embrangle

Hows my little kitchen rat?

2012-01-22T10:07:00.002-06:00

Last Sunday I really felt like doing some sort of cooking activity that kept us busy all day. I came up with an idea of soup in a bread bowl. This was appropriate because we have resolved to make more soup and more bread, perfect! I started off the day by making some hockey pucks posing as cupcakes, which I thought were muffins until I found there was a icing recipe. They tasted alright but they didn't make the good breakfast that I was expecting with muffins.

The rest of the day we spent making our soup and bread bowls, in traditional fashion I failed on the bread bowls and Laura's soup shined brightly.

We waited for a good two hours for the bread to rise and all it really did was spread out, sort of a let down considering we were making bowls. As I typed this I'm thinking maybe we should have put them in bowls to rise. Eventually I thought that they would rise in the oven like a cake, cupcake, or muffin even but instead we ended up with four bread scones.

Laura was the soup lady and she made us a tasty tomato soup from scratch. It was really cool because it tasted just like the soup from a can, but way tasty and easy! I think we will be making it again.

The bread ended up being really tasty and and we learned that when using wheat flour one needs to add gluten to the mix for better results. Next time!

While we were waiting on the bread we also broke out our pasta roller and got our noodle on. Its a pretty neat process so I figured my fine followers would like to see it. We made some very not spinachy noodles, but they were green.

It starts as a chunk of noodle bread, and gets flattened by our flattening device.

We learned after our first time that you need to separate the noodles and liberally apply flour to keep them from fusing back together.

Our instructions say, build the noodles into nests and freeze. This was our interpretation of that.

Laura made us a yummy sausage meal to accompany our noodles on a different day.

MMM!

Hows my little bookworm 2012 edition?

2012-01-15T13:32:00.001-06:00

Maus by Art SpiegelmanThis book was fantastically different. I don't want to call it a graphic novel, because its more like a nicely bound comic book. It is an interesting story of survival of a Jew in Nazi Germany. The best part is the Jews are mice, the Nazi are cats, and everyone else is a pig. It is a captivating story of survival in this awful time to live and I enjoyed the story, but when I closed finished the book (and there was definitely more story to tell) I didn't realize it was part one of two. Which for some reason I'm not excited about reading two books like this, but one is fine. If I had known it was in two parts I wouldn't have bought it in the first place. The drawings aren't very exciting and easy to skip over, just like this book.

Chasing the White Dog by Max Watman
Chasing the White Dog was wisely recommended to me because of my interest in all things fermented. I have a special spot in my heart for whiskey (and how to make it) so I had I was very excited about this book. Its a really interesting documentary about moonshine, its history and where it stands now. It starts off talking about how the author made his own still and and attempted crafting his own white lightning. His forays into making moonshine sound a lot like how I would go about it full of disaster, caution, and humor. The historical parts are all really interesting, from George Washington to prohibition and onto modern moonshine cases. Of course a moonshine story isn't complete without a reference to Popcorn Sutton and NASCAR, both get some space in the book. I would recommend this book for anyone who is interested in prohibition, moonshine, or liquor production. I found it fascinating and I think most of my faithful readers would as well.

Hows my little Bostonian?

2012-01-11T23:06:00.001-06:00

Well friends, another weekend and another pin in our map! This pin belongs in the wonderful city of Boston Massachusetts. I think I can safely say, I love Boston. A couple of weeks ago I found a killer deal for two tickets from Chicago to Boston for $250 round-trip. A frenzy of phone calls and excitement led to a booking and a new adventure to visit my long lost friend Sarah Fuller and her wonderful dude John.

The trip started on a really exciting note, on our drive up to Chicago I smashed my car into a HUGE! deer carcass. Somehow because of a crazy combination of lighting and hill we didn't see it until we were basically on top of it. SMASH! After a lot of fur, blood, carnage, and a lost license plate we drove home and switched cars to continue our adventure. We had to, mine stunk so bad we could hardly stand it.

