Andy Gapin

I can’t believe I did it again, but I followed up last year’s Rita’s tour with an even bigger and better tour this year. I’m not going to lie, it was intense. Last year was tough and mistakes were made, but we aimed higher this year. We hit four locations last time, but we wanted ten this year.

We couldn’t make it. Time wasn’t on our side. We were only able to make it to eight total locations over the course of nine hours. However, those nine hours did include a trip to a wedding venue hopeful that the fiance and I had already made an appointment with and a trip to Stuff Yer Face to get some food into us. I think we could have pulled off all ten locations still, but the one in Morristown didn’t exist anymore–damn Google for saying it was there–and another location was a few miles away from where we thought it was. But all-in-all, I think our efforts were quite impressive.

We improved on some of last year’s mistakes. This time, we made sure to eat real food beforehand and include a food stop later on in the trip. We also brought water and took advantage of sugar-free flavors at some locations to keep the sugar intake down. Additionally, we used self-control to not finish any serving. A regular sized ice at Rita’s is a pretty decent size, but trying to have eight of those in a day is enough to give you diabetes on the spot. I only consumed a third to a half of each one and in a couple locations requested just a kids size instead. And one last thing that I think may have helped was that my fiance and I went for a five-mile run in the morning.

Unfortunately, we got tempted by a random cupcake place we drove by in Denville, NJ. We saw Sugar Mommy’s Cupcakes and had to stop. Three of the four of us got cupcakes there which was not good for our sugar levels.

Ultimately, 21 flavors were tried by the group. Pretty impressive, I think. I also experienced flavors that I never even knew existed like RitaBerrious and Strawberry Margarita. The flavors that I tried myself were:

• Alex’s Lemonade – A standard, but always delicious.
• Green Apple – One of my favorites.
• Swedish Fish – I’m really glad that they kept this flavor after last year, it was only supposed to be a limited time thing. They got this impressively accurate.
• Georgia Peach – This was surprisingly amazing.
• Florida Orange – I only had a few spoonfuls of my fiance’s, but this was very good.
• Sugar-Free Cherry – Almost no flavor at all. Really disappointing.
• RitaBerrious – This wasn’t very good. I’m not even sure that it was supposed to be.
• Strawberry Margarita – Extremely good and very accurate tasting.
• Caramel Apple – Incredibly awesome.
• Peeps – This is a new flavor for this year. I only tried the sample, but it was good. About as gratuitously sugary as real Peeps.
• Island Fusion – I only sampled this one and had it not been only at the same location as the Caramel Apple, I would have ordered it.
• Pistachio – I only had a few bites of this since it was my fiance’s, but it was very, very good. I didn’t think I’d like it.

I’d like to think that this is a pretty impressive list, much better than last year. Last time around, we didn’t have a lot of choice at most of the locations, but I was very impressed this year to find that every location was pretty well stocked with flavors. Also, while most locations had lines 20-30 people deep at any given time, they moved quickly. Impressive.

Overall, I’d consider this to be a success this year. Much better than last time. I didn’t feel sick at all or over sugared really. Still, I think even more improvements could be made for next year and we could hit up to twelve stops. What probably killed us the most was the time it took to check out the wedding venue. That also kept us from staying more local. We ended up having to make a huge loop around instead of hitting a bunch of locations all within about 20 minutes of our apartment. To the right, is the map of the locations that we hit and below are a few pictures that I took. Also, for another account of the tour, check out Foodosaurus Rex. Enjoy!

Unfortunately for everyone, there was no edition of The Playlist this week. I was suffering from what I’m willing to say was the worst allergy day of my life and couldn’t make it to the station. I could barely open my eyes. Though, it at least prompted me to finally make a doctor’s appointment so that I can get the ball rolling on determining whether or not the suffering I’ve been going through lately is because of a newly developed cat allergy or something else.

Anyway, I finally made my first t-shirt purchase of the year last night. I can’t remember that last time I went this long, but I’ve been trying to save money for the wedding and such. Plus, I really have no where to store these damn things anymore. However, Threadless is running a $10 sale that’s good an all shirts. It’s a pretty awesome sale, actually. I had to take advantage. I’ll post pictures of the shirts when I get them.

I’ve been listening to the Against Me! album a bit more and it’s definitely growing on me. There are a lot of parts that I like a lot, but I’m still not digging about half of it. There are few bands that could put out an album that I’d put this kind of effort into liking, but I really want to like this.

