Those Temporarily Flying Discs!

I'm coming up on my breaking point. This used to happen all the time in college, when I'd only see my then-wife-to-be roughly once a month. About two weeks after each visit, I'd reliably begin getting anxious and unhappy. Mood swings and a depressed attitude were common as my subconscious slowly came to terms with the fact that I wouldn't be seeing her for a while. So it was, and so it is; I'm getting stressed about little things and subconsciously avoiding stuff that could make me feel better. Just calling her, for example, would definitely cheer me up, but I tend to avoid doing so (perhaps out of a sense of resentment?) at times like these. I'm crazy, I know! It's important to keep that in mind, and to work to counteract that insanity.  Because let me tell you:  madness is a bad scene.

On Saturday I finally had the time to just be by myself and unwind a bit; the first such time since my wife left!  It was absolutely wonderful.  I celebrated by finally getting myself to eat right and even working out, which was a very good feeling.  I can't really remember what I ate (food that I don't cook myself is just so boring!), but it was pretty healthy.  Eating right, for me, is pretty difficult and takes a lot of willpower.  I'm definitely a supertaster, and that means delicious foods are, to me, incredibly delicious.  I tend to overeat when I'm not being really careful, which is a Bad Thing.  I think I've gotten around this dilemma, though, by keeping very little food in my house that can be eaten without preparation.  It's working so far!  Also, I printed out a picture of me back in high school, when I was the very image of unmitigated hotness, and I keep it in my pocket as a form of inspiration.  I can turn back time, I know I can!

Fish update:  Cormorant and γ are on top of the world.  I changed their tanks today and only mildly traumatized them in the process!  Their feeding schedule has been somewhat irregular, though.  They're supposed to get two round meals a day (pellets), but you know...fish are slippery creatures, and especially adept at slipping a guy's mind.  So sometimes they get one.  But I think it's good, since it'll keep them nice and lean!  Look at me, I'm even getting dieting inspiration from my fish.  We're all in this together!

Summer job update:  the end is, sadly, in sight.  My boss, having just finished a solid year of litigating, is ready to take a break, and that means there won't be much work for me to do.  So he's going to set me free a full week before my last year of school starts up!  I still three weeks left there, though, and my wife will be around for at least one of those.  She hasn't really worked out the rest of her schedule for the summer (remember, being a teacher, she gets summers off), but I'm sure, based on precedent, that it will mainly involve finding excuses to avoid spending time with me.  Just kidding, haha!  Hoho heehee.

The apartment is still intact, except for two problems.  The first is that I really need to vacuum, because my belly button lint is seriously all over the place.  Secondly, I've gotta find some way to pay this electric bill.  My wife claims she left a check for me to use, but checks can get up to all sorts of crazy business, like being used to pay some random guy from craigslist for 224 stacks of Pogs.  Not that I did that, or would ever do that.  But, you know, some people like Pogs.  Don't judge.

Deep in the Shallows

Alright, so I forgot about ironing. What's the big deal? Leaving some wrinkles in my clothes is an intentional cry for help. After all, if I outwardly appeared to get along just fine without any wife to look after me, nobody would be able to realize the existential dread that haunts me every instant of consciousness. I'm hoping that wrinkly pants will be enough of a hint.

Last night, I hauled myself into my bedroom and prepared for the sweet oblivion of sleep to carry me into the next day. However, as I waited for the air conditioner to cool my place of repose into a balmy 78 degrees F, I decided to jump into the shower to help with the heat. I turned the shower on, and then thought I might as well lay my head down for a moment while the shower heated up (yes, I take warm showers to cool down. What's it to you?). Five hours later, I awoke to the water still running. Erk! That was a pretty bad start to my morning.

I just love to digress. But here's the deal, straight-up and true as a teenager's Angst: I'm starting to adapt to life on my own. I've done plenty of exaggerating about my living habits when my wife is around, but the truth is that I can be kind of a slob when I have somebody who's willing to pick up after me (who can't?) By myself, though, I'm developing a sort of weird desire to keep my place clean, just in case I forget to turn on the oven fan and asphyxiate myself while trying to cook some delicious bacon. I don't want my eventual rescuer/discoverer to have to drag me out of a messy place! That would just be embarrassing. And so I keep my home nice; the next step, obviously, is to wear a suit at all times, to save my family the trouble of dressing me should I slip on a discarded banana peel and do a face plant into the garbage disposal. I have a very malleable skull.

