I’ve tried to be very aware of her treasure hunts and celebrate each time she turns the treasure over to me before putting it in her mouth. I hope to train her that it’s way more fun to hand over whatever it is that she finds to me versus trying to eat it.

So this afternoon I saw her zero in on her prey and got down on the floor with her to try and figure out what it was that she was so intrigued by. I had seen her searching the area before, but figured she couldn’t get to whatever it was so I let her explore.

But this afternoon she seemed more determined than ever.

She wasn’t giving up easy. What was she after? {Notice the graham cracker she is already munching on. Did I mention she is a bottomless pit? The kid could eat for 24 straight hours and still want more.}

Ahhhh.... the elusive Cheerio. She doesn't eat enough of these during the day. She had to have this one.

She finally went in for the kill:

And finally victorious... and eating her prey.

I have no idea how long the Cheerio had been under the refrigerator, but she worked so hard for it, I had to let her keep it.

The song heard many times before but never sounded so sweet and so romantic !!

It is just my crazy mind or something else ? Dunno !!

P.S : You might wonder what's so special about all the things ? Actually nothing !! I just learnt to appreciate tiny winy pleasures of life !! :-)

Thanks Lord for making Life sound like Heaven !! Touch Wood .

I realized it of late how much I was craving for such a fun filled day, a break free day away from all the worries and how abouts of life. I had those childhood moments back; does not matter even if it was for short while. They are been added to those memory pages. Had Ghoda-Gadi Ride, Had that colorful ice cream candy, walked and walked and giggled like mad. We were one crazy gang among the most well behaved tourists around.

Guess after working hard for 8 long years I deserve this break. Frankly I was damn scared of this transition. TBH has been very encouraging and supportive and making this a cake walk for me. ( Like Always !! ) Change has always been a challenge to me. This time,for a change I am loving it !! :-)

]]> http://leadlap.wordpress.com/?p=243 Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:07:39 +0000 leadlap http://leadlap.wordpress.com/?p=243 As NASCAR practice was under a rain delay, Casey Mears was interviewed on SpeedTV. He basically talked about the time it takes to start performing well with a team and about getting a deal done with another team for next season.

If you want to read too much into it, Mears conducted his interview in front of Petty Enterprises No. 43 hauler. The team is sponsored by General Mills and Cheerios, which will be sponsoring Richard Childress Racing's fourth car next season -- a team that Mears is rumored to be going to.

At the beginning of the interview, Mears said he was "BSing" with the Cheerios guys.

Coincidence?

I m kind of agreeing with Chandni's take on this movie "Jab We met ".

First time :

I got the DVD. I watched the moving like mad , totally absorbed and hated Kareena totally. I was like "Man how much she yaps, totally irritating !! " :-)

Still don't know why I watched it again for the second time. Not only me ; I pulled up my both nieces to watch it with me !! ( Why bear the torture alone ;-) )

Second Time :

- Both my niece slept of half way through. and I went on and on watching the movie alone!! :)

- I loved Shahid totally. He looked so classy and so matured in this movie. Glad that he is out of his chocolate boy image.

-  I started liking Kareena actually.

- I still hated the character for continuous and brainless talks.

- I loved the songs. Especially the "Tum Se hi" one. It is so so awesome !! :-)

After that I don't know how many times I have watched the movie. I kept wondering why I have been watching the same movie again and again.  With every re watch I have landed up liking Kareena more and more.

I don't like to say this but the truth is I love the break free character Kareena portrays. So much of enthusiasm, Innocence, taking decisions without worry of the end results, going all the way by what heart says. She sounds very irrational and childish but then probably that is something you lose as a process of growing up and something that can not come back even if you want it badly.

Damn !! Last but not the least I am kind of not liking this feeling of liking this movie and the great "Kareena". It does not mean I will give up watching this movie and liking it more and more ! ;-)

- The first year of married life is magical. Away from realities of marriage. It can change a person in and out.

- Not that life is bad after first year of marriage. But you just get used to real life post marriage. ;-)

- It is fun to bully the newly wed bride. :-) and it is much funnier to listen to her fun filled enthusiastic stories of new and changed life.

- Shucks ! I am making my married life sound boring when it is not :-)

- 99% newly wed bride said this to me "What I fear most is what if he changes tomorrow? " I told them with a smile on my face "Don't worry he won't change !! :-) "

- Most of the wonderful couples I have met they said their likes and dislikes differ a lot from their respective other half. Still they are extremely happy together for years after years.

