The Failed Vegan

There I was at Moose's Tooth, eating dinner with 7 of my best friends on the planet, four of which who were visiting just for a bit this summer. I order my vegan delight pizza (sauce, pesto, artichoke hearts, olives, and sun dried tomatoes) and immediately dig in as soon as it arrives. Everyone else had been tackling mozzarella cheese sticks with marinara while I looked on with drool coming out of my mouth.

I take a huge bite. I take another. Delicious as always. I share with Erik, who agrees. "Vegan must not be that bad."

Matt turns to me and says "is pesto normally white?"

I hadn't even thought about it. On that pizza, buried under sauce and pesto...was cheese.

I lost.

Shortly thereafter Amy showed up, right as I was texting her, but after 28 days as a vegan, I went down. Accidentally of course, but I lost no less.

Amy is the vegan champion. She is the Queen Vegan, and I will forever look upon her as the better vegan. Of course I am also convinced that she paid off the waitress at Moose's Tooth, but that is neither here nor there. It was a fun month, I may even do a few weeks of it at a time from time to time, but I lost no less. Of course, really, I won, as I followed up my loss with downing two slices of greek gyro, one of spicy pepperoni, and two pieces of mozzarella cheese bread.

And good god...it was glorious.

The Vegan Diaries, Day 22

Well we're hitting the home stretch in the Great Vegan Challenge of 2008, and with 8 days remaining Amy and myself have shown absolutely no signs of relenting. Besides a stretch that lasted an afternoon towards the beginning of the month where I felt ill, I've had absolutely no problems with this at all.

The foods are delicious, meals are varied (although I am borderline obsessed with Middle Way Cafe right now...seriously their vegan baked goods and tasty sammiches are the food of the gods), and I feel stellar. I could make this last way longer if I decided to...but I'm not going to, because it turns out I do really like meat and things of that sort.

This challenge has really only made me aware of one thing, and that is that I could really do anything if I set my mind to it. Too bad I'm lazy and am only really motivated by competition, which really cuts in to what I actually accomplish.

Meh.

The Weekend Edition

Ahhhhhhh yeah!!!!!!

That's the sound I'm making because it was the first weekend of the year for me that really felt like summer hit Alaska. That of course is a very good thing, because summers in Alaska are absolutely incredible and the best place in the world to experience them. I can never get enough of them, and even with the late start this time I still feel as if this summer is going to be all-time, to quote Amy.

What made this bad mamma jamma so rad? Let me count the ways...

• Frisbee Golf fridays
• Margaritas at La Mex
• Bernie's outdoor patio, absolutely dominated by the Crewnit and the extended Crewnit
• Dance party plus at the Anchor
• Coffee with my sister
• Roughly 13 naps - very necessary
• Getting caught up on comics
• Camping out at Eklutna
• How I Met Your Mother redux
• Doing all that while keeping it vegan

Really, in an extremely unsurprising trend revelation, the days were decent but the nights were spectacular. Friday night we had a massive posse pretty much take over Bernie's Bungalow Lounge downtown and it was a heck of a time, and it all came on the heels of a great round of frisbee golf where Colver and I tied at even and an hour or two at La Mex having margaritas.

On top of that, after Bernie's a smaller group (key conspirators: myself, Amy, Kim, Cate, Patrick, etc.) went to the Anchor and had a blast rocking the dance floor. Suffice it to say, there was a significant amount of the running man thrown down that night, along with a lot of me getting strangely low to the ground. Little known David fact: I can get very, very low while dancing. I may be secretly good at the Limbo, if anyone in fact still limboed.

The Crewnit with our driftwood wizard wands

Saturday night may have been even better though, as Colver, Lorna, Kim, Amy, Hannah, Jason, and I went out to Eklutna for a camping trip featuring Loaded Questions (and the absolutely ridiculous answers that went along with them - my porn star name = Sir Francis Drake Huffman, for example), the First Annual Crewnit Beach Tag Football Game (Eklutna Megabowl? Discuss.), Johnson family domination (Jason's brothers Eric and Michael came out), driftwood wizards, steamrolling up the ying yang, and fitting everyone (besides Amy, who was satisfied by staying outside) into Colver and Lorna's mansion tent.

My team from the Eklutna Megabowl - Hannah, myself, and Eric

Camping is always one of my favorite activities during the summer (along with hiking, it forms a fairly deadly duo), and I have a feeling there will be a lot more trips like this throughout the summer. Sadly, I missed out on the first camping trip of the year (where the legendary Perv Com was created) but I vow to not miss any others for the rest of the summer. Or at least that's what I say now, as sometimes things are out of my control.

Picture of the Crewnit from Estadia de Bonfire, aka Bonfire Stadium in Eklutna

We had a rocking good time, and Amy and I even made it through totally vegan - vegan italian sausages are surprisingly delicious, FYI. If we can make it through an Alaskan camping trip without eating any animal products, I'm fairly certain the both of us are going all the way. Hurrah for our incredible willpower I say.

The Vegan Diaries, Day 5 - It's Showtime

So the first inklings of road blocks have finally struck me in the great vegan challenge of 2008. As much as I hate to admit it, it's the absolute truth. What are they?

• Events
• Lethargy
• Upset stomach

Up first, events. These are killing me. It seems like I have wall to wall events right now, from work lunches to work dinners, from BBQ's to camping. To put it more succinctly, I picked the worst time imaginable to do this. Every event comes with amazing food that is decidedly not vegan friendly, and it's a hell of a thing to not get involved with it. I mean come on, I love food. A lot.

However, I do want to go into a bit of detail about one of the events which made the whole thing go by easily - last night's Showtime dinner.

