Friends

Hanukkah has come and gone, celebrated with good friends and an excellent brisket/latke dinner.

mmm latkes, best with homemade applesauce.

This will be the second year of my mail-order Christmas, with various packages arriving every few days. Last year, I put them under the tree for a couple days until my mom told me I should just open them.

My first gift came Wednesday but before I could open it, I made myself clean and finish decorating. The snowman bell door hanger never made it off the doorknob, so the 3-foot tree and wreath were all I had to do. Also, I keep the lights and ornaments on the tree when it goes in the box for the rest of the year. Low maintenance decorating always preferred. I’d rather spend my free time baking goodies for the newsroom.

I didn’t bake these. But I helped decorate and eat them!

These I did make: Kolaczki for a coworker who pined for a Polish bakery.

Last Christmas was the first I didn’t spend with family in Illinois. Plane tickets out of Casper were ridiculously expensive and I didn’t have enough days off to make a trek down to the Denver airport worth it.

I drove to New Mexico and you know what, it was fine. I missed the family time, but there was enough Christmas (snow, fires in the fireplace, gingerbread houses) to make it memorable.

Christmas and New Year’s Day are on weekends this year, which means I can take them in the same week. And Josh happens to have some of those days off, too. A Christmas miracle! Because if there’s anything harder than a journalist trying to take vacation it’s a journalist trying to take vacation around another journalist’s vacation schedule.

For that reason, the best I could do was Wyoming for Christmas, Tempe for the Mizzou/Iowa bowl game and somewhere in Kansas for New Year’s Eve. It’d be nice if there was some snow in there.

Four Loko, the caffeinated malt beverage affectionately called “blackout in a can,” has been in the news for hospitalizing a dozen college students and causing hundreds more to make very, very poor decisions.

The 23.5 oz can has about as much caffeine as a six-pack of Coke and about as much alcohol as a bottle of wine. The makers removed the caffeine and energy-boosting additives a few weeks ago pending a ban from the FDA.

That means Four Loko would likely not make it to these parts. So I was charged to investigate while visiting Illinois for Thanksgiving.

Friends have tried them, and although they said it resulted in craziness, they didn’t die. And my 23-year-old brother swore by them for a while. Safe, right?

On Saturday night, I had my first (and probably last) taste of the Loko, the lemonade flavor.

“$2.49 — that’s how you know it’s good.”

I made the mistake of smelling it before my first taste: Sour milk and lemonade jello. Coincidentally, this is the taste that lingered in my mouth the next morning.

The first few sips were rough. It tasted like a carbonated Country Time lemonade left in a warm place for a few months. My tongue adjusted and before I knew it, half a can was gone. I tried to pawn it off on someone but there were no takers. So I kept sipping.

And then it was gone. Worry set in. I had only planned to drink half — what was going to happen to me? The last time I had an energy drink — while reporting a story about caffeine addiction — I was in a caffeine-free stage and experienced heart palpitations and nausea.

I waited. Nothing. I felt buzzed, but it was more from the sugar, I think. I felt fine until I got ready for bed at 2 a.m.

Climbing upstairs at my mom’s house, I felt nauseous. Everything looked like it was moving up and down, like a busted TV. Then I felt sharp pains in my stomach I’ve only felt after extreme sugar overdoses. Then the alcohol hit my stomach. I might have thrown up, but I’m not sure. I do know I changed into PJs and brushed my teeth. The next thing I remember is waking up in the bed at 8 a.m.

I tasted that sour milk, lemon jello taste and gagged but kept everything down. My head hurt. My stomach hurt. Muscles ached, and it didn’t have anything to do with the 3 mile run the day before. Everything felt jittery, like I had been shocked or stirred from the inside. I wished for a hangover — that can be cured with greasy food and a lot of water.

I felt better after breakfast, lunch and a lot of water but the stomach pain stayed all day. I blame the sugar, which I’m already sensitive to. I’d built tolerance for caffeine thanks to the previous week’s legislative meetings and accompanying 24 oz coffees. I have no clue about the alcohol, since that probably hit me hardest after I went to bed.

The alcohol/caffeine combo is nothing new but Four Loko makes it more accessible and fruitier and mysterious and that’s what makes it dangerous. I can’t think of another reason to ever drink it again, except maybe to find out for sure if it makes me throw up.

Back in grad school a few years ago, three of my girlfriends and I realized we wouldn’t be together forever or for much longer. We decided the best way to guarantee regular reunions every couple of years was to get together for each of our 30th birthdays and do something special.