We arrived the following afternoon and started adventuring immediately. We were introduced to the lovely and convenient 'T' early on and walked ourselves through town. We got to see some ducks, statues, churches, a killer public library and a drink on top of the tallest building in town.

Pit-Stop for a kickass cupcake. mmm!

The fun continued on that evening to a unique event called 'The Donkey Show'. I'm not sure I will look at butterflies the same again. Contrary to what you're thinking this show is actually a theater performance based in a 70's Dance club (and we danced) and based off of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Most of the characters who wore clothes did so in drag. I didn't understand the plot at any point, which I attribute to never seeing any version of the performance, written or otherwise. I did understand that aside from John and I every other dude there had to be also into dudes and understandably so. Regardless, I loved it, the whole glittery mess.

Laura is actually not in pain, nor angry.

Everyone woke up hungover the next morning, new adventures through the city was the fix. We had a really fun and packed day. We started with a trip to Harpoon Brewery and got to drink beer fresh from the tank, which was a first. Harpoon is the best brewery I've never heard of, and I've heard of a Yuengling. Brewery tours are best when the beer is good and the tastings are hearty, this was no exception. We bought a growler to go and carried it with us (full, mind you) to all of the rest of our adventures of the day.

After Harpoon we got excellent some Boston sea food staples which miraculously cured Laura of her brown bag sickness.

Next we went to the Boston Institute of Contemporary Arts. It was a very interesting experience, as an art major I really never want to say I hate art, but sometimes the shit that gets into a museum blows my mind. There were some really cool and interesting pieces hidden amongst the other art. I really liked this movie that had 9ish screens and you basically immersed yourself into the film with changing surroundings setting the place. I got a nice greeting from the guy in front when he told me "I can check your beer into the coat check for you".

After that we took our beer to Goorin Brothers Hat store. I loved it. Dark wood and hats everywhere. Laura and I both left with something new for our heads.

After that we drank the best Hot Coco I've ever tasted. Ever.

We took it easy that night remembering our previous night and looking ahead to everyone's big day next. We had a fantastic dinner of pizza, wine, and smiles aplenty.

Day three was epic.
It started off with a jaunt through Harvard looking for a geocache which was one of the coolest ones I've done. Mostly because of how public it is.

Next, Laura and I were ushered around Boston via John and the red line painted and paved through Boston known as the freedom trail. We walked all over the damn city with a private tour of a battleship and capped it off with a march up (and back down) 294 stairs to the top of the bunker hill memorial. We learned a lot about Boston's history and of America's as well. John proved to be an excellent tour guide filling the walking portions with his knowledge of events that unfolded around this historic city.

Handcock's headstone looks like a penis.

Ride in opposition.

We finished our grand adventure off with a great meal, followed by a fantastic dessert, and some tired legs.

It was so great to catch up with Sarah again and I miss her. The great thing about great friends is that even after not really hanging out for years you can step in right where you left off and things are good, really good. I loved Boston, its got nearly everything I miss about city life, people, useful public transportation, interesting and lively history, endless meal options, great places to drink, a large body of water, a few hills, and no corn anywhere. Would I go back? Absolutely.

Hows my little '11 recap?

2011-12-31T11:12:00.000-06:00

2011 Has been a really great year, a year that seemed to go by too quickly but great nonetheless. A lot of new and wonderful things came to me this year. This year was the first year I set a new years resolution and followed through with it. I gave up cereal, I miss Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Golden Grahams greatly, but I'm not hungry 45 minutes after breakfast anymore, that makes it worth it. I've had many good accomplishments and small changes to my usual lifestyle and am looking forward to more to come. Here's to 2012!....that is unless the world ends.

With no further ado, the highlights of 2011:

Best:
Movie (in theater): Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Just like when I closed the final book after finishing it, i left this movie feeling a bit empty. Since high school I've been looking forward to new Harry Potter books and movies and this year it all ended.

TV Show: True Blood.
This year I even gave Lost a chance, boy did that show blow.

Concert: Flogging Molly, Congress Theater, Chicago
Flogging Molly seems to be a staple for this award, but it was also one of the only concerts I attended this year. It helped that the Chicago River was green.

