One of my favorite things of 2009, was discovering Zevia’s all natural sodas when I was introduced to the Belly Fat Cure by Jorge Cruise. I’ve been a big fan of Zevia since my very first purchase. Their sodas are all natural, and naturally sugar free, and calorie free. They are sweetened by Stevia, a South American plant who’s name means “sweet leaf” and Erythritol, a sugar alcohol that naturally occurs in plants.

At the time I first started trying Zevia, they only had four flavors, Cola (similar to Coca-Cola or Pepsi), Natural Twist (a lemon-lime soda similar to 7-Up or Sprite), Root Beer (similar to A&W), and Orange (similar to Fanta). Soon after they introduced two new flavors, Ginger Ale (similar to Canada Dry) and Black Cherry (similar to a Cherry 7-Up). And now they’ve introduced a new flavor called, Dr. Zevia, which naturally is similar to Dr. Pepper.

It was quite a while following the introduction of the Ginger Ale and Black Cherry Zevia flavors before I ever found them in the stores, so this time I ordered a couple of cases of the new Dr. Zevia directly from Zevia. Fortunately they were offering a great discount at the time which dropped the price of shipping for the two cases down to just a couple of bucks over top the price of the cases. And after a couple of weeks of waiting for the order to ship and for FedEx Ground Service to deliver it, the Dr. Zevia had finally arrived.

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As some of my readers may recall, a few weeks ago I had a craving for some A&W food, and to my surprise discovered all the locations in San Diego County had closed up shop. (Click here to read about it if you missed it.) Since I was in Orange County for Robert Shadbolt’s birthday at Disneyland, I decided on the way home I was going to seek out one of the A&W’s on the way home from Disneyland. But I wasn’t really hungry and by the time I found the location in Mission Viejo with a slight diversion off the highway, it was a few minutes before they closed.

I didn’t really want food, so I elected to just get a Root Beer Float, except using the Diet Root Beer instead of the regular. Officially even those are a no-no items on my Belly Fat Cure program, because the ice cream has sugar in it, and the Diet Root Beer has aspartame in it. But as a Dr. Edward Taub frequently states, “Everything in moderation….including moderation.” And so I had a small Root Beer Float with two bad ingredients. On the Belly Fat Cure, I’m not supposed to have a meal that exceeds 5 grams of sugar and 2 carb servings or a 5/2. The Diet Root Beer Float was a 17/2, which is okay on the carb end, but 2 more grams of sugar than I’m supposed to have in a whole day. Still far better than the 57/4 getting the regular root beer version would have been. So I cheated on my program a little.

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Following the great day at Disneyland to celebrate my friend Robert Shadbolt’s birthday, our group decided on dinner at Anaheim’s Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant. The chain of Bubba Gump restaurants takes it’s name and inspiration from the 1994 Forrest Gump film originally directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks in the title role. As a themed restaurant, Bubba Gump offers a seafood dining menu in addition to a themed gift shop and effectively offering a unique way to keep the spirit of Forrest Gump alive and well in the mind of consumers long after the original theatrical run of the film.

According to the press kit, Paramount Pictures originally approached Rusty Pelican Restaurants, Inc. about extending the brand of Forrest Gump into the realm of casual family dining. And by 1996, the very first Bubba Gump Shrimp Company themed restaurant opened it’s doors in Montery, California. The company specifically targets tourist destinations for their restaurants, such as the Anaheim location which is a couple of blocks away from Disneyland, and other locations including Universal’s City Walk in both Hollywood and Orlando, Times Square in New York, Pier 39 in San Francisco, and the Mall of America in Minnesota. Bubba Gump is Paramount’s most successful foray into themed restaurant licensing, but wasn’t the first.

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A couple of weeks ago, I received an invitation via Socializr.com from Mike Trueblood inviting people to come celebrate the birthday of his partner, Robert Shadbolt at Disneyland. The date was for January 15th, a Friday, which normally I wouldn’t be able to do because Friday nights start my week of work at the casino. But that could be easily fixed with a time off request for a night off. I don’t usually get the chance to use my pass with friends as most of my friends have Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 type jobs and I work the middle of the night inclusive of weekends, so I jumped at the chance to share a day at Disneyland with Mike and Robert.

My requested night off was approved and I changed my “Maybe” to a definite “Yes” that I would be attending and was able to coordinate some details with them ahead of time when I saw them both at the bar on Wednesday night. The rough plan was that the guys would be there at 9 am and that I should call them around that time to coordinate locations. I was planning on being there early, but I was coming from my parent’s home in Temecula instead of from San Diego as they called me for some help setting up their brand new television for use in their home entertainment system. My folks wouldn’t let me leave in the morning without breakfast first, so I didn’t get to leave as early as I wanted.

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The other night I happened to be visiting the Bed Bath And Beyond store in the 4S Ranch Section of Rancho Bernardo. I left Bed Bath And Beyond empty handed and figured I was in the area, I should check out the Jimbo’s Naturally store which is the local health food store which happens to be in the same shopping complex. I happened to need some unsweetened almond milk, so I thought should just pop in.

