So, I cheated.

Just the once, mind you, but it was a cheat all the same.

This past Saturday, me and Bunny went to Heroes Convention in Charlotte, which is basically a huge collection of nerds under one building.  We had a pretty amazing time and I’d completely planned on writing an entire blog post just about Heroes Con, complete with pictures of all the awesome things I saw (including roughly 500 different girls dressed as Harley Quinn), but I was so overwhelmed with the greatness of the event — it was the first comic con I’ve ever been to — that I completely forgot to take a single picture.

But here’s a rundown of some of the highlights:

• I got to meet Bernie Wrightson, and have him sign my copy of Frankenstein, which he illustrated. He also had sketches for some concept art that he did for an unfilmed prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing. I didn’t buy any of those because they were super-expensive and I’m super-poor.
• I got a signed print by Tony Moore, the cover illustrator for The Walking Dead. Mr. Moore was there, but my conversation with him consisted of a nod and a quick “hello”. (He was busy drawing — zombies, presumably.)
• I talked to Geof Darrow for a while (he’s a hilarious, cranky old man). For some reason, most of the con-goers didn’t seem to know what he was, but he’s one of my favorite comic book artists. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t do a whole lot of mainstream work. I got him to sign my copy of Hard-Boiled (written by Frank Miller, with art by Darrow) and bought a print of Shaolin Cowboy (which he co-created with the Wachowski Brothers, whom he met while doing concept art for The Matrix).
• I got to meet Adam Hughes. He’s British. I didn’t know that.
• I got to meet Steve Epting, and talked to him about how the Captain America movie poster totally ripped off one of his covers.

Lots of other stuff too, and I got a lot of great prints from some awesome up-and-coming artists. The best thing about Heroes Con, to me, is going through Artist’s Alley and going through all the prints. You can decorate your entire house in great quality, pop-culture memorabilia for like fifty bucks.

Oh yeah. The cheat.

So a few hours into our time at Heroes Con, we got hungry. The only restaurants in the convention center itself were an Einstein Brothers and a Bojangle’s. So we decided to leave to find something a little bit better. I’d found an awesome-looking vegetarian restaurant online called Luna’s Living Kitchen, which was about a mile and a half from the convention center and our plan was to go there.

The one thing we didn’t think about was that, once we left, we’d have to come back. And find parking again. And pay $10 to park again.

So our only choice was to find somewhere within walking distance. And in the one hundred degree heat, walking distance meant “across the street.”

Enter: FUEL Pizza Cafe.

I walked into FUEL and smelled the wonderful pizza and decided, just this once, I was going to cheat. I know, I’m only six days in at this point, but for me, the past week had been a total breakthrough. I’d eaten more veggies in the previous six days than I probably had in my entire life. So what’s one slice (okay, two slices) of pizza? 

No regrets.

After doing it for a whopping two days, I came to the conclusion that doing a daily roundup of the diet foods I’m eating was incredibly boring (both for me and for you), so I stopped doing it.  I’ll still update meals here when I think they’re relevant or interesting, but otherwise just assume that I’m eating some sort of veggie on some sort of whole wheat 90% of the time, except for the one night a week that we might actually have time to cook.

Great. By the way, two new bakeries opened in Greenville & I’m on a diet. I’m also a full-time employee at the fart factory. 

I’m currently taking a break from cleaning my demolished kitchen and trashing all the crap food in our house. The thing that excites me most about the Engine 2 diet really isn’t about how good my butt is going to look in a few weeks; it’s that my chicken finger-lovin’ husband is going to eat the same thing that I’m going to eat! Being a lactose intolerant vegetarian married to vegaphobic cheese fiend means we fend for ourselves at mealtime (or eat pb&j). It’ll be really nice to cook a meal together, to sit at the table, and to eat food that’s going to make us ridiculously sexy.

I’m a meat eater. I always have been, really. Sure, my parents forced veggies upon me as a kid (with varying degrees of success), but for the majority of the twenty-nine years that I’ve spent on the planet earth, I’ve eaten meat, and very little else.

It doesn’t help matters that I’ve grown up in The South, where everything is fried and covered in cheese, served with a side of ranch dressing. Unless you’re in a fairly progressive city (like Asheville) or a large city (like Atlanta), your chances of finding a restaurant that serves healthy food are slim.

But it’s time for a change. I’m not getting any younger, and I’m certainly not getting any healthier. A year ago, I was in the hospital for the first time in my life because of issues in my digestive track. You’d think that would’ve been enough to get me to change my ways, but it’s taken me this long to really want to change. It’s time to take matters into my own hands.

It’s not going to be easy. I’ve chosen the Engine 2 Diet as my means to an end. For those that don’t know, Engine 2 is a diet that is described as “plant strong,” and it completely cuts out meat and meat-derived products by the second of its four weeks.  As I mentioned, I’m a meat eater, so this won’t be an easy transition for me. Going twenty-eight days without cheeseburgers, pizza and tacos isn’t something that I’m looking forward to. It’s not that I just don’t eat veggies; it’s that I really don’t like veggies.

Only in the last few months have I discovered that I like a whopping two veggies: green beans and asparagus. And this discovery was a big step for me (previously, if you’d ask, the only veggies I’d have told you that I liked were potatoes and mac n’ cheese). So adapting a diet, even for a brief period of time, that consists of nothing but vegetables is something that’s going to take a lot of will power for me.

But it’s do or die. Quite literally. My choices are: eat better now, or pay the consequences later on down the line. I choose the former.

I also think that, by charging into this Engine 2 Diet with guns a’blazin’, I’ll have a better chance of creating those good eating habits that I need, as opposed to gradually trying to wean myself off of my meat-heavy diet.  It’s a challenge, and I’m determined to meet the challenge.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no intention of becoming a full-fledged vegan or vegetarian. But hopefully, by following this regimen, I’ll be able to reduce my meat intake and get more veggies into my diet on a more permanent basis. This will be better for me, and better for the planet.

Wish me luck. This is going to be tough, but having open heart surgery in twenty years would be tougher.

I always suck at first blog entries.

I’ve done a lot of first blog entries over the years. Mostly that’s because I lose interest after a while or run out of things to talk about or, in most cases, I get bummed that nobody seems to be reading my blog and that if I wanted to talk to myself about myself, I could just walk around and do so like a crazy person instead of going to the trouble of putting thought to paper (or keyboard, as it were).

But this time is different. No, seriously. No, I promise. I’m not going anywhere this time. Really. Really. No. Really.

Because this time, I’ve got a partner in crime. Her name is Bunny (but not really), and she’s my wife and together we’re going to embark on a journey to share with you all of the cool things that happen in our life, while leaving out all of the boring bits, like how many times our dog has pooped today (three, for the record).

But mostly, we’ve started this blog to help us remain accountable to someone (even if that someone is the faceless mass that is the internet) in regards to some lifestyle changes that we’re going to be making.

First and foremost: food.

I’ve known for a long time that I’ve needed to eat better. But it was always “later.” “I’ll eat better when I’m older.” 

Then one day, all of a sudden, I realized that I’m turning 30 in a few months and that now, I am older. It’s time to make a change. (More details on this later.)

So while this blog will delve into other, more fun aspects of our life, for a while our main focus is going to be on the overhauling of our eating habits. I hope that, by sharing these experiences, knowing that other people are on this journey with me, we’ll be more likely to stick to our guns and that maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to inspire others to better themselves as well.