One of us had the first birthday earlier this month (wasn’t me!) and we made plans to meet up in California where Andy lives. The weekend included some of my favorite things: wine, running, ocean time, laughter and food.

Pacific Ocean in Half Moon Bay. [Oct. 29, 2010]

Andy had to work, so Cat, Sarah and I toured parts of San Francisco on foot on Friday: Chinatown, Union Square, Fisherman’s Wharf. Then we drove north to wine country and had the most amazing dinner at ZuZu in Napa.

On Saturday, we drove further north to Bothe-Napa Valley State Park for a 10K/half/marathon race. We heard the Napa Wine Country race was tough, but we were not prepared for 2 straight miles of hills, narrow muddy trails and jumping from rock to rock across small streams.

Crossing a creek in Bothe-Napa Valley State Park. [Oct. 30, 2010]

The race was small (300 runners) and fun. The views from the top and smells while running past coastal redwoods were worth the pain felt in our quads the next day.

Napa Wine Country. Pictures can’t do it justice. [Oct. 30, 2010]

We soaked in hot springs in Calistoga, ate a huge lunch and stopped at a few wineries to taste bottles we can’t afford to purchase. Andy met us at our last tasting at Jessup Cellars (thanks – you guys were awesome) and we finally had a birthday dinner.

Sun-day stroll in Sausalito. [Oct. 31, 2010]

On the way back to San Francisco, we stopped in Sausalito for lunch a walk in the sunshine. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge for a driving tour of the city before my flight home.

Before I knew it, it was time to leave, back to Wyoming, work, the election, etc. But the short weekend was just what I needed before a busy week.

My friends are awesome — awesome enough to deserve a shoutout on the Jackie Blog.

As I mentioned, I missed my college’s homecoming/alumni/parent weekend last week. Several of my friends traveled to Rochester to celebrate their five-year reunion (or close to it) and they didn’t forget about me.

Not only was I tagged in several nostalgic photos on Facebook, but I came home to a package mailed from the ROC.

Candy corn and creme pumpkins from Parkleigh!

I hate candy corn, but it just tastes different from Parkleigh — the most adorable gift/specialty store I’ve ever been to. NORDSTROM:JCPENNEY :: PARKLEIGH:HALLMARK

And Parkleigh candy corn — like Meliora Weekend — is a true sign of fall.

Of course I ate way too many and ruined my dinner and now feel sick — home/lovesick.

I joined more than 8,000 people riding in the Tour de Fat parade in Fort Collins on Saturday. Tour de Fat = tailgating + Halloween + bicycle parade + music festival.

I went last year with my sister, who is a senior at Colorado State. This year, the CSU/CU-Boulder rivalry game was held in Denver on the same day, taking my sister and many other college kids with her.

I went down Friday and stayed with Stefanie, a good friend from college who’s well on her way to a Ph.D. from CSU. We woke up earrrrrrly to get “dressed” in our mad/lazy/crazy housewife outfits: muumuus, robes, curlers, slippers. Total cost for both outfits: $6 during a Salvation Army sale. We biked about 5 miles to a house party for mimosas and warm zucchini coffee cake.

It actually took a lot of time to look like we just rolled out of bed.

The ride to the New Belgium Brewery wasn’t far, but when we got there, we hit a wall of bikers.

Stopped at a light.

We cut around the crowds and got to a spot further down where the crowd thinned. We settled into a spot behind Peter Pan and Tinkerbell and next to a guy blasting classic jams out of a speaker on a cart behind his bike.

After the parade, we met Stef’s friends at Steakout to watch football. The three games pleased everyone in the group: Iowa/EIU, Mizzou/UIUC and CSU/CU. Two wins, two drinks, half a cheeseburger and a ton of fries later, we walked back down to the brewery to catch the end of the post-race festival.

More than a dozen warped bikes were available for people to try.

We heard an awesome band from Chicago — Mucca Pazza, which describes itself as a “circus punk marching band.” It reminded me of klezmer+big band. The stage was packed with at least 20 musicians dressed in marching band and cheerleader uniforms.

The whole day made us too tired to do more than shower, eat and watch a movie. So that’s what we did. Sunday was another early morning for me because I had to be back in Casper for the fantasy football draft. A whirlwind trip to Colorado, but well worth it for a one-of-a-kind event and quality time with an old friend.