How About Them Apples

About a month ago, I started bringing an apple every day to work because I figured it might make me healthier. Not that I know much about nutrition, but hey, my momma always told me to eat more fruit, and I don't know too many people who would say fruit is bad for you, so might as well eat some fruit right?

Now originally, I wanted to bring my favorite fruit (oranges/tangerines/clementines), but after further thought, I decided that they rot too easily. Since I don't like to go to Jewel or Dominicks more than I have to, I eventually settled on a more versatile product, the apple. It lasts a long time, so I can buy it in bulk, and the taste/texture isn't too shabby either, but I think the clincher was that it has it's own snazzy little saying ("An apple a day keeps the doctor away"). You know a fruit is good when it has its own saying. How can it not be?

Well, I wish I knew someone who was more of an apple expert than me, because I'm full of questions with no answers. First of all, what kind of apple should I get? When I went to buy some apples for the first time, I was confounded by the number of options. I forget most of the names, but there were little ones, big ones, red ones, green ones, reddish green ones, and more. I just picked the ones that looked closest to my personal image of what apples should look like, which turned out to be "Royal Gala".

Also, I didn't really know whether it would be better to just get one of those preselected bags/baskets, or choose them myself. I have no idea how to choose fruit, basically, I just try to find the ones that are least dented and don't look diseased. For some reason, though, I get the feeling that there's some secret out there to choosing fruit that everyone knows except for me.

Anyways, the Royal Gala apples turned out to be pretty good, but in the back of my mind, I couldn't help but wonder if there's something more, something better out there for me. Today, I decided to try a "Red Delicious", which Olivia told me was pretty standard. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that "delicious" either. I'd describe it more as "somewhat tasty", but I guess realistically, nobody's gonna buy an apple that's called "Red Somewhat Tasty", even if that makes the name more truthful. I think eventually, I might also delve into Fujis and Washingtons, which I've at least heard of before. Other than that, I guess I really don't know what's out there in the wide world of apples.

The other thing is, I haven't yet figured out whether or not I should be eating the skin. My mom always told me to spit out the skin, or peel the apple before eating it, because they put wax and other chemicals on it to protect from insects and stuff. However, I've also heard that the skin has a lot of valuable vitamins, and that it's perfectly okay to eat the wax as long as you wash the apple first. Again, this would be a great question to ask the apple expert friend I don't have.

- The other day I was flipping channels and I happened to stop on this celebrity poker thing on Bravo. One of the contestants was this lady that looked really really familiar. She was about 50-something years old, kind of loud and annoying, and I couldn't figure out who she was. I watched for about 10 minutes agonizing about where I knew that face from, until finally it hit me - it was Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher). It was such a wave of shock when I realized who it was, because I've pretty much only seen her in the Star Wars movies as this young, skinny, beautiful girl. And here she was, playing in some lame celebrity poker game, with a wide grandma body and wrinkly grandma skin, acting crass on top it all. All I can say is, the years and aging really took its toll on her. The experience totally shattered my lifelong idolization of Princess Leia and even made the original Star Wars movies seem a little less sacred to me. I don't know what I was expecting, for the Princess to never get old, but still.

- Another channel flipping experience was last night when I turned to ESPN2 and they were showing Sportscenter highlights in Spanish. I thought it was a joke at first, but apparently it was actually a shared broadcast from the new "ESPN Deportes" channel. Since I only know about 5 words in Spanish (I took Japanese and German in high school and I don't remember much of either of those either), and half of the words I know are curse words, I couldn't understand anything that was going on. It was really trippy to see all the familiar ESPN format, such as the Bottom Line, all the stat graphics, and even the NBA promos, except with Spanish words instead of English everywhere. One thing I noticed was that there were a lot more highlights of soccer and not that much of NFL playoffs. Also, I thought it was especially funny that for the NBA commercials, all they kept showing were clips of Eduardo Najera. He must be some sort of god in the Spanish speaking world.

- Over the weekend I bought the extended DVD sets of Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers. It was a lot harder than expected to find the first one, but after checking Best Buy in Darien, Wal-Mart, Target, Hollywood Video, and 2 different Cockbusters, I finally got it at the Best Buy in Arlington Heights. After watching the first one, I must say that it was well worth the $30 and all the hassle of finding it. Even though it was so long, I think a lot of the extended scenes helped the whole series make a lot more sense for me. I'm definitely looking forward to watching the second, and of course I will have to buy the third when it comes out.

