Behold history in the making: the first cheesecake I’ve ever made myself. ‘Twas the holiday season, so I figured why not.
Category Archives: Mundane
Christmas is Over for Now
With one Christmas countdown ended, now another Christmas countdown has begun. The chalkboard Santa in our annual Christmas diorama is a little too anxious to push us forward, encourage us to start saving up already, and have us ignore the next fifteen major holidays in favor of his. Nice try, Santa, but you were too late to stop the one store I saw this afternoon that already had Valentine’s Day swag on the shelves, right on schedule.
Right this way for light musings as we prepare to burn off what’s left of 2015!
Scenes from Christmastime 2015!
Fit into our Christmas tree theme this year, Santa Yoda does.
Christmas! Christmas! Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!
That time of year we celebrate Christ’s birth and the fulfillment that came with it. That blessed season when we wrap up the year with one last multi-platform shopping marathon. That timeless trial when we find out how strong or how weak the communication lines are between distaff family members. That awkward negotiation over which gatherings we are or aren’t attending. That discomfiting anticipation that somewhere out there is a stress-induced tantrum with our name on it. That quick escalation into spiraling darkness if you don’t snap out of it and remind yourself of the reasons for the season, the fruits of the spirit, and oh what fun it is to ride and so on.
In honor of the main event, please enjoy this humble collection of random moments from the past few weeks that highlight local gentle reminders of the occasion and the joy inherent in holiday decorating. We here at Midlife Crisis Crossover wish you ‘n’ yours a super Merry Christmas, and we do hope you get the opportunity to connect with loved ones in between multiple showings of The Force Awakens.
My Favorite Christmas Tie
I don’t own many neckties with pictures or characters on them partly because I’m finicky, partly because I’m not great at accessorizing, and mostly because ties are ridiculously expensive to a guy who hates more than $25 for a pair of shoes. Thanks to the benevolence of family and friends, though, I’m the proud owner of six Christmas ties that I wear to work every year as a personal countdown on the last six business days before Christmas. Guys like me may not have a lot of options for dressing all Christmassy in an office setting, but I enjoy making the most of what I’m given, and the Six Ties of Christmas are it.
I like all of them to varying degrees, but one of these means more to me than the others.
Right this way for storytime! But not about the obvious tie…
Breakfast with the Blue Screen of Death
Anne and I went out for our usual Saturday breakfast today and were greeted with a fun reminder of how much the restaurant business has changed since ye olden tymes. The young crew members who provided us with grade-A coffee and service explained the error happened the night before and…well, here it still was. Oops!
I can vouch for the fact that restaurant tech support, even for major corporate chains, isn’t always a 24-hour service. Back in the day, though, we didn’t need it to keep our menus from crashing.
Right this way for another quick memory of The Way Things Used to Be…
7 Things to Know Before You Go Out Christmas Caroling
The Swedish Chef, Beaker, and Animal proved with “Ringing of the Bells” you don’t need a great singing voice to go caroling, but you may need safety equipment.
My wife Anne loves singing Christmas carols. She used to be first among her coworkers to begin singing them every year until she bowed to peer pressure and agreed to wait till at least after Columbus Day. I learned most of the catalog in grade school and willingly participated in three consecutive Christmas programs, even soloing once on “The First Noel” for an audience of hundreds of parents, none of whom had the clout to offer me a recording contract. Our old Bible study group used to visit group homes and nursing homes, serenade residents with a medley of timeless classics, and bring them baskets of cookies and/or fruit in the spirit of the season.
We love Christmas songs. We have a lot of fun singing them to appreciative crowds. We love being given the opportunity to sing for others as an act of service, an outpouring of faith, and an outlet for our pent-up expressive hearts. We’d join multiple caroling groups if the right offers rolled in. I blame our inactivity on our agent, George Glass.
But Christmas caroling isn’t as easy as it looks, especially if your fellow singers aren’t on the same page. We regret we’ve learned this the hard way. If You, the Viewers at Home, have ever considered singing Christmas songs to others, whether to praise Jesus or to have a good time, we offer you seven handy tips for simplifying your caroling mission, bringing a merry gleam to the eyes of others, creating a pleasant memory, and hopefully remaining on good speaking terms with the rest of the choir by the end of the night.
