Oh yeah, I’m aware of all those points and practice them regularly, but thanks for mentioning them! I was speaking of past experiences (like a year ago). I try to stay away from extreme dieting stuff, although I just started 5:2 “dirty” fasting just as a mental challenge (bonus points if I lose some weight), so we’ll see how that goes.

I dunno about anyone else, but if I cut (but not entirely eliminate) a significant amount of fats from my diet, good or bad, my libido absolutely tanks. Yes, I lose weight faster, but it’s not even worth it to me if I can’t have a good time when I want to, so I don’t get too extreme in trying to reduce fats from my diet.

Wuss-Tuh-Sher

Que?

Nope, never. My retirement plan is a ditch with a nice view of the Rockies in Colorado and a bottle of gin on a cold winter night. Everything I’ve saved into (SS, TSP, retirement accounts) will inevitably disappear before I can access them/hit the age requirements. I don’t trust the system at all (I didn’t trust it before the election outcome either). I’m fucked. We’re all fucked. Might as well live it up now while I still can.

I really like backgammon but no one ever wants to play with me

My grandma had these at her house and they were used so often they eventually fell apart. Years later I found a set of 6 at a thrift store and bought them for nostalgia’s sake and now I have all my snacks in them.

I would be rich as fuck

I’m visiting my elderly father this weekend and he told me last night that he remembers when he and my mom took me to the doctor when I was like 2 or 3 and I tested positive for high amounts of lead (not lead poisoning, just a high amount), and now I’m like damn, maybe that explains why I suck at a few things…

I wouldn’t say I’m legit dumb though. I maintained a 4.0 GPA in college and I get by just fine, but now I’m like “do I suck at math because I was exposed to lead as a child?”

This is my favorite way to cook it: Beans & Greens

Or just saute it in a little olive oil with some garlic. The key is to remove the leaves from the stems and only cover the pan for like 5 minutes. You don’t want it overcooked, that’s when it gets nasty. I feel like too many people think kale should be cooked down like spinach and it just comes out a mushy mess.

Kale. I hated it as a kid, but that’s because my parents never removed the stems, and then boiled it down into mush, neither of which is the correct way to cook kale. Now that I cook my own, I love it and eat it regularly.

Sleepy Time extra strength. Valerian root, take me away.

Surprise surprise. Remember when this bullshit first kicked off and they were like “Oh yeah, we’ll totally let them back in once the fighting stops”? Yeah, that was never the plan.

Falling into a nice comfy bed when you’re exhausted and just passing out

Using an actual flushing toilet after being out in the wilderness for even just a few days

Orgasms

Eating your favorite meal

Having your back scratched or getting a massage

Apparently I think the best feelings have to do with the physical and not the mental, not sure why that is

Man Push Cart, it’s about an immigrant trying to make ends meet while living in NYC.

CunninLynguists - Will Rap for Food

Nappy Roots - Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz

Deltron Zero - Deltron 3030

Jurassic 5 - self titled album

Lupe Fiasco Food & Liquor

1999 - Taco Bell nachos did me in, never ate there or at any Taco Bell ever again.

2004 - Some sushi joint outside of Tacoma, WA, I had the shrimp tempura. Nothing tasted off, but that was my first experience with it coming out of both ends at the same time.

2005 - I was an idiot that thought, for God knows what reason, that the floor of the trailer I called home at the time while stationed in Iraq would remain cold enough to keep a can of Fritos dip cool after I opened it (we did not have a fridge). I was very very wrong and paid the price later the following evening after finishing the dip that day, and that was my second experience with it coming out both ends at the same time. I know it was my own fault, but I still can’t eat those dips to this day.

Fast forward to 2020 - 2023, something is making me randomly ill on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis. I eat a regular meal, 30 minutes later I’m in the bathroom with horrible cramps and shits. It took me nearly 3 years to figure out that I’d become lactose intolerant due to age (this is apparently a common occurrence as you get older). Haven’t had any issues now that I know to avoid most dairy, but I can immediately tell if I’ve unknowingly ingested some, because it feels like I’ve been poisoned 15 minutes into consuming it. Then comes the frantic race to swallow as much Lactaid and lactase pills as I can to calm the storm before it can reach my intestines.

My partner hates cooking, and I love it, so the deal in our house is I cook and they do all the cleaning in the kitchen, unless I made something specifically for me, since they have some medical issues that prevents them from eating certain things, then I will do the cleaning of the mess made during the preparation of cooking that specific meal.

As far as cooking from scratch or pre-made, I’m about half and half. I rarely make my own red sauce or pasta, but all baking is from scratch, breakfast foods like pancakes, yes I would make those from scratch as well. Soups, stews, chili, Asian, Mexican, Indian recipes, mostly from scratch, but many sauce elements I would buy.

This is fucking brutal, man. I can handle some shit, but not dead animals that were killed just because. I think I would have lost my mind.

When I was deployed to Iraq my platoon ran the post office on the FOB, and one of the jobs we all had was going through packages that other soldiers were mailing home to make sure everything they wanted to send was safe/legal to ship. There were several instances where I had to go through footlockers that belonged to soldiers who were killed (their belongings get mailed back to their family once the family has been properly notified; the shipments are handled differently/tracked differently than regular mail). It always fucked me up to go through someone’s stuff, knowing they were now dead. Like, you get this little window into their lives: pictures of their family, CDs of the music they liked, books they were reading, all that shit, but then you see the bookmark in that book where they left off and you realize they’re never going to finish it, just little things like that that were hard to process, whether you personally knew that soldier or not.

But then it gets even more fucked up because weeks and sometimes months after they were killed, they’re still getting mail from people in the states that sent it way before that person was killed, so now you have stacks of letters and packages and post cards for a dead person that they’re never gonna get, and the post cards are filled with “I love you and miss you” etc etc, and it kinda crushes your soul a little bit, because you have to go through it all just like the footlocker and ship it all back to the family.