- Most of single friends of mine get worried that how to marry a person who is so different from them?

- It gives immense pleasure to meet someone who has spent 20 plus years in the marriage and still in so much love with each other.

- The bond of marriage amazes me sometimes. It makes two unknown people to spend entire life together, even if life is not a cake walk. They travel together through worst scenarios with a great courage and heart.

- Edited to Add : People who make such an issue of "love marriage or arrange marriage", ultimately all the couples go through same good old realities of married life. So it actually does not make life so very different as far as the couple is concerned.

Nell'ultima edizione la maggior parte della top ten è risultata costituita da brand alimentari: al primo posto si è posizionato il Ketchup Heinz, seguito dalle caramelle M&M's e dai prodotti (latte e cioccolata) Hersheys. Al sesto ed ottavo posto della classifica di brand equity ritroviamo rispettivamente, i cerali Cheerios e la Kraft Foods. Al quinto posto le batterie Duracel e Discovery Channel al settimo.

Quest'anno però lo studio Equitrend si posto anche l'obiettivo di valutare i volumi di wom marketing relativi ad un brand ed in particolare: scoprire quali brand e quali categorie di prodotti avrebbero beneficiato di più dalla diffusione del word-of-mouth, quantificare il livello di WOM nell'ambito di una certa categoria merceologica e identificare i sotto-gruppi demografici con più probabilità di impegnarsi nel passaparola.

E' risultato che alcuni prodotti generano  più word-of-mouth degli altri: in particolare i ristoranti generano il più maggior volume di WOM, seguiti dai prodotti per computer, dal cibo, dai dispositivi elettronici, alberghi e divertimenti.

Carol Gstalder, Senior Vice Presidente della Harris Interactive, ha spiegato la necessità di combinare le tradizionali analisi sulla brand equity con l'analisi del WOM, dicendo che "sta diventando sempre più importante capire a quali social network appartengono gli stakeholders e come funzionano [questi social network], per influenzare proattivamente la diffusione di brand experience positive e minimizzare le conseguenze negative".

Breakfast held me over surprisingly well, but I did need to break for lunch slightly earlier than normal... I was looking forward to lunch since it was leftovers from last night... I also paired it with an apple to round out the meal... The panini wasn't as impressive, probably because it wasn't warm and I'm not a huge "ham" fan, but for some reason was craving it last night... Today? Not so much... Oh well!

To tide me over until dinner time, I packed one of my homemade trail mix snack bags... This contains Life Cereal, Whole Grain Cheerios, raisins, and banana chips!

I'll be back with a dinner post after the gym tonight... I'm hoping to get to the 6:45 spinning class, since I'm in crunch mode for the ACS!

TBH finds this game boring. Well it is not that action type like moto-racing and all but somehow I like it.

Like as part game you can control Sim's daily routine. You also need to keep track of aspirations and money bank.

The fun part is I seem to follow my routine rituals while playing the game too. :-)

I mean when you have freehand to do whatever you want to, still you seem to follow the routines you are habitual to.

Not only rituals; when you have option to buy things from Sims Emporium I tend to buy those things which I might buy them in real life. Things like Plasma TV rather than a coffee maker. :D

I found it quite amusing. Don't know if it happens to others as well.

I figured I would go to the grocery store after my exam at three to pick up some food and some water, but I put it off to finish up the last of the work I had for my other class.  As six-o-clock rolled around, I peeled myself away from the endless International News Communication podcasts and ventured to Harris Teeter.  Seeing as Kroger is a mile from my house, that is the usual choice, but Ellis had called around three to let me know that they in fact had already run out of water.  So I drove the extra mile to the Harry Teeter.

I could see before I even pulled in the parking lot that mass hysteria had commenced.  There was a brief line just to park.  Once inside, people were running about everywhere, snatching cases of water off of displays and other various foods.  I plodded around the bakery section looking for corn bread to accompany the dinner Ellis was making and watched the citizens of Greenville act as if this was the end of the world.

I called Ellis to inform her there was no corn bread, but that "people were fucking going crazy over this shit." She said she already knew.

After selecting a few other things, I decided I wanted to see what the water aisle looked like.  I came face to face with the entire front wall of Harris Teeter that had completely been emptied in a typical Greenville Frenzy.  One lone bottle stood by itself underneath the strategically placed Brita filters and the Perrier water was left on the end, forgotten and sparkling.  Just as I was about to pull out my lovely pink beauty and take a picture of this, a man behind me asked if I was looking for water.  I turned around and was greeted by him and another woman.  I then proceeded to pull out the best attitude Cary taught me how to have.

