are you a match?

I recently saw a news report where a whole college football all got their bone marrow tested to see if they were a match. It ended up that one of the most important tight ends was an exact match for a gentleman that lived on the other side of the country. He ended up sitting out the rest of the season. To keep a long story short he saved the mans life. Giving bone marrow is no walk in the park but the story really touched me. Why couldn't more of us do such a wonderful thing? How rewarding would that be? You can give all the money in the world to charities but can you always save a life?

So tonight I went on this website www.marrow.org and registered myself. All you have to do is answer a few questions and they send you a kit to swab your cheeks for your DNA. You can also donate to the site as well.

What do you think?

click here to find out more

Movies!!! My next adventure

Embarrassingly, there are apparently a lot of popular movies that I haven't seen. I have decided to try to tackle these over the next few weeks when my roommate is gone for Christmas break.

I have made a list of 11 to get me started:

1. The Godfather

2. The Godfather II

3. The Princess Bride (only seen parts of it)

4. Casa Blanca

5. Amelie

6. Star Wars ( i know i know)

7. Usual Suspects

8. Animal House

9. Goodfellas

10. Fight club

11. A Clockwork Orange

Now to figure out where to find all these movies!!

let the cooking begin...

Tortellini and Veggies

So on my third attempt to cook I made tortellini and veggies.

The previous 2 cooking sessions included a thyme breaded chicken with arugula salad and my moms chili (southern style).

The chicken was a learning experience. Don't buy really thick chicken and expect it to cook as the recipe says. Mirna and Jeremy came over to enjoy dinner that night. It was nice to have friends over for dinner and a nondrinking night.

Bernie made some great things as well. She made a pork roast, Thai soup (which was excellent), and some great dishes over thanksgiving dinner.

So back to the tortellini and veggies. This dish went over really well and it was really easy. See picture above of my success and the recipe is in the link above.

I have been inspired

I recently got to know someone that has inspired me. Inspired me to do what? I am not sure really but I feel a new energy inside me to stop being so down on myself and start doing things I like to do and tracking them on a blog. This all stems from the fact that I don't have a specific hobby that I am super into (ie biking, running, etc). For some reason, this really bothers me. But I am starting to realize, I do like to do lots of different things and that is okay. The person that inspired me has one of those token list of things they are going to do in a certain amount of time and these ideas of his are all over the place. I like this idea/concept except I know myself and I don't know if I would be able to accomplish something like that. So I thought, I would go about it in a less calculated format. I will just keep a blog as often as possible. I will try not to get too personal on it but just document my day to day stuff. I am going to try to do things I like to do as often as possible and blog about that adventure.

First thing on the list is to learn to cook. Bernie and I have decided we each are going to learn to cook and dedicated 2 days a week to cook dinner. If you know Bernie and I, you know we usually just eat cereal or something similar for dinner every night. We pretty much share the same diet which is rather convenient for the two of us but I think we both know this won't fly for any future living situations. My cooking turn starts next Monday but I thought we could start tonight. I was going to do chili. (southern chili not green) The problem is that I already know how to make that. I guess I could do the chili tonight and the new thing next week. I am pretty excited about this and if any has any recipes they want to share let me know. (healthy stuff mostly please)

1. Cooking - pictures to follow -
- update: bernie made these amazing lettace wraps.
Today is monday and it is my turn to cook. I am being lazy and doing chili but next week will be a new recipe