Performance: Blue Man Group.
If you ever get the chance to see these guys, do it. If you can get tickets in the "splash zone" it is 100% worth the premium, their performance is enhanced by their blue facial expressions.

Album: Foo Fighters - Wasting Light
Wow. If you like music with electric guitars at all, buy this one.

Song: Electric Chapel - Lady Gaga
So goddamned catchy.

Game: Angry Birds Seasons
Smurfs Village is a close second though, really close.

Book: The Passage by Michael Cronin
Easily the best book of the year (of the few I read).

Gadget: Lil Mac II
A new laptop. A much needed upgrade and used extensively for work. Fantastic.

Bar Night: Las Vegas June 10-12th
Not really one night, but really I didn't stop imbibing the whole weekend. Bare, Glitter Gulch, Flamingo, Stratosphere, Downtown, +$200, 10 hours sleeping, no complaints.

Getaway: Michigan
Belated 1 year anniversary and a MUCH needed recharge from the crazy hours spent working the previous couple of months.

Garden Growth: Brussels Sprouts
I really think these are pretty gross frozen, but fresh from the garden...Yum!

Race: Grandma's Marathon
26.2 miles of exertion and a massage worth running to.

Construction: Garden trellis
I have no idea if this thing is going to stand the test of time, but I'll cross my fingers.

Intoxicating Beverage Tour: Yazoo Brewery, Nashville
The tour was pretty great, but the strangers we befriended iced the cake.

Events of Note:

Random: Sauerkraut failure. Grey Butt hair. Mohawk.

Obsession: Learning about Minimalist footwear, running and so on.

Newsworthy: Japan's destructive earthquake and tsunami.
Sparked the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

News I'm oblivious to: Casey Anthony, Kardashians, Charlie Sheen.
Charlie Sheen jokes fall flat don't make them expecting me to laugh. Watching my facebook friends blow up over Casey and Kim was crazy. I couldn't believe how much hatred was expressed towards complete strangers' lives.

Travels: Chicago, Door County, Chicago again, Northern Georgia, Las Vegas, Duluth, Washburn, Michigan, Sand Ridge State Park.

The death of my wonderful old companion Chip.
First Annual Bockfest, 100% success.
Our new grill is amazing!
I lost about 15 pounds through this year and maintained that weight.

2012 has a great many things to look forward to. At work the winemaking process is moving more into my control, which is terrifying and exciting. Last year I resolved to write more blog entries to keep my faithful readers interested and this year I am going to improve on my sad improvement from 2009. There are a few travels that I am looking forward to, like a trip to Boston, Georgia, Tough Mudder Twin Cities, possibly California, and the usual adventures to see my great friends and family. I'm also looking forward to our newly enlarged garden, we added 72 square feet for more tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, and new things! This year maintaining and improving my fitness is also going to be a major goal. I also keep talking about building some sort of piece of furniture and I think this is going to be the year it happens, a lack of tools is no longer an excuse. I'm also excited to step up my homebrewing adventures by moving to all grain brewing for the first time! With that comes greater control and effort, but the quality of beer should improve. Another important goal is for me to read more books this year.

2012, I'm ready for you.

Hows my little holiday?

2011-12-30T10:06:00.000-06:00

Christmas this year was very difficult to get into the spirit of and that familiar "Christmastime feeling" was completely absent. I tried too! Normally it just comes easy, the temperature drops, snow flies, I hear jingling bells in front of stores, and I lust at everyone's great Santa hats they wear. This year none of that happened! No matter how many times I listened to Michael Buble swoon me with his Christmas songs I just never felt it!

Our Tree was a near disaster from the beginning since we fought with it for over an hour just to get the thing to stand up. Eventually we tied it to the wall, and weighted the stand down with dumbbells. We cut it down without any snow on the ground let alone any in the forecast. We didn't drink our premium hot chocolate while decorating it, because we were both sweaty and mad at its stupid challenging crooked trunk. We had strong chocolate martinis instead.

