Good evening and happy Monday Eve Eve Eve Eve! Wow, that was a really bad joke. Before I get pummeled with tomatoes, how about we just get to the five topics? Okay, here we go…

Happy Leap Year – Today is Feb. 29 so please allow me to wish a very happy birthday to all our leap day babies! I had the special opportunity to produce a leap day video for work. We focused on three WSU students who “turned 5” today and had some fun with them. You can watch the video by tapping here.

This was a fun video to make and I actually learned a lot about leap day babies.

Four Years – This week (Feb. 27 specifically) marks the four-year anniversary of when Sidney was welcomed into the Catholic Church and Beau was baptized. What a blessed day it was! I still remember arriving at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Myrtle Beach and when my family entered the chapel area, many of my Knights of Columbus brothers and other people from the parish were already seated ready to support Sid and Beau. We are forever grateful to Fr. Roger Morgan for bestowing the sacraments upon us.

Thanks be to God for Feb. 27, 2020. This is our family at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Myrtle Beach on the day Sidney was welcomed into the Church and Beau was baptized.

Sloan Reading – Throughout the year at St. Mary Catholic School, the different grades take turns hosting mass. The students in the respective grades will do the opening prayer, bring down the gifts, and lead everyone else in the prayers of the faithful. Another job is to do the reading. Yesterday, the first graders presented mass and Sloan was chosen for that day’s long reading. She proclaimed Wisdom 7:7-10, 15-16 and did a flawless job, even with many big words mixed in. She practiced with me for two weeks and her efforts paid off. I took time off work to attend the mass and I was so proud of Sloan and all her classmates.

Sloan reading at the St. Mary (Spokane Valley) school mass on February 27, 2024.

National Toast Day – A half decade ago in 2019, I explained how my wife teases me for not really making toast but just “warm bread.” I can’t object—five years later I still cook my “toast” just to the point where it starts to stiffen a bit. Although I gave myself credit in 2019 for being a #11, I really am more of a #16. My wife? She is a solid #13.

According to this chart, how do you eat your toast?

Bring On March – I love the month of March! Spring arrives, longer days set in, Sloan celebrates her birthday, pandemonium ensues with March Madness, and this year the month concludes with Easter. I have liked the third month of the year for a long time, in fact, I wrote about my admiration for March back in 2013…that’s 11 years ago!

My brother and I on Easter Sunday in 2012.

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That will do it for tonight. Sidney and I have a huge weekend on the horizon as we will present to 12 engaged couples at a retreat through our Engaged Encounter work. Please pray for us! Don’t Blink.

Going to a restaurant is always fun. Ordering from a menu, receiving good service, and of course eating delicious food all make eating out a nice experience. But sometimes the pleasant vibes can push us to maximize the pleasure.

As a boy, young man, and even now as an older dude, I have sometimes felt obligated and challenged to eat the entire contents of the plate put forth in front of me. But this can be an unfortunate practice, especially when you are eating somewhere like Texas Roadhouse or Cheesecake Factory.

Even though I still fall short from time to time, I have learned that “making a happy plate” (as my wife calls it) isn’t always the best way to go. Here are my five reasons for not cleaning your restaurant plate—even if you really want to…

Often, it can be tempting but also unnecessary to eat everything on your plate at a restaurant.

1. Self-discipline – Nothing like a challenge to refrain from gorging yourself, right? Although it might not be fun when you are in the middle of really enjoying your meal, you will feel like a champ walking out of the restaurant.

2. Leftovers – Make no mistake about it, restaurant leftovers usually taste better the next day and provide something to look forward to.

3. Gift for someone else – I truly think it is a thoughtful act when my wife goes out to eat with her friends and returns with a to-go box and hands it off to me. “This pasta was delicious and I wanted to bring some of it home for you.” Bringing a portion of your meal home to give someone else is a way to selflessly share an experience that they weren’t able to attend.

