The BlogStalker

Hi Friends. I hope you all had a nice week. It has been a busy week here. Well, not really, but I’ve done some things that I’ve been putting off for awhile. 

1. Kate and I went and met the new neighbors down the street. They moved in about a month ago, and we wanted to go introduce ourselves for quite some time, as they looked young and childless. That said, we didn’t want to look like the creepy neighbors who are trying too hard to be friends. I’m convinced that it’s impossible to go introduce yourself to new neighbors without looking/acting like a complete jackass. Kate made brownies. I bought beer. I guess we didn’t even need to stick around to say hello…the brownies and beer probably would’ve told them what we’re all about. Anyway,they seem nice. We probably seem crazy. Check that one off the list.

2. I got a haircut. Things were getting pretty out of control. I think this might have been my first haircut since the inauguration, and that was like four months ago. You know you’re looking pretty good when the lady at the haircut place says “I’m guessing you don’t work in an office with other people, do you.” I’m not exactly sure what gave away my work from home lifestyle. I’m guessing it was either the lack of pockets, my 3:00 PM on a weekday walk-in, my urban Amish facial hair, or the Bob Ross style afro. Either way, I’m now about five pounds lighter.

3. I went to the doctor. I’m not sick or anything, but I haven’t been to the doctor for a check-up since the late 1990s. I wish I was exaggerating, but my last physical was in 1998. So this week I went in for the blood work, and then next week is my actual appointment. I’m going to feel like a pretty big chach if el doctor finds something that would’ve been way better to find like five years ago or something. So I’m going to make a deal right here. With blog as my witness, I promise I’ll go to the doctor every year or so, as long as I don’t get stuck with some horrible illness or disease at next week’s appointment. Deal? Cool.

Alright. That’s what I’ve been doing. I also watched The Real Housewives of New Jersey. I have been looking for a copy of Danielle’s book (Cop Without a Badge) but it’s going for $189 on Amazon. I love my housewives, but not that much.  No new inventions this week, so I’ll just get going to the blog review. 

HangryPants remains in the #1 slot this week, which means I didn’t get any free shiz this week. Anyway, Ms. Hangry is currently getting ready for her “Cleaner Life Month’ which she describes in this post. From what I understand, it has something to do with eating healthy stuff. These month long challenges are great. They seem to fly by, and then the challenge blogger talks about their progress, and I just sit back and think “what the hell did I do in the last 30 days” and it’s usually pretty depressing. I don’t think I’ll be participating, but I’ll be cheering from the sidelines (diet mountain dew in hand).  I’m going to start my own challenge. I’m not going to eat any peaches for the next month. Who’s with me? No real reason, other than the fact that I don’t like eating peaches, but there ya go. Follow me to a peach free June. In other news, Kate told me about some health food guy who said something about how you shouldn’t eat foods that weren’t around 50 years ago. I guess that sort of makes sense for things like gogurt (whatever the hell that is) and other overprocessed stuff. But I doubt the greatest generation sat around drinking vanilla almond milk either, so I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do. Alright, I’m rambling now. Next blog…  

Brooke at Homegirl Can Eat wrote a great post about a perverted teacher in this post. If you aren’t reading this blog yet, you really, really should. It’s probably one of the best written blogs out there, even though I don’t understand half the shit that homegirl is talking about (mostly because I’m old). Whenever I go to the mall and start hating ‘those damn teens’ I just think of Homegirl and her good writing, and it makes me not hate the kids as much as I did before. I do often wonder if homegirl’s principal or teachers are aware of the blog and how they feel about it, but I’m sure she has that under control.I’ve noticed that homegirl commentors like to comment using homegirl-speak. That is, they adjust their language and slang to match that of the blog they are reading. I always want to comment on her posts, but I refrain for two reasons:

1. Kate is convinced I’d come off as a creepy old man
2. I’d write something like “Great post, I love how you did XYZ” which would really stand out amongst the comments like “Yay for graduation again! You and mama cynth look gorgey-poo! ” and other comments in Homegirl-speak. So I just lurk instead.