As a whole our Christmas holiday celebrations went well this year. Although I just realized it was pretty much sibling free, which 20 years ago might have been great, but a bit sad since this was the first year of our "every other" with our whole families.

Since my parents are living here and there we got to hang out with them for a delightful afternoon of fun and headed over to a Christmas party later where I learned I should stay away from gross whiskey and coke. My highlight was throwing hatchets/knives in the basement, I've now decided I should take that up as a hobby to better prepare for the end of the world. Zombies or not.

For Christmas we headed up to the always delightful Washburn, Wisconsin to hang out with Laura's parents. We had tons of fun walking here and there, making the best gingerbread cookies ever (because they aren't rock hard even after a couple of days). Laura's family has a tradition of a snack supper on Christmas eve which was fantastic. Laura's Dad like every 5 year old decided we were opening presents then. So after our delicious meaty meal we opened our great gifts and digested. Laura and I saved a couple presents to open Christmas day because I just didn't feel right not saving any to open. For our dinner on Christmas we had Prime rib which Tim cooked phenomenally, I got a giant cut of it and savored the entire thing. I love me some Prime rib.

Yesterday we took down our tree, which is a bit early for us but since that whole christmas feeling never really arrived, and we had a healthy fear that the dumbells on the tree stand and the string tied to the wall weren't going to hold forever.

I really miss snow.

Hows my little kraut?

2011-12-18T19:09:00.000-06:00

About two weeks ago I decided to make Sauerkraut. It is supposedly quite straightforward, easy, tasty, and only a tiny bit terrifying.

Here is how its done:

I wanted purple kraut so we used our last two purple cabbages from our garden. These were planted specifically for this project.

Step 1, finely chop your cabbage. I could have done this better.

Mix in some salt as you chop your cabbage

Throw in some more salt for good measure and mash up your cabbage to extract some liquid, the salt will extract more.

I found out that you can make it spicy so I threw in some delicious Transylvanian garlic and ground (really spicy) chili peppers.

Cover your almost kraut and put something heavy on the lid to keep everything pressed down.

Wait a few weeks. It is supposed to spontaneously ferment...

After about 11 days I noticed that our house went from smelling a bit strange to smelling like someone was depositing their awful shits underneath our floors. I thought "this is normal". Laura wouldn't let me forget about how stinky it was. I finally gave in and shut the guest room door to keep the smell out of the rest of the house. When I opened the door later I nearly gagged on the horrific smell of the room and decided that it was time to call off the project.

This morning we brought it outside. Good thing too. When we pulled off the cheesecloth the smell magnified tenfold.

Notice the bright blue mold on the bowl. Even with a light breeze I had to periodically run away to escape the smell.

The cabbage/Sauerkraut's final resting place. Back into the garden for some further decomposition and soil fertility enhancement.

So what did I do wrong?
Maybe a couple of things, Purple cabbage might have been the wrong choice. (but I don't want to admit that)
Before the sitting around for awhile stage you are supposed to add salty water until it covers your cabbage. I added regular water from our refrigerator, I should have probably boiled it beforehand too.
What else? I'm not sure. I do know that it will be difficult to convince Laura that it will be a good idea to attempt this experiment another time.

I'm happy our house doesn't stink anymore.

Hows my little Whiskey drinker?

2011-11-19T19:22:00.001-06:00

For my birthday this year Laura got me a new bottle of whiskey and I have been very excited to stage a whiskey sampling with what I have on hand to compare it with the new stuff. Its also a great way for me to sample a bunch of different ones next to each other to find out what I like best or least. So for you whiskey fans out there read on. Our selection is limited but a healthy variety. Unfortunately I just got a new tasty rye whiskey this week that didn't make the sampling.

My goal was to set up the sampling in order of smooth drinking to ground shaking bite. I was pretty darn close in my guess too.

Jameson 18 year
Light, smooth, creamy, a hint of spice and licorice, delightful! no whiskey burn but can feel the alcohol heat.

Laura's Take:
I actually don't mind it! Leaves a good aftertaste in my mouth.

