Thing #194: 150 Baking Cups

Over the last year or so, I've slowly used up 150 baking cups by making batches of muffins:

• blueberry muffins (three different brands)
• Cinnamon Toast Crunch muffins
• banana nut muffins
• oatmeal muffins
• chocolate chip muffins
• almond poppyseed muffins
• cornmeal muffins

I thought the Krusteaz blueberry muffins were the best, which reminds me of an old Jack Handey joke about dolphins.

Thing #189: Silverware

Same story as the plates. It's like camping, but in your own apartment!

Thing #188: Plates

I had these two cheap WalMart plates from college, which I kept in storage until Megh moved in for awhile and we needed a couple extras. Since she doesn't have all her kitchen stuff out here yet, I gave her these two when she moved out.

Thing #184: Muppet Magnets

Muppet torsos with interchangeable hair and shirts, stuck to the refrigerator for years. Gonzo seems pretty upbeat, despite not having legs.

Thing #150: Wooden Kabob Skewers

I had a pile of these in a kitchen drawer, from a party long ago, and I'd been using them for various things, mostly food-related. I thought they were all gone, then I found this last (?) stash in a pile of stuff I'd salvaged from my car.

When I first bought the car, the driver's side mirror was attached using two wood screws. It looked funny up close, but it stayed in place so I didn't mind.

Some time later, I went through a car wash and the mirror broke off of the screws and was just kind of dangling there. Being the resourceful guy that I am, I tried to use a handful of these skewers (for structural support) and duct tape (for obvious reasons) to reinforce the connection between the broken portion of the mirror and the part still fixed to the door. It never really worked very well, or it never really worked very long.

Apparently I left the rest of the skewers in the car, then moved them into a paper bag with some other junk, and then now I threw them out, so I think they're all gone, finally.

Thing #148: Electric Mixer

Megh tried to use this to make cupcake frosting, but it didn't work. It turned on, but the motor wouldn't start up and the beaters wouldn't turn.

I did what you would have done: I grabbed a screwdriver and took the whole thing apart, then put it back together. That didn't fix it, so I threw it away.

(Megh borrowed one from Nate after that.)

Thing #124: Coffee Beans

I was supposed to use these by February 2011, but instead I shoved them to the back of a cabinet and forgot all about them.

Thing #114: Instant Espresso

I vaguely remember buying this little jar with the intention of adding espresso flavor to other things. It was a nice idea.

Thing #113: Maraschino Cherries

These are "best" by November 19th, 2012. Wait, that's still in the future!

And an awfully specific date for a product I purchased in 2009. It was for ice cream sundaes, so we used approximately two cherries from this jar, and it's been sitting in my refrigerator ever since. I've finally accepted that I'm never going to eat them, regardless of the date on the lid, so that's that.

I did eat one today, just because. I'm not sure it still counts as fruit when it's been soaking in corn syrup and preservatives for three years. Brief review: it didn't taste great.

Thing #112: Flaxseed Oil Supplement

I found this in the back of a kitchen cabinet, unopened. Freshness and potency guaranteed through: April 2009.

Thing #109: Wrigley Field Souvenir Cups

Plastic cups: they really tell stories, don't they?

In this case, they tell how the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Chicago Cubs 18-1 on August 2nd, 2010.

At the time of this post, that is still the largest margin of victory in the Brewers-Cubs rivalry (Wikipedia).

Amazingly, the Brewers got 26 hits but only four went for extra bases: three doubles, one home run. Meanwhile, the Cubs managed only four total hits... and all four were doubles.

Thing #108: Lollapalooza Cups

From 2007, when Pearl Jam headlined. You get one of these when you order a beer, so I must have had at least two beers. Don't worry, it's a three-day festival and I took public transportation.

These were #5 plastic. Turns out you can recycle #5 plastic at your local Whole Foods, which I recommend if you want to feel like a real yuppie. I did, and I did.

Back to the Lollapalooza lineup: it's just a bit weird to look at the schedule now and see all the bands that I missed because either they weren't big yet, or I wasn't aware of them yet, or I saw a different band during the same timeslot. (Or possibly I saw them but forgot because I didn't really know them yet and/or I was hazy from one or both beers.)

For your amusement, a partial list of bands/acts that I didn't see at Lollapalooza 2007:

• Daft Punk
• Muse
• Kings of Leon
• The Black Keys
• Amy Winehouse
• LCD Soundsystem
• The Hold Steady
• Spoon
• Against Me!
• Silversun Pickups
• Cold War Kids
• Lady Ga Ga
• Cage the Elephant

Thing #104: Comedy Sportz Cup

Faded plastic cup from Comedy Sportz Indianapolis, a souvenir of the college era.

I once caught a mouse in this cup. Drinking out of it was kind of weird after that, but I got over it.

Thing #78: Salsa Jar

My parents brought me this Mason jar full of salsa when they were visiting once. I ate most of it, then somehow the remainder sat in the back of my refrigerator for a long, long time.

Fow now, this jar is sitting in the recycle bin because I'm not one of those folks who makes creative use of old Mason jars. Are you one of those people? Do you want this? Speak up and I'll save it for you.

Thing #74: Peach Tea Diet Snapple

This was way in the back of the refrigerator, virtually invisible and nearly forgotten. I'm not sure who left it there (it wasn't me) or exactly how long it lived there. (Authorities said best leave it unsolved.)

I dumped the liquid and recycled the bottle, so I'm tagging this as "recycled" to make myself seem slightly more environmental when I tally these up at the end.

Oh, and according to the trivia under the cap, more Siberian tigers live in zoos than in the wild. Interesting.

Thing #68: Wedding Souvenir Magnet

Kim & Ben
9/18/2010

May your love -- unlike this commemorative magnet, which is sort of falling apart -- endure forever.

Thing #67: Northwestern Football Magnet

Not sure I'll ever need to refer to the 2010 schedule again, but if I do, I can probably use the Internet instead of a refrigerator magnet.

This is the year they hosted Illinois at Wrigley Field, a game played entirely in one direction (insert Illinois margin of victory joke here). I snapped a few photos in Wrigleyville before the game, but they aren't published anywhere yet. Considering that was 13 months ago, maybe it's time to hunt down my Flickr credentials.

Speaking of cameras, this camera does a terrible job capturing purple in still shots.

Thing #55: Cookie Tin

This had cookies in it last Christmas, so I know I've had it since 2010. I gave it back to Sarah, since she's making cookies for people again this year.

If -- totally hypothetically -- I were to get this exact tin back as a gift, I would face a serious philosophical dilemma about whether or not this "thing" still counts.

Thing #53: Potato Chips

I found these in a bag of materials from a training session I attended a few years ago. I assume it was from a few years ago, because on the bag of chips was printed: "Best By 25 May 2008".

Naturally, I had to taste a chip, for science. So I ate one. I would describe the taste as both "metallic" and "bad". I tried a second chip, to confirm my results. It tasted even worse than the first.

Science accomplished, I threw the rest of the bag away.

Thing #49: Frilled Picks

I kept these for months because I didn't know what they were called, so I couldn't write about them. Then one day at the grocery store, I saw a package of them on the shelf. Frilled picks. Frilled picks!

Now we know.

P.S. As of the time of this writing, frilledpicks.com is available. Go register it and make a site! You'll get so much traffic from this blog post!