- I'd like to take the opportunity to vent about one of the things that pisses me off the most in traffic - people driving slow in the left lane on highways. A couple weeks ago Chras was telling me about how Illinois police are gonna start ticketing people for clogging up the left lane, and I think that's long overdue. In my opinion, it doesn't matter how fast you are going, if someone is going faster and approaching from behind, you better find a way to get to the right so he/she can pass. Personally, I don't care if I'm going 85 or 90 in a 55 zone, I always move right to let people pass if someone's going faster behind me (and then I speed up and try to follow him as a speed shield, of course). If everyone would just follow the simple concept of "Slower traffic keep right", I bet it would seriously save at least 20% cumulative travel time for the general driving population. And it would probably save a good deal of accidents that happen when people are forced to pass on the right. Everytime I get stuck behind one of these white minivans or beat up old Ford Escorts in the left lane, driving under the speed limit, and the right lane is open but 5 cars are tailgating him in the left, I want to stop this person, pull him out of his car, and kick his ass. I'm not even that road-ragey of a guy, it's just that I can't understand why people can be so stubborn and stupid about driving slow in the left lane. There's no excuse, I say.

The Apprentice

Thanks to the recommendation on Rich's Xanga, I checked out some of "The Apprentice" after watching last night's Friends. From first impressions, I thought the show was pretty stupid, but I kept finding myself switching back to NBC throughout the night to see what was happening. (This could also be due to the lack of any other good programming on at the time).

One thing that pissed me off, for the first "competition" they broke up between the guys and the girls and had them see which team could make more money selling lemonade on the street. Even as Donald Trump was first announcing this to everyone, all the girls started celebrating before the competition even started, while all the guys basically looked at each other and said "sheeeeee....." As well they should have, it doesn't take a business genius to know that people on the street will always buy more and pay more for anything when there's chicks involved, than from a bunch of guys in suits.

So they show the competition, and the stupid thing is, the girls are horribly organized, and in typical female fashion, they waste a whole lot of time bickering and arguing about stuff in the beginning rather than taking action. Don't get mad at me girls, you know I'm right. The guys actually had much better business skills from the beginning, getting local stores to sponsor them and stuff, only they made the mistake of picking a bad location. But I don't think it would have mattered, considering they were selling cups for $1 each while the girls were getting people to pay $5 (about $1 for the lemonade, $4 for a kiss on the cheek or their phone number). Needless to say, the guys lost pretty handily by the end of the day, in a 3 to 1 margin.

But in my opinion, much of the show's entertainment value for me was recouped in the last half hour. I think once I remember writing in this blog about the guilty pleasure of listening to someone get chewed out by a manager/VP at work. You kind of feel sorry for them, but there's just something fun about hearing someone get ripped a new one. Well, it's even more fun when Donald Trump and his 2 steel-faced assistants are doing the ripping, and the guys being ripped are the ones who pissed you off in the show. It's also interesting to see how quick they turn on each other when they're being grilled.

Anyways, I think I liked the show enough overall to plan on watching it again next week. Well, chances are, I'll forget to watch it and then I'm screwed for the rest of the series, like what happens whenver I try to follow any other reality show that's not on MTV. Someone please remind me to tune in again next Wednesday.

*****

For Anuj

Alright focker.... I'm gonna go through this one more time to show you that I was right and you guys were wrong.

Path #1: From Darien, taking 355 N to 290W to 53N to Palatine E gets you to Dave's house in about 45-50 mins (let's say average 47.5 mins).

Path #2: From Darien, taking 294 N to Willow gets you to Dave's house in about 40-45 mins (let's say average 42.5 mins). From Dave's to and from Vernon Hills Hooters is about 10-15 mins each way (let's say average 12.5 mins). Since the Hooters is located pretty much due north of Dave's house, it basically means you're driving that distance twice. So for the total travel time, you have to take 42.5 + 2*12.5 = 67.5 minutes.

As the math shows, Path #2 (your choice) is 20 minutes more, pretty much exactly the same difference I showed you guys using Yahoo Map numbers that day. 20 minutes is a pretty big number, considering it's almost 1/3 of your total travel time in Path #2.

Local vs. highway is already factored into these numbers, in fact, Path #2 has just as much local driving if not more. You shouldn't really even count Palatine Rd. as local, it has 3 or 4 lanes each direction and has speed limits of 45-55 mph for most of the way. I'll admit, your so-called "Woodfield Christmas season traffic" in that quarter mile stretch (generous estimate) between 53 and the mall loop might add a little bit of time to Path #1. A liiiiitle bit of time. But it's still not gonna come close to making up 20 minutes worth of discrepancy in the simple math I explained above.