Between evolving into a semi-neat freak (compared to how I was before) and no longer deriving much refreshment from sleep, I think I might be taking on some significant insanity here. Before my wife left on her trip, I would happily have admitted to being "crazy," in the sense of "quirky and fun at parties." But no, I'm pretty sure that I've now hit all the benchmarks for lower-level derangement. I'm beginning to seriously wonder if my wife wasn't just a hallucination I had, an apparition, a mere symptom of my madness that the people I see regularly are happy to humor me about. I mean, if I have the capacity to live on my own -- if this ability was in me all along -- then who's to say I ever needed her at all? Maybe she's actually a split personality, and at one point my brain forked into two parts and assigned all the cleaning to the other one.

The cleaning, the cooking, the laughing, the smiling. That's her department.

I'm not entirely serious, but a small part of me wonders. I know the way I'd deal with someone suffering with a similar ailment; my grandmother has Alzheimer's, and I often simply go along with the fantasies she suggests rather than try to force her to face reality. I can't be entirely sure that the same thing isn't happening to me. I only really have one option: wait until my wife gets back, and then hold her so closely and tightly that I can be absolutely convinced she's really there. It'll be an unbelievably beautiful feeling to hold her again, and to reassert my sanity.

Frozen Pants & Other Sundries

So after a debilitating weekend at the beach with my family, I retrieved my overly needy fish from my sister's moderately careful oversight and dragged myself home. That was when I noticed they needed cleaning.

I realize, certain dishes aside, the c-word hasn't been tossed around here too much. Don't be surprised! It's not that I like to let my place get filthy and therefore go long stretches without cleaning; it's that I ordinarily keep my place in such order that no grime can ever manage to accumulate.  Seriously, though, despite my grumpiness about my sudden stewardship over these little aquatic balls of misanthropy, I feel a real responsibility to keep them in oxygen and food pellets.  That's why, when I spotted their little tanks all clouded up with ammonia, I knew it was time to act.  After all, those fishies need me!

Those guys are slippery.  Really slippery.  It took me the better portion of half an hour to determine the best way to get them out of their tanks without killing them.  It would have been a huge help to me if I'd had a net of any sort, but...alackaday!  'Twas not to be, and I contented myself with picking out their little decorative rocks one by one, so they wouldn't be crushed unceremoniously underneath them when I tilted the whole tank over.  It was the only way to get them out!  I tried deep spoons and the like, but those fish can JUMP.  In essence, it took me 30 minutes to outsmart a couple of fish.  A couple of fish in a prisoner's dilemma.

After I got their tanks changed and fed the little upturned-jaws, I turned to my true challenge:  the laundry.  That despicable machine has haunted my nightmares for the past few days, but I decided to overcome it.  I frantically made several loops through my apartment, finding loose pieces of clothing with every circuit.  I am a man who suffers from chronic sock shortages, and now I know why -- my wife has been hiding them all beneath the couch!  I mean, who else could have done such a thing?  I'm such a victim.

I carefully sorted my clothes into neat piles of colored and whites, feeling like a disgusting racist for it.  However, past attempts at sartorial integration had gone poorly, so I knew the time had not yet come.  Deciding that I needed nice shirts for work much more than I needed more socks (having recently found the proverbial "motherlode"), I tossed the coloreds in first (this one's for you, Rosa!)

I filled that washer up as high as it could go, and then a teense bit more.  I got it running, set it to LARGE LOAD, and tossed a bit of soap in.  Somehow I managed to get some soap on my bed (soap!), but at least this was a liquid detergent and couldn't find its way into my nose.  Not unless I absent-mindedly wiped my soapy hand on my nose.  AND OF COURSE I WOULD NOT BE STUPID ENOUGH TO DO THAT.  SO, MOVING ON.

I got the washing machine running and went to distract myself with flights of fancy and planning my busy social calendar for the week.  Epochs later, I heard the washer grind to a halt and directly ran to throw my stuff in the dryer.  I did so without too much difficulty, until I dropped one of my lighter colored socks in amongst some of my darker white socks.  It was like a lit match falling into a pile of gunpowder.