"This is ridiculous.  Seriously, people are going insane.  It's just fecal matter in our water and it will be gone in 48 hours.  I mean, hello, just buy a case of water, no need for 3 and 4, and then boil your tap water.  Are we too lazy to boil water now and instead will be wasteful with plastic bottles?"

At this point the two innocent bystanders of my eruptive 'tude chimed in.

"Well, we don't know if it's just going to last two days.  People just want to be prepared."

"I don't know. You know what, I'm going to buy a case, but I'm going to drink the fecal matter anyway and nothing is going to happen."

This is where I wanted to spout out, "This isn't Y2K  (ugh...sigh.) or Hurricane freaking Fran. Everything is going to be alright." Instead, I walked away.

I took my case, Cheerios and Chex Mix (mmm...delish, definitely not on the post summer school be deliciously fit diet) and stood in line.  An extremely tall black man lined up behind me and proceeded to tell some girl that he was going to get himself a bottle of liquor tonight instead of water.

I turned around and thanked him for being the only intelligent person in the store at that moment.

Fecal Matter people... boil your water, get over it. Life goes on.  It was like that final "animal scene" in Mean Girls when the "girls have gone wild."  RIDIC.

Time for Show Off :P

Not that I made something out of this world; it was simple regular stuff. But then the effort matters isn't it ?

Especially when you crave for every single Indian dish in this Firang Desh :)

How they turned out ? Aub apni taarif khus kaise karein ? ;)

You can ask TBH for sure. :D

Any Guesses on the name of the dishes ?

Now I am just a little frog, swimming in a big pond, but I gotta tell you, I am starting to relate to croaker number one right now, the water is heating up in my pan and I am ready to get out.

It is hard to say how much more the American Consumer can take as a whole. It seems to me that the new catch phrase in this country seems to be “passed onto the consumer” and personally, I am getting awfully tired of it. I really do not have a clue as to what can be done about it other than lament the fact, but I am so tired of taking it in the shorts on just about everything, it is far beyond funny anymore. It is beginning to become tragic.

I Pledge Allegiance has been changed to … Bend over and take some more.

Gasoline comes first, no rhyme or reason to it, but it continues, unabated. While I am at it, “I am tired of this rant over and over, on the environmentalists, and the tree huggers being the problem.” Drilling in Anwar, Yellowstone, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, isn’t going to meet one year of our petroleum needs.

IT IS NOT THE TREE HUGGERS.

Why doesn’t someone ask them why there are no new refineries, why the refiners are only running at a small percentage of what they are capable of? Why we have an “artificial shortage” of motor fuel in this country. The numbers are in, people are driving less, consumption is down, so why isn’t the price going down. No, it increases. It defies logic. Okie City is a virtual Ghost Town any night of the week after eight o’clock. We are shut down.

So if we are using less, much less, why are we still paying more? Bad math. Even I can see that, and I wasn’t always the sharpest knife in the drawer, when it came to math.

Stop blaming the tree huggers … Last year during hurricane season, this stuff was increasing on a daily basis on the “speculation of a storm in the Gulf of Mexico” that never really materialized. But in America, what goes up ….. stays up … it doesn’t always go back down.

No profit in that.

Cops in Atlanta this week started adding a $12 fuel surcharge for speeding tickets, airlines are weighing customers, where does it end. Big change in breakfast items.  Grain cereals have jumped on the bandwagon and are now giving us less in the box for more money. Weights are down, check it out the next time you are in the store, and you will see what I am talking about. They are selling us less product for more money. With the high price of diesel (which is a waste product of petroleum by the way) farmers are going to have to have more to cut even a marginal profit this year. Throw in the recent flooding in the Missouri and Mississippi basin’s and the loss of millions of acres of planted crops, well, the news is not good.

Beer is being served in smaller glasses, ice tea and other refreshments have gone to smaller sized glass. I note that the plates in one place we usually frequent, over night, shrank in size. Not necessarily a bad thing for the American Consumer who is face it, a bit on the tubby side. We used to go to this place, and we would split an order of Fajita’s the wife and I, now I find out that they are charging me $2 for the second plate, which of course, “used to be free.”

They can now call me the hacked off Old Gringo and say Adios, I will go somewhere else.