Fortunately the same thing hasn’t caught on here on The Blogstalker, otherwise y’all would comment using my backcountry gibberish and we’d all be a little dumber. So the moral of the story is, read Homegirl’s blog. 

Alli of Green Dog Wine had a busy week. Her blog found a new home (the URL that I used), got a new logo, and it was also her husband’s birthday and she devoted this post to her husband. As I mentioned last week, I’m a big fan of photo trips down memory lane in blogland. Sure, pictures of food are great, but I would much rather look at pictures of people doing funny things. Think of it this way, I wouldn’t go watch a movie about a bowl of oatmeal, but there’s a good chance that I’d go see a romantic comedy involving a man with a mohawk singing karaoke or lifting his wife over her head. So I vote for more personal pictures in blogland. Except on my blog. Because I’m lazy and our camera is pretty lame. But everyone else…please include more pictures. And if they can be photo slide shows with sappy music, that would win you bonus points. Now get to work! Also, I’ve been reading this blog for quite some time and didn’t really know where the name came from. I had some good theories going on in my head, but never thought to look at the ‘about me’ page, which pretty much explains it. I liked my theories better. 

Postgraduate Meghannnn did a recap of the San Diego Marathon in this post. Congrats to Meghannnn and everyone else who completed some sort of distance race this weekend. We were also happy to see that the easter bunny made the trip to San Diego. What really blows my mind is that people are videotaping and twittering while running a damn marathon. I’ve run my share of marathons, but have never videotaped or used any other type of technology during the process. After mile 13, I don’t think that I’d have a single thing to say that would be family friendly - I guess you could call it exercise-induced Tourettes. Also, I think I sweat too much to carry something electronic while running. I’ll just stick to the pictures that the race people take to document how miserable I was feeling during the race. Or I can just think really hard and remember it. 

Stock Up

Graduation - I’m happy for all of the graduating bloggers, I just hope that they keep blogging. See previous post re: not a big fan of change in my blogs.

House/Apartment/Room Tours - There was basically a full episode of Cribs this week. Unfortunately, none of the video tours included classic Cribs cliches like “this is where the magic happens.” I think at least one blogger should have used that line when showing off their kitchen or something.

Detailed Exercise Recaps - Including, but not limited to: calories burned, distance traveled (down to the hundredth or a mile), music listened to, energy foods and drinks consumed, etc. I think you’re burning off calories just doing the exercise recap.

Puffins (the cereal, not the bird) - Always a fan favorite among bloggers, but really growing in popularity in recent weeks. I just can’t eat this stuff. I once saw Puffin on a menu in Iceland, and it wasn’t the cereal. So now I can’t eat the cereal without thinking about people eating the cute little bird, so there’s my excuse. 

Stock Down

Flip Phones - The entire blog world seemed to get on iPhone or Blackberry bandwagon in the last week or two. Still waiting for someone to bring back the Zach Morris brick phone as a retro smart phone

Bagels - Not sure if this is because of the high caloric content, or the fact that it’s national donut day. Mentions to donut day should probably be stock up.

Alltel’s Commercials - Chad (the Alltel guy) is kinda hot and nice enough, but those other jackasses are really pissing me off. Sorry for the bad language, but I’m passionate about this one. Their last two commercials have butchered some pretty funny bits by Chris Farley and Willy Wonka. Sorry…this has nothing to do with blogs or bloggers, but I really really dislike these commercials, especially the Sprint guy.

Drogging - Drogging (drunk blogging) references are still stock up (thanks to Caitlin Pancake), but actual drunk blogging hasn’t been happening as much (as far as I can tell). I would like this to be stock up this weekend - especially for the Charlotte bloggers who are going to dive bar karaoke with me tomorrow night. You know who you are. 

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading, and I’ll try to do better next time.