My world ended.  Trains screamed on their tracks and derailed, transforming from vehicles of convenience to metal tombs.  Airplane turbines sputtered and died, dragging their sleek-lined chassis into the seas.  Millions of panes of glass shattered at once, defying nature to invent an equally heartrending sound.  I watched that sock fall into its nearly-identical brothers, mouth agape with horror at the prospect of ever finding it again.  Its collision with the pile of clothes was as silent as a newborn's eyes.  I was lost, adrift in a pile of clothing, doomed to search for a needle in a mountain of hooks.

Then I realized it was the only sock in the pile that was wet, and fished it out without much trouble.

No, friends, the trouble came thereafter.  I loaded my clothes quickly, and even checked that there was a dryer sheet and the ridiculous "dryer balls" that my wife insists on using.  I guess she's trying to convince herself that they aren't meant to be sex toys.  At least our clothes get to roll around with them, I guess.  I set the dryer to "towels," realizing this is a necessity where multiple pairs of jeans are involved, and went to lie down on the couch waiting for it to finish.  What a terrible mistake.  You can't just out-wait a dryer.  Those things are eternal.  I felt that I had no choice, since I had a huge pile of whites I still had to wash.  I figured I'd wait until the dryer was near-finished and then toss the whites in, so I could move as efficiently as possible.  

I failed completely to consider the power of the circadian on my biology.  As soon as my head hit the couch pillow, I fell into the deep, dreamless, not-very-refreshing sleep that I've grown used to over the past week-and-change.  I awoke in the morning, just minutes before work, to find that I hadn't gotten to the whites, my wife was still in Africa, and I had slept with my contacts in (a truly miserable experience).  I had to rush about, barely finding time to perform my morning ablutions, and eventually had to toss my still-roasting pants into the freezer to cool them to a wearable state.  But, as I hopped around the kitchen, frying in my own khakis, I noticed that my fish were swimming around happily in their freshly clean bowls.  I felt a small tinge of pride that, despite all my difficulties, I had managed to care for some living creatures.  Even if they couldn't appreciate or understand what I had done for them, the knowledge that I had managed to keep them alive injected a small bit of warmth into my old, cold soul.  Sometimes, I think, that's good enough.

So good, so good, sofrito

I finally cooked for myself! As I said, every night up to now has been a busy mess of social engagements. Last night was an equally busy mess of interpersonal tomfoolery, with the key difference being that I was the host. As you must have expected, I whipped up my guests a truly unmatched meal, that being the one I linked yesterday.

You may find yourself incredulous to hear it, but I didn't have all of the kitchen tools the recipe called for when I decided to make it. Luckily, one of my outings this week took me to the mall, where I stumbled into that miracle of marketing, Kitchen Kapers. And they provided me with precisely what I needed to prepare my sofrito:















That's the ticket! This mortar and pestle was the perfect birthplace for my delicious sazon/garlic/oil/salt/pepper paste. And when I was done making that, I slathered it all over the meat like so:














Scrumptious! As per the recipe, I poked some holes in the meat and stuffed them full of sofrito just to be safe. I wasn't able to get my hands on any pork shoulder, but I figured a pork roast should work just as well. And it did! Super tasty!

For dessert we had tostones, but I forgot to take a picture. Plantains are mouth-watering, though. I'll definitely need to use them more in my cooking. Anyway, the meal was a big hit, and my friends were profoundly shocked at my culinary abilities. Not that they're newly developed abilities or anything; I guess in the past these friends always assumed my wife was doing all of the cooking. Well, I certainly demonstrated the keenness of my abilities to those lack-wits!

Speaking of my wife, I've noticed that I haven't been sleeping as well since she left. I'm not sleeping any less, but I don't dream at all, and I have a much harder time getting up in the morning. It may have something to do with my increasingly busy social schedule keeping me out and active more often. I've certainly been lucky to be able to keep in touch with my wife -- international calling seems pretty cheap from the cell phone she purchased in Ghana, and her host family has a computer with internet access. I mean, I tried stacking up the pile of clean laundry she left unfolded into a replacement pile to fill space next to me on the bed, but it's way too colorful to pass for her.

My fatigue may simply by stress from being taken so far out of my habits, and it's really not that bad. I was kidding yesterday when I said I was lonely; I haven't really had any time to be by myself at all. Tonight I'll be hanging out with friends, and then over the weekend I'll be visiting with family. Monday night again will be spent with friends, and then probably the whole week again! In fact, despite all this hanging out with friends, there are still MORE friends clamoring to hang out with me! And several friends I need to call and make arrangements to hang out with! Seriously, things were never this busy with my wife around. Somehow working in an office provides me with more solitude than being at home!