At my job, we have reps show up from networks and premium channels on a semi-regular basis to visit and schmooze and take us out to dinner and do trainings. Last night, Showtime (home of Dexter and Weeds) took myself and a group of coworkers out to dinner at Kincaid Grill, and it was absolutely awesome. As it always is with Showtime, because frankly in terms of coolness of reps there are two classes: Showtime and everyone else.

So I just wanted to say, thanks to John Stillson, Patrick (I didn't catch your last name man, sorry!), and Allison Weilbacher for the wonderful time out, and thanks for being really understanding about the vegan bet. Also, Allison, you had better come visit because we're going to miss you a lot at GCI. You're the best.

Back to the point of the vegan bit. Today two things really hit me - an extreme lethargic feeling and a really bad upset stomach. I felt sluggish, lightheaded, and generally ill at ease. Of course this could be a lack of sleep and any number of things to explain the stomach ache, but I get the feeling that it has more to do with the drastic change in my diet. Hopefully this won't affect me too badly, but I have to be honest: I miss meat. I miss milk. I miss cheese. Imagine what day 26 is going to be like! To note, I've specifically targeted day 26 as the worst day of the month. No idea why.

But I can do this. I will not let Amy win. No sir.

The Vegan Diaries, Day 3

I'm now three days into my fearsome competition with Amy, the competition of course being who can last the longest as a vegan? So far, so good for the both of us. Although Amy seemingly had a bit of a rough start (hunger pains? lock it up Steele), we've both made it this far and we even made an awesome dinner together tonight which was 100% vegan, delicious, and very filling. Plus we had vegan ice cream afterwards, and it was aces. On top of that, we watched some How I Met Your Mother which always brightens my day.

I had a feeling this wouldn't be too rough on me, but so far I like it quite a bit. I'm eating way more fruits and vegetables and strangely I feel as if my meals are far more diversified than they were when all options were open. How weird is that? No less, veganism? To this guy, it ain't no thang.

Happy Birthday Amy!

Today is my good friend Amy Steele's birthday, and I wanted to make sure I had a post out there wishing her a happy birthday. Happy birthday Amy, I'm looking forward to hanging out with your freshly minted 24 year old self, complete with new levels of maturity added.

Finally.

Additionally, an addendum to my vegan post from the other day. Amy and I officially bet - whoever lasts the longest wins coffee for a week as provided by the other person. Today is day 1, and I have to admit it hasn't been that rough. Poor Amy, she doesn't even know what she's gotten herself into.

What's going on back in AK?

Once again, before I get cracking on my Sasquatch related posts, I wanted to get into details about my thoughts about a few things and then a couple current happenings in my life. This post is about current happenings in the good ol' AK, now that I'm back from vacation and getting integrated back into the ebbs and flows of that crazy place.



Before I left, Amy became really interested in the vegan lifestyle, or at least sampling what it had to offer her for a month. This extremely random scenario came to fruition because her good friend Blake decided he was going to do the same thing (as you can see here) and was going to blog about the whole experience no less. She set herself upon the idea, but before I left we had a discussion as to how long I would last as a vegan.

Amy: 45 minutes?
Me: Come on...way longer right? I'd be ok so long as I had milk.
Amy: You can't drink milk - cows remember?
Me: ...
Me: ...
Me: Dammit.

Ok, that isn't exactly how it went, but there was not a lot of confidence in her. While in Portland I quizzed friends and the general consensus was somewhere between one (AMANDA!) and three days (Erik and Sheri I believe). Upon my return, I asked Colver, and he suggested I'd last a week, but to quote him it'd be "because everyone said you couldn't, and knowing you, you'd do it just long enough to prove everyone wrong."

Colver apparently gets me very well. So I'm going to try it, just to see how long I'll last. I'm shooting for a week, but who knows! Maybe I'll last even longer. Maybe I'll love it and develop taste for soy milk and tofu.

Nah. No way. But it's a worthy experiment - but for those concerned, don't worry - I am not getting involved with issues. This is just a study in self control, or better yet, my extreme lack of it. Starting June 1st, it is on.



My Alaskan posse and I (also known while in separate factions as the Crew and the Unit, or the Crewnit when combined) are embarking on a legendary journey this summer taking us from sketchy bar to sketchy bar across the Alaskan wild. This summer is going to be the inaugural Crewnit Alaska Dive Bar Tour, taking us all the way from the Buckaroo Club in Anchorage to Tips in Eagle River, from the Salty Dawg Saloon in Homer to the Comet Club in Fairbanks - we are going to turn this state upside down - Crewnit style.

Should be delicious and ridiculously fun, but special thanks to my good friend Raechelle who designed our shirt logo above. She did a great job and dealt with my needy nature when it came to the shirt design, and I love the finished product. Now we just have to make the shirts and distribute them, and then drink in sketchy places of course. We're good at that last part at least.

As you can see in my post here, Elton John is coming to Alaska for a few performances. After the first show sold out incredibly fast with no tickets coming my way (myself and the Crew all struct out), I managed to secure six tickets for the show this Friday. Tomorrow night after three straight days of wall-to-wall performances, I'm getting myself back in the thick of things for a performance by the Rocket Man himself.

I'm very excited though, as my parents told me it was a good performance on Wednesday, so now I am even more excited for the experience. I'm hoping it will be akin to Neil Diamond's performance, which was incredibly fantastic facing lowered expectations. Just can't let those get too high, but it's really hard not to fall victim to Hannah's limitless enthusiasm for the show. I just hope it's good so she isn't disappointed, but I have faith the man will bring it like only he can.