Tonight, I may or may not have gotten hit on while in a bar. A (very inebriated) lady complimented my hair while I was closing out my tab and told me that I forgot to put product in it. I explained that I don't use product in my hair, because I have little enough as is, and I prefer my hair to be mobile and limber, like a mongoose ready to strike out at any Gorgons that may swing by. I think she may have been negging me. Of course, she was OBSCENELY drunk, so I'm not sure that her thought processes were even fathomable by that point.

But, hey, if negging can happen to me, then it can happen to you. I'm not sure how we should feel about it. I mean, it's really not a particularly constructive way to indicate any sort of attraction or openness to intimacy, but neither is a lot of what happens in elementary schools, romantic comedies, and the internet, so who are we to judge? I've already talked about online dating, though. I'm sure I have. I'm not going there tonight. That doesn't mean I know where I'm going, of course.

Now I do, though. See, Thanksgiving is coming up, so- Oh. You think I'm going to talk about Thanksgiving? No. No no no. We've already had an incredibly epic post about that. There have been demands for selfies from the drawer bed. There has been much confusion and speculation over said drawer bed. Thanksgiving dinner itself is absolutely amazing. People don't even understand. I think I'm bringing wine? I don't even know if I'm bringing wine. I should clarify whether or not I'm bringing wine, and I should also get my linguistic brain functioning enough to not attempt to type "weather" instead of "whether," because I know better than that, and this is just unacceptable.

But I digress.

No, Thanksgiving is coming up, so I don't want to make anything that will have a lot of leftovers, because I don't think they're particularly going to last through the holiday weekend without some serious health concerns, of which I need no more for this year, thanks. Due to my illness, I've been regularly thawing containers of miso soup that I froze down about a month ago. The soup itself is pretty solid and has protein and vegetable matter, I'm sure, so that's a big solid, especially with the surplus of health issues (see: every mention of my cough over the past week and a half). I was thawing a container today after lunch, when I used the last of my unthawed soup. (There are still multiple containers of soup in the freezer, because I had a lot of miso, seaweed, and chard to use up, because what other recipes actually call for either miso, seaweed, or chard?) When I got home from lab, a substantial part of the soup was thawed, except for the giant ball of frozen miso soup in the middle. So, for dinner, I had some pretzels and Biscoff spread.

Biscoff was discovered in the same manner as Cracklin' Oat Bran. Namely, by watching uppets slowly devolve into madness and debauchery.

For those of you who don't know, Biscoff spread is a cookie butter made by the lotus company. It's basically shortbread ground up and mixed with magic and leprechauns to form a smooth butter that tastes amazing and will magically transfer itself by the jarful into your stomach if you aren't careful. I AM fairly careful, and I know better, so I only ate half of the jar for dinner. With some pretzels. And some water.

Many of you are probably thinking, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Rob, easy there. Your pancreas needs rest. You need healthier food. You are going to develop hypertension and high cholesterol, and you'll be dead of a heart attack by 24." First off, I've already surpassed that landmark, so no worries there- it's all downhill from here. Second off, I am an adult, and these are the decisions I have chosen to make for myself.

That said, that decision was absolutely terrible and left me in a pretty rough state for most of the evening (INCLUDING RIGHT NOW, I'm sure). I've since added a clementine to the equation, as well as two PBR's, as they are cheap and I want to support local bars in becoming the number one sellers of PBR in the nation (screw you New York City).

NEW YORK CITY?!

In honor of my terrible decisions this evening, I give you, "Things Rob Could Have Done For Dinner That Would Have Been Better Decisions Than Biscoff Spread, Pretzels, Water, 2 (Okay, One And a Half, Even Though Rob Knows That You Should Never Leave a Beer Unfinished, But Sometimes You Have To Look Out For Your Own Well Being Over Niceties And Principles, Especially Those Relating To Whether Or Not One Should Finish A Beer When One Really Does Not Want To Finish a Beer) PBRs, And a Clementine Later."

1. Gone Out

There are plenty of restaurants in the area that I could have gone to to get some sort of food. I could have even just swung by a Taco Bell and gotten a delicious prescription of Delayed Release Regret. The bar has good sandwiches, in which I could have partaken (okay, fine, good might be stretching it, but they are certainly quite edible and delicious, because bacon). I could have gone and gotten grocery store sushi. (As an aside, I once walked out to my car at that store and found that someone's grocery store sushi had come open and fallen down, leaving pieces of sushi on the ground. This may have been one of the most bourgeois sad things I have witnessed.) If I had the time and inclination to spend the money, I could have had virtually anything that I could have wanted to eat. Out is a big place, and you can find such treasures Out there.

2. Gone to the Store for Provisions

I probably needed to pick up some carrots and milk anyway, so a trip to the store would not have gone entirely awry. At this point, I need to get some sleep. I figure that I'm a good 1100 (okay, fine, not quite, but I believe that this parenthetical might just get us over the 1100 mark if we BELIEVE IN MIRACLES DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES I WANT TO BELIEVE IN MIRACLES SO HARD RIGHT NOW) words in, and I can finish this up tomorrow.

It is now today, which was tomorrow yesterday. I have had five hours of sleep, and my stomach is replete with cereal and a bagel with bacon/scallion cream cheese, because God exists and wants us to be happy (and doesn't make a huge deal about pork products anymore). Anyway, to continue in the vein of last night's post, I could have gone to the store and picked up all manner of foodstuffs. Even if most of my culinary repertoire is based around leftovers, I could finish some leftovers over the course of five days or so. I mean, there wasn't a lot of time to cook anything extensive, but I'm sure I could have found something decent to work with. Worst case, I could have picked up a friggin' Stouffer's lasagna, followed the microwave instructions, and ended up with lasagna burned to shit all around the edges while I burned the ever loving bajeezus out of my mouth, but I would have had a far healthier dinner than pretzels and Biscoff. Also, I could have picked up ingredients for sandwiches of some sort, which would have prepared me for some sort of eventuality in which sandwiches are necessary. I can't give you gold all the time, especially on five hours of sleep.

3. Eaten Some Freaking Vegetables (Or Fruit)

As of last night, I still had several carrots just hanging out in my fridge. Carrots themselves do not make for the finest meal ever, but there was also some garlic and some onions, which really wouldn't have been all that appetizing either. I also had a few bananas, some of which weren't completely brown (so, um, aces) and several pounds of clementines. I'm not saying that any of these would in themselves make anything resembling an actual meal, but you know what? Neither do pretzels, Biscoff spread, one and a half PBRs, and a clementine later in the evening.

4. The Ramen Spectrum (haha because see it's a physical chemistry joke about inelastically scattered photons following interactions with a molecule's vibrational states)

If this text is still bold, then I have failed you all. I had to do some writing on my phone to avoid suspicion by the boss, so you're getting some gonzo blogging as well as (possibly) the unfortunate effects of my phone's auto correct functions. But I digress.

Ramen noodles get a bit of undeserved hate. Not a lot of undeserved hate, mind you, but a bit. Yes, they're cheap and high in sodium, and their flavor packets are pretty suspect, but in the right hands, Ramen can be okay. I don't know why my phone capitalizes Ramen, but maybe that's the correct way to do it? And now, welcome from the future which is now the past as I needed to take a roughly six hour break to handle things in lab. Huzzah. Anyhoo, yes, ramen/Ramen can be suspect as your run of the mill bachelor food, which in itself would probably have been better than the litany of malarkey that I was eating last night.

That's the taste of economizing, son.

But if you've got, say, some onions, some garlic (for example), and some spices to give it a little kick, then you've got something great going. Add in some eggs and fish sauce (which also happened to be hanging out in my fridge, just straight chilling, yo WOCKA WOCKA), and you've got something magical and amazeballs (although there were no balls of amaze in my fridge, which is unfortunate, because I'd imagine that they'd really pair well with ramen/Ramen).

That's the taste of economizing in style, son. You are now a man. Here's your man card. Don't lose it.

5. Defrosted the Goddamned Soup

Because, I mean, there's a microwave RIGHT THERE.

Goddammit, Rob.

6. Brinner 

Brinner, or breakfast for dinner, is a time honored tradition of small children, bachelors, and hobbits. It does, however, require rather specific breakfast ingredients. So, let's review what I had available in the house yesterday evening (in perhaps more detail than before):

-Some slices of bread
-A few eggs
-Some milk
-Some fruit
-Onions
-Garlic
-Probably some Swiss cheese or something like that
-Maple syrup
-Bisquick in the pantry
-Gingerbread pancake mix
-Vanilla
-Baking soda
-Cereal
-Other sundry goods

With those items, I could have made: scrambled eggs, an omelette, pancakes, French toast, a French toast omelette, cereal, scrambled pancakes, Bananarama, maple banana scrambeled omelette toast, a grilled Swiss cheese sandwich between French toast with a side of pancakes and scrambled bananas, straight up vanilla right from the bottle, and Cheerios.

In conclusion, my meal plan yesterday evening was a mistake and an utter failure. However, there was no way that my pancreas was coming out unscathed, and I am an adult, so I do what I want. AMERICA.