PeteCarpenter.com

Best of 2008

Ah, the year-end top ten list. A yearly tradition that reminds me what the hell happened over the last 12 months. Without further ado, and in no particular order:

• Best Answer to My Taco Dreams: Taqueria El Amigo. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted in a taqueria: hole in the wall, Spanish-speaking, TV tuned to Telemundo, fantastically fresh tacos, and is five minutes from my house. Since we discovered it, we’ve gone pretty much every other week, which will continue for the foreseeable future.
• Best Time Suck:Facebook/Twitter. I finally gave in and signed up to the social networking phenomenon and now understand what it’s all about. Sort of. I guess. Hell, it’s just a great way to kill time and pretend that other people really care what you’re doing right now.
• Best Thing That Makes Me Hate Winter Just a Little Bit Less: A Snowblower. I’ve only been through one storm with this, but I can’t tell you how much happier it has made me. I don’t know why we waited to long. Shoveling is stupid.
• Best Thing That Makes Me Hate Vacuuming a Whole Lot Less: Rosie the Roomba. Vacuuming on a weekly basis has always been my chore, and I pretty much hate doing it. Rosie has taken that evil job away from me, happily cleaning the house while I do other things. I love her.
• Greatest Invention Ever Created: iPhone. It’s pretty much everything that a cell phone should be, and it has lived up to every expectation that I had. I seriously can’t imagine living without it now.
• Vegetable of the Year: Kale. We started getting it in our farm share this year, and I don’t know if I had ever made it before. It quickly became a favorite, and we now buy it every week, whether we think we need it or not. The recipe that really did it for us was these kale chips that might be the easiest and best things that we made all year. Trust me, it will be the brussels sprouts of 2009.
• Best Reason to Wear a Suit and Take Up Smoking: Mad Men. Best show of the year, without a doubt. We picked this one up before season two started and went back and watched all of season one and caught up just in time for the finale. Just fantastic.
• Best New Lunch Spot that Opened Near Our House and We Quickly Became Obsessed With: Sofra. Go get yourself a mezze platter and some flatbreads and a couple of chocolate earthquakes and just try to tell me that this place doesn’t rule. When they first opened, we went about six times in four weeks. OK, so we OD’ed a little bit, but it’s still a favorite even though the prices have gone up and it’s always packed with fancy Cambridge folks.
• Worst Unexpected Home Renovations: Bathroom ceiling/exploding furnace. Isn’t home ownership fun?
• Best Way to Relive My Junior High Days: Wii. Yes, video games returned to our lives and we found ourselves staying home on Saturday nights to eat Chinese food, drink beers, and play Wii. So much for maturity.
• Best Way to Get Your Veggies: Our CSA. It was the first year that we bought a share, and we could not have been happier with it. I’ve never eaten so many different kinds of vegetables in my life, and I can’t wait for next year’s to begin.
• Best End to Years of Wishing: Finally getting a new HDTV. I could never justify spending thousands of dollars on a TV, but with prices dropping so far this year, it was time. I am a happy boy.
• Worst Dining Trend of the Year: Getting sick at restaurants. It happened twice this year. Getting so sick that the mere thought of food made me nauseous, it wrecked big meals that we had planned for and were really excited for. It’s like I was jinxed or something. Hopefully, that trend is in the past and won’t return for 2009.
• Best/Worst Way to Eliminate All Free Time in Your Life: Going back to school. Yeah, it sucks right now, but I know it’s worth it. Still, I miss my life.

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