In the last couple of months, I’ve developed a new love affair. Don’t worry. It’s nothing that will threaten my marriage. I have discovered that I love a good deli sandwich.

It all started when a coworker, Bob the Cisco Ninja, invited me to lunch at one of his favorite places (he has many “favorite” places). It’s called “Weinberger’s Deli”. I was only able to find one good reference on the web, and it’s a review in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram. Weinberger’s is a Chicago style deli, with a real “mom and pop” feel. It’s really small, smells kinda funky, and the same people are always behind the counter, night and day. Oh, and by the way, their food rocks.

I have a to-go menu next to my phone and I’ve been systematically going through it, trying everything and, so far, everything is good. Here is a transcription of some menu items and my hand written notes next to them.

The Brat (Wisconsin Veal Brat, Brown Mustard and Grilled Onions or Kraut or both) “Good”
Da Beef (Italian Beef on Gonnella Bread, dipped in Au jus and served with either Green Peppers and Onions or the traditional way with Giardinerra) “Really Good, but hard to eat and Giardinerra peppers burn my tummy”
Totally Wicked Sandwich (Served on a toasted Kummelwick Bun, Hot Roast Beef or Hot Smoked Turkey Breast, covered in real Horseradish, Mayo, Sweet Onion and sliced Kosher Pickles.) “Awesome”
Texyorker (Hot Pastrami, melted Cheddar Cheese, BBQ Sauce, Sweet Onion on a Poppy Seed Roll) “HECK YA!”

A couple things to note about Weinberger’s: If you sit in the tiny dining area to eat, 1) you’ll have a constant line of patrons squeezing by your chair to place their order and 2) for the rest of the day your clothes and hair will smell like the smoke from a well seasoned grill.

Having discovered that deli’s are good, one night Tammy met me at the office and we went looking for somewhere new to eat. I saw McAlister’s Deli and thought we should try it out. It was great!

McAlister’s is the polar opposite of Weinberger’s. McAlister’s is a national chain and feels like one. Big dining areas, clean and bright, staffed by the latest crop of the high school work force. Still, their menu is diverse and, try as I might, I can’t find anything bad on it. They’re signature item is Southern style sweet tea. *moan* It is so good I can’t even express it.

Every time I go into McAlister’s I see several people staring agape at the huge menu (drawn on chalk boards to look more deli-ish) displaying to all the fact that they’re first timers. Several times I’ve offered these first timers advice, since I’m about half way through the menu now and can speak with some authority. That’s partially why I decided to do this post. To share the knowledge.

Taco Salad (Fresh greens, chili, cheddar cheese, tomatoes, sour cream, jalapeños and black olives on a bed of warm tortilla chips) “Yum!”
The Reuben (Piles of thin-sliced corned beef topped with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Thousand Island dressing on rye) “Pretty Good”
The Patriot (Smoked Turkey, lettuce, tomatoes, mayo, Swiss cheese on Wheatberry bread with Orange Cranberry Sauce) “Sounds weird, tastes great!”
Muffuletta (New Orleans style muffuletta bread, ham, Genoa salami, olive salad and provolone cheese) “Not bad”
Delta Delight (Roast beef, ham, provolone cheese and sliced jalapeños and BBQ sauce on a 6″ hoagie) “HECK YA!”
The Big Nasty (Roast beef served open-faced on a toasted 12″ hoagie covered in McAlister’s “Come-Back” Gravy, topped with cheddar and Swiss cheese and green onions) “Whoa! VERY Yum, but big enough for three meals”

They also have a wide selection of baked potatoes (that I’ve seen on other people’s plates and they’re roughly the size of regulation footballs) but I’ve been avoiding those for the sake of my girlish figure. In the near future, I’d like to analyze my favorite deli delights in terms of nutritional concerns. I’m sure that these slices of heaven are laced with nutrition from hell.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, my tummy is rumbling and my mouth is watering. I got to get out of here before I start chewing on my keyboard.

They say bad habits are hard to break, but for me, it’s harder to make good ones.