Lastly, Saturday is free Rita’s day and I’m planning on doing the tour again this year. But I plan on correcting the mistakes that were made last year. We’ll spread it out of a larger portion of the day, eat a real meal in the middle, and get sugar-free flavors at a few of the stops to help ease the sugar overload. It’s going to be intense though. We’ve been swapping proposed maps back and forth and it looks like we’re shooting to double the amount of locations we hit last year. I’m sure I’ll post about it all afterwards, but I’m a little scared!

PS: Yes, I called it “water ice.”

I took a very productive burrito trip today, I got both of these pictures out of it.

Feel free to click on this one and vote for it.

I wanted to make a fail picture for this next one, but trying to capture a picture on my phone while driving wasn’t easy (don’t tell the cops) so it didn’t come out too great. Anyway, it’s a commercial van that has a bumper sticker that says “Evolution is a lie.” Seriously, way to attach personal beliefs about science being wrong and God being right to your company’s name. That’s a great way to make sure that you don’t alienate any potential customers. Really.

The company is called ShinyCar, in case you can’t read it and would like to boycott…or give them all your car shining business…which may or may not include Jack Nicholson.

Every year on the first day of Spring, Rita’s gives away free Italian ice. And every year, I say that I’m going to go on a tour of all the locations in the area. This has never happened…until this year! Rita’s Tour 2009 started as a great idea, sadly, it did not end as a great idea.

Since it was a workday, we just did it after work instead of making an entire day out of it, though I did cheat and go during lunch. We hit four locations in a well orchestrated, but slightly mob-like, assault of gluttony. It was actually quite impressive. I didn’t think we had it in us to follow our dreams like that, but there was some serious inspiration behind all our eyes.

The biggest issue we faced was that since they were literally giving it away, there were lines and not a lot of flavors to choose from at a couple locations. One location only had pina colada and it sucked. The gods were on my side at two locations though and I was able to score vanilla and sweet tea. Vanilla is my favorite, but sweet tea was a nice departure from the ordinary flavors. It even had a slightly different texture.

Prior to the outing, I thought I would feel amazing after all the glory of getting Rita’s five times in one day. I was mistaken. Very mistaken. I actually felt ill afterwards. I’m not talking about the Beastie Boys kind of ill, I’m talking about contemplating forcing myself to throw up just to get it out of me kind of ill. I didn’t think that too much Rita’s was possible, but it is very possible. Not only did my stomach feel weird, but my whole body felt like it was crying out for insulin. There were moments of intense amounts of energy throughout the tour, but the crash after the last stop was awful. The four of us were sitting in a diner booth looking like we were hungover and hadn’t slept in days. I felt just as bad as I looked.

While it will be forgotten over the next 365 days, there is a lesson to be learned here. If you are going to try to eat Rita’s out of business, you need to start early in the day and spread it out. Don’t try to do it all at once. Realize your sugar-intake limits!

For a more in-depth account of the outing, check out this.

And on a very related (read: completely unrelated) note, I got two new zombie shirts this week. I’ll have to double check the count, but I think these may be zombie shirts four and five. Both are from 6dollarshirts.com. But they’re printed on Hanes shirts which always fit a little weird so that kind of sucks.

This has been quite the Facebook craze over the last few weeks. It’s even been getting some media attention. I gave in a couple weeks back and did it, but now I think I’m going to post it here too. It was really hard at first to come up with all of these things. I sat there for a while trying to think of things, but then after I posted it, they kept coming to me. I almost did a follow up…or two.

