Shame on me for eating lunch at a Chinese buffet yesterday. The restaurant’s location a few blocks away from my dentist’s office, and the convenience of being able to eat quickly convinced me to commit this sin. My tummy paid for it constantly yesterday afternoon.
No Cavities? Awesome!
I had a fantastic dental checkup yesterday. Prior to the appointment I was going to go for a walk around the new Braves stadium area, to try and walk off a little of the lunch I had consumed. However, the weather was not conducive. Instead I went into my dentist’s office at least forty-five minutes early.
“You know that your appointment is a 1pm?” I was asked by the new receptionist.
“Yes, I know.” I said.
“That’s not for another 45 minutes. There is a cafeteria on this floor.” she retorted.
“Thanks, I’ve eaten. I will wait here and catch up on email and such.” I replied.
“Oh, don’t worry, Paul is always early.” the receptionist who has worked there for at least fifteen years chimed in.
I smiled.
I did catch up on email, and I also bought a ticket for The Whiskey Gentry concert at 40 Watt Club in Athens in April, as well as a ticket to “Constellations” at Horizon Theatre for this coming Saturday night. I would have also booked a hotel room in Athens for that Saturday night in Athens, but every hotel within walking distance of downtown Athens I looked at yesterday was overpriced; I have time.
Chili Today, No Hot Tamale
After putting in an awesome eighty minutes on the trainer, and I’m now about 2/3rds through Season 6 of The Amazing Race, I cleaned up and cooked up a large batch of chili for dinner.
I had been gifted a package of Cin Chili Seasoning and to comply with my desire to use up food in the house I combined it with two pounds of ground beef (okay, I had to purchase this recently), along with — a can of beef broth, can of tomato sauce, and two cans of beans — all of which were in my pantry.
The original plan was to pair the chili with rice, or eat it “Cincinnati style” by eating it over pasta, but by the time the mixture was done I decided to keep things simple and to eat it alone. The concoction was quite tasty, and I plenty for second and third helpings.
Perhaps my only failure with last night’s dinner was with the cleanup. The beef I purchased was “80/20”, 80% lean and 20% fat; surprisingly the local Kroger didn’t have much variety so I had to settle for this fattier mixture. Because of the beef mixture there was plenty of fat to pour out after browning the meat. In the past I have used what I believe to be a very clever solution for getting rid of beef fat: I line a bowl with aluminum foil, pour the hot fat into the bowl, carefully place the bowl into the freezer, and the next day simply lift the hardened-fat-filled foil out of the bowl and discard it. This time last step failed miserably. Apparently there was a hole in my foil (another possibility is that the Target aluminum foil is so thin that the hot fat burned a hole through it) and overnight enough fat had seeped through and married the foil to the bowl. It took a bit of finagling, but I finally managed to head the bowl sufficiently to extract the foil without turning the fat back into a liquid. The fat that had seeped through was easily chipped out with a spoon. Live and learn.
Focus, Focus
Today I will be spending my day doing German homework. Prior to class today I will also be participating in a focus group being held by the Goethe Zentrum.
And finally I need to figure out how to get in at least thirty minutes of exercise so that I can keep my streak of filling all three Apple Watch activity rings going.
Enjoy your day.
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
Today is National Compliment Day so I’m going to start out my reply here by saying I love coming here and starting my day by reading your blog journal and I love that you’re keeping it up. Thank you.
I survived yesterday pretty much unscathed – only one person was “rude” about the Falcons win: most everyone else was sympathetic for just how horrific the Packers were.
As most of you know, I don’t work at Orpheus anymore, but only because it didn’t work with my day job schedule: I’ve kept some good friends from there. One such friend now works for a brewery out of Raleigh, N.C. called Lonerider Beer — have you been there, Paulie? Considering your connection with the Raleigh crew, figured you might have been. Anyway, she contacted me yesterday and wondered if I could possibly help with beer sample pours at an event they’re having coming up and, well. I ain’t going to say no to that! So I’ll be at Total Wine Dunwoody 2/3 and Total Wine Brookhaven 2/5. If y’all are around that weekend, come get some beer and swag from me.
Thank you to the compliment. My compliment to all of you ITP Readers is to thank you for reading, commenting, and keeping me in a social circle.
I’ve had plenty of Lonerider, but have not made it to their tasting room in the outskirts of Raleigh. Speaking of Raleigh, that is where I will be while you are pouring samples at Total Wine, otherwise I would be certain to stop by and say hello.
A quiet evening of left over taco fixings and binge watching “Last Man Standing”. The funniest one we saw was the other evening when characters from “Home Improvement” appear on the current show and make associated references to the old show. This is a pretty good bet for some good laughs most of the time.
Apparently, last week when booking travel for training in June, I inadvertently used my personal debit card instead of the banks card. I only learned this when I got an email saying my balance was low. Oops. Now I’m trying to figure out who can reimburse me for travel 5 months away.
I may try and run tonight. My goal is to make running a little more of a regular occurrence in my workouts. Some trail shoes will help and I can run over at Bear Creek- now that deer season is over.
-FP
Steve – was it the episode when the Home Improvement wife was the widowed neighbor with all the tools? That was hilarious.
There was also a episode with the Al being the drunk? That was pretty funny too.
and OOOOPS on the debit card.
And his regular neighbor talking over the fence, half obscured! Too funny.
The travel folks are scratching their heads and trying to figure out what to do…
I’ve been meaning to start watching “Last Man Standing”. Perhaps I will when I am done with “Parks and Recreation”.
its VERY different than Parks & Rec – and let’s just say Mike Baxter is a conservative……. I sometimes wonder how they get away with some of the politically incorrect jokes.
That’s one thing that is irritating that they really don’t need.
I just use old glass jars for the fat, I keep one or 2 wide mouth ones empty under hte sink for when the current one gets full.
We went to the dentist as well yesterday, Allan has a broken tooth, so he needs a crown, and I have a tooth that could have issues – so we have been referred to dentist that does more of that than ours. Good times – spending money – becuae at best I think my insurance will only cover 50%.
Thanks to your chicken & dumpling recipe the other day, we made a tater tot taco pizza recipe from that website. It was very interesting, but fun. Not sure if I will always do the tater tot crust, but taco pizza is something we ate growing up in Iowa, so we will definitely do that again.
Sorry to hear about your teeth woes. I have not had dental insurance for twenty years because my dentist was never part of Echostar’s plan. Therefore I have had to pay 100%. Fortunately with the exception of a few crowns and some cavity refills my teeth have been okay.
I missed that recipe on the website and should look into it. Thanks!
Dental work is just pricy, but hey, we need our teeth! My periodontist got way too much money a few years back, so this will seem cheap in comparison.
I don’t think the taco pizza is very healthy, hahahaha.
And, there were a few other recipes I found that were simple enough that looked good. Sometimes recipes just have too many ingredients, and steps, that I jsut dont’ want to bother.
Headed to my man cave for some trainer and TAR time. Catch up with you all in a couple of hours.
Up from the basement, showered, and have eaten leftover chili for lunch.
My legs are spent, and I lucked out when chewing on something hard in the chili. I would have hated to have to go back to my dentist the day after my checkup.
German homework will be my focus from 12:30-15:00.