this is a really self indulgent post. i haven’t even written it and yet i know this to be true. the reason i know this is self indulgent is that the nugget is based on this inner dialog:

me: i’m so fat. why don’t i go to the gym more?

me: but you’ve gone to the gym 8 times in February.

me: but i’ve only gone twice this week. i keep falling off the wagon.

me: but you went 0 times from the age of 18 to 30. now, your bad month is still about 12 times. that is good progress. you have made long-lasting lifestyle changes (which is exactly what you set out to do).

me: but i don’t feel great.

me: your ‘depressed’ now is like a pretty damn good day in your old life.

me: ok, but i can’t keep looking backwards.

me: let’s take red meat, for example.

me: i ate a cheeseburger yesterday.

me: but you rarely bring red meat into the home and you eat a small fraction of what you used to. that’s progress!

me: but i used to be a vegetarian!

me: i would not call what you were a vegetarian. you were are nieve, unhealthy good-time guy. maybe you should consider really becoming a vegetarian.

me: . . . what?

me: well, why not?

me: because i like buying organic chickens. this conversation has taken a turn for the worst.

Nothing fancy (like garlic).

Soak 1# bag of black beans overnight in water or start soaking them in the morning. It is not too late to have beans for a late dinner if you start soaking them in the morning. But, I typically soak them overnight, make them the next night and we eat them the following day (unless it’s Saturday).

Rinse beans and put in pot; cover with about 4 cups of homemade chicken stock and a cup of water to fill it out (or use all stock). I wouldn’t buy store-bought chicken stock to make these; I would just use water.

Boil. Then put on simmer for about 2 hours and stir occasionally (or do what I do: taste the beans manically starting about 1/2 hour in until you get the texture just right). I use an actual “bubbling” simmer.

When the texture is just right, add the following:

Salt (start with a teaspoon and stir. . . add pinches (stir and let the beans rest a little each time) until the beans start to taste like beans. Do not over-salt. If anything, under-salt and let the eater salt it to their liking.)

Lime juice (or lemon juice): about a teaspoon. error on the side of too little.

Cumin: about 1 full teaspoon; again, start small.

Cinnamon: 1 dash. again, add a little and taste.

Ground Pepper: about 5 cranks. not very much.

Orange Zest: (or whatever you have (lime, lemon): very little of this; and make sure the zest disappears completely. I’ll actually hunt through the beans and pull out zest because it isn’t very good to eat. But this would be the secret ingredient if there were such a thing. A good measure of if the salt adjustment is right is that the zest will suddenly present itself when you are getting close on the salt. It can be a delightful sudden sparkle (and this salt trick is true not just in beans; I tend to use it a lot).

Keep adjusting the salt and seasoning until your beans are a little bit sweet, a little bit rich and a lot like black beans.

Stir and let the seasonings soak in a little bit. Let the whole family try the beans and add their corrections.

Drain.

http://www.amazon.com/Casio-G-shock-Atomic-Solar-Watch/dp/B001AZXN4O/ref=cm_cr-mr-title

I told myself that I would come back here and review this watch after I’ve worn it for a year. I’ll add it to my calendar to come back in 5 years or when it dies to give an update. 5 stars.

I wear it everyday to an office job, to the gym and keep it on during showers. It looks brand new. I’ve never had to set the watch, the solar cells keep the battery life on full-charge and the satellites keep it ticking perfectly. I check the date on it almost as much as I check the time; it has a good display for time, month, date and day. The stop-watch is used a lot and it easy to access. I haven’t used the alarms so I can’t speak to those and I’ve used the time zone setting while traveling without a hitch. The ‘auto-off’ feature at night is nice; it wakes up when you put it on. The ’tilt to activate’ light actually comes in handy occasionally.

My only criticism is that it’s clunky but not so much that anyone has ever commented. I wear it with suits and it’s appropriate but I’m an engineer so maybe I get some slack for wearing a nerdy watch. I have small children and I wear it around and holding them without any snagging. I did smack it into the wall a couple of times when I first purchased it but I must be trained to keep a wider birth for I haven’t dinged it in awhile. I run, ride bike, ice fish, snow-blow and just plain do stuff and I’ve never had to take the watch off. I almost make it a point to leave it on while swimming in pools or the lake just because it should (and does) work great in the water.

Go G-Shock.

i’m viewing the ’share’ feature on google reader. please ignore.

i’ve been chugging along on my path and haven’t really self examined to the extent that a being on the top-half of the hierarchy of needs probably should. but i’ll share one anecdote that would fit in here somewhere and leave it to you to parse its meaning because i don’t care to dissect myself too much.

when i was a young, impressionable man at the age of 12 or so, i attended a sunday evening church service that become quite heated. by heated i mean psuedo-spiritual. speaking in tongues, repeating songs until they bring on a trance-like state. and somewhere in the throws of this sweat-filled scene was a sermon.

the crux of the message was that alice cooper is coming to town and we are going to pray that the venue collapses, or some other natural disaster occurs to cancel this concert. alice cooper, it was said, was the enemy and a minion of the devil.

obviously, i was torn for two reasons. the first question i had was ‘is it really our business to interfere w/ someone else’s livelihood’? hasn’t he a band a crew and the need to make money just like anybody else? and the second was ‘are we absolutely sure that alice cooper is the devil’? i knew he was evil looking; i remember he gave me a start when i saw him on a professional wrestling show. but would satans right hand man take the time to grace the ring next to jake-the-snake? these are the thoughts that filled my head during the church service and i started to realize that a riff was beginning to form between me and my church. i was kind of on miss coopers side on this one. i secretly prayed that the concert would happen but ‘please don’t let alice kill anybody while he’s here’.

then, as an adult, i read things like this. and this. and even though i haven’t thought about alice cooper and that old church service for such a long time, i took away the fable: i’d be incredibly hard pressed to find an actual enemy to pray against. schools out forever.

a friend messaged me this morning about a dream he had where i offed myself. i appreciated the concern and the gesture but i can’t help but wonder if my facebook profile had influenced his psyche. i don’t prune the images that i’m tagged in, ever. it’s a policy i took on as a sort of social experiment and so far it has done what i expected it would: paint me as a hard-drinking, hard-rocking party animal who does nothing but play music in dingy bars.

that’s all true. i do do that stuff (or did) but it’s not who i am. to an outsider who doesn’t know ME, it’s a pretty bleak looking existence, i imagine. but i can’t help it if my friends at church aren’t on facebook and so don’t tag me in pictures of me playing bass backing up the service (which is much more likely where you’ll find these days) and i refuse to try to paint a fabricated picture of myself on a social network.

leaving facebook to it’s devices is my way of declaring that i am who i am; and i don’t care who you are; i’ve done what i’ve done and some people have taken pictures of it and were kind enough to tag me in them. i will admit to hoping that more current encounters would be tagged but people of my age seem to like digging up the glory days, tagging each other and then posting it for all to share. i love those photos, too.