1. I’m only making this list because I’ve been tagged no less than a dozen times.
2. I have dreams about the zombie apocalypse at least once a week.
3. If I hear the word “burrito,” I must immediately have one. There is no self-control here.
4. I have spent much of my life being afraid to do things by myself because I like to share experiences with people and can be afraid of situations in which I may look like I don’t know what’s going on. I am slowly changing this.
5. I like about half of Katy Perry’s music and am somewhat ashamed of it.
6. I love lolcats way too much.
7. My Google Reader has about 160 sites on it and allows me to always be up to date on news, webcomics, nerdy stuff, and lolz, but it has also ruined the Internet for me.
8. I think How I Met Your Mother is the most underrated show on TV.
9. I wish that I could more consistently update my blog.
10. I have pretty decent grammar skills, but I often have a bad habit of sending and then proofreading.
11. People with bad manners, especially those that don’t tuck their chairs in, anger me.
12. I have heard so much music in the last 10 years that I can barely remember anything about it or the bands that created it.
13. Caffeine calms me down and helps me focus.
14. My insurance got charged $7000 for my trip to the hospital for food poisoning a couple months ago.
15. Overly optimistic and overly pessimistic people really annoy me. As do people that have no touch with reality.
16. Generally, I don’t keep many friends longer than two years. A lot of the time, it’s really only a few months. I rarely even think twice about it or care when people leave my life.
17. On no less than two accounts, I have proven that the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” policy at 7-11 means nothing.
18. I abhor filling out things about myself. This includes profiles on websites, surveys, and forms.
19. Jawbreaker is my favorite band, but if they ever do a reunion, I’ll be pissed. I will also roadtrip and see every single show.
20. When Zooey Deschanel got engaged, I pretty much treated it like I was broken up with.
21. I have actually seen Deathbed: The Bed That Eats and can say that while it should be the worst movie I’ve ever seen, it is not.
22. I once got punched in the face by another driver while driving on rt287.
23. I can pinpoint the exact reasons behind my phobias of spiders and getting poked in the eye.
24. Being in a car without a seatbelt on makes me feel very anxious and weird.
25. I have to pee right now.

I’m actually a little disappointed in my score on the Geek Social Aptitude Test. I’m a pretty big nerd, but I guess I’m what I like to call a “social nerd.” When I’m at home, I’m almost always near a computer, not just reading a few sites or on Facebook, but messing around with Linux and reading about gadgets and other computer related stuff. But despite how much I love that and love talking about it all, I prefer to be out with my friends doing things…even if it’s just quoting TV shows, movies, and comedians and my iPhone is in my hand the entire time so that I don’t have to leave my email or RSS feeds unattended for too long.

I should probably be happy about this.

You Scored a 12 Out Of 50

You wear a “Can’t sleep, clowns will eat me” shirt you bought at Hot Topic, but you rarely have trouble gathering a crew to play Left 4 Dead at your place. Sure, you might not have been prom king, but you’ve found your niche and similar people to you and you’re making it work for yourself. You can’t really argue with that.

For pretty much no reason, I felt like making a few little lists and posting them. Maybe it’s just because I want to update this thing more often. I don’t know.

Current pluses:

• snowboarding
• How I Met Your Mother
• iPhone (more on this coming later)
• 2009
• being in the best physical shape that I’ve been in in almost ten years
• high level of productivity and busyness in my life over the past month and a half
• cat

Current minuses:

• the current lineup posted so far for South By Southwest

Horror remakes that I actually like a lot:

• The Amityville Horror
• The Hills Have Eyes
• My Bloody Valentine
• Halloween
• Dawn Of The Dead

Only bands I’ve been listening to recently (actually this is pretty standard):

• The Replacements
• Minus The Bear
• Gaslight Anthem
• Sundowner
• The Lawrence Arms
• Challenger

Last night, I was out at a bar in the city with a few friends and a discussion came up regarding the sexuality of a guy on the other side of the bar. He was pretty muscular and talking to a girl, but exploded with the vibe of not quite being ready to admit the truth to himself just yet. After a short while, we decided that the only way to find out was to send someone over to walk by and see if he checked them out.

None of us are really sure why we cared so much. It didn’t matter at all. We just needed an answer at this point.

Somehow, I was selected as the guy to do the walk by. The girl we sent, nothing. No acknowledgement whatsoever. But me, yeah, he looked me all up and down. It was quite flattering actually. But I couldn’t help feeling a little dirty afterwards. Here I was, a relatively straight man, trying to get a guy to check him out solely to prove a point. I almost felt bad, like I was duping him or something. I felt like one of those girls that go out on Friday and Saturday nights with the intention of being hit on by guys and being bought drinks all night. Then at the end of the night, they just go home to their boyfriends having had no intention of ever actually speaking to any of those guys again.

This got me thinking about two things…

One, why do gay guys seem to be way more into me than girls are? This is not even close to being the first time that I’ve received interest from a guy. Do I give off a vibe that I’m into men or something? I realize that I’m not the most masculine dude out there, but do I come across as being that gay?

