text: 7. Self-Esteem Preservation. One time during a road trip with my girlfriends, the song "Whomp! There It Is!" came on the radio, so we cranked it up! It was awesome until my much younger friend Jamie said, "Oh, I remember this song! It was the 6th grade dance and all the boys were on one side and the girls were on the other..." Ahem. Never, I repeat, NEVER do something that's going to make you feel old on a road trip. Leave all that depressing stuff at home. Other conversation topics to avoid are weight gain, wrinkles and "what kids are wearing these days".
  8. Carpe Laboro! (Seize the Bathroom). What's uncomfortable? Really needing to pee. What's even more uncomfortable? Really needing to pee when there's no bathroom for milllllles. So when you get a chance to go, just go, whether you need to or not. It's better than fertilizing the grass on the side of the interstate, if you know what I mean.
  9. Avoid the Blue Light Special. After driving for several hours, you might decide to pick up some time on a long stretch of two-lane highway, but don't. In college, we took a caravan of speeding cars through the great state of Alabama on our way to Panama City and a state patrol officer pulled us over. All of us. Every single car. Seriously, it was like a scene out of Smokey and the Bandit. The speeding tickets totaled over $800. Considering that we were just a bunch of broke college kids who survived on nothing but Ramen Noodles and Milwaukee's Best, that was a tough lesson learned.
  10. Take It In, My Friend. Life is full of tiny moments strung together through the years, so make this road trip one to remember. Enjoy the scenery, enjoy your friends and family, and enjoy the break. Real life will be waiting for you when you get back.
  
  Spring has definitely sprung judging by all the fresh local berries available in southern California right now. These berries have inspired us to eat a strawberry, blackberry and ginger cobbler made with fresh, local berries, ginger juice, and a crumbly, ginger biscuit topping. The whole dessert is topped off with a scoop of natural vanilla bean ice cream and garnished with a sprig of mint.
  A: heheheh okay, i know i have several problems, but there’s one in particular that’s affecting me right now. I just can’t seem to stop buying berries! they’re everywhere and i just buy buy buy. it’s like some kind of sick disease.
  T: i gotta say this is the least of your problems. It’s not a sick disease. Wanna know what’s a sick disease? buying freaking california burritos all the time. That’s sick. I think I can feel a piece of beef lodged in my heart.
  A: 😛 now that is sick! you’ve got some kind of effed up digestive track if whole chunks of beef are making their way to your heart!
  T: it started off as cholesterol, and slowly collected itself until it was whole again. Eventually, if I did not have a heart attack first, a cow would burst out of my chest.
  A: sweet! then we would have dinner for ages. a whole cow would feed us for a while 😉 i don’t really want you to either have a heart attack or have a cow burst out of your chest….uh, so maybe you’re gonna want to find a new disease. like my berry buying disease!
  T: my office is actually surrounded by taco shops. In every direction. We even share a wall with a taco shop. If I go to the bathroom, and sit quietly, I can hear mariachi music. And then images of burritos start dancing around in my head. And they don’t sell berries. So basically I’m screwed.
  A: you could always look for a new job that’s located next to a berry stand rather than hundreds of taco shops…. you could even work at the berry stand.
  T: I don’t think berry stands have much need for web developers. I could be wrong though. Anyway, on to the cobbler…
  A: ah yes, the outcome of my berry addiction. So at the end of this week, we had over three pounds of strawberries in our fridge. not to mention a couple pints of blackberries and a half pint of blueberries. what’s a girl to do with all those berries other than make a strawberry ginger cobbler.
  T: I can think of a couple of things. But let’s not go there. The cobbler was a good choice. Have you ever made a cobbler before this one?