4. Promote health – This might be the most obvious reason on the list, but it isn’t ideal to consume 3,000 calories in one sitting. Even if you don’t want the psychological challenge of not eating everything on your plate, perhaps following basic guidance for daily caloric intake will provide a good enough reason to look out for your overall health.

5. Score re-usable containers – When you ask for a “box” at a restaurant, sometimes you receive a container that is pretty spiffy. Yep, some restaurants have really elevated their game when it comes to what they give customers to load their extra food in. Sidney and I have re-used some of these containers long after the leftovers are gone.

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If you want to increase your will power, create another meal for later, brighten the day of a loved one, save some calories, or bring home a re-usable container, you might consider not cleaning your plate. But, as this blogger is very much aware…easier said than done. Don’t Blink.

Let it be known that it took me until Feb. 27 to mention the two words that fill so many of us with anxiety and dread: Election Year.

But just because I haven’t mentioned the election on this blog until now (and I hope I don’t mention it much more through November), doesn’t mean I don’t follow it. Now don’t get me wrong, I am not obsessive to the point that I have alerts on my phone or that I am referencing FiveThirtyEight constantly, but I do enjoy a good presidential race. I definitely keep an eye on it.

And, from time to time, I talk to people about it. One thing I have noticed in my conversations with people supporting both Joe Biden and Donald Trump is a lack of enthusiasm for each candidate. The attitude is that both men are the de facto nominees—the safest options (whoever thought Donald Trump would be the safest option?). Removing either candidate would require maneuvering, in-fighting, inconvenience, money, and so much more. Basically, it would be hard.

It just seems like the easiest option to have these two duke it out again.

I think in our everyday lives we often fall back on the choices and options of least resistance. In our busy existences, why exert energy to undo something that has seemed to be working decently? Why rock the boat when it seems to be sailing just fine?

But perhaps we are overlooking a small leak in the boat. Maybe if we don’t rock it, the leak will get bigger and the boat will eventually sink—or at the very least people might start jumping ship. Better that we are given the chance to make decisions to fix the boat long before acts of desperation like ship jumping, right?

Change for the sake of change isn’t something I advocate for. However, if there are reasons to indicate that an alternative approach or option to a problem might be better, I think it deserves the chance to be vetted and perhaps implemented. Now who is ready to watch the debates this fall?! Don’t Blink.

Earlier this month, Gwen Stefani went on the Jimmy Kimmel Show. Gwen and Jimmy talked about how she will re-unite with her No Doubt bandmates at Coachella in April. During that discussion, Stefani revealed that she no longer remembers the lyrics to most of her No Doubt songs and that she will have to re-learn the lyrics for the festival.

I guess some people might be a little shocked that Gwen Stefani can’t remember the lyrics to the songs that literally made her millions. After all, it wasn’t like she just performed them once. They were songs she wrote and performed over and over.

Kudos to Gwen Stefani for being honest, but I think it is a little sad that she can’t remember the lyrics to her songs.

To be honest, I am not too surprised. Why? Because it is just the human condition. Our brains forget things. Sometimes the forgetfulness is total and sometimes it is supplemented by details that did not happen. I feel ya, Gwen!

But just because I understand Gwen Stefani’s lyrical amnesia and the tendency for humans to forget memories as time goes by, it doesn’t mean that I don’t find it sad. We live our days and then a decade later we don’t have any recollection about them. Even for people like myself with sharp memories, it is depressing how much is just forgotten.

As a way to combat the recollection loss of what I have done on a day-to-day basis over the course of my life, I started to journal religiously about 23 years ago when I was a middle school student. I have written in this blog (which is another way to save memories) numerous times about my journaling habit but this video might explain it the best. I am always fond of saying that if there was one material item I would save if our house was ablaze, it would be my box of old journals.

I treasure my journals more than anything.

Perhaps the human tendency to forget things shouldn’t bother me that much, but I just can’t brush off the fact that Gwen Stefani no longer remembers the lyrics to “Spiderwebs” 😂. Don’t Blink.

