Sweet Sixteen of Cereal

If you read this blog at all, you know that I can turn almost any mundane event into a reason for a party. So much so that when I recently jokingly referred to celebrating National Matrix Singularity Error Day in a work email, people thought that I was serious. And now I am seriously thinking about actually celebrating it. Life’s too boring when you don’t celebrate the small things.

But there are certainly bigger, um, more normal things to celebrate as well. Like many offices across the country, my office has a little NCAA tournament bracket fun--for entertainment purposes only, seriously, I am rule follower.

Partly to celebrate the tournament, but mostly to eat a copious amount of cereal, I organized the Sweet Sixteen of Cereal for my office. It was actually an idea that a colleague came up with and passed along to me for implementation. And I was happy to do it!

First, we compiled a list of every cereal we could think of currently in production (yeah, you can buy some extinct cereals on Amazon, but good luck with those expiration dates) and had everyone pick their top eight (or “top ate” as one person referred to them). From those votes, there were 11 cereals that were the clear favorites. For the remaining five slots, I weighted the remaining cereal by number of votes they received and selected five cereals using a random number generator. (Did you think I wouldn’t inject a bit of nerdiness into the process?!?).

The official Sweet Sixteen of Cereal included the voted in cereals of Honey Nut Cheerios (the overall top vote getter), Apple Jacks, Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Corn Flakes, Crispix, Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes, Frosted Mini Wheats, Honey Bunches of Oats and Cocoa Rice Krispies and the “at-large bids” of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, Cap’n Crunch, Chex, Lucky Charms, and Total.

Note: none of my favorite cereals made the top sixteen. But I want to give them attention and it’s my blog so I can. HA! My favorite cereals are plain shredded wheat (I add fresh blueberries), Kashi Vive, Trader Joe’s High Fiber cereal (aka Fiber Worms), and Nature’s Path Optimum Slim. If you have not tried Kashi Vive yet, you HAVE to. It’s like little expensive flakes of heaven in a dish. But I eat oatmeal for breakfast every day anyway. Cereal tends to ‘cut’ the roof of my mouth, especially Cap’n Crunch. I thought this was a Rebecca-exclusive issue but in the many, many indepth conversations I have had about cereal in the past week, more people claimed the same problem.

I then created the official bracket:




We all gathered on Thursday Morning and kicked off the event!



Everyone had their early favorites!

The first round had some interesting match-ups including Chex versus Crispix. (Chex won)

And Apple Jacks versus Fruit Loops. (Apple Jacks won.)

Everyone tasted as many cereals as they wanted and voted the “best” between the two in each match-up by placing a cereal token in the ballot cup. How each person defined “best” was entirely up to them.

Miriam employed the unique technique of putting all of the cereal in the same bowl at the same time.

The first round had one major upset when Lucky Charms beat Frosted Mini Wheats.

From there, we moved onto the second round where we had the unique match-up of Frosted Flakes versus Corn Flakes.

For this match-up, the guys turned to the labels and found that the cereals have the exact same ingredients just one has a bunch more sugar dumped on it. That one won, naturally.


And we came up with our Final Four: Apple Jacks versus Frosted Flakes and Honey Bunches of Oats versus Lucky Charms. Can you sense the drama?!?! Who would emerge victorious?!?

The loser cereals:

In the finals it was Apple Jacks versus Lucky Charms

where, drumroll please, Apple Jacks won! Woohoo!!!

It was kind of a surprising result. I voted for them though. I love the faux-apple flavor!

The final bracket:

I will say that everyone had a tremendous sugar high followed by a huge sugar crash. HA! And that afternoon, we celebrated March birthdays too with some delicious Whole Foods cakes. The true highlight of my day came when my boss came into my cubicle eating out of a bowl that had a layer of cereal on the bottom, a piece of birthday cake in the middle, and more cereal on top. A truly balanced meal.

Holy Blog-cation, Batman!

Sorry for the nearly two-week blog hiatus! Work has been occupying way more of my brain than I usually allow and my creativity has been developing time series models and not cupcakes. But it's been great geeky fun!

Anyway, the next month will continue to be bananakers but I promise not to stay away from the blog this long...ever...again!

But in the meantime, I wanted to alert you all to the free Barney Butter giveaway. I love love LOVE Barney Butter. I put it on my oatmeal every morning. It's the yummiest almond butter around and it comes in these cool little, portion-sized packets, perfect for throwing in my handbag where it can mingle with the 27 tubes of chapsticks that congregate at the bottom of every bag I own. Anyway, the good people (they are seriously so nice and helpful) at Barney Butter are giving away free samples of it! Click here and sign up for a free sample. (They never send spam or anything so don't worry.)

Just what I was looking for

The mailroom in my building has a bulletin board where residents can post items for sale and whatnot. I have never bought anything from these postings but I always stop to read them because well, you never know!

This one though might be the best one I have ever seen.

"For Sale: Talking Freddy Krueger Doll $15"

So many questions. 1) They actually make those? 2) What kind of person buys one? 3) $15?!?!? Seriously?!?!?

And okay, a little Google search answers 2 of those 3 questions. Check it out here. Apparently, 15 dollars is a steal.