This is most likely just another case of wanting what I can't have. After all, I was looking forward to being a social butterfly! I'll miss all this fun talky-talk time when it's gone. But life is a balance, after all, and I need to find some way to keep my competing needs in order. This bears thought, so more on it will come. Just give it time.

Those Terrible Pangs

I admit, it's been a few days longer than I expected, and for that I apologize. I've had plenty to keep me busy in my wife's absence, and somehow I managed to avoid any of that being cooking or cleaning. In fact, since she left, I've hardly had any time to myself. Mysteriously, I'm alone more often when my wife is around. Is this one big conspiracy? Is everyone colluding to force me to choose between having my wife around and spending time with people who are not her? Not that having my wife around, strictly speaking, is my choice to make.

It seems that those other people in my life have "taken an interest" in my well-being, assuming from my character that, uxor absentis, I'd be dead in a few hours. On some nights, I've had as many as three separate dinner invitations (before you go thinking I'm insanely popular, be content to hear that two of those were from family). So while I had been looking forward to the thought of a bit of solitude, it seems even that solace is denied me. O me woebegone man, for whom companionship be most blessedly vexatious!

And things have come to pass such that, short of murder most foul, there's simply no way for me to be alone in my residence. The day before my wife left, we (somewhat inconveniently) had a wedding to attend. The centerpieces at the reception were colorful betta fish floating around in their own little vases. It was a nice idea, and an even nicer wedding, but when the evening's end rolled around, tradition reared its ugly head. My wife and I love to dance, so we tend to be among the last guests standing at weddings. This can result in our getting to take home a lot of leftover favors and having some more time to talk to the newlyweds, which is never a bad thing. Unfortunately, we are also complete suckers, so we wound up taking home TWO of these accursed fish -- that's right, we got a centerpiece from somebody else's table in addition to our own.

Even better, these are both male betta fish, which means they have to be kept in separate fishbowls or else they'll slaughter each other. And their bowls have to be kept far enough apart that they can't see each other. And I have to remember to feed them! Little Cormorant and γ probably aren't very long for this world.

Fish updates to follow; tonight I'm making this delicious-sounding recipe. I'll let you know how it goes, even though I don't really have to, because I am a genius and it will go wonderfully. Adieu!

p.s. I'm so lonely

Terror at 150 Degrees

Dishwashers get pretty hot. I know this because my wife prefers to run ours when we're either not at home or about to go to bed, in order to avoid having to deal with the miserable heat. I also know this because it really, really hurts when you pick up a plate out of the dishwasher immediately after it has finished its cycle. Not that I did that...this time.

Last night, as I was beginning to feel the icy grip of sleep reaching out for my softly beating heart, I noticed a curious inverse relationship between the number of dishes in the sink and those in the dishwasher. My wife, in her eternal wisdom, had left the dishwasher open, blocking my path, to better remind me of its existence. After bumping into it for the eighth time, I determined that, seeing as I was about to slam the silk, I might as well load and run the dishwasher. It'd be an adventure! A strange exploration of foreign concepts and space, replete with discoveries and achievements. I was so wrong!

Envisioning myself loading the dishwasher, I saw a gentleman, whom you would be correct to describe as both intrepid and dynamic, daintily tossing plate after utensil after glass into the dishwasher, each article landing perfectly in its assigned place. His fitted leisure suit unblemished by the worst excesses of leftover comestible splurge spattering against the parched machine's innards, he casually pours powdery-fine detergent into the tray from a height of about five feet, not missing a mote, then deftly closes the contraption with a kick, flips the switch to "ON," and commences to enjoy a favorite broadcast program in the meantime. Friends, this is not how dishwashers really work!

As I surveyed the device that would soon transform a piece of my tranquil kitchen into a deceptively watery hellscape, I realized that I had no idea where to start. Was I supposed to load the top or the bottom first? Although I was able to find a site with step-by-step instructions on loading a dishwasher, including advice on the order in which you should unload the racks, there was no clue about where to start! I decided my best bet would be to start with bottom (less chance of collapse), and then alternate between the top and bottom to guarantee an even weight distribution. Just think of the disaster potential in an uncalibrated dishwasher!