By the way, Chras can attest to the fact that I took him through Path #1 from Dave's house to his house in about 40 mins flat last week. I'll even give you guys the extra 7.5 minutes for the sake of calculation, because I drive pretty fast and there was light traffic that night.

- This morning as I pulled out of my garage on the way to work, I caught the traffic report on the radio: "North-South Tollway is backed up with an accident around the North Ave. exit". I kind of feel guilty, but I seem to get a sense of pleasure from knowing that people are stuck in traffic on the very road I used to drive on every day, while I can now enjoy a smooth 9 minute commute. There's even a little voice in my head that sounds like Nelson from the Simpsons going "HA-HA".

- One of my lesser known passions in life these days is knowing the shortest routes from one place to another. You might say I'm a little obsessed with trying different paths and figuring out what way will get me there in the fastest time. When I first moved to the townhouse in Palatine, I kept a stopwatch in my car so that I could measure the times it took from various exits on 53 to get to the townhouse, then record them in Excel, average the numbers and analyze them (the best exit is Euclid West to Hicks north). *nerd alert* A couple weeks ago, I got into a heated argument on the phone with Chras, Anuj, and Andy about which Hooters to meet at before going to Dave's house for cards. I let them have their way, though not without a fight, but when I arrived at Hooters in Vernon Hills, I was armed with a 3x5 Post-it Note to show them I meant business. On the Post-it Note I had drawn a crude map diagramming why I was right and they were wrong, and apparently Andy, having known me since high school and roomed with me for a year, predicted that I would do something like that beforehand. But the important part is, I was right: it would have been significantly faster to have met at Schaumburg Hooters instead and then drove to Dave's, than to drive past his house to Vernon Hills and come back.

- As part of my important policy of talking about Britney Spears in my blog, I thought I'd pass on the latest information I have. Her next video is set to premiere on January 13th. The video is for the song "Toxic", and apparently features her as a homicidal girlfriend out for revenge on her cheating lover. Sounds spicy. The song itself is probably my favorite on the album, so I am especially excited. It sounds a lot different from any of her other music, features the Stockholm Strings as well as her sexy voice, and above all that, is quite catchy. I know I had it in my head for about a week straight after I first bought the album. So now that I've hyped it up, everyone watch MTV next Wednesday as I will most definitely be doing.

Crocodile Hunter

I was watching some news thing and they were bashing the Crocodile Hunter guy because he "endangered" his baby son on one of his shows. Then they showed the tape, and basically from what I saw, all he did was hold his son in his left arm while feeding the crocodile a piece of meat with his right.

Now, I'm no lover of the Croc Hunter, actually I find him to be very annoying, but I gotta say, leave the man alone! I think people are way too sensitive about kids and babies these days and this is just another example of that. I mean, babies are cute and all, but let's not get carried away. It's like we worship children in this society, and that's taking it too far.

Obviously, I believe we have to protect kids to some point. It's not like I'm saying it's ok to dangle your toddler over a balcony or anything. And it goes without saying that I'm against child abuse, molesting, whatever other bad stuff that people do to kids and babies in this cruel world (by the way, I would include abortion somewhere in this category).

But this Croc Hunter guy, working with these dangerous animals is his life. If you've watched any of his shows you know that he's regularly in a lot more dangerous situations than feeding a crocodile a piece of meat. Whatever "danger" he put his baby son in, he put himself in at least twice the risk if not more. I gotta say, if I were a kid, I'd rather be brought up by a dad who is gonna expose me to risks and dangers in life (within reason), than to be constantly sheltered and "protected" from anything that might remotely harm me.

I think all these people who act so horrified that the Croc Hunter would bring his baby boy on his show are probably the same parents who would raise their own kids in a bubble if they could. In their minds they think it's about protecting children, but really, it cripples the kids in the end. You know the parents who don't let their kids play in sandboxes with other kids for fear of them getting sick? Guess what, their kids are the ones who grow up with underdeveloped immune systems, not to mention a severe lack of social skills.

Well, I think now I'm getting carried away. I guess all I'm saying is, some people in this country need to chill. Kids are great, but how about we don't act like every single 2 year old is the second coming of Christ. Thank you.