The other night at the dinner table, Sidney and I started to chat about what our parents cooked for our families growing up. We specifically discussed the dinners that would be prepared. My wife mentioned that a reliable rotating menu of about five core meals was continually offered throughout her childhood. Growing up in my family, our menu was a little more extensive but we definitely had our go-to dinners as well.

For tonight’s blog post I thought it would be fun to mention the 10 dinners (in no particular order) that were consistently placed on the Reser family kitchen table throughout my childhood. Bon Appetit!…

Our table has expanded over the years and the meals have become more elaborate. Let me take you back couple decades to tell you about some of the classic meals the Reser family would eat.

Grilled Hamburgers – Perhaps the defining meal of our family, there was nothing my dad enjoyed more than throwing hamburgers on the grill. He would take our cheese order (no cheese, one slice, double cheese) and do his best not to burn the meat—easier said than done 😂. Some might view grilled hamburgers as a summer thing but we ate them year-round.

Lasagna – Growing up in an Italian family, you better believe we had a heavy diet of pasta. My mom’s signature dish was her delicious lasagna which she would pair with meatballs from my grandpa’s restaurant. If we ever brought something to a potluck or if my dad needed a dish for a work function, it would be a lasagna.

Tacos and Tater Tots – Sidney said she never ate tater tots with her tacos until she met my family. Well, it was always tots that we would accompany with our homemade, greasy, love-filled tacos. Although I always opted for a soft shell, this was the age when double decker tacos at Taco Bell were really popular and my parents would always make their own versions of it.

Pasta Fagioli – A recipe passed down from my grandma to my mom was pasta fagioli, an Italian bean-based soup. My mom would bake muffins to go with it and whenever she prepared the soup it would fill the kitchen with a distinctive and savory smell. Pro tip: this soup was always even better the next day when we re-heated it in the microwave.

Breakfast! – Breakfast for dinner was definitely a thing at our house. My mom would make either pancakes, French toast, or haul out the battle-tested iron to make homemade waffles. Served with eggs, hash browns, and sausage, eating breakfast for dinner was always a nice change of pace.

Homemade Pizza – This was always a fun night because my mom allowed us kids to make our own personal pizzas. We could either make a traditional round pie or use her muffin pan to create “pizza cupcakes.” Of course homemade pizza tasted way different than what we would get from Pizza Hut but it was always fun and because we made it ourselves there was always that incentive to actually eat it.

Grilled Cheese and Top Ramen – I mentioned this meal in a recent blog post as I described how I had fond memories of dipping my sandwich in the ramen. After letting it soak for 30 seconds or so, I enjoyed the soggy taste that resulted. This was always a quick and easy meal that was great for Lenten Fridays.

Wiener Wraps – This dinner was notorious in our house! A wiener wrap is a hot dog wrapped in Bisquick dough topped with a slice of cheese. On a wiener wrap night, my dad would always concoct his “special sauce” for the wraps and the frozen fries that we would cook to accompany them. These things were always so good that my mom had to set a limit on how many my dad was able to eat 😂.

Sunday Dinner – My parents would go all-out for dinner on Sunday, usually grilling something like chicken, steak, or London broil. They would also prepare baked potatoes and fresh vegetables for a meal that would tie a bow around the weekend and prepare us for the week.

Nachos – My mom and dad would occasionally plan a movie night for our family on either Friday or Saturday. We would head to the basement where our lone television was set up and enjoy the rare opportunity of eating dinner away from the kitchen table. Usually, my mom would make a huge platter of oven-baked nachos for us all to munch on. Toppings like fresh veggies (chopped by my dad), refried beans, and sour cream would be provided. It was always like a mini party and we loved it!

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Now that Sidney and I have our own family, our menu consists of meals passed down to us from both our upbringings. If you ever want a taste of that very eclectic combination, stop by for dinner one of these days. By the way, what was one of the signature dinners served in your family? Don’t Blink.