Lucky that a quick rinse had taken care of the major food particles, I loaded a fork and then double-checked that site I'd looked at earlier. What's that? "Be warned: how one does or does not put silverware in the dishwasher can break up a beautiful friendship or marriage!"

"Oh no!" I thought. "My marriage is beautiful! And temporarily physically broken up, in terms of us not sharing the same physical space!" I was poorly served by the site's extremely ambiguous advice, which merely offered the possibility of the utter destruction of my marriage if I did it wrong -- despite the fact that I had no idea what was wrong in this case. Obviously, I knew my wife has a system, but lacking any way of discovering it, I was on my own -- a decision that could end my marriage forever was in my hands.

After mulling it over for a few hours, I came to the conclusion that I could just load the silverware however I wanted; as long as I remembered to empty the whole thing before she got back, she would never be the wiser! She would simply assume that I hadn't run the dishwasher at all in the time she was gone, and our marriage would continue peacefully.

I'm a genius.

After getting over my terror at the prospect of permanent bachelorhood, I managed to load the rest of the...front...of the dishwasher. There was still the matter of the back part of each rack, the part you have to roll the racks out to get to. I had a bad experience in my childhood moving a dishwasher rack; I won't go into it here, but let's just say that the family cat was never quite the same afterward. After a few stiff shots of pomegranate juice, I felt adequately enabled to face my demons, and pulled the racks forward.

What confronted me was like the worst of my nightmares distilled into a pure manifestation of madness. The geography in the back of that dishwasher borders on the non-Euclidean. Where the front of each rack features nice, orderly rows between which you'd slide each dish, the back is filled with pincers, pokers, swivels, trays and other miscellany that could apparently be used for either hosting a barbecue or violating the Geneva Conventions, but never for storing dishes safely.

After recovering from the massive psychological trauma I suffered from gazing into the abyss, I shoved my leftover dishes anywhere they would fit. In some places they were leaning against each other perilously; in others, they were simply stacked one atop the other. I know that's a major violation of your so-called "dishwasher etiquette," but what choice did I have?? Before too long, all of my dishes were more-or-less ensconced within the soon-to-be-warm bosom of that wicked machine. Only one step remained -- the soap.

For reasons too numerous to explore right now, soap and I have a troubled history together. In form of bar, gel, liquid, foam, powder, or otherwise, I basically can tolerate soap only minimally better than I can tolerate smelling terrible. And here, this hideously powerful soap -- this detergent -- taunted me with is very existence, an embodiment of causticity that every moment threatened to dissolve its meager cardboard packaging and move on to devour my flesh. I held my breath and the box at arm's length as I poured a tiny amount into the dishwasher's tray. Having finished the job safely, I allowed myself to breathe in deeply out of relief. What a terrible mistake! Small particles of soap still floated in the air, and every one was pulled deep into my nasal canal. If you've never accidentally inhaled dishwasher detergent, take my word for it that it will quickly drive you insane with agony.

In my soap-induced, near-blind flailings, I somehow managed to activate the dishwasher -- hopefully at the right setting -- and staggered into my bedroom. I collapsed onto my bed, smashing a fist into my sinuses over and over again in a hilariously vain effort to expel the tiny pieces of detergent that seemed determined to clean my very brain of the struggling consciousness polluting its folds. In my last moment of lucidity, I heard the dishwasher kicking into life, the sound of powerful jets of water accompanied by various clanks and shrieks which could only be my dishes grinding in protest at their unnatural orientation to each other.

I awoke this morning in a pool of sweat, somehow having managed to survive my grueling ordeal with hardly a scar on my exterior. My nose was somewhat sore, and I had a headache, but it was no worse than any other morning. Better yet, the dishwasher had done its duty remarkably well, without a single break. I breathed another sigh of relief (breathing out this time), and went about my morning ablutions with newly clean dishes. For today, at least, both my flatware and my marriage remain intact.

Food Log #1 - Circus Pizza

Forgive me for the fauxmanteau up there. I will now take a moment to scar your minds horribly, unalterably, forever. Buckle up and otherwise prepare to gaze upon my favorite candy: Circus Peanuts! These are easily among the most reviled candies in the world. They are so hated that the Straight Dope has fielded questions on whether anyone actually likes them. Thankfully, the results of that question assure me that I'm not completely alone (in terms of candy preference, not in terms of my wife utterly abandoning me). Yesterday, a friend asked me if my "love" of Circus Peanuts was really just a ruse concocted so that I could buy candy without fear of other people stealing it. It's a nice idea, but I really love them.

