Category Archives: random

Chipotle’s Secret Salsa

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I recently went to Chipotle for two meals in a row (dinner on Wednesday and lunch on Thursday). It was a wonderful 18 hours, although not quite as good as the night a few years ago when I ate two Chipotle chicken burritos in one sitting (this seriously happened…a few of my friends did it too and someone made a video to document the event). Chipotle is not only one of my current favorite restaurants, I think it’s one of the greatest non-fancy-restaurants in American history; that’s right, I’d put it in the same category as places like In-N-Out Burger, Fuddrucker’s and Bonanza (I purposely left McDonald’s off this list because of the annoying “McDonald’s hangover” that sets in about 30-60 minutes after eating their addictingly good food).

Fact: Chipotle burritos are delicious! If I had the magical power to change anything about them, I wouldn’t — because they’re perfect just the way they are. As it turns out, I’m not the only person in America with a “tummy crush” (kinda like a “man crush”) on Chipotle. In fact, someone loves (or hates, potentially even fears) Chipotle so much that they created a Chipotle Nutrition Facts Calculator that allows you to select each ingredient you get in your Chipotle meal and it will calculate the nutritional information for you. Like I said, the person(s) who created this site must either love, hate or fear Chipotle, because the facts it reveals are not necessarily good news. For instance, after just a few clicks and some quick multiplication I learned that my adventure a few years ago known as the “Dos Burritos Challenge” consisted of 2068 calories (I won’t even tell you how many of those calories were from fat). To be honest, I’m not even mad…that’s impressive!

It seems Steve Ells, Chipotle’s 42-year-old founder and CEO, has found the recipe for success–in both business and burritos…keep things simple, use quality ingredients and treat your employees really well. Groundbreaking stuff, huh? Well apparently it’s working. According to a story from U.S. News & World Report last week titled “Chipotle’s Secret Salsa”, Chipotle Mexican Grill’s stock has more than quintupled since they went public in 2006. The article takes a closer look at “the most successful and perhaps the hippest” of what they call “fast casual” Mexican restaurants. Despite Chipotle’s basic menu (only three items – tacos, burritos and salad) and simple assembly line operation (ala Subway), the burrito artists at Chipotle get paid quite well (around $8.10 an hour as a starting wage) and over the last year they wrapped enough tortillas in tin foil to bring in over $1 billion in sales…and they made all that money without even having cookies (or any other dessert items) on their menu. It’s incredible! On behalf of all the Americans who contributed to that $1 billion total last year, I’d like to say thank you to Steve Ells and all the wonderful Chipotle employees for making my life a little bit better, one burrito at a time…

foil-shizzle.jpg

(click on the burrito to find a Chipotle near you.)

Farewell to Real World Sydney

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In case you missed it, tonight was the season finale for The Real World Sydney. It was a roller-coaster episode of typical Real World drama, complete with roommates saying hurtful things to/about each other (including things like “I don’t care if I never talk to you again after we leave”) and then — less than an hour of TV time later — they were all crying and hugging each other before they left the house for the last time; exchanging I love you‘s and promising to call each other and possibly even hang out when they got home. They only lived together for four months and they had cameras crews following them and taping nearly everything they did the entire time (and let’s not forget they’re wearing microphones with battery packs with the exception of when they’re in bed or in the shower, but even then there are mics built into the house to make sure anything that’s said is picked up, and in case it’s not, it’s sure to be deciphered by someone and translated into subtitles). There’s just nothing about the situation that is Real, yet at the end of each season the housemates act like they’ve become best friends during the experience…what’s wrong with them? and at the end of each season I get kinda sad because I feel like I’m losing seven new friends…what’s wrong with me?

Merry Listmas and Happy “let’s look back on the” Old Year!

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Have you ever noticed how many lists there are during this time of year? My family and I send out lists of things we’d be excited to receive as Christmas gifts from each other, music channels have “list shows” for the top songs of the year (click here to watch any/all of VH1′s Top 40 videos of the year), even Santa keeps lists of the “naughty” and the “nice” kids around the world.

We are list crazy in America, especially–it seems–at the end of a calendar year.