I’m doing pretty good on my commitment to memorize a verse a week. I must admit, I am a week behind, but the good news is that I had already memorized this week’s verse a few years ago.

Eph. 2:8-9 (From memory, I swear!) “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not of yourself, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one may boast.”

But last weeks verse is still not tucked into my memory yet.

Acts 3:19 “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.”

I haven’t figured out a good way to review all the previous verses each week to make sure they stay fresh in my mind. I wrote the references on my wall calendar, but that’s only good for the current month.

Now, if I could just get my body working as hard as my brain, I’ll be ship shape in no time.

Back in January, I set some short term goals for myself. I did… okay. I made it through January without eating donuts, rice or potatoes, but I fell off the wagon big time when it came to soft drinks and candy. My weekly weigh-in showed only minimal results from the first two weeks, when I was staying true. But after I gave it to the temptations, I quickly floated back up to my current (over) weight plateau (250 pounds más o menos).

So now, I must redouble my efforts. And this week’s white board quip might add some motivation through degradation.

You’re not fat! You just look fat because you’re so old.

I don’t remember exactly how I ended up receiving the “What On Earth” catalog for the first time. But I do know that it changed the course of my life. It was choke full of the clothing equivalent of manna from heaven. T-shirts! Funny ones, weird ones, cool ones, t-shirts that would make me stand out from the pubescent junior high crowd. It was like the first time a baby discovers cake frosting. I was all wide-eyed and couldn’t get enough.

Through college, my friend Galyn and I became famous (or infamous) for our eclectic t-shirts. It became, for me, more of a lifestyle than a fashion choice. The “fat ugly hula girls” and the “big spotted hoodoos” were more who we were than what we wore.

Well, lo and behold, the circle of life has come back around. I discovered only a few weeks ago, that the “What On Earth” catalog still exists and they now have a web site. *GLEE* There are literally thousands of shirts on there site, so it will take me a while to go through them all, and I fear that my t-shirt wish list will soon require it’s own dedicated hard drive. So be it. Never again will I struggle with the question, “What do you want for your birthday?” My response will be the following URL: http://www.surelyyourenotserious.com/blog/?page_id=448

I know it must be hard for you to believe, but I’m not real big on this whole Valentine’s Day thing. In fact, I might have missed it all together if it weren’t for the fact that my wife and I are celebrating a friend’s birthday tonight. Oh, looky there. Haven’s birthday is on V Day.

The way I see it, I love my wife every day all year long. Why would I go out of my way to, at great expense, “prove” that I love her on some arbitrary day established, no doubt, to boost sales of flowers and candy.

Fortunately, my wife is the coolest wife in the whole world. (Sorry, all you married guys, but mine’s better. Deal with it.) She’s not happy about my feelings on V Day, but she’s okay with it.

Jess’s wife has an even more extreme take on the matter which I will let him explain.

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Addendum:
I should clarify something. The only way any guy can get away with shrugging off V Day is if he showers his wife with love the rest of the year. Honestly, due to my work schedule over the last few months, I have not been pulling my weight in that regard. Sorry, Squirt. I’ll do better, I promise.

I’m really having a hard time with the idea that it’s already February. Somehow the entire month of January passed in what felt like a week. But, at long last, my life should be returning to normalcy, which in my life is a bit of a misnomer.

I’m still shaking bugs out of the new website, but I’m confident enough in it to send you there. It’s at www.altn.com. I’ll get some screen shots of the old website before we trash it so you can see a comparison. We went from a “way too busy”, “magazine ad” look to a down-right Spartan, “clean and simple” look. And oh-by-the-way, we completely redesigned the back-end, e-commerce architecture and introduced a fully content managed design. Now the marketing guys can reword and rearrange to their hearts’ content without bother the web developers… much.

I am co-directing “The Diaries of Adam and Eve” for Stage Right Productions. It’s a dessert theater performed in reader’s theater style. By “co-directing” I mean that I showed up for auditions, two rehearsals, and that’s about it. Please reference my earlier discussion of the chronology of January. Still, the show is going to be awesome.

