Tag: New Year’s resolution

Caffè Companions

My wife made a batch of rolled sugar cookies last week, cut into traditional Christmas shapes like bells, wreaths, and stockings. It’s the first time in a long time for these cookies, inspired by the assistance of our young and attentive granddaughters. Though the cookies never donned their frosted/decorated costumes, they sure tasted great all by themselves. Kind of like the biscotti I’m giving up in 2026.

Are you a fan of biscotti?  They’re the small, oblong cookies that resemble tiny slices of sourdough bread.  They’re hard and dry, with just a smattering of almonds or almond extract for extra flavor.  Biscotti are meant to accompany a drink, just as two of them do every morning with my coffee.  Biscotti ward off the nausea I feel when I down my vitamins on nothing but a cup of joe.  Nice excuse for daily cookies, eh?

“Cantucci” (not biscotti)

When the calculator (which doesn’t lie) reveals you ate over seven hundred biscotti over the course of 2025, you quickly come to your senses and declare a resolution for the coming New Year: Shift biscotti from “habit” to “occasional treat”.  Yep, it’s time to cut down on carbs.

Before we seal the lid on the cookie jar however, biscotti deserve a little more attention to set the record straight.  First and foremost, the pint-sized pastries I consume with my morning caffè are not technically biscotti; they’re cantucci.  Cantucci contain ingredients like milk, butter, and flavorings, none of which are found in an authentic Italian recipe for biscotti.

Here’s another distinction.  Biscotti were never meant to be partnered with coffee.  They were (and still are) served alongside a glass of sweet wine as a light Italian dessert.  Americans pair cantucci with cappuccino at upper-crust hotels and coffeehouses.  You’re supposed to dunk to make them softer (and take the edge off the coffee) but I prefer to eat them just the way they are.

Biscotti translates to… not “biscuits”, but “twice-baked”, which is exactly how they’re made.  First baked as a full loaf; then baked again as individual cookies. Now then, another Italian translation for you: Nonni means “grandmother”.  Nonni’s also means a brand of biscotti (whoops, make that cantucci) you’ll find in your grocery store… and in my pantry.  The Nonni’s version is an unashamed dessert cookie, with a layer of chocolate, caramel, or lemon frosting to add to the appeal.  My advice: Nonni’s need to be put on a hard-to-reach shelf else they’ll become a habit just like the ones with my morning coffee.

In some Western European cultures biscotti are thrown into savory dishes, which I’m not going to get into because I find the idea unappealing.  Biscotti are classy little sweet treats in my book – one of the two items in my “grown-up milk and cookies”.  Alas, in 2026 it’ll just be “grown-up milk” for me… that is, as long as I stay away from my wife’s sugar cookies.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #7

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

Today we took a mini road trip, as I chose to build the fountain’s Bags 12 and 13 – of 15 bags of pieces – on the kitchen counter (instead of upstairs in the home office).  Kind of fitting considering the counter is topped with white marble.  Kind of annoying considering the laundry machine and dishwasher were running nearby the whole time, interrupting Arcangelo Corelli’s moving “Christmas Concerto” in G Minor.

Trevi statues are TINY!

Maybe it was the change of venue but some strange stuff happened today.  To begin with, I couldn’t find the very first piece in the build at all, until I looked closer at the instruction manual drawing and realized I was after a tiny statue.  Once I found him I was off and running, though I found it sad that one of his companion statues ended up being a leftover piece.

Thought you should know: the back side of the LEGO Trevi is a sheer wall of white.

Now for the strange stuff.  I assembled a flat L-shaped piece on top of another flat L-shaped piece, only to discover they weren’t supposed to go together that way.  No amount of fingernail dexterity could pry those two apart.  Fortunately I found myself in the kitchen.  Sharp knives everywhere!  It took a careful pry without cutting myself but I finally got those two unmarried.  Never let it be said building LEGO models isn’t a dangerous sport.

That little brown round one (nestled top left) was missing from Bag 13!

More strange stuff.  LEGO left a piece out of Bag 13.  Okay, technically they left it out.  “Technically” because in my growing pile of leftover pieces I found its twin.  But considering LEGO never leaves out pieces, I had to wonder:  Did the little guy just wander over to my leftover pile when I wasn’t looking?  Or is he somewhere in the trash right now, along with the cellophane bag of Bag 13?  Maybe he’s resting quietly on the kitchen floor just waiting to stub my toe?  Who knows.  I’m just thankful I had a “replacement” from my leftovers.  And I don’t think I’ll be building LEGO models in the kitchen anymore.