Apparently information isn’t interesting to us unless it can be organized in some sort of a list, preferably after first be filtered through a ranking system–starting with a large number (at least 10, but 20 or 40 is even better) and moving down to the #1 (random thing) of the year. And it seems we’re not only interested in the top/best things of the year, but also the lowest/worst things. A few examples…my sister brought the year-end issue of People magazine to my parent’s house over Christmas (the issue is dated January 7, 2008; explain to me how that works since I was reading it in December of 2007…was I time traveling while reading it?). Anyway, in big letters across the top of the cover of the “Special Double Issue” reads “BEST (AND WORST!) OF 2007,” and inside the magazine are all sorts of lists of the best (and worst) dresses, couples, stars, etc. of the year (according to the writers of People). Yesterday on msn.com one of the featured stories highlighted the Top 10 “Best housing markets” (listing the cities where home prices increased the most during the 3rd quarter compared with the same period in 2006) as well the Top 10 “Worst housing markets”).

I enjoy getting things I actually like/want for Christmas; I love music and culture, so I watch the video countdown shows on not just VH1, but also MTV, CMT and BET; and I do my best to stay on Santa’s “nice” list (I got some cash in my stocking this year, so the big jolly guy must still like me!). The lists of best/worst housing markets was somewhat interesting to me and I shamefully like reading People magazine, but there were a few other lists I ran across today that I didn’t expect to see. Like Foxsports.com’s “most hateable people, teams” of 2007“; babycenter.com’s Top 10 baby names of 2007 (girl’s and boy’s names); and–also from babycenter–the Top baby names through history, where you can find the Top 100 baby names for each year going back to 1996, the Top 40 baby names for each decade (1930s through 1990s), and the Top 10 baby names for each decade (1880s through 1920s). This is really incredible data. I never knew that my name (Andrew) was the 19th most popular boy’s name in the decade I was born (1980s), or that Margret was the #9 girl’s name in the 1940s (but #4 in the 1880s) and Mildred was the #7 girl’s name in the 1910s.

Perhaps even more interesting than finding humorous grandma names that were common one hundred years ago is looking at trends of popular names today that can be linked to popular culture (whether it be through character names on TV shows and movies, or even the names celebrities give their children). For instance, on NBC’s wildly popular show Friends, Rachel (and Ross) had a baby girl on the last episode of Season 8 and they named her Emma. The year before that episode aired (2001), Emma was only the 29th most popular girl’s name, but in 2002 it moved up to #11 . Friends was America’s most popular show until its last season (Season 10) in 2004. Baby Emma was a consistent character on the show and, as a result, Emma was the second most popular girls name in 2003 and the most popular for three straight years (2004, 2005 and 2006). It was finally de-throned this year, but it is still the third most popular girl’s name (and the final episode of Friends aired almost four years ago).

We’re now seeing a similar trend in baby naming thanks to the popularity of ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy and the star of its spinoff show Private Practice, Dr. Addison Montgomery (played by Kate Walsh). The name Addison wasn’t even on the Top 100 girl’s name list of 2005 (the year Grey’s Anatomy came out), but as the show quickly became more popular, so did the name. Addison was the 26th most popular girl’s name in 2006 and this year (the same year Private Practice premiered) it cracked the Top 10, coming in at #6.

Do you think we watch too much TV in America? Maybe, but I love shows like Friends and Grey’s Anatomy, and–although I can’t say whether they would influence the decision of naming my own child (thankfully I’m no where close to facing this decision)–I don’t plan to stop watching them anytime soon (and I don’t think it’s such a terrible thing that 15 years from now, there are going to be a lot of college girls telling the story that they were named after a baby on their parent’s favorite TV show).

I’m sure there are plenty of other fascinating lists that I have yet to learn about, not to mention other trends between the popularity of baby names and the world of popular culture, but I’m going to let you discover them on your own. Let me know if you find anything interesting.