And two, I think it’s sad when people have trouble just coming out about who they are. I have a couple friends that I think are afraid to come out of the closet. I feel really bad for them. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable, but at the same time, I just want to scream at them to be who they are and be happy about it. Quit trying to hold it in!

Last night, I was out at a bar in the city with a few friends and a discussion came up regarding the sexuality of a guy on the other side of the bar. He was pretty muscular and talking to a girl, but exploded with the vibe of not quite being ready to admit the truth to himself just yet. After a short while, we decided that the only way to find out was to send someone over to walk by and see if he checked them out.

None of us are really sure why we cared so much. It didn’t matter at all. We just needed an answer at this point.

Somehow, I was selected as the guy to do the walk by. The girl we sent, nothing. No acknowledgement whatsoever. But me, yeah, he looked me all up and down. It was quite flattering actually. But I couldn’t help feeling a little dirty afterwards. Here I was, a relatively straight man, trying to get a guy to check him out solely to prove a point. I almost felt bad, like I was duping him or something. I felt like one of those girls that go out on Friday and Saturday nights with the intention of being hit on by guys and being bought drinks all night. Then at the end of the night, they just go home to their boyfriends having had no intention of ever actually speaking to any of those guys again.

This got me thinking about two things…

One, why do gay guys seem to be way more into me than girls are? This is not even close to being the first time that I’ve received interest from a guy. Do I give off a vibe that I’m into men or something? I realize that I’m not the most masculine dude out there, but do I come across as being that gay?

And two, I think it’s sad when people have trouble just coming out about who they are. I have a couple friends that I think are afraid to come out of the closet. I feel really bad for them. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable, but at the same time, I just want to scream at them to be who they are and be happy about it. Quit trying to hold it in!

What a crazy year this has been! I started off with incredibly high hopes and expectations for 2008 and, to be honest, I’d say that it hit almost every one of them. It was easily one of the best years of my life…despite taking a very unexpected turn in the homestretch.

I took trips to San Francisco, Toronto, Chicago, and Florida (I was sick with food poisoning the whole time), as well as a short little weekend trip to Vermont. I tried all kinds of new things and could barely keep up with how busy I was with stuff. I started playing soccer and got active again. I’m in the best shape that I’ve been in in years. It’s great.

I started a new job early in the year doing software development. Something that I didn’t go to school for and had no formal experience doing. My only experience was as a hobbyist. I was insanely scared of taking this job–I wanted to turn it down, actually–and stressed like I can’t even describe when I first started. I stuck with it though, despite putting myself in very uneasy situations–I don’t do well in situations where I feel like I could look like an idiot and I have no idea what I’m doing. But I made it. I’ve been there for almost a year now and while I’m not super crazy about the company, I love what I do and I’m really excited that I have a career path to look forward to. Something that I like doing and that I’m proud of doing. I couldn’t say this a year ago. I was happy at my last job, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

I scaled my role at the radio station back almost entirely to nothing. All I do now is my radio show and I’m happy about that. I’m finally ready to completely leave. I think that by May 2009, I’ll be able to walk away happy.

The biggest thing in 2008 for me, I think, was a relationship that started towards the end of 2007 with an absolutely wonderful girl who was also my best friend. We had a lot of fun together and connected in a crazy way, I won’t go into details. The relationship is over now, but with no hard feelings, just a lot of great memories and the knowledge that it really changed me as a person in a very positive way.

And on top of all of that, my half siblings got in touch with me and I’ve started to develop a relationship with my half-sister. We hadn’t talked in eighteen years, but now, thanks to Facebook–which I no longer hate because of this–we keep in touch often. And I also got back in touch with an old friend that I hadn’t spoken to in years.

Unlike 2008, 2009 is starting off with no plans or expectations. It’s a completely clean slate. I think I have two things on my calendar for the year so far. It’s the first year that I’m starting off single since 2001, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. It’ll be an interesting year, I think. I’m looking forward to it. And I think that I’ll continue trying many more new things in the year to come.

Alright, I’m slightly lying when I say there are no plans or expectations. I would like to move to Chicago, but that’s a bit dependent on the economy. I’m not going to quit a job and move a third of the way across the country when the economy is so crappy. So we’ll see about that one. If it doesn’t happen, that’ll be fine too.

All I have left to say is…BRING ON 2009!!!