Next week: The Trevi is completed!

Running build time: 6 hrs. 52 min.

Total leftover pieces: 35 (including a lonely little statue)

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Nature’s Constant Call

It wasn’t supposed to be this difficult.  Merely tweaking a former New Year’s resolution to create a new one should be the proverbial walk in the park.  But clearly, I wasn’t prepared for the, uh, “inconveniences” of my particular undertaking.  So it goes when you commit to drinking a dozen glasses of water a day instead of ten.

(Hey, give me a sec’… I’ll be right back.)

Are you a New Year’s resolution kinda person?  Do you sit down towards the end of the holidays and pen (or pencil, for you not-so-brave) a list of gonna-do’s for the coming year?  Me, I’m on the fence with the whole promises-promises thing.  Sure, turning the calendar from December to January evokes a fresh start; I’m just not convinced I must be “resolute” in the process.  I prefer casual, undocumented, safe-zone agreements.  Gonna eat better. Gonna get to the gym more. Gonna read a bunch of new books.  Whether I blow them out of the water or just achieve slightly better than last year, I win!

The water thing, though.  Why-oh-why did I read my latest fitness club newsletter and choose to drink their Kool-Aid?  (Wait, hang on… the phone’s ringing… it’s Nature again.)

Can you hear it? Does it make you want to…?

Forget the glittering generality of eight-glasses-per-day.  Not only is the rule passé, it holds no water.  Eight glasses is simply too generic for the myriad human bodies out there.  Ditto downing “half your weight in ounces of water” – too generic.  On the other hand, a pile of research and scientific evidence in my newsletter suggested the following: Men should consume 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of fluids per day, while women should consume 11.5 cups (2.7 liters).

Now then, “fluids” includes all liquids swallowed in a day, so right away we have an appealing math problem.  Fluids from foods = 20% (just go with it), so my 15.5 cups instantly evaporate to 12.4.  A cup of coffee in the morning and a glass of wine in the evening can also be subtracted (don’t believe the dehydration claims – they don’t hold water).  However – and here we pause the calculator – I can’t escape the negative impacts of a) regular exercise (I sweat like a baby rainstorm), b) environment (Colorado = high altitude = dehydration), and c) breathing.  Those three moisture-robbers elevate me back to 12.4 cups.  Maybe I should stop breathing – that’s worth at least the 0.4 cup.

12 cups = 3/4 gallon

Ten cups a day – now that’s navigable waters in my book.  I start the morning with two (supposedly a good habit) as I wash down my multi-vitamin.  I drink another two mid-morning, another two at lunch, another two or three in the afternoon, and one at dinner.  But twelve cups?  How the heck do I jam another two into my schedule?  More importantly, where to I find the extra time to uh, um… (a little patience here, I need to talk to a man about a horse).

Time to get personal (as if we haven’t been already).  When I morphed from child to teenager to full-grown adult, my body parts grew accordingly, EXCEPT my bladder.  That little balloon remains the same size as when I was born – I’m sure of it.  The bladder is a remarkable organ, “capable of expanding from 2 to 6 inches with a capacity of 16 to 24 ounces”.  MY bladder is capable of expanding to 2 inches (a guess) with a capacity of 16 ounces (another guess).  And here’s the best part.  The urge to urinate comes when the bladder is one-quarter full. Whose idea of a cruel joke is THAT?  Do the math on me and I’m only halfway through cup #1 before I’m scheduling time with the porcelain goddess. Speaking of the goddess, uh… (hold tight while I go water the flowers).

About these down-the-hall interruptions: is it just me or does the sound of running water “accelerate” the process?  In my twelve-cups-a-day world, I continue to brush my teeth, make a cup of coffee, refill the dog bowl, refill the bedroom humidifier, and refill water bottles every time I go to the gym.  You’d better believe every one of those tasks has me wanting to go powder my nose – and I really don’t powder my nose if you know what I mean.  Gee whiz (for God’s sake, don’t say WHIZ!), can’t a guy catch a break that doesn’t have the word “bathroom” in front of it?

My fitness newsletter also claimed, “women who are pregnant or are breast-feeding need additional fluids to stay hydrated”.  Bless my stars, I am not a woman. But seriously, twelve cups?  I’ll be moving my laptop into another “office” in my house before I know it.  There’s more to say on this topic but it’s gonna have to wait because… (I need to make a pit stop).