Electric service is up, why not, everyone else is doing it. But there has to be a point at which this will cease to be realistic. We cannot keep absorbing all of these price increases, over and over, there comes a time, when the glass is full. We are quickly reaching our point on the scale, it has come to where push meets shove around here and sadly it has reared its ugly head a lot sooner than I thought it would.

Today I read but one more credit card article, this couple in hock up to their ears. $16,000 on one credit card, owed $106,000.00, on a house that had an appraised value of only $63,000.00. I still see the big screen televisions going out the door at China Mart and the new paper tags on the cars (new cars) all over town, and frankly, I wonder how it is that they can still do this?

It is a lot different at our house … The wolf is baying at the backdoor and we have nothing to toss out to satisfy him. Old frog number one is really getting tired of this ---- .

How about you?

000

Related: Money Saving Tips

Yesterday I picked up the following for $13.89 oop:

15 Powerade Zero

12 Wishbone Bountiful Salad Dressing

9 Splenda 1 Cup Sugar Sub

5 Electrasol Powerball Tab 20 count

4 Cheerios Strawberry Yogurt Burst

2 Ivory Dishsoap

1 Trident Xtra Care gum

The Powerade, Splenda, and Trident were FREE after coupons.  The Wishbone Bountifuls and Cheerios were $0.50 each, the Ivory was $0.09, and the Electrasol was $0.74 a box after that awesome $2.25 coupon.

I’m fairly sure it was at this time in the late 20^th century that the large influx of gummy candies and Nerf dart guns were also coming into fashion.  Feast your eyes upon this chaotic scene:  Two six year olds ravenously consume Gushers and Dunkaroos, become sugar induced lunatics, grab their small arsenal of Nerf weapons and hop in their Power Wheel.  What do you think these young boys are going to do:  Discuss the finer points of eating crayons?  Fuck no.  These kids are going to do drive-by shootings on the neighbor’s cat or the cootie-fest of a tea party that was taking place at Suzy Derkin’s house up the street.  The drive-by may have been something that began with mobsters in the 1920’s and 1930’s, perpetuated by gang violence in Los Angeles, but white, six year old suburbanites added a new twist:  drive-bys on drugs.

Now for a while Power Wheels was exclusively a toy for males; not unlike voting ballots, mathematics, and rational thought.  But as it turned out, little girls liked driving around too, but perhaps not as spine-ripping ninja commandos.  So of course Mattel, fresh off destroying the female psyche for fifty years with the anatomically impossible Barbie, decided to capitalize on the market by getting into Power Wheels as well.  There were now two demographics of people who wanted to drive pink cars:  pimps and six year old girls.  It was at this point that little girls began “driving” around and there was true equality for little girls.  That is, until they got into the work place.

But why is this interesting?  Well if not for the mere reason that Power Wheels disappeared completely, but also explaining why they disappeared.

What happened was that Americans started getting bigger and fatter.  There is a fairly substantial issue with obesity in America this day and age.  If you don’t believe me just take a walk down any aisle of any grocery store anywhere in America.  For example, cereal, which for Christ sake wasn’t sugary enough and was totally unappetizing beforehand, has been made sugary.  Compounded with the blitzkrieg lifestyle of an average American eight year old, they no longer have time to spend five minutes and eat a bowl of Cheerios or Frosted Flakes, and also because it isn’t delicious enough.  What did General Mills do?  “Put that fucker into a candy bar,” they said!  Cereals have now been packaged into bars with “milk” in the middle.  And by “milk”, of course, they mean “frosting” and “shit”.  I’m sure it is a great source of calcium in the same way shooting oneself in the thigh is a good source of blood.  It doesn’t mean it’s good for you.  This is just one of the small problems.  I’m sure next week Corn Flakes will have a new label on it that states, “Now with real pork!”

So kids got fat, Power Wheels could no longer take the weight of these ever expanding children, the batteries drained more quickly and Power Wheels became more like real cars, except nobody was making out in the back of them.

But if you want to know the real reason why kids became fat as well, along with the rest of America, you need not look any further than an all you can eat buffet. 