Indiana Couple Negotiates Tentative Agreement for Turkey After Weeks of Diplomatic Stalemate
Turkey and pie. Let’s face it: everything else at the Thanksgiving table is disposable.
All this week, every time someone friendly asked me, “Got plans for Thanksgiving?” I’ve had to shrug and say, “Wish I knew.” As of this morning, six days before the big event, neither my family nor Anne’s had communicated a single word to either of us one way or another. No Facebook “event” set up. No direct messages. No general statuses. No phone calls. No cards. No sign of any volunteers. No visible evidence that any of them still considered Thanksgiving a worthy celebration and not a fabricated Hallmark card-selling stunt.
Hoping for the best but planning for the worst, we decided tonight to buy our own fourteen-pound backup turkey. Just in case. Because sometimes you gotta take holiday matters into your own hands.
“Sleepy Hollow” 11/19/2015: Sumerian Gothic
“I got a rock.”
Previously on Sleepy Hollow: a Norse monster pack tore each other apart; Pandora summoned her evil husband into our plane of reality; Jenny got powers but was summoned to the Dark Side; Sophie Foster, relic hunter, stood revealed as Agent Foster, FBI; and “fan favorite” Joe Corbin got kissed, pretty much his career highlight.
On tonight’s fall finale, “Novus Ordo Seclorum”: Pandora stands by her man, who’s not Anubis! Ichabod Crane goes to college! Joe is tempted to get tough! And when the dust settles, one of our cast members is gone!
For those who missed out, my attempt to hash out the basic events follows after this courtesy spoiler alert for the sake of time-shifted viewers…
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Top 10 Captions for Your Inflatable Armed Snowman
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we took our first plane ride and walked away from the landing without a scratch. While my wife is holding up the “business” end of her “business trip” travel deal, I’m spending the week running around Colorado Springs and the surrounding areas to see new sights that didn’t make the cut on our 2012 road trip.
After she was released from duty today a few hours early, we spent some bonus quality time together and visited a few places we’d never been before. One of those was Bass Pro Shops, which has zero locations within 100 miles of our hometown. We don’t hunt, fish, boat, seriously hike, go camping, stock up on assault gear, or participate in most other functions supported by the products we saw, so it’s not as though we’d personally have a good use for one. But we know they’re a big deal to some folks, and we just so happened to be in a convenient position to peek inside one. We decided to browse for our own curiosity.
As I expected, we saw animal taxidermy, assorted weapons, outdoor clothing for outdoor people, fish capturing mechanisms, and so forth. In other words, much like our Dick’s Sporting Goods back home, or the Cabela’s we’ve seen in other states. That makes sense to me. Not our demographic, but we have plenty of friends and family who’d consider such places a great reason for an all-day shopping trip.
And then there was the big guy in the above photo. I stared and I stared, and I don’t get him. I just don’t understand his existence. At all.
Halloween Stats 2015: The Comeback Before the Storm
At Walmart, The Force infringes on the Great Pumpkin’s religious turf.
Once again our annual Halloween traditions were besieged with lousy weather that interfered with the one day out of the entire year that my neighbors and I agree to look at each other. Fortunately, this year Mother Nature compromised: temperatures were in the rather hospitable low 50s, much preferable to last year’s anti-seasonal snowfall, and the rains didn’t arrive till around 7:30. In fact, the precipitation was so gentle that we no idea it was even raining till I went to shut off the lights at 8:30. That went a long way toward explaining why we’d gone a full 55 minutes with no further visitors. Duh.
Right this way for three more photos, including my wife’s first costume in years!
My October Symphony of Treats
Best of show: the Salted Caramel Pizookie at BJ’s Restaurant and Brewery in Avon, Indiana — an oven-baked caramel cookie as big as a Personal Pan Pizza, filled with almond toffee, pretzel bites, and both white and dark chocolate chips. Because that’s obviously not enough, on top is vanilla-bean ice cream, caramel sauce, and more dark chocolate chips. Just looking at this photo counts as 500 calories. Sorry, dieters.