The stage will still be warm after dessert theater when we start auditions and rehearsals for the Spring musical. I’ve been too busy to know much about what’s going on there, but rest assured, I’ll be involved somehow.

I can’t express how eager I am get back on my mountain bike and rock wall. I look forward to misplacing my gut, maybe for good this time.

There are so many things I’ve missed over the last three or four months that I’ll never really be able discuss fully here. Apparently there was some election or something and the Democrats are kind of excited about it. Despite the insistence and urging of many, the world has not melted, nor the sky fallen. Several people about whom I really couldn’t care less have publicly announced that rehab will somehow repair their moral bankruptcy and corrupt lifestyles. There are also unconfirmed reports that some vestige of the movie industry still exists in Southern California.

I look forward to getting back in the saddle and entertaining you all, or at least allowing you to peek in on my occasional rants and worthless opinions.

This is it, sports fans. It’s 4 AM the night before the web site goes live. I’ll publish the web address later when I know the site release was successful. I’m not pessimistic. I just don’t want to invite you all to the party and they kick you all out because somebody spilled punch on the carpet.

I’m making the last preparations and moving the latest code to the server. It’s kind of like putting your kid on the bus for the first time (except I’ve never actually done that). You just hope that you’ve raised them right and that none of the other kids beat them up once their out of your care.

I want to thank EVERYONE for your encouragement, prayer, patience, prayer and prayer. If you sent me a comment and didn’t see it show up, it’s probably because I had 352 comments in my moderation folder (I’m SO not making that up) and rather than try to sort through them, I just deleted them all. Nothing personal. It’s just… you know… 4 AM.

I had a huge response from friends and family about the verse of the week. Did you all get Romans 3:23 memorized by last Sunday? I did.

As for my other resolutions, on Monday, after a week of going without processed carbs (candy, sodas, etc.), I weighed exactly (to the pound) what I weighed the previous Monday. And man am I jonesing! I dream of sitting down to four or five grilled stuffed burritos and a 200 ounce Mountain Dew Code Red.

For the last five years or so, I had a standing order for Christmas: A Dilbert desk calendar. Every morning, as my PC started up, I’d tear off yesterday’s humor and get a fresh laugh. Then I discovered something. The strips in the desk calendar are the same strips that are on the website, just three years older. That means that for the last two years, I’ve been laughing at strips I’ve laughed at before. (Still just as funny though.)

So, this year I thought I’d get out of the rut. While Tammy and I were out shopping, I saw an “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader” desk calendar and asked for that instead. It’s been weird not having two doses of Dilbert each day, and so far (Jan. 9th) Uncle John hasn’t been that great. But I’m going to give him a chance. It’s early.

Today’s story about a crossing guard who used a hair dryer to get cars to slow down at the crossing earned a mild chuckle. Then the kicker (there’s always a little one liner at the bottom) said, “Experts say pessimism raises blood pressure,” to which the pessimist in my brain said, “Oh great! Now I’m going to get high blood pressure. THANKS!”

Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to go read today’s Dilbert strip, because laughter lowers blood pressure.

All the experts agree (which implies that someone is lying) that the best way to achieve long term goals (like resolutions) is to make short term goals. So here goes.

Long term goal: Finish 4 non-fiction books
Short term goal: Read at least 5 pages every week day.

I am a miserably slow reader. I enjoy reading but I get very frustrated by the fact that I can not read without vocalizing the words in my head. Thus I read silently just as slow as I read out loud. I’ve tried many tricks, but my brain refuses to change how it reads. Naughty brain. No donuts for you!

Long term goal: 235 pounds
Short term goal: No candy, no donuts, no soft drinks, no white rice and no potatoes in January.

I tipped in at 250 this morning, down a little from last week. I still can’t ride my bike to work for a while, since I’m going back to late hours to get the web site project done. So my only alternative is to cut back on refined and starchy carbs. Expect the stock prices of french fries and Sprite to spike in early February.

Long term goal: More productivity
Short term goal: No web comics, no web videos, and no news/blog sites outside of my RSS feeder until the web site project goes to beta.

This is going to be much harder than the donuts and soft drinks.