As Americans, we have lots of freedom.  We’re talking so much freedom, that we can’t even fit all of it into our Escalades.  With all this freedom, we have free time.  With free time comes boredom and what better way to remedy boredom than to just make another enjoyable part of the day longer, more extravagant and more voluminous.  This is where the all you can eat buffet comes in.  The buffet is a terrific metaphor for what we believe the world is to us.  We can take and take and as long as we don’t explode, we have the right to possess it as long as we’ve earned it… or digested it.  This is the way we have treated the world for the past three hundred years, taking and taking while the rest of the world has very little.  Just because we can take all of this food from the buffet, doesn’t mean we should. 

It is the idea of the buffet that makes Americans drool as we are always looking for bargains, so it is important that we get our money’s worth by eating as much as humanly possible.  It is the only way that an average, everyday American can fight terrorism by exercising our freedom to eat as much as we fucking want.

I’m sure obesity is a bit more complicated than that, but the buffet was a pretty large step forward for American obesity… as well as diabetes.

The all you can eat buffet is the food equivalent of internet pornography:  There’s variety, you can find it virtually anywhere, and you always covered in gunk when you’re finished.  Oh I know, that’s disgusting, but it’s completely true.

The amazing thing about buffets is that everyone is practically twitching to get to the cheesy broccoli and they’re aware that everyone else is as well.  People then get flustered in the buffet line and speed through it, missing the cheesy broccoli entirely.  Because that’s the only way we can eat broccoli, which is rich in vitamins and nutrients, by throwing some queso on that bitch. 

And you have to speed through because you don’t know if the heavy breathing fourteen year old with the Battlestar Galactica t-shirt behind you brought his steak knife with him to poke you in case you slow up.  It is for this reason that people always end up getting things that they don’t want.  You show up at the table with water chestnuts, brussels sprouts and cottage cheese. 

On a side note: nobody likes brussels sprouts.  Stop trying to be different.  They are not the food equivalent of listening to indy-music, shopping at Whole Foods, or boycotting Wal-Mart.  If you want to seem older and cooler, smoke a cigarette like everybody else.  No one thinks you’re cool.  And let's be serious, sushi is the food equivalent of indy-music.  Get with the program.  Only communists and high school guidance counselors like brussels sprouts.  Honestly.

It also doesn’t help that the sneeze guard is built for humans that probably lived next door to Moses.  Not everyone is 5’2, Pizza Hut buffet.  I don’t like having to do Pilates regularly to be in the proper shape to get to the bacon bits.  You know where you have to lean your hand and arm in while also managing to bend your neck and back all the while holding your plate and managing to not aggravate the masses behind you.  Then again, if I was doing Pilates all the time I might not be the kind of fat-ass that would go through all of that just for bacon bits.  Life is confusing.

In conclusion, the overarching point is that Power Wheels has disappeared forever into the evanescent mist of toys-that-were-good-in-theory-but-buffets-ruined-them.  I suppose children will have to do the unspeakable:  walk places or ride their bikes.  It is tragic to think that a whole generation of children will not know the joy of wind not blowing through their hair as they careen down South Street at 4 miles an hour.  That is, until the battery runs out. For now though, it’s time to play with my Nerf gun; my roommate just showed up with Gushers.

From the title of this post, you're probably thinking it's about Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers and the whole fiasco they are going through. Then you see this old, curmudgeonly white guy with a headset over here and wonder what he has to do with either. The answer is nothing. This post has nothing to do with Favre. In fact, the only reason I bring it up is to get that elusive google traffic of people searching for "Brett Favre"+Cheerios. In fact, I'm going to spell his name Farve to capitalize on all the typoists out there too. Now, on to business.

My favourite time of the sporting year that isn't the Olympics comes in the middle of every March, when 32 college basketball games take place over a  48 hour period on a Thursday and Friday. Every year I take those two days off school for the first rounf of March Madness and sit around in my underwear in my basement cheering on teams like Holy Cross or Wichita State and spilling milk in my chest hair while eating Cheerios.

It's a great way to spend a weekend, except, just when I'm about to go into a euphoric basketball coma, Billy Packer has to come along and snap me out of my vegetative state. With a voice like L Dopa, Packer is the eternal Robin Williams to my Robert De Niro, waking me from a blissfully ignorant daze. Of course, Robin Williams was a doctor (or at least, playing on on TV), while Packer is more of an aging mysoginistic bigot who has more shit coming out of his mouth than the two girls with the cup, but the effect is still the same. So thank God to CBS for finally realizing what the rest of the NCAA basketball-watching world did at least 2 years ago (though much, much longer for many of us) and giving Packer the boot in favour of Clark Kellogg.

