Failure is Inevitible

I’m not cooking. I had such grand plans for this challenge, I was going to learn to cook! But it hasn’t quite worked out. I blame Tiff.

First off, my lovely wife got a new job that was suppose to keep her from getting home until about hour or so after I got home. This changed on day number two. Now, not only does she get home before me, waiting for me to cook something, but she leaves just before me in the morning and throws off my whole morning routine, but that’s besides the point.

Second off, on day number three, it was Tiff who made a pretty convincing argument for eating out. I don’t really remember the particulars, but I do remember the guilty pleasure of eating outside at Foster’s in downtown Manassas on a beautiful Saturday evening. The other several times we’ve eaten out weren’t all quite as enjoyable, but they still beat cooking.

We did find this amazing new place to eat, some Chinese place hidden away about a mile from our house. It was the next Saturday night, just about suppertime, and we were the only people there. Despite that, it is amazing. It’s the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. They served hot tea along with the food, which was amazing, and I’m not a tea drinker! And they had this hot mustard that wasn’t hot in your mouth, but somehow blasted your sinuses with this crazy sensation. It was amazing! We went back three days later!

Thirdly, Tiff couldn’t handle my cooking. What seems perfectly acceptable to me, doesn’t quite hack in the snooty world of Tiffany. Thirty-one days of dinners seems easy enough to me to break down: 5 spaghetti nights, 4 Pasta-Roni nights, 2 Mac’N’Cheese nights, 3 frozen ravioli nights, 6 nights of cereal, 3 nights of Grilled Cheeses, 4 nights of doughnuts, 1 night of chili and 3 nights of leftovers. Tiff likes a little more variety and after three straight nights of pasta was very curious what I planned to do with the left over sour cream. That night Tiff made Mexican. It was delicious.

And that gets to the last point, this challenge was always going to be an uphill battle, one that any reasonable me should have had the foresight to see the inherent flaws in. I mean, I’m not a cooker, I’m an eater. I’m a good eater at that too. Why should I shy away from that?

Cooking... with John

It’s a new month and with that comes a new challenge. I’ve got a long list of ones I’d like to try, but after I take out the ones that would be too hard, too much of a change, too dangerous, or just too expensive, the list is much, much smaller.

This month’s challenge stems from necessity. Tiff recently got a job that changes her daily routine around a bit and leaves me home alone until 6:45 or so. That being said, and with a great deal of anxiety, that leaves me in charge of dinner.

Over the last few years, me being in charge of dinner usually means a trip to some sort of quick-serve, not-fast-food dinner. Ever since Tiff became a vegetarian, the selection is almost always Five Guys or Chipotle. They’ve got some great food, but I need to learn to cook.

So this month’s challenge is a two-parter. First off, no going out to eat, especially on weekdays. And the bigger of the two, will be cooking every night.

Tonight, I’m starting out easy. On the menu is pasta.

Just to make it official:

Cooking: 1 Month

Let the Games Begin!

The end of September, how I will miss you so. Despite a depressingly low number of posts, I am going to consider this sacrifice a rousing success with a hardy, “Har! Har!” of approval. I’m not sure what exactly that means but I said it, and I meant it. I mean, in my opinion, with just the one infraction (playing Wii at my in-laws) I made it through the month without any video games.

Looking back, this one wasn’t even all that hard when it came right down to it, which is a bit of a surprise. Sure, I battled boredom, but I did so with pizzazz. I started a painting, I read a little bit, I became interested in some TV shows. Okay, so maybe it was a boring pizzazz, but I made it through.

I think the main key to my success was unplugging and putting away the playstation. It seems so simple, but it really worked. It was that extra little hurdle between me and video games made it happen for me. There were times when I was bored and thought, this would be a good time to play a quick game of soccer, EA Games-style, but I had enough will-power to stop myself before I took the time and energy to get the system out, hook it up, and turn it on. Perhaps that’s a character flaw, and perhaps that character flaw is something I should look into sorting out, but this time, I used my laziness to my advantage and I’m the better for it.

Perhaps on top of my hardy, “Har! Har!,” I should include an extra “Har!” as I’m not all that eager to start back up with the video games. Well, Tiff’s been playing a card game video game, that has me interested, but soccer and football, it would probably be fun, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Plus, I would have to get out the system, hook it all up, and turn it on…

All in all, I’m done with the challenge, but I’m curious to see how much longer I’ll last. Maybe I can go two months on this one. Maybe three. So there’ll be no more posts, but I’ll update when the playstation re-emerges.

