There are some brands and specific products which I have found I like and that work best for me. And for these reasons, I am particularly loyal in consistently purchasing them. I thought it would be interesting to make a record of these and re-visit them down the road to see how my personal consumerism may have changed.

• CLIF Mojo Bar – Mountain Mix Flavor: I use these as my universal snack, food of last resort, emergency food (when there’s nothing else good to eat), and even sweet fix. I used to like the Roasted Peanut, but for some reason it started to smell like the peanuts had gone bad, so I had to switch.
• Vitamin Water: These are great chilled or not (except for the dragonfruit flavor which is good chilled, otherwise tastes like diluted cough syrup). Unfortunately, I can’t drink this for my exercise hydration because it uses fructose for sweetening and after some personal testing I determined that I am one of those that have a “negative reaction” to too much fructose.
• Virgil’s Root Beer: my brother-in-law Gordon gave us some great root beer when we were visiting in Taiwan one year and since then I’ve been totally jealous to find something as good here in the US. Well, thanks to Trader Joe’s, we can now enjoy our own great root beer.
• Mike’s Hard Lemonade: this was the first alcoholic beverage that I actually enjoyed and has since led me down the path of imbibing.
• Ricola Original Herb Cough Drops: I hate coughing, it drives me crazy. So finding cough drops that work is a huge deal when I’m sick (you can ask Rebecca). Before, the only cough drops that would work were these ones from Taiwan made from a Chinese cough syrup called Pi Pa Gao. Fortunately, for our sanity, we tried Ricola (I actually got two different flavors to see which worked better) which are much easier to find around town.
• Cepacol Lozenges: these were recommended by Sophia a few years back, and they are my “big guns” when I have a sore throat or can’t stop coughing. Topical anesthetic for my throat, ooh, so nice.
• Maximum Strength Contac Cold+Flu: confession, when I have the flu, I am not a nice person to be a round. These will knock me out so that I can sleep and won’t make everyone around me as miserable as I feel.
• Clarks Shoes: ever since I bought my first pair of Clarks at Off Broadway Shoes, I’ve been hooked. It’s like their model 7 1/2M is using my foot as its mold. And their designs look good too.
• KCRW Radio: I love this radio station. It’s got NPR as well as great music. Not like my commute is all that long, but I sure miss it when we are driving outside of SoCal.

This is more like my daily living list. I have a more techie list, but that’s for another day. I’m sure there are some others, but these are what I could think up. If you guys think of any others or have your own lists, make sure to let me know in the comments.