The great thing about Circus Peanuts is that they actually are disgusting to eat. If you've never had one and don't believe the hype, let me confirm: marshmallows were never meant to be banana-flavored. I can't really stand to eat more than five at a time. Not only are they fat-free, but they have a built-in overeating prevention mechanism! Folks, this is a really fantastic candy. And cheap, too! They're so good that I get the hankering to eat more just a few minutes after getting sick of them. That's an excellent turnaround time. Candy corn weighs heavily on my palate for a lot longer than that. In fact, I believe I will have some immediately after I write this. Delicious, and so chewy! How many candies do you know that taste even better when they're stale? Marshmanna from heaven.

Luckily for my digestive tract (not so much for my figure), the other food I'm using to kick off my renewed bachelorhood is a classic: Pizza Hut pizza. See, my wife is lactose intolerant, so I can't really enjoy store- or restaurant-made pizza anymore without feeling super guilty. We've managed to compromise with her affliction by making pizza at home using lactose-free shredded cheeses (Kraft, we love you), but there's something about a Pizza Hut pizza, something deep in the crust, that you can't replicate without breaking a few health codes. Thankfully, there's a Pizza Hut right near my job, so I placed an order on-line and zipped over to get my $10 pizza (traditional crust, italian sausage & mushrooms), which I have since eaten for lunch, dinner, breakfast, and lunch. The pizza's gone, but four meals for $10 is a pretty good deal indeed, so Pizza Hut should keep its eyes open for my custom.

I also heated up some spicy sweet potato fries. My wife has always handled that before, because she doesn't trust me to use the toaster oven anymore (please don't ask), so I was a little unsure. But with some small trepidation I was able to foil the oven pan, throw in the fries, and wait twenty minutes for the delicious feast to come. Somehow, I still managed to turn one of the orange fries yellow -- not sure what I did there, but they can't all be winners -- and enjoyed the fruits of my exhaustive labors with mayonnaise. It really takes the edge off the spiciness!

My plan is as follows: no eating after 10pm. Somewhat careful tracking of calories (to the point that I aim for 1600 calories a day, but will accept up to 2000). Being a sizable adult male of low activity, most sites that I have checked have placed my required daily calorie intake to maintain weight at about 3000 calories. This isn't going to be a weight loss blog, have no fear, but I want you all to understand some of my stranger dietary quirks.

Oh, and before you ask why, if I want to lose weight, I'm still eating candy: silly reader, haven't you been listening? Circus Peanuts are banana-flavored. I've gotta get my potassium somewhere.

One man's dream....

I'm married. Happily so! My wife and I have been married since May of 2009, and we've been together since another six years before that. Like spouses the world over, she recognizes that a large part of her job is to make my life more difficult for little to no discernible reason. I do my best to repay her in kind, but this month she's made a decision that'll put her in the lead for some time to come.

My wife has decided to volunteer for 3 weeks in Ghana. She's attached herself to a pretty cool program, and she'll be working at an orphanage run by the Order of the Holy Paraclete in Mampong in the Ashanti region. She's always dreamed of giving of herself selflessly to help people in far-off places, so naturally I encouraged her to fly to the ends of the earth in pursuit of that goal. I'm just that good.

But where does this leave me? Sure, it's only three weeks, but here -- just when I'm settling in and finally finding a routine that ensures a happy cohabitation -- she's up and leaving me to my own devices. And what devices they are!

This blog is a record of my thoughts, cares, and (most importantly) foods consumed during my revived period of bachelorhood. I don't want you to get the impression that usually my wife does all the housework -- far from it -- but I do have a bit of trouble from time to time finding the motivation to help out. So without her to help clean, cook, and console me after facing the harsh ravages the world throws my way, how will I get by? Will it be a non-stop orgy of candy, video games, and morose musings on the nature of loneliness and companionship? Or, having never really lived by myself before, will this be a wonderful chronicle of nascent self-reliance? Come with me, dear readers, as we journey down this obstacle course of single living, this parable of independence, this odyssey of culinary, recreational, and social endeavor...together!