One of the things I think that was inevitable was being told about Words With Friends. I was initially told about this Scrabble like game for the iPhone and iPod Touch through a few friends, but soon it was taking over the iPhone owners at work too. There’s no escaping Words With Friends. No doubt this due to the fact that Apple’s iTunes App Store carries both a paid and free version of the software, so there’s no excuse to not try it.

I consider Scrabble one of my least favorite games, as it was always one that my Dad liked to play. As a young child who loved games, I quickly grew to hate Scrabble as my young vocabulary never had a chance in hell of beating my Dad because he would never play it so that there was ever a chance I could win. While I’m sure some Scrabble grand masters would wipe the floor with my Dad, at such a young age I grew annoyed and frustrated that he’s never sacrifice a few top scoring words for the sake of giving the impression that he could be beaten or even sacrificing a game or two here and there to give a little victory and ensure those around him would still be willing to play with him. So I was a reluctant player drawn into Words With Friends due to this mostly hateful relationship I had with the game of Scrabble over the years, sure my vocabulary is greater than it once was, but I am no where near the type of player who truly masters the game with high scoring unusual words that only Scrabble grand masters know.

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When I originally started on Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure Program just about a year ago, the large majority of people weren’t yet aware how dangerous sugar can be to the human body. While it’s still arguable how well aware the public is now, it’s considerably more aware now than a year ago. Truvia and PureVia were just hitting the market and most people still unaware the Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola are the major backers behind the companies that make these Erythritol and Stevia combinations and helped push their rapid approval through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be used as a sweetener.

A year ago, you’d be just starting to see Truvia and PureVia hitting the shelves of the average supermarket, and now they’re pretty much a guarantee to be seen there. Both are starting to make their way into beverage products made by the respective cola giants although they’re yet to make their way into the cola giant’s diet versions of their signature products. Perhaps one of the signs that things are changing in a good way is that packets of PureVia are now available in the bulk purchasing giant warehouses of Costco. The super-sized boxes of packets which contain 300 packets are humongous compared to the 40 and 80 count boxes you can typically find in a regular supermarket.

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When Doctor Who was relaunched in 2005 at the hands of Russell T. Davies, it was returning after nearly a decade away from the public eye. Russell T. Davies viewed the relaunch as more of a picking up where the story left off as opposed to being a complete restart as the current trend for bringing new life to past entertainment properties.

To aid new viewers in getting up to speed with the lore of Doctor Who, a new companion, Rose Tyler, played by Billie Piper, so the getting to know the world of Doctor Who is told through the eyes of a character that’s meant to be the audience, someone from our time and experience being drawn into this fantastic world for an incredible journey. Old enemies of the Doctor, familiar to long time fans are new to Rose and new audience members and they become educated quickly. The end of the first season taught the audience about one of the Doctor’s greatest tricks to ensure it’s long term endurance, the ability of the Doctor to regenerate.

As Christopher Eccleston left the series and David Tennant took over the role, for the character of the Doctor, what this allows is the Doctor to take on a new face and personality every time the Doctor regenerates. This easy way to change actors also allows each new actor to bring their own touch to an established character. David Tennant’s first season as the tenth Doctor was aided by Billie Piper’s second season as Rose Tyler, as those of us new to Doctor Who had Rose’s getting used to the new Doctor to help aid us through the process as well. Eventually the storyline had Rose depart being the Doctor’s companion and we had a few others take on being the Doctor’s companion during David Tennant’s run.

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Press Your Luck was one of my favorite game shows from the early 1980′s. As a child I loved all the game shows of the period but one of the ones that always stood out was the short lived Press Your Luck with it’s host Peter Tomarkin. My brother and I used to enjoy the show, probably more for the Whammies than the actual game, as we were kids at the time. We loved to see the contestants hit a Whammy and have their money taken away so we could see one of the animated Whammy graphics come on and make the money disappear. They had so many wonderfully creative ones from ones that blew up a little dynamite detonator, to Whammies dressed like Boy George and the Beatles coming in to sing a little line from a tune before taking the money away. I also loved the sound effect from when the Whammy was hit, it just sounded like a dramatic electronic “Uh-oh.”

The game consisted of a round of questions where three players compete for the right to spin on the big board and earn cash and prizes, then a round of playing the spins followed by one more round of questions and then a final round of spins on the big board. The winner at the end of the game was the player who collected the most money in cash and prizes. Part of the strategy for the big board was to spin a few times to collect enough cash and prizes then to pass on the remaining spins to another player who would have to play those spins in the hope that the passed spins would force that player to hit a Whammy to steal their cash and prizes. It was a fun and high energy show that got quite competitive and a player could hit three whammies and stay in the game. A fourth Whammy eliminated them from the game.

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I don’t normally write about social networking sites designed for dating purposes, so this is a little bit of an unusual entry for me. When I first felt comfortable enough to come out it was really the bear community that was the friendliest and most welcoming to me so naturally I felt it best to fit in with people who friendliest with me. Fast forward to today, most of my best local friends are members of the bear community and I have really enjoyed getting to know so many great people.

Recently a new site meant for bear community members to socialize has come on the scene called BearGrind and can be found at BearGrind.com and it’s founding has occurred as a result of complaints addressed to the management and handling of another site. As I like my blog site to focus on the positive, I’ll leave you on your own to discover those complaints if you choose to find them, in any case, the newly born site that came online this month is rapidly growing everyday as the word gets out. I learned about it from a Twitter post by Brian Hill of the 619 Bearcast podcast and it seems he was one of the first in San Diego to learn about it.