Kindergartener kin of Davey Crocket kills bear

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This is absolutely fantastic and to be honest, I’m still not sure what to think about it; according to an article on espn.com, a descendant of Davey Crocket killed a 445-pound black bear while hunting. That’s a very large animal, but it’s not the size of the bear that makes the story so incredible, it’s the size of the boy who killed the bear, and who he is related to, that makes this story so unbelievable. Tre Merrit is only 5 years old and he is descendant of Davey Crocket, the legendary American mountain man (aka “King of the Wild Frontier”). Tre’s grandfather witnessed the instantly-legendary hunting story; here’s how they told it to a reporter from KATV/Little Rock,

“His 10th great-grandfather was Davy Crockett,” Mike Merritt said. “And Davy supposedly killed him a bear when he was three. And Tre is five and really killed a bear. I really doubt if Davy killed one when he was three.”

Mike Merritt was in the stand at the time but said Tre did it all by himself.

“He came in about 40 to 50 yards,” Mike Merritt said of the black bear, “and when he got in the open, I whistled at him and he stopped and I said, ‘Shoot Tre.’”

Tre confirmed his grandfather’s account.

“I was up in the stand and I seen the bear,” Tre Merritt said. “It came from the thicket and it was beside the road and I shot it.”

At first, Mike Merritt didn’t think Tre had hit the bear with his youth rifle.

“I said, ‘Tre, you missed the bear,’ ” Mike Merritt said. “He said, ‘Paw-paw I squeezed the trigger and I didn’t close my eyes. I killed him.”‘

The bear turned out to be 445 pounds — 12 times the weight of Tre. Mike Merritt said tears rolled down his cheeks when he found out his grandson killed the enormous bear.

The entire article – including a video of Tre, Mike and the bear – can be found on espn.com (or by clicking here).

links of interest

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I’m passing on links to a few interesting articles I read today.

  • “Cold and Flu Myths” (MSN): like an episode of MythBusters, this article disproves several well-known myths about common illnesses. For instance; flu vaccines do not cause the flu, colds aren’t caused by going outside without a coat, and you should feed a cold AND a fever.
  • “Us? Happy? You betcha!” (Star Tribune)*: an article on the front page of the strib about a recent study ranking each state by how happy its residents are (rankings are based on depression and suicide rates). Which state has the happiest people? According to this study it’s…South Dakota? Equally as suprising, NoDak was ranked number 9 (I have no idea how that happened…have you been to those two states? They are awful!). Also in the Top 10, Minnesota was ranked the sixth happiest state and Iowa (my other “home” state) was fourth. Trailing its fellow MidWest states, Wisconsin came in at number 30 (although I assume the study was done during the past two NFL seasons when the Packers were losing…if it was done again this year, I would predict Wisconsin would crack the Top 5!). *FYI: you may need a startribune.com membership to view the article. Membership is free, you just have to give an email address to signup. They don’t send much spam and it’s worth it because you get access to all their online content (which is basically everything from the print-version of the newspaper).

confessions of an email addict

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Hi, my name is Andy and I’m addicted to email. I check my email at least 5 times a day, probably more some days, depending on where I’m at and if they have free wireless. I have 3 “main” email accounts, 2-3 “secondary/junk” accounts (which I only check once every couple days), plus the inbox for my facebook and myspace pages; add it all up and the amount of time I spend simply checking all my emails (not even reading or writing messages) is getting out of control. My “problem” has become more noticeable lately as I’m trying to be a productive student and finish the semester strong. I have a lot of work to do before I can really enjoy the Christmas season and working on school stuff often takes a backseat to other-much less important things; I’m actually proud/embarrassed to admit that sometimes I find myself checking email or reading articles online while sitting in class (I hope none of my professors are reading this, although I doubt I have them confused since it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not paying attention to their lecture). I’ve come to realize that grad school is pretty much all writing (papers and projects) – at least it is in my experience as a seminary student – there are very few tests…in fact, this is end of my third semester (plus one J-term) and when I buy new books after Christmas I will have only taken one real test (you know, the kind you take in a classroom after the professor comes in and asks everyone put away all their study materials and all you hear for the next two hours is the sound of furious writing – the joyful release of knowledge before it’s forgotten – and an occasional sniffle, since students are always sick around finals, especially in December when it’s cold outside and people haven’t been getting much sleep).

The thinking seems to go something like this… when you’re studying for a test you’d rather be writing a paper, but when you’re writing a paper you’d rather be studying for a test. Continue reading →