Dinner Last Night?

On Thanksgiving, the conversation had meandered off the way lots of conversations do. We started to talk about the ridiculousness of Facebook. I naturally chimed in on the stupidity of it. Especially when you have grown and seemingly sane people openly taking sex drive quizzes or fertilizing and live-stocking their virtual fields on some loony device called Farmville. I lamented about peoples' needs to let us know the most trivial moments of their day.

"I'm so happy to hug Grandma."

"I just had Mom's stuffing. Yummmmmm!"

"Ninja Assassins was the bomb!"

Who the fuck cares? I said rather emphatically.

But, then, my possibly ex-friends made a counter observation.

"Well, you do the same thing in your blog. You tell everybody what you had for dinner last night."

Hmmmmmmm.

Oh, and thanks for the comment. Hope you enjoyed today's turkey dinner. You won't be back next year.

But then, I gave some serious thought to the notion. Was I being hypocritical? Am I contributing to the "over information" frenzy by adding this little inconsequential line to my blog every day? Could it be that, gasp, I am as bad as everybody else?

Frankly, this is unsettling. I don't like to be grouped with, ugh, "everybody else."

I thought back to how this started. When I began the blog, I was looking for some sort of hook that would require me to do this every single day. If I had to update the previous evening's dinner, that would also mean I'm writing every day. Of course, as crafty as I am, I soon figured out that I don't have to write every single day to have a daily blog entry. I compose a lot in advance and simply save it. Then I access it the night before to load the dinner listing and I let it fly. You'll all be very happy to know that I don't plan my meals so far in advance that I know I'll be having "salisbury steak" at the Cheesecake Factory two weeks from next Monday.

I actually stole the daily meal reference from another blog done by a Hollywood screenwriter. She would include the contents of her previous day's lunch. That didn't work for me. Pretty much, every day you'd be reading about non-fat yogurt and fruit. Breakfast would be no better. The only daily variable is whatever I choose to spread on my toasted English muffin. Or the odd days where I opt for a bowl of Cheerios. Dinner for my blog made the most sense. And, as you can see, I did it more for me, than for your morbid curiosity.

Secretly, there was another selfish motive. I wanted to do this so I could monitor what I was eating. And perhaps even dine more healthy. The only trouble is I never bothered to check back historically to see just how well or poorly I was eating.

Until now.

Going back to the genesis of this blog, I can tell you that I eat out way too much. I frequently complain about families who have forgotten to gather around their own dining table every night for a home-cooked repast. Well, me, too. My roommate and I too often fall into the trap of "grabbing a bite to eat" at one of ten nearby restaurants. Statistically, the most frequented was the Cheesecake Factory, followed by Cafe 50s Diner and then BJ's in Westwood. If we stopped going to any of these places for a month or so, I am convinced that they will call to inquire about our health. Or send a mass card.

Yes, I know I eat way too much sausage. Sausage and peppers. Bratwurst. Dodger Dogs. I have a distinct affinity for meat in any kind of edible casing. I am German. Did you expect anything else, Vigates?

There used to be a lot more home-cooked meals in my house and you can certainly tell the difference. If you see "sandwich" or "salad," I'm home and I'm on my own in the kitchen. If you see "Chicken Francese with mushroom risotto," my roommate has cooked.

On two instances over the 1000 or so blog postings, I forgot to do the meal update. By 10 o'clock the next morning, I had ten e-mails inquiring as to whether I was ill and/or dead. I was not the former and definitely not the latter.

The dinner updates have also presented another problem for me. Over the past two years, there was a handful of days where I had to fabricate a meal. You see, I might have been engaging in a little white lie about my plans. Perhaps, I didn't want to do X, so I could do Y, but I didn't want to be entirely honest about Z. That's generally not an issue, until you realize that the recipient of said fib reads your blog and would instantly know that you did Y instead of X. There were four or five times over the life of this blog that a dine-out meal doesn't have a restaurant name attached. Now you know why.

I now realize that all of the above paragraphs also now can be classified as too much information.

I don't care. My friends can come back next Thanksgiving, but "Dinner last night" ain't going anywhere.

DINNER LAST NIGHT!!!!!!: Leftover minestrone soup and grilled sausage (what else???)