My problem with Packer isn't that he says things like "Since when do we let women control who gets into a men's basketball game? Why don't you go find a women's game to let people into?" to college girls whose job it is to check media credentials. It isn't that he's one of the only people left in the world to use a phrase like "fag out". It isn't even that he called Allen Iverson a "tough little monkey." It's everything else that he does. Listening to his commentary makes it clear that Packer is an arrogant, set-in-his-ways, and possibly senile old man, so it should come as no surprise that he still uses words that make most of his audience uncomfortable, or that he still believes that women shouldn't be given positions of authority, or even that he still thinks it's okay to compare black people to animals. I'm not condoning it; I'm merely recognizing that he comes from the Don Imus school of broadcasting in a time when affluent white men could say whatever the fuck they wanted about homosexuals, minorities, and women without any reprocussions or feelings of guilt. Had he been fired over any one of those comments, it would have pleased me more than a weekend with the triple-breasted hooker from Total Recall, but more because I truly hate his announcing than because he's a bigot and a prick.

And his announcing is truly where he falls flat. Billy Packer was the lead college basketball analyst on the biggest college basketball-broadcasting network, and everybody hated the man. He broadcasted the past 34 championship games, yet in Deadspin's media approval ratings back in February, he got a 90.6 per cent disapproval rating out of 4500 and change votes. This was clearly a paradox, yet CBS kept renewing his damn contract year after year.

What should have made Packer a good commentator (and what probably kept him on the air for three decades) was that he was never afraid to state his opinion on what's going on. Too many colour guys wait to be set up by the play-by-play man to give their pre-made canned answers to pre-made canned questions. Packer was legitimately different. He didn't have an issue saying what he felt was going on. His analysis wasn't always the greatest, but at least it was there.

However, Packer's downfall can be directly attributed to the fact that a lot of his opinions-stated-as-fact were either clearly wrong, or assanine quotations designed to piss people off. His hate for the mid-major programs—the darlings of every Final Four tournament whose successes are what make the damn thing so much fun to watch in the first place—went against the cheering for the underdog mentality that the tournament relies on. Moreover, it was a case of blatant ignorance over the path college basketball has taken over the past decade. He said St. Joe's didn't deserve a number-one seed before the Hawks made a very strong run through the tournament, losing in the Elite 8 to Oklahoma State on a last-second three. He railed against the selection of four Missouri Valley teams in '06 before two of them made the Sweet 16 (another mid-major, George Mason, made the Final Four). Ever since Gonzaga made the mid-majors a Cinderella story in the mid-90s, the successful teams—the Bulldogs, Kent State, Southern Illinois, and many teams in the A-10 and the Mountain West, which have had the success to be included as major conferences—have become perennial powerhouses, expected to be in the tournament and capable of beating the best teams in the country. I don't think there's anyone who doesn't want to see 26–6 South Alabama over another 18–12 team from one of the power conferences.

But it's not just his inability to change with the landscape of NCAA basketball that has made Packer obsolete. The past couple season especially, his commentary has just gotten offensively bad. First off, there was his adamant defence of Duke's Gerald Henderson after Henderson broke UNC star Tyler Hansbrough's nose with a brutally flagrant foul in the dying moments of game UNC was winning by 12. I don't really want to go too far into what Packer said, but watch this, watch the replays, see how blatant the attack was, listen to the bullshit Packer is spouting as though he were an ancient Babylonian fountain tied directly into the city's sewer lines (best illustrated at the 1:50 mark I feel and then wonder at Packer's audacity to suggest this was UNC's fault for playing Hansbrough late in a game that was already out of hand.

Of course, this really only pissed off UNC fans, since in this world there are Tar Heels, Blue Devils, and normal, well-adjusted people who hate both and wish they would all die and stop taking up so much Saturday afternoon airtime when we want to see Chris Paul at Wake Forest. But Packer misstepped once again in this year's Final Four matchup between UNC and Kansas when, after the Jayhawks' Brandon Rush hit a three to give them a 38–12 lead 12:30 into the game, Packer called the game over. Maybe Billy, a Wake Forest grad, just hates the Tar Heels, who, probably out of spite, closed the gap to within four with 11 minutes to play before sputtering down the stretch and losing by 18.

So yeah, maybe there will be less self-righteous pandering at this year's Final Four, but I'm not sure I like the call of bringing Clark Kellogg into the booth. Kellogg has never struck me as being particularly insightful either as a studio host for CBS, or in his columns for Yahoo. I've always preferred the other studio guy, Seth Davis. That said, I'm willing to give Kellogg the benefit of the doubt. All told, it's a banner day for those of us who hate awful sports announcers. Now if only TSN would follow suit and pink-slip Pierre McGuire.