Note: This was originally posted at yourselfinfiveyears.blogspot.com

Hi Everyone. Welcome to the fourth and final edition of the food blog roundup. It’s not the last one ever, just the last one on this blog. The new blog should be ready to go next week. I could’ve had it ready to go this week, but I had to watch The Masters all weekend, then I was sick, then it was my birthday, and then I had to catch up and read all of the blogs. So hopefully I’ll get around to it in time for next week. I’ll keep y’all posted. I think it has been an excited week in blogworld. There have been fires, free Garmins, and most importantly, my birthday. Sadly, my mailbox was blondie-free on my 29th. Alright, enough about that. Here. We. Go.

Mara at What’s for Dinner had a busy week. The week started with a nice post for her fiance’s birthday. Yes, I realize that there is an accent mark at some point in that word, but I don’t feel like digging around for special characters in the blogger editor. Anyway, it was a somewhat sappy but nice ode to fiance. My only criticism is that she used the phrase “my stomach flipped with joy.” Now while this might be accurate, when ‘stomach ‘and ‘flip’ are used together, I just start thinking about the end of Marley and Me (both book and movie). And then I think of the 100+ people openly sobbing around me when we were at the theatre. So I don’t really know how Mara’s fiance love post ends because I started thinking about Marley and got distracted.

Mara also had a blogger playdate with Jenn from Eating Bender. It was an action-packed date, filled with everything that a food blogger meet-up should include: overpriced organic grocery store, uncooked Asian foods, specialty cooking stores, and ice cream. I bet there’s a lot of pressure when two food bloggers meet for the first time. If I was the food blogger responsible for coming up with the agenda, I think I’d probably just schedule a bunch of out of character activities. Well, out of character for healthy food bloggers, at least. I’d use a theme, like ‘buckets.’ My Chicago food blog meet up would probably start in one of the neighborhoods around U.S. Cellular Field. We’d make enough wrong turns that we would end up near a Harold’s Chicken and enjoy a bucket of legs, wings, thighs, and grease. Then we’d head south for a couple buckets of beers at Bourbon Street on 115th, and then downtown for a big Bucket of Garrett’s Carmel and Cheese Popcorn.  It would probably be our last meeting and the pictures wouldn’t make the interweb.   

Speaking of Eating Bender, I was going to devote an entire paragraph to Jen, but then I noticed that she’s doing the P90X workout. If she is able to make it through one session of that, then she can officially kick my ass, so I’m going to watch what I say. For those of you that don’t know what P90X is, apparently you don’t have cable or sleeping issues. It’s a workout program that only advertises on basic cable between 2:00-6:00 AM. I feel sore after watching one of the infomercials. It looks like Level XIV of Jillian’s 30 Day Shred, and the ‘after’ spokespeople look like Brad Pitt in fight club. Good luck with that.

Caitlin Tipping Point (seems easier than writing out Caitlin, at The Healthy Tipping Point) had some excitement this week when her apartment complex caught on fire. My only critique of this is that there was only one post devoted to The Great Fire of 2009. It was comprehensive coverage within that post, but I would’ve dragged it out over a few days. It was sort of like in the last season of The O.C. when Marissa Cooper started hooking up with the chick that’s now playing 13 on House. There was one episode of The O.C. devoted to their torrid love affair, and then by the next episode Marissa was back to dating Ryan Atwood and hating her mother. Or am I the only one who compares food blogs to Teen Drama plot lines? All I’m saying is that you missed an opportunity to turn this into fire prevention week on HTP, with instructional videos for fire extinguisher usage, and more pictures of the dreamy firefighters. Also, I’m not really a black helicopter guy, but I find it quite a coincidence that there was a fire at the apartment during the same week that Caitlin announced her running hiatus. I’m just saying that maybe someone in the running industry might not be happy about this decision and may have had something to do with the fire. Because ‘fire’ is the #2 cause of spontaneous running, just behind ‘someone chasing you.’