October has been a delicious month for us, and not because of those tiny prepackaged candies that Big Chocolate wants us all to worship. In that spirit, today we present a montage of five happy treats that provided me much-needed happy-time boosts through a month of unprecedented busyness. Enjoy!
Right this way for four more reasons why I’m not a size Medium!
Live Under a Blood Red Speck
10:51 pm.. EDT — See that tiny, funny-colored dot at upper right? That’s no space station.
No, the above photo was not necessarily my best attempt at capturing the soul of tonight’s much-ballyhooed “super blood moon” very special astronomical event, but it’s the first one I took when I discovered my Canon PowerShot ELPH 340 HS has a setting called “Handheld NightScene”. The moon is visible in that shot, but wasn’t for long. Here in Indianapolis we’ve been under cloud cover all weekend long, and they refused to let up even for something as unusual as a lunar eclipse, let alone an oddly hued one. I’d describe this as “once in a blue moon”, but I’m not sure which moon color is rarer and I’d rather not spark any sky-science semantics squabbles over this.
I didn’t take the greatest SuperBloodMoon photos of all time, but at the very least, the pics leading up to the feature presentation were the best moon pics I’ve ever taken in my life. For a thoroughly amateur photographer, I’ll take that little victory.
Here’s the best takes on what we saw before the clouds solidified the gaps between each other and ruined an otherwise cool evening. All time stamps are Eastern Daylight Time, and for once I’ve resisted the urge to crop or resize any of them.
Right this way for the light of the silvery moon! Featuring cameos by the color red!
Ranking the 2015 Lay’s New Potato Chip Formulas
Yes, it’s true: I allowed these in our house. Some experiments you have to try for yourself.
Someone at the Lay’s Potato Chip factory got bored this year and let the general public choose new flavors for their mad food scientists to concoct and test on us consumer guinea pigs.
That was the state of the potato union in 2014 as we saw previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover, and here we are again one year later. The adventurous bigwigs at Frito-Lay decided the previous stunt was so entertaining, they’re trying it again with four more theoretical flavors suggested by fans at home. The official site for their “Do Us a Flavor” contest lets eaters vote for their favorites and get to know the lucky fans whose suggestions became mandatory work orders for Frito-Lay’s top nutrichemists.
One of the flavors was suggested by a fellow Hoosier who recently spoke to the Indianapolis Star about her new-found claim to potential fame. If she’s one of three losing finalists, she receives a mere $50,000.00. If she wins and America loves her idea, she wins $1,000,000.00, the flavor becomes an official permanent product, and Frito-Lay keeps all future profits in perpetuity, assuming we all don’t band together as a country to troll them by choosing the worst flavor and wrecking their 2016 P&L sheets.
In the interest of food science and life lessons, my wife and I tracked down all four flavors and held our very own two-person chip-tasting party tonight. Also, because we can.
MCC 2015 Food Photo Marathon #7: The French Confection
While my lovely dinner companion and I await our charcuterie, a tiny Eiffel Tower twinkles merrily at passersby.
Our very special MCC extended interlude concludes!
Once again we return to Massachusetts Avenue, the part of downtown Indianapolis where trendy eateries cheerfully serve those of us who don’t live in any of the upscale north-side neighborhoods. For my birthday last May, my wife and I tried a relatively new place that specializes in unpronounceable French cuisine. Anne and I met in high school German class, but we did our best to fake our way through dinner from one of Germany’s notable European colleagues.
MCC 2015 Food Photo Marathon #6: The Thin Line Between Breakfast and Dessert
Our very special MCC extended interlude continues!
Ye olde, venerable International House of Pancakes may be a chain restaurant, but they’re not known for dullness or restraint. You can order pancakes as your primary meal, as befitting their moniker. If you’d rather have an omelet, you’re entitled to a side order of toast, biscuits, or the same pancakes. The strawberry banana pancakes in the above photo were given to me as the sidekick to my omelet. That would be great if I were someone likely to burn thousands of calories over the next few hours, such as an Olympic pentathlete or The Rock before his first three morning workouts.