The President totally waved at me

One of the great realities of living in D.C. is that you encounter motorcades. Alot. You get used to standing on the sidewalk, waiting and waiting. Then the motorcade goes through and you play a little game of guess who is inside, all while machine guns are pointed at you. It is an exciting way of life.

And a way of life that generally hadn't encroached upon my neighborhood. Or didn't, at least, until the neighborhood became the midpoint between each of the First Daughters' schools. And a few weekends ago VP Joe Biden and his family dined at the local Boogeymonger restaurant. Really, my 'hood is suddenly a politico hotspot.

So this afternoon, when I popped out of the Metro station, I knew something was up. The roads were all blocked with police cruisers, and well, there were police everywhere. My first thought was "Oh My God. Is Bloomingdale's on fire?" (I am not making that up, it really was my first thought.) Then I put two and two together and realized the streets would soon be graced by President Obama's motorcade.

What was really cool is that people literally poured out of the shops and condos that line the street to get a peek at the President and starting cheering. Kind of a unique Washington experience on a bright sunny Friday.

Two favorite moments of this motorcade experiences:

1. At one blocked intersection, a tiny lady leaned out of the window of her huge Escalade and starting screaming at the police office whose car was blocking the intersection. It went a little something like this:
Tiny lady in a Huge Escalade (TLIAHE) "WHY WON'T YOU LET US THROUGH? WHAT IS GOING ON? CAN'T YOU SEE HOW IMPORTANT I AM?" (Okay, she didn't say that last thing but it was implied.)
Police officer: Ma'am it's a motorcade.
TLIAHE: "I HAVE A MANICURE APPOINTMENT. IF I MISS IT, IT'S YOUR FAULT."

While I understand better than most the value of a well-groomed cuticle, TLIAHE, seriously, GET OVER YOURSELF!

2. I happened to be standing in front of Louis Vuitton when the motorcade went through. The entire staff of Louis Vuitton was standing next to me. They all seemed to realize at once that they were ALL standing on the sidewalk and then screamed, "OH MY GOD, did anyone lock the door?" So if anyone was looking for a LV bag on the cheap, lol, you definitely missed your chance.

I am snow over winter

For someone who does not like cold weather or snow at all, I have spent sooo much time this winter in cold, snowy places: three trips to Wisconsin, one trip to Duluth, and one trip to Aspen. All of the trips were a blast but after the 30 below temps and monstrous snowfalls that I have endured with a smile and a fabulous winter wardrobe, I feel as though I have earned a snowball encrusted tiara.

Because on top of those trips, it has felt like the longest winter ever here in D.C. It's been colder, longer than any of the three previous winters. But really no snow.

Until yesterday.

This is what I woke up to this morning.



I am sure all of my Wisconsin readers are scoffing at this bit of snow. But seriously 4-6 inches here is like five feet for you. The city's resources are just not built to handle it. And personally, I love, love, love the pre-snow freakout that takes place in this city. While I was hoping for a snow day today, I know a delay would be more likely.

When I woke up at the ungodly hour that I wake up, I dashed over to my computer and discovered that there was not even a delay even though the snow had "piled" up overnight. I grumbled but then just got ready: straightening my hair, washing my face, brushing my teeth. And then turned on the news to NBC4 for my daily dose of Joe, Babs, Tom & Jerry. And at that moment, they announced a two hour delay had just been put into effect. Apparently, and this has happened before, I wake up before these decision are made. Which is sort of sad. LOL

Naturally, I went back to bed for an hour.

It was such a nice change of pace to have Panera coffee and breakfast at home during the workweek. (However, it totally messed up my eating for the day. I have a VERY defined morning routine at the office. I arrive at 6:15, check emails, and make my to-do list for the day. At 7 a.m. SHARP, I head downstairs to the coffee shop and get my hazelnut coffee. While my coffee cools, I warm up my oatmeal in the microwave and eat while I work. My body knows this schedule is set in stone Monday-Thursday. And when I don't follow it, I snack. All day long. GAH!)

Around 7:15, after watching the Today show reporter report live from in front of the Capitol and basically call the snowstorm the end of world for the day at least, I set out to the Metro station expecting the worst.

And really, not so bad at all. In fact, the sidewalks were completely passable even though it was snowing super heavily. This, dear readers, is the exact OPPOSITE of what happened a few weeks ago when we had an ice storm. The road crews did a fab job on the roads that night but the sidewalks were completely forgotten. As in, not a single grain of salt graced the ice. Which is not a good thing in a city where a large portion of the population walks to work/Metro/school. Have you ever walked uphill on an unsalted slab of ice? At five in the morning? It was a not a good morning. While the accessories portion of my wardrobe is vast and diverse, it does not include an ice pick in its contents. But at that moment, I would given anything for one (maybe one bedazzled with pink rhinestones).

I made it into the office today and attendance overall hovered around the 50 percent mark. Once the snow stopped, some super cold air descended on the city, probably the coldest it has been all winter. Naturally, the fire alarm went off so the entire building had to evacuate outside. This happened during lunch so many, many people were in the cafeteria without their coats. I was not (Score one for being all antisocial and eating lunch at my desk!!!) It was freaking cold!

What is getting me through this weather? The knowledge that it will be in the 60s this weekend.