Am I the only one that’s a little jealous of all of the free stuff that Kath gets? She got a freaking Garmin? Kath is my friend so I should be happy for her (and I should realize that maybe I can borrow some of her free stuff sometime) but I want to understand the secret to getting free stuff. I mean, this blog is read by literally DOZENS of people every week, but I guess that isn’t enough. So far I’ve got

Step 1: Create Blog

Step 2:

Step 3: Free Stuff

Maybe I should drop some subtle hints…

The check engine light is on in my Toyota Highlander. I just love my Highlander and I hear that the new Hybrid model is fantastic. I sure would like to drive one of those.

Or

My Kenmore washing machine is one of my favorite appliances, but the spin cycle seems to be acting up. I’m just not sure where I could find a replacement.

If I haven’t made this clear yet, let me say one more time: I am willing to sell out this blog (and my new blog) for free stuff.  I’ll take almost anything. Except maybe the WWII era cereal that Kath got this week, with the picture of a kid that looks like a cross between Ralphie’s little brother in A Christmas Story and one of the Children of the Corn kids. I don’t think I could eat breakfast with this kid staring at me.

Alright, back to the blog review now

There was some excitement on Hangry Pants this week. There was finally a ‘he said’ post! For those who do not read Hangry, each post starts with either “He Says” or “She Says” depending on who is the author of the post. Sort of a clever idea for a shared male/female shared blog. Only problem is that there isn’t an even balance between he says and she says. Specifically, we’ve gone entire weeks recently without a single he says post. So going to the blog and looking for a “he says” post is sort of like Where’s Waldo or one of those magic eye posters. You know, those things that you stare at for 30 seconds and then you see a panda that says I love you emerge from the trippy design.. Now I know that Daddy is very busy at work, but we stay up late to wait for him to come home, and then he doesn’t talk to us kids out in blogland. We need more “he says” posts – the last one introduced me to new salad toppings, including Pepperidge Farm Goldfish and Honey Wheat Kix.  That is food blog gold, and I want more.

Diana at The Chic Life broke the all time food blog record of excessive use of the word ‘sammy.’ Now there has been some discussion and debate on the correct spelling (is it Sammie or Sammy). My official answer is that it is neither, as the word should not be used. Ever. Problem solved.. Now Diana is a friend and loyal reader. She knows how I feel about the use of the word Sammy. Yet she managed to use Sammy four times in one post. And it’s not like she was describing four different sandwiches – it was just one sandwich. And this isn’t the first time. I did a quick control + F and found no less than 13 instances of Sammy on one page of The Chic Life. And I double checked, and none of them were about Sammy Davis Jr. or Sammy Hagar. Diana, we need to talk about this. We might just turn my birthday party tonight into a Sammy usage intervention for you. All of your blogging friends and family will be here to help you through this.

Oh, and to fill out our list of places that spinach should not be:

3. Pancakes

4. Brownies

Thanks to Heather (from Heat the Salmon Butt) and Jennifer (from Blogger Profile Not Available Error Page) for submitting these winning entries.

Stock Up

Salad Challenge – I was going to participate until I found out that chicken salad, taco salad, and potato salad would not count as my daily salad.

Getting Free Stuff from Companies – Unless you are me.

Soups that look like baby food - bleh

Obscure Nut Butters – I don’t think there are any nuts left that have not been made into a peanut butter substitute. Also, ‘Obscure Nut Butters’ would be an awesome band name

Peep Art and Peep Consumption – Peep Utilization in food blogs was up almost 24% from last year

Stock Down

Cooked Food (or whatever the opposite of ‘raw’ is) – This means that natural gas and electricity are both stock down this week

Cadbury Cream Eggs – I looked at least 50 food blogs on Sunday and didn’t see a single one. I saw lots of Cadbury mini eggs, but not their goo filled big brother.

Pirate Attacks – Although I don’t want to call them Pirates

Alright. That’s all for this week. I’ll put next week’s post here and on the new blog. Let me know if there are any blogs that y’all want me to talk about. I gotta get going. Only a few hours until My SpongeBob Birthday Party/Diana’s Sammy Intervention. Talk to you later.