15 Hamburger Helpers (sale $1.00 each - $15.00 total)

4 Yoplait GoGurts (sale $2.50 each - $10.00 total)

2 Yoplait Fiber One Yogurt (sale $2.50 each - $5.00 total)

15 Fruit Roll Ups (sale $2.25 each - $33.75 each)

5 Fruit Shapes Snacks (sale $2.00 each - $10.00 total)

6 Betty Crocker Brownies (sale $1.00 each - $6.00 total)

2 Totinos Pizza Rolls (sale $1.00 each - $2.00 total)

2 Nature Valley Granola Bars (sale $2.50 each - $5.00 total)

2 Cheerios cereal (sale $2.50 each - $5.00 total)

2 Lucky Charms cereal (sale $2.50 each - $5.00 total)

2 Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal (sale $2.50 each - $5.00 total)

Total $101.75

less $43.80 in doubled mfr coupons

less $52 in cats

OOP $5.95!

What can YOU buy for $5.95?

This morning I started the day off with a bowl of multi-grain Cheerios, Skim Milk and fresh fruit. The milk wasn't as cold as I like, because I had just opened a new carton, but milk is milk, right?

After breakfast I spent my time with some much needed retail therapy, then picked up my Kundera book. Who needs a productive morning, anyway? That's what afternoons are for. [As of today].
For lunch I made a chopped salad with fresh tomatoes, cottage cheese [which actually covers the poached egg whites - They're in there, I swear!] a pickle, balsamic dressing and a slice of whole wheat bread.

I had a nice weight-lifting session, and endorphins are always welcomed. After weights my stomach was chatting quite loudly, so I feasted on some fat free plain yogurt, a few almond slivers and cinnamon. [They're may be a hazlenut or two thrown in there, just for good measure...]

I studied a bit of my German, and I was feeling a bit antsy and axious, and took a quick jog. I came back refreshed and yadda yoo, more good things to say about endorphins. I found a cool recipe I wanted to try, Orange Glazed Tofu. Turns out we didn't have any orange juice. Actually, we had oranges so I just used those. I added in some yellow and green squash, and 1/2 of a Rye Toast.

Sweet potatoes, for some reason, were calling my name tonight so I decided to use them up. Sprinkled with a bit of paprika and salt, they're quite delicious and healthy. [Low on the glycemic index... If you care about that shenanigans]. You can see the ones I ate in the bowl above, [Cool bowl, no? Ikea rocks.] But I decided to give a nice close up to showcase my many talents. :p

Pretty good day, food group wise. I didn't get all 3 cups of dairy in though. Or all the grains. Ooops.

I then began thinking of all the cereals that I've consumed in the quarter century I've spent on this earth. For nearly a decade of my childhood I was a loyal customer of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It was one of the few cereals my mother and I could agree upon. From her perspective it was healthy enough, and from mine, Cinnamon Toast Crunch had just enough brown sugar to earn credibility amongst my peers. As I slowly gained autonomy from my mother's dictatorial breakfast food decision making, I began to venture into more sugar coated cereals, namely Cocoa Puffs and Frosted Mini Wheats. There's nothing better than eating a cereal that leaves the milk a completely different color than when you began eating. As I've grown older and wiser, I've begun to appreciate the merits of a healthy breakfast and have gravitated towards more fiber-rich cereals like Kellog's Smart Start and even Raisin Bran, a cereal that I detested as a child. I believe that if my ten year-old self saw my 24 year-old self eating Raisin Bran, he would kick my ass. But now there's a variation that includes crunchy bits of granola that livens up the taste. When I'm feeling adventurous these days, I've been opting for Cocoa Krispies, which much like this blog, explode with flavor.

As many cereals that I've eaten in my years, there are so many that I haven't even tried. I've never spent much time with Cap'n Crunch, Count Chocula or Kix. Never explored Life, Apple Jacks or Chex. Never tasted Honey Bunches of Oates, Boo Berry or Smacks. There are so many in fact, that one could probably pick one cereal to eat each year for the duration of a lifetime and still not try all of them. That's what I call choice. God Bless America.

Let me know what some of your favorites are and if you're bored, check out a full list of cereals here at Wikipedia.