Some people collect stamps and coins. Others fill their homes with old records and vintage toys. There is a man who lives just down the street from us who we’ve been told has a world-class collection of cut glass poodles. He keeps a few on display on a windowsill, but we have yet to be invited in to view the full collection. We have a childhood friend whose mother has filled her house with Lladró figures of children dancing and playing which look like overgrown pieces from a Norman Rockwell themed chess set.
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For us to belittle other people’s collections would be hypocritical. We have so many collections that we can barely track them all. Our shelves are crowded with antique jars, espresso cups and Godzilla toys dating from Steven’s childhood. Hidden in various locations, including under the bed, are seven ukuleles, three guitars, a clarinet and a Theremin. We store enough wine on site that we could stop buying today and last three years. We are truly the Imelda Marcos of athletic equipment, with two surfboards, four bikes, three sets of skis, skateboards, weight vests and more pairs of running shoes than a mid-sized track team. We are also diet book junkies. We cannot walk past a used bookstore without checking out what crazy diet books they have on hand.

We do not promote binge drinking. We do not binge drink. We have, however, occasionally gone beyond our own healthy drinking guidelines. It is far from a regular occurrence. When it has happened, it is almost always following a particularly long and intense workout. On the theory that “we earned the extra calories,” we allow ourselves to call for one more round.

We recently came across several new studies that forced us to rethink our behavior. It turns out that the aftermath of a killer workout is exactly the wrong time to indulge. The days when we hit the gym the hardest are days that we should be the most restrained.
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Don’t take this wrong. We still believe that alcohol is fully compatible with serious athletics. In fact, in lesser quantities it may benefit recovery. The key appears to be dosage. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. We will let the research tell the story.

1957 was a momentous year in American culture. Wham-O introduced the Frisbee. Dr. Seuss published The Cat in the Hat. The Brooklyn Dodgers moved from New York to Los Angeles, a betrayal that Steven’s Brooklyn-born father is still bitter about. On the political front, Congress authorized the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention to inconvenience Americans by conducting a yearly survey of their health and lifestyle.
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The pattern the CDC has since established is to publish new statistics monthly. The media then takes those figures and converts them into alarming headlines. Numbers showing that obesity continues to trend upward become, “Average American Now Shaped Like Michelin Man.”

Our original plan for this week was to hop on the Hipster Express and review well-known diets for their compatibility with the zombie lifestyle. This sounded more fun that it turned out to be. The problem is that zombies are mono-foodists. They consume the flesh of the living and, like the French, particularly enjoy the delicacy of brains. Neither sweets nor grains hold any interest for them. Zombies appear have the same aversion to fruits and vegetables that vegans have to the traditional zombie diet.
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A dreary list of diets that allow organ meats is probably enough to headline the humor section of the Huffington Post, but we have higher standards.

​“Do you want to meet Harold?” We were visiting our friends Chris and Kati in Petaluma, California. The question came as we were finishing a tour of the farm on which they live.
 
“Who’s Harold?” Andrea asked.
 
“He’s a cow our landlord is raising. Any interest in going into the meadow to feed him apples? He’ll take them right out of your hand.”
 
“Sure.” Anyone who was raised on a farm has already recognized the stupidity of our answer.