I'm on a water and fresh food diet. Starting............ Now.

Hold me to it.

I feel crappy eating on the go all the time, chugging diet cokes... I'm out.

The House Tour

Why do people give full tours of their homes? I was thinking about this tonight, and I'm lost. My wife and I have people over just like the next couple, but we only display the living room, kitchen, and bathroom to our guests. There is no gesturing and explaining about what the rooms are for or what they do. It is not perfunctory -- it is obvious where the bathroom is, so go use it if you must. We make no gestures toward the hallway or the kids' rooms, the basement, or our bedroom. In fact, our bedroom is where all the stuff we live with is hidden.

And yet, many people feel led to show their first-time guests every nook and cranny of their house. Why? Or does this never happen anymore because it's a thing of the past that I've merged with the present? I can see a new house and you've just moved in, or show your parents or other family... but why, otherwise? And why explain? It's a house, for Pete's sakes -- one peek in a room and you know what that room's all about! What more is there to say?

I guess if I had a lot of things: pool table, stuffed head on the wall, art, a third refrigerator, a fancy new TV, I might be inclined to share a narrative of why I have the item, or how I acquired it, but that would just be to fill the emptiness with someone I didn't know well -- or it would be to boast.

Hmmm.

This, my friends, is a Braeburn apple, and I will never go back. Like any American kid in the 1970s, I was constituted on apples. And how wide a swath did the apple family walk for a typical middle class kid? Not very far. So, I was feted with Washington brand Red Delicious apples, Golden Delicious, and a few Granny Smiths.

Every year my parents would take us to the Minnesota State Fair (the grandest of the state fairs) and we'd walk through the apple growers' pavilion and have our eyes opened to tens of apple-eating options. Then, as a young adult living in Upstate New York, I encountered other types of apples such as Jonagold and Red Rome, and these I enjoyed.

But then somewhere, somehow, a few years ago, I discovered the Braeburn apple. It is Ah-mazing. It has a white crisp flavor and is not like the chalky flavor of the Red Delicious. Gala apples are close cousins, but there's nothing like a Braeburn and I am so thankful that they seem to be ubiquitous here in Georgia - every store has them. It is one of the simple pleasures of life that I am quite fond of, for sure.

Oh, and by the way, my preferred method of eating an apple? Sliced into wedges! I disdain biting into it skin-out. Try a Braeburn suchly, and you'll be shouting like me: "I'll take mine the Braeburn Way!"

WHEW!

I have discovered this week that COKE is phasing out: Vanilla Coke, Diet Vanilla Coke (pictured), and Diet Coke with Lemon... this I will accept. But please, oh please, don't ever tell me that Diet Coke with Lime is gone. I would have to stock up, buying every 2-liter bottle I could find. I know it sounds silly, but I have really grown to love this flavor - from one of the greatest brands around.