Laura got me the 18 year for my birthday last year and it is phenominal. I recommend that everyone who likes whiskey to try this someday in their life. Especially since I'm going to polish mine off pretty soon. I love the idea of this whiskey having been aged in a barrel for 18 years. If I rewind my life to 18 years previous to my 26th birthday I would have been 8 years old. That would have put me in Mrs. Tokle's 2nd grade classroom where I met my first black friend ever. I rode the bus to school, and spent almost every moment I could playing outside with my best friend and neighbor Colin Jensen. What else happened that year? Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced for life in prison. Hurricane Andrew smashed its way through Florida. The pope formally apologized for the inquisition of Galileo. Bill Clinton was elected president. CDs overtook cassettes as the preferred medium for music purchases. The mall of America opened its doors for business, and I watched with jealousy kids playing in LEGOland on TV. Its amazing to think that during those events there was a cask full of Irish Whiskey sitting in a barrel awaiting my consumption.

Woodford Reserve
Surprisingly boozey, a nice smooth start and finish, very little burn.

Laura's Take:
It wasn't bad, but it burned a little bit, but a good burn.

Crown Royal Black
Super smooth, raw oak aroma and flavor. Easily smoother than Woodford.

Laura's Take:
It smells like a sauna.

George Dickel Barrel Select
Peppery and sawdust, has the most bite thus far. Solidly tasty.

Laura's Take:
It was ok, it tastes very alcoholy.

Jack Daniels
Tastes like banana's and goes down smooth and easy. No burn at all, probably should have been drank after the crown.

Laura's Take:
That's actually good! Surprising!

Four Roses Single Barrel 2011
Woah! Really great flavor, a very strong alcohol singe all over my mouth.

Laura's Take:
Burns the buds, but tasty.

This was my birthday present this year. A special limited edition Whiskey from Four Roses. Laura and I visited this distillery a few years ago but it was closed and we were sad. One of the best parts of this whiskey is that it is limited edition and STRONG! You have to burn off the top layer of your taste buds to truly enjoy sipping this one, but it's totally worth it. I love the handwriting on the bottle.

This whiskey is also 12 years old and once again I love to think about what was happening 12 years ago when I had no interest in alcohol or its consumption. Which would have put me in 1999. I would have finished 8th grade at Chippewa Middle School and Started my Freshman year at Mounds View High. I learned a lot about friendship that year and began solidifying friendships I still maintain to this day. I Also played football and managed to make the basketball team. What else happened while this whiskey was being born? Dr. "Death" Jack Kevorkian was convicted of murder (wrongfully if you ask me). Columbine High School Tragedy. I found and fell in love with a little program called Napster. I began my hatred for Britney Spears' music and learned I liked rock and roll, and listened to Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Offspring. I sneaked into the Blair Witch Project, Loved the matrix, and idled through The Phantom Menace. An interesting year happened around this fresh charred oak barrel.

Jim Beam
Smooth but something of a strange flavor. Much more harsh compared to the other 80 proof drinks. My stance on using Jim as a mixer is upheld.

Laura's Take:
Not awful.

As you can see I will never become a professional drink blogger, because my descriptive words are nonexistent. I hope you enjoyed my small foray into the world of beverage blogging. I enjoyed myself and got even more excited that Laura learned that she can tolerate the wonderful world of whiskey!

Hows my little busy beaver?

2011-11-16T10:54:00.001-06:00

Today's post is epic in length, so get comfy.
Last we left off in the life of Tony was a bit of a sad note (minus the 1 year anniversary) so this post promises to be much more chipper. Starting in August life for me got incredibly busy with work. A time known as harvest. This was a time of year that was proclaimed to be crazy and very busy. I think that was an understatement. Six day work weeks, with 10-14 hour days becoming the norm, it was draining both physically and mentally. I came home wanting nothing but rest. It was exhausting and very physical work. The best part about it though, I never once came home and said 'I hate this' or 'when will it end'. Yes it was busy and tiring but I got to meet lots of great people, really learn how wine is made, and best of all I got to be outside the whole time. Standing in the sun and cleaning something caked with grape skins and stems beats clicking a mouse and looