Words On Wednesday

Hard seltzers are the new IPA. They’re the “in” thing right now, adored by hipsters and the like, and criticized by your more traditional beer drinkers. These alcoholic sparkling waters are quickly gaining market share, while craft beers are other categories remain static or fall (Kendall, 2019). Being the adventurous soul that I am, new types of alcohol always interest me, even if I do feel like a stereotypical cool kid while trying them. My first exposure to hard seltzers was the Truly Colima Lime flavor. It was available from the Ingles Mix-N-Match area one time, and I’m more than willing to try a drink if I can get it as a single, rather than committing to a full 6-pack of it. We threw one in with our weekend beer run, figuring it was worth a shot. In this case, I’m very glad we only got one. It was awful. I don’t really care for seltzers or soda water anyway. Unflavored options seem to have a salty, bitter flavor. Flavored options like La Croix have the same shortcoming,...

I’ve always been interested in writing a story, and lately I’ve been revisiting the idea with a more approachable technique. Instead of knocking out a full novel in one fell swoop, I might publish a number of different stories in more of a serial format. When considering what I might write a story about, I’ve had several different ideas: a drug addict who sees large buildings and construction equipment as monsters, a high fantasy work that serves as a more literary telling of the adventures I’ve had across several MMO games, a post-apocalyptic tale of a society rebuilding from disaster. Each of these is obviously unique from the others, and if I were to commit to one, I would be stuck with it for the duration, even if I might want to entertain one of the other ideas. If I let myself switch, the stories might get caught up in the literature equivalent of development hell, and never actually publish anything at all. To avoid this unsavory scenario, I considered that I might write mor...

I’ve always struggled with reaching and maintaining a healthy weight, part of which is eating a healthy breakfast. Lately, I’ve been trying to find something that is healthy, but also something that I can meal prep, and sustainably eat over a long time frame. Checking all of those boxes has been a surprisingly difficult endeavor. At first, I started with overnight oats. They tasted pretty good, and they were surprisingly customizable. Change up what fruits or spices you add, and it creates an entirely new dish. After a while, though, I started to get tired of them. Fruit gets mushy pretty quickly after you cut it, so I could prep the oats themselves about a week in advance, but I had to add the other stuff in each morning. Plus, they were a little higher in carbs than I wanted to consume for breakfast, so I started to look for some other alternative. A friend posted on Facebook that she mixed protein powder with a pumpkin spice latte k cup, in an attempt to meet her protein goal...