Four cases of chicken mushroom ramen and other assorted crap

(02:43:21 CST)

Four cases of chicken mushroom ramen and other assorted crap

When the day started, I had one mission: to get my physical finished. It had started two or three weeks ago, a trip to the doctor to get some blood work done and to talk about my general health. It ended up being a triple parter, with blood work making up the second part and today's discussion of results making up the third. What are the results? Well, my weight is my primary issue, nearly everything registers fine. My blood pressure is a tiny bit high, and my HDL is a bit low, but I am not pre-diabetic or even honestly pre-hypertensive. Sodium and lipids and everything are just fine. Heart is fine. Lungs are fine. The weight thing? He just said that no way could these numbers continue to be fine if it stayed on. Which is true, but I know deep down that part of him was unsure why those numbers were still fine at my weight. My take? I'm a strangely active guy for my size and prepare many of own meals. I drink enough tea to anti the oxidants out of a large, rusty battleship. And, I come from a line of people who, despite our weird health glitches, tend to survive an amount of pain and self-induced stupidity to wipe out entire tribes of non-Bolden stock.

Plan section two sub-section "B" was just to come home and do nothing. More or less all day. Until 4pm or so, I succeeded. I took a nap, watched the last bits of the second series of Peep Show (episode 5 is a hard, hard episode to watch) and then got up to get ready to go out and eat with Sarah. She sat down to read the news and bam! The shooting at UAH. At the time, details were sketchy. We both know a lot of people on the campus. I work out on the campus. She used to work on the campus and was really close to faculty that work in the building in question. First, we were sort of numb to it but it was not long before reality set in. Until we knew the names of those affected, it could be someone we knew; possibly quite well. It ended up being people more in the line of those we have heard of, but that campus is a little bit our home. We both graduated from there. We both still head out there to walk around. I'm still there, you know. It was surreal, dark mark on the day. Answering a half-dozen calls to say that I was ok was both flattering and frustrating. It just kept it fresh in the mind.

The next two-fer pales in comparison to the first two, but in some ways it was just as significant. First off, I screwed up the budget in one area and had to sit down and solve where I had made the mistake (which cost us $40 and half an hour's worth of time). While this was going on and I was building up a big old batch of self-hatred, we get a knock on the door. Turns out is UPS, and the second round of good news was here:

FOUR CASES OF CHICKEN MUSHROOM RAMEN HAD ARRIVED.

Now, that seems a bit silly of a thing to harp on during the other events of the day, but let me spell it out to you. I grew up poor, right? I don't know mean "lower middle class and oh no, Timmy, Christmas cuts off at $200 apiece this year" poor. I mean my family literally had to fish and hunt at one point in time to properly stock food. Ramen was a special thing for me. It was just...I don't know: versatile. And it was cheap, the kind of thing I could get a handful of packs of during our bi-weekly shopping trips, not just one or two. It was one of my three primary comfort foods (right up there with Lipton Noodle Soup and my mom's fried chicken). My favorite flavor in that batch was chicken mushroom. Could not tell you why, I just prefer it. Fast forward a bit, and you got packs after packs of boring flavors like chili-with-lime ramen coming out monthly (as well as the ever odd creamy chicken ramen that seems to be the current ramen fad) and chicken mushroom shows up maybe twice a decade around here. One of my favorite (non-)foods in the whole world and I get it every five years. Well, it came back about a year or two ago, and then went back away. I looked into it, dug around a bit, and found only one place willing to sell it online: BuyTheCase.net. I picked up four cases of it (I was going for maybe two, originally, but figured why risk it being gone before I make a reorder?). It ruins the cheapness, some, by putting it much closer to fifty cents a pack when you factor shipping and whatnot, but screw it. I win, for now, and after these four cases are gone, I guess I'll see it again about 2013 or so. It just, strangely, and this will sound weird but I think you know what I mean; getting those four cases of ramen was me conquering fate. Especially on a day like today.

It is now close to 7pm and I have this mixture of up and down going. I am Nottingham in Disney's Robin Hood, you know. I got one of my favorite childhood foods in quantity, but then I'm an idiot happy over packet noodle while there was a shooting. My health is ok, but I cost us unnecessary money because of an accounting error. We need to get out of the apartment, Sarah and I myself, and we head out. We eat, then head over to MovieStop to get some movies for this weekend. Finally, we wonder over to Target. I want to spoil Sarah a little. She has been craving chocolate. We head to the Valentine's Day display (not yet on deep sale, should have waited until Monday, I guess) and pick up random chocolate for the both of us, and then pick up some bottles of wine. And baby socks. The weekend has form, now, and its form is sloth.

We are on our way back home, and then the final down comes to conquer the slowly building up: turns out that Dragon Garden has closed. Maybe moved. Not there, anymore, at any rate. Sure, it wasn't everyone's cup of tea but there has been a long history there. The first restaurant I ate at after I moved to Huntsville, one of Sarah and I's first dates. We've had various birthdays and other significant celebrations there because it was a comfortable place, a place we knew and was never pretentious. Favorite restaurants are never just about the food. They become places you can hang out and feel attached to. When you go to places like Olive Garden, you are just there. Ruby Tuesdays? You are just eating a salad. Those friendly holes-in-the-wall; they get to know you when you come in. They know you drink orders and stuff. You get used to things like giant tanks of saltwater fish and non-descript Hong Kong mountains hung as wall art. I had even thought about ordering from them tonight, if we didn't feel like going out. Ah, well.

After that, came back here and watched random DVDs: a bit of Doctor Who (first ep of "The Pirate Planet"), a bit of Big Bang Theory, a bit of No Heroics, and seems like a bit of something else I seem to have forgotten. It ended up being nice. Screw you, February 12th, screw you.

Si Vales, Valeo

file under (...on Me in 2010)

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