While browsing through the store, I ended up over by the cooler that stocks bottles of water in a variety of sizes, everything from gallon size bottles on down to individual sizes. The display case had a big section filled with bottles of water that featured really brightly colored pictures of fruits and berries. While the photos of the fruits and berries caught my eye, it was the name of the product, “Hint” and it’s tag line, “Drink water, not sugar” that made me pick up a bottle to read the label. Just looking at the Nutrition Facts label, hint water is identical to ordinary water, no calories, no fat, no sodium, no carbohydrates, no proteins, and no sugar whatsoever. The only difference to be found on the label is in the ingredient list, where in addition to purified water, it has whatever it happens to be flavored with. Just pure and simple, water and the labeled ingredient that gives it flavor, no sugar, no sweeteners, and no preservatives.

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In order to make it easier for people to ask their questions about the Belly Fat Cure program, I’ve created a new page on this site for people to post their questions. It’s accessible in two ways off the main page of Ryan’s Incredible World, first, the brand new “Belly Fat Cure Ask Ryan” graphic which appears in the sidebar will take you there, and there also is a text link in the “Pages” section of the sidebar.

I figured this option might be a better way to ask me your Belly Fat Cure questions and get the answers all in one place as opposed to reading through all the various Belly Fat Cure blog entries I have throughout the site. If you’ve got questions about the program, I want to help you get answers to your questions.

The important thing to keep in mind is that I am not Jorge Cruise, so your questions will not go to Jorge Cruise, nor will my answers be officially sanctioned by Jorge Cruise. I just am someone who’s been successful with the program and would like to help others with their questions for the program. I have more details about my success on the Belly Fat Cure program and further disclaimers on the “Ask Ryan” page.

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I stopped by to visit my parents yesterday at their new home in Temecula. The main reason for my visit was to spend more time with my Grandfather before he flies back to Canada on the January 4th. While there, my mom starts telling me about the adventures she and my dad have been through deciding on a television for the family room of the house.

They had visited the local Best Buy in Temecula and spent some time in the Magnolia section within the store. Magnolia is kind of like a store-within-a-store as it’s Best Buy’s “high end” shop so you’re going to find the fancier home theater equipment in that section. In the demonstration room they saw a Mitsubishi 52″ LCD TV that had a built-in soundbar and they were really impressed with it and the model in the store was on sale for $2,399.99 and they were including a free subwoofer with it. Well my dad isn’t quite so keen on spending that kind of money and I can’t say I blame him, that’s quite a bit of money.

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Yesterday, I received a phone call from my friend Vito Grandolfo to invite me to join him and a couple other friends to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie followed by a run to Five Guys Burgers. That sounded like a good idea so I headed my way down to the theaters everyone was meeting at.

By the time I got there, it was just a few minutes before showtime but I discovered that the Sherlock Holmes showtime was sold out, so the group decided to go see Up In The Air instead and to save time they went ahead and got my ticket ahead of time. I had never heard of the movie nor had I had no clue who was in it, but what the hell, it sounded like fun being spontaneous.

Turns out the movie stars George Clooney and is about his role as a traveling job terminator. Probably something that hits a little too close to home in this economy with George playing a guy that is brought in to terminate employees for bosses who in the words of the movie are “too much of a pussy” to fire their own employees. The premise is the next generation of traveling job terminators wants to bring the operations back in house and conducted over the Internet. George Clooney’s character has to train the young lady on the nuances of the firing people and while adversaries initially, become respectful of one another. It has a few surprises along the way.

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Now that 2009 has come to a close and 2010 has begun, I can safely say that it’s a year that has been very challenging and although I am not the least bit sad to see 2009 go, it certainly was not without some really incredible experiences for me that I would like to highlight before wipe the slate clean and start fresh with 2010.

This list was especially difficult to narrow down since 2009 was the year I kicked my blogging into high gear. I had started Ryan’s Incredible World in 2007 didn’t actually start blogging until 2008 and I would maybe make no more than five entries a month. So picking my highlights of 2008 was relatively easy since there wasn’t so many blog entries to go through to pick out the defining moments.

I had joined a couple of 30-Day blogging challenges which requires 30 blog entries in 30 days and it essentially got me into the habit of making almost daily blog entries. Now it’s pretty safe to say that each month sees about 25 new blog entries. The constant blogging has actually helped bring a bigger audience to my blog, so if your first time reading any of my writing has been in 2009, then no doubt something I wrote in 2009 caught your eye and is why you’re here reading this entry now. I am grateful for the many folks who’ve read my blog and left me comments, it’s been a pleasure to hear your feedback throughout the year. In any case, I looked through every post of 2009 to select what I feel were the 10 Most Incredible Things about 2009 that happened for me. You’ll note I combined a few complimentary things to narrow it down to 10.

I do hope you enjoy my reflection on 2009 and continue to join me on my quest to find the most incredible things of 2010. Without further ado, in no particular order.

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Now that the Belly Fat Cure Book is out and available, Jorge Cruise is going to be getting out there to meet folks and one of the ways to do that is by book signing events. At the moment, only the first two are scheduled, and for lucky Costco members, both events are at Costco stores.

For Costco members in the New York area, Jorge will be at the Costco in Westbury, New York on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at Noon. And for Costco members in the San Diego area, Jorge will be at the Costco off Morena Blvd. on January 30th, 2010 at Noon. Come bring your books or buy one there. Jorge want as many people as possible to come down and get their books signed, he wants to meet you, take photos with you and more.

I know two signings doesn’t cover a whole lot of the US and I’m sure more dates will get added in other places. In fact, Jorge is soliciting suggestions from his blog readers on where he should go to do future book signings. You can send in your destination suggestions by clicking here and leaving a comment on Jorge’s Blog.

More specific details on the book signings including the address and phone numbers of the two Costco locations are as follows: (more…)

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