MCC 2015 Food Photo Marathon #5: Salad and Solitude
Our very special MCC extended interlude continues!
Pictured above: the Salad Nicoise at Indy’s Bazbeaux Pizza — albacore tuna, anchovies, eggs, pepperoncini, red onions, artichoke hearts, and hearts of palm. Guys like me don’t normally walk into a pizzeria and order a salad for dinner. One night last May, it just seemed like the thing to do.
Right this way for a tangential follow-up to an MCC entry from May!
MCC 2015 Food Photo Marathon #4: Half One Thing, Half Another
Our very special MCC extended interlude continues!
Four out of every five business days I bring a home-assembly turkey-‘n’-cheese sandwich to work for lunch. It’s one of the little ways we cut budget corners so we can set aside more disposable income for conventions, vacations, comics, movie tickets, and so on. Spending eight or ten bucks a day on lunch works out to $40-$50/week, or $160-$250/ month, or $1,920-$3,000/year. That’s an awful lot of geek merchandise and travel frills to leave behind. So cheap sack lunches are the rule of my routine.
Once a week I do lunch out with a coworker. On extremely rare occasions, when I’m absolutely sick and tired of Oscar Meyer, and we didn’t have any leftovers in the fridge that I could bring to work and nuke, then I might go out alone for a bite. Pictured above from one such outing is a burrito topped with chili sauce and chili con queso, garnished by a small sidekick of salad, all from a Mexican place called Acapulco Joe’s. I’d been wanting to try it for years, but I kept forgetting it was there. From the dingy decor and rustic exterior, I hadn’t expected an arty presentation that looks like something Two-Face would order from his personal crime chef.
MCC 2015 Food Photo Marathon #3: Farewell with Cupcakes
Our very special MCC extended interlude continues!
Dateline: October 2014 at work. One of my teammates retired after twenty-odd years with the company and per regulations was entitled to one (1) retirement party with visitors, memories, congratulations, family guests, gifts, speeches, food, fruit punch made from random two-liters, and the opportunity to enjoy all of this on the clock. It’s all part of the company’s sincerely generous retirement package. Food varies from retirement party to retirement party based on the whims of the retiree. This time: cupcakes.
MCC 2015 Food Photo Marathon #2: A Day at Castleton Square
Our very special MCC extended interlude continues!
Dateline: January 31, 2015. As part of our annual pilgrimage to see the Oscar-Nominated Live-Action and Animated Shorts, my wife and I have to travel up north to Keystone Fashion Mall, home of Keystone Art Cinema, the only art-house theater in Indianapolis, a long drive from our side of town. The Fashion Mall overhauled their food court a few years ago into a much wider, brighter, more modern space with newer, trendier dining options replacing several of the sort of meat-scoops-on-rice joints that rule all the other malls in town.
MCC 2015 Food Photo Marathon #1: A “Chopped” Inspired Birthday
[Due to circumstances entirely under our control, we here at Midlife Crisis Crossover are taking a much-needed getaway for reasons that should be easy for any longtime readers to guess. Trust me when I say we’ll have plenty of new stories to share upon our return. We ask for your prayers and kind hopes that the preceding statement doesn’t turn out to be grim foreshadowing to a brutal cautionary tale.
So! While we’re retreating, recharging, renewing, rejuvenating, and restocking our production stations, please enjoy the next several daily entries’ worth of Fun Moments in Food from our past fifteen months. As a proud “nicheless” blog, MCC skips around from topic to topic depending on where all the whims lead, so if this all-foodie salute isn’t your favorite thing ever, rest assured we’ll get back to geek stuff and/or normal stuff viewed through geek lenses rather shortly. Updates as they occur. Enjoy!]
Dateline: my birthday, May 2014. My mom wanted to take us out to dinner. I picked a Mexican place in Brownsburg called Tequila Sunrise for two reasons: one, I was in the mood for it. Two: their menu items contained words we’ve never heard beyond episodes of Chopped.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 