, blueberries & almonds," i "went for it." i absolutely love the cranberry, blueberry & almond ones. the fruits & nuts are tiny & worked into the chocolate really well. basically, biting into one is like biting into any other candy bar, until you notice that there's a chunk of cranberry stuck in your teeth & you get to lick at cranberry for 2-5 minutes trying to get it out of there...& when you do, the reward is all yours. this bag is definitely no match for me tonight.

with them, i'm downing a sobe orange carrot elixir. it is SO ORANGE!...but i wouldn't ever turn one down based on its shocking color, because it's a pretty tasty beverage & carrots are totally good for your health. some might say "this beverage is too friggin' sweet." to them i say, "your teeth only live once, jacko." i was addicted to sobe beverages (& more specifically the black tea) in the years round the end of college, when they started appearing on the shelves of boston convenient stores. when i moved to florida in 97, i was forced to starve my addiction. as far as i could tell, there was nary a sobe drink to be found in the greater ft lauderdale/miami area, which absolutely baffled me, considering that the drink gets its name from south beach, an area of miami beach, located just 30-45 minutes south of my pembroke pines apartment. it turns out that sobe is based out of norwalk, ct, known primarily for its oysters & from what i can tell, "sobe" is pretty much just a pre-geico lizard marketing gimmick...& i hate their website. it tries to be cool while sacrificing functionality for bird chirps.

in closing, originally this post was going to be more lesbiancentric, but in the end, i decided to go in a different direction...instead i'm just going to throw out this one random thought from that thought train: are there any females in my neighborhood who aren't lesbians? even one? i remain skeptical.

#17 - head.

on wednesday, i made my way up to the boston area on the megabus with ryall to meet up with m.j. & my bro for the radiohead concert at the venue formerly formerly known as great woods. my trip began in the prospect ave stop on the r train, where after a few minutes, the train entered the station. as i waited for the train to stop & the doors to open, i looked at the torn advertisement behind me, which had the following message scrawled across the bottom of it:

i snapped a quick pic & got on the train. it's safe to say that as the lead singer of belle & sebastian (the band that acted as the jumping-off point for pretty much everything i've listened to since 2001), i'm not sure if i could ever let go of stuart murdoch, no matter how twee he is. regardless of this person's personal struggle with stuart murdoch, musically speaking, i took my random path-crossing with this particular message to be a positive start to radiohead day. usually the subway ads feature no more than crudely drawn penises on them.

the megabus busride was fine overall, other than the non-functioning wifi. the southwest airlines-influenced bus driver even quipped, "there's wifi on board. sometimes it works." they played two dvds during the five-hour drive--benji: off the leash! & shark bait (the reef), which is a budget attempt to cash in on the success of finding nemo. it appears that somebody else has the upper hand in the wifi-inclusive bus service market at this point, megabus...or should i say, megabutt?

radiohead was friggin' amazing, as was expected. as i have probably expressed to everyone & their mother at this point, i can not believe how lovely & clean they sound in a big open amphitheatre. i was in the absolute back of the lawn & it still sounded wondrous. my personal fave...jigsaw falling into place. my personal victory...we were the very last people they sold beer to in our section. they literally gave us our beers & shut the gates to the stand, making lots of people behind us quite sad.

#17 - head.

snack: flaming hot flavored munchies
drink: pomegranate blueberry mash

after the concert, an hour or so in the parking lot & an hour or so drive back to my brother's place in j.p., we went to pretty much the only thing open in the neighborhood after 1pm...7-11, where i, of course, spent in the area of $10 on snacks alone. clearly a smart allocation of my funds.

for this particular night, i decided i needed to eat from a bag of flaming hot flavored munchies. it was after 1pm. i had just been at 7-11. munchies were clearly the right snack for that moment. each munchies flavor features rold gold pretzels, sun chips, cheetos & doritos, with the last three ingredients changing depending on the overall snack mix flavor. you would be correct in assuming that this particular flavor features the flaming hot versions of the sun chips, cheetos & doritos. as my brother informed me, they used to have a kids' version with doritos, cheetos, popcorn, m&ms and captain crunch. if you ask me, that is one hell of a snack & should probably only be available for adults due to its high awesomeness content.

...& seriously, people. pomegranate is not going to save civilization. it is just a fruit. i defer to bevnet for or a link for the pomegranate blueberry mash, as boylan bottling apparently doesn't care enough about this product to have a web page for it. in fact, they care so little about this product that they appear to have even spelled "pomegranate" incorrectly on the label..."pommegranate" ain't correct, mr & mrs boylan. look it up.

#6 - university salute.

i was raised roman catholic, meaning that i am totally down with the guilt & the shame. as a result, for about a week now, i've found myself reflecting upon the early bloggy days of eat! drink! snack! & feeling that the chosen snacks & drinks for my first few entries may not have been of the healthiest variety possible. also, the "snacks ain't healthy enough" issue may have had a tiny bit of something to do with my trip to the beach last weekend.

to combat this wickedness, i decided yesterday that when i was at home tonight, i was going to have some sort of snack that embraced health & more specifically, some type of fruit.

today was when i decided that regardless of whatever fruit i chose, i was going to take that fruit & dip it in nutella...& have it with a tasty beer.

#6 - university salute.
snack: strawberries & nutella
drink: wolavers' organic oatmeal stout

my senior year of college was the first year that i lived off campus, in a just-remodeled apartment in the allston area of boston, where i lived with three sophomore roommates i had met the year before. we had a porch off the kitchen, which gets me on a side track. i've yet to have a porch in new york...just rooftops. new york prefers rooftops to porches for some reason...maybe because porches are best for sitting & we can't sit still for a spell in this city to save our lives.

two of the roommates were a couple. the guy was a younger fraternity brother of mine from romania via lower jersey & the girl was in the same program as he & the daughter of a diplomat. she loved carnivale. they spent a high percentage of their waking moments together, many of them at the apartment. i don't think either of them had to do much cooking until they came to college, so when they ate, they fell back on a lot of the same foods & dishes. one such item consumed in mass quantities was nutella, or as i like to call it...chocolate of the gods. they ate it by the spoonful, dipped breads & fruits & meats & whatnot in it and for all i know, probably poured it all over each other. it is a wonder that they didn't both gain immense amounts of weight or develop a candy shell.

the other roommate was a girl who i also met the year before, a time when i was dating her roommate & she was dating mine. this roommate of mine she was dating was a good fellow, another of my fraternity brothers. he was totally from vermont, dude...the sort of guy who got kicked out of a yanni concert for brawling with a canuck.

in remembrance of this era of my life, tonight's snack pairs the healthiness of hazelnuts & chocolate with strawberries, who won out over the mango when i didn't feel comfortable with my ability to judge the ripeness of a mango on the fly. sure, i could have used it as an opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone, since i hear it is a great way to meet babes in a grocery store. does this mango feel ripe to you...babe?

that's not really my style though.

the wolavers beer, brewed by otter creek brewing company in middlebury, vermont, contains the healthiness & starting-your-day-right goodness of oatmeal with the certified goodness of organic beer. mmm.

vermontwise, middlebury is about an hour south of winooski (the town outside burlington where my former roommate grew up). to compare, winooski has its down-the-street proximity to higher ground & phish (who rumor has it may be reuniting!), but middlebury totally has a college that's a member of the little ivy league. they're so tiny those lil ivy leaguers! i'd pinch their lil middlebury panther cheeks if the panther wasn't such a ferocious jungle cat!

good pairing. definitely healthy.