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My previous roommates had a Magic Bullet, so I could kind of experiment with making shakes like the one in Jorge Cruise’s “Belly Fat Cure” book, but the Magic Bullet has a small capacity and really not a lot of power for some serious blending. Now that I’ve moved and got my own kitchen, I didn’t have a blender of any kind. And I really didn’t want to spend any money on one either.

At work, when we meet our customer service goals, they award us a bonus. The bonus used to be a quarterly cash bonus that maxed out at $200 but once taxed at the rate the government taxes bonuses, it was barely more than half the value. As part of a cost cutting measure last year due to the economy, the quarterly bonus opportunity was transitioned into a point program where the points could be saved and redeemed through an awards catalog online. The points can be redeemed for a wide variety of products and if that’s not quite enough for you, they even have a partnership with Amazon.com for supplying Music and DVD options to be redeemed for points.

When I logged in to look at what was available, I really wasn’t looking to purchase yet with the point I had available. But I just happened to look and not only did they have a variety of blenders available, they also had KitchenAid Blenders. I’m already familiar with KitchenAid quality thanks to my grandmother’s mixer being passed down to me. And I love a great deal, the mixers are normally 7,176 points, and they were on special for 3,915 points, essentially 45% off the usual “price” only thing was there’s only one choice of color, the “Willow Blue” model. Fortunately, it’s a nice color and since buying the blender for real money would be about $100, I felt it was a great deal and placed the order. Within in a couple days the blender arrived. (more…)

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Recently, I got a blender and have finally been able to try out Jorge Cruise’s recipe from the Belly Fat Cure book for the Sugar Free Chocolate Shake. The recipe is on Page 83 under the title “Chocolate Lover’s Shake.”

When buying the ingredients, I opted to get Vanilla flavored Whey Powder instead of the Chocolate flavor the recipe calls for. I figure if I want to experiment with other flavors then it’s easier to use Vanilla as the base flavor. I initially had some of Clemmy’s Chocolate flavored Ice Cream and opted to use it and the chocolate flavored unsweetened almond milk to add the chocolate flavor. I didn’t bother adding any of the Truvia as I wanted to see how sweet it would taste without it and I threw all the ingredients into the blender and let it do it’s thing and poured the shake into a hurricane glass and topped it with whipped cream.

The shake tasted amazing. I’ve since made a few more shakes and have tried some other variations, everything from Clemmy’s Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and Vanilla almond milk and adding cocoa powder to give it chocolate flavor and even adding a few ice cubes to the blender to help it stay colder longer and it’s been fun experimenting with various ways to make the shake. I’ve even thrown in Psyllium Husks to add more fiber to the shake and they’ve all come out delicious and completely guilt free and sugar free.

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On a recent visit to Disneyland with some friends, we took the opportunity to see the return of Captain Eo, which Disneyland brought back as a tribute to Michael Jackson due to Michael’s death last year. The attraction is billed as the “Captain Eo Tribute” as opposed to just Captain Eo. And the attraction is replacing “Honey, I Shrunk The Audience” 3-D attraction which I think is what originally replaced Captain Eo in the first place when Disneyland pulled the attraction.

The attraction starts out with a “pre-show” which Disneyland highlighted was the original pre-show from when Captain Eo first premiered back in 1986. And I think the pre-show just really showcased how attention spans have gotten considerably shorter, as the pre-show just dragged on and on and on endlessly where the footage would have been sliced and spliced considerably more if it was being made for today’s audiences to keep the pace moving. It showcased some of the casting, the rehearsal process, and the making of Captain Eo. The pre-show was also hammering down the notion of how landmark Captain Eo is as a collaboration of Michael Jackson (arguably at his peak of popularity), George Lucas (still hot off the heels of the success of his original Star Wars Trilogy), Francis Ford Coppola (a legendary director) and of course, Disney. Okay, we get it, big names bring big expectations.

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In March Jorge Cruise did an online coaching program targeting Women over the age of 40 for a specialized coaching program and the response they got overwhelmed the support staff available to handle the email support for the program. Looking for a way to help supplement their support staff, I was called by Jorge Cruise and asked to join the support staff for the course of the program as someone who’s had a lot of success with the Belly Fat Cure program and would be able to help handle the flow of emails from the clients who joined the program.

In a way the experience was like a hyper version of my own “Ask Ryan” page for Belly Fat Cure questions here on my own blog. I was helping several ladies with their questions regarding the Belly Fat Cure program and got some very interesting questions that I had to research to be able to answer them. Some questions were easy ones to answer and others were a bit more of a challenge. As a result of the experience I’ve developed a whole new level of appreciation for Kim, who was the support person when I originally went through the program and she fielded all the questions from me and the other members of the group I was a part of. Here I was a colleague for Kim and helping get those questions sent in answered as quickly as possible.

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One of the unexpected surprises that lead to a brief hiatus here on Ryan’s Incredible World was that my roommates of the last couple of years had decided they wanted to get back to having their house to themselves. They are a married couple and I work with one of them at the casino on the same shift, so for the time I was there it worked out to be convenient for both of us to live in the same house and commute together to work since we worked in the same place. However, my roommates have decided that it was time to be on their own again and in mid January, I asked to find a new place to live and was given until the start of April to find a new place.

I initially wasn’t thrilled with the request, but my roommates reassured me that they felt I was the best roommate they had ever had, and the only reason they were asking was because they wanted to be on their own and have the house all to themselves again. They reassured me that it was not anything I had done and that they feel I’ve been the most considerate roommate they’ve ever had in their lives and I had been there the longest any roommate has ever stayed with them. When I originally moved in they envisioned my stay there being about two years, and I was there two and a half years. They have been the best roommates I’ve ever had as well and I look forward to continue having a great friendship with them well into the future.

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