No Video, No Game, Make John... Something, Something

I haven't posted in a while, and it's with a heavy heart that I have to admit that I am a failure.
I played some video games over the weekend. It was on the Wii with my sister-in-law. I resisted briefly, but I was encouraged by Tiff. Plus, I didn't want to seem weird in front of her family, so I didn't put up much of a fight.

They got a new game... Wii Sports Resort. It's pretty neat! You can canoe and play basketball and ping-pong and archery and water-skiing and fencing. I sucked at all of them! There's something up with the Wii - I seem to be pretty bad at all of their games. The only one that halfway decent at is MarioKart... which if you are going to be halfway decent at one thing, it really should be MarioKart.

Anyways, that's all in the past now, and I'm not sure how to score it. In my defense, I was neither playing at home, nor was I playing alone. So, while I'm a bit upset with myself, I think I'm giving myself a pass on this one.

That being said, I'm on day 21 since I began, and my thoughts towards playing games now range from "This is stupid, one game of soccer won't hurt" to "I'm bored, I wish I could play" to "I wonder what the guys on my team are up to... oh yeah, they're not real." It's that one that kind of worries me, and makes me wonder if one month is too short.

We'll see how the next week and a half or so plays out though. No more slip-ups though... I'm seeing it through.

Hooray for Sports!

I’ve quickly adopted sports as my means of passing time. With DC United making a late season push for the playoffs and college football and the NFL starting up, I picked the right time to do this. It seems there is always something on.

Even when there isn’t sports on, there’s something about sports on. People making predictions, deconstructing teams, and just talking about sports because they are analysts and experts. It’s a bit ridiculous. It’s a bit unnecessary. It makes me wonder what an analyst would say about my soccer team in the video game. I’m sure they would have nothing but praise for my greatness.

It is nice not having an element of control to the game. I’ve always watched sports, but if the game wasn’t going the way that I liked, I used to switch pretty frequently to video games and check the score every now and then. With video games, I always know who’s going to win the game… me… or at least most of the time. And there’s no restart button in sports. Whatever happens happens. If I can remove myself from it, I guess it’s a pretty good lesson.

Tiff is not too thrilled though. She’s over-ruling the Notre Dame-Michigan game and asking “Are you going to watch soccer for two hours every Saturday night?” I’m not sure what to say. It sounds like a good idea to me. I haven’t told her that the NFL starts tomorrow. We’ll have to wait and see how that goes over.

Loooong Weekend

So Labor Day Weekend is essentially over and I have to say that three days makes for a very long weekend. Sure I did stuff; I did just about everything that I could think of, but I think on a normal weekend I would spend a solid few hours each day playing games - most likely soccer. Trying to avoid the temptation of playing, I wound up just feeling all antsy-in-my-pantsy and sitting around doing nothing much.

I've spent most of that time trying to figure out what sort of hobby I could get into. I tried to write, which didn't last too long, but I may give it another shot. Tiffany's trying to get me to start painting, which I think I would enjoy, if I thought I had something to paint. I read a little bit. I drove around a little bit. I watched a whole heckuva lot of TV. But none of it equaled a hobby.

Then this morning I started to wonder what normal people do. After a little bit of thought, it dawned on me that I should probably be doing like house maintenance and work on our new house... it still has a lot of work to do.

So, I cleaned out a corner of the garage! It wasn't much, but it needed doing. And I didn't feel so bad watching all that television today.

It's Getting Expensive...

I don’t mind not playing video games thus far. So far, after three days, I’ve gone to a soccer game, watched TV until I was bored out of my gourd, and went out for dinner and movie.

In other words, I spent fifty bucks, I was bored out of my gourd, and I spent fifty bucks. Videogames, in addition to be good mind-numbing entertainment, in the long run is pretty cheap. I bought a Playstation 2 around April of 2006 for somewhere in the neighborhood of $120. I shelled out the big bucks! In three years, I’ve probably bought 10 games for a total of maybe $200. (Although, I’ve only spent time playing a couple of games, that cost me $20 and $2 respectively.) Let’s tack on $50 for electricity and other costs, whatever they might be, and say I’ve spent $370 all together on admittedly the predominant form of entertainment for me.

In comparison, in an effort to wow my wife, I hoped to buy tickets to the Washington Ballet’s performance of Don Quixote. The only tickets I could find on their website were sold by groups of four productions, and the cheapest tickets I could find were $211 a piece. A Piece! That’s just crazy.

Poker’s a different story entirely, but in my defense, I hardly ever play.

It’s been a wonderful few days, even with the lull in the middle, but if this keeps up, I’m going to run out of money long before my month is up. I need to find a hobby and fast! I need something to do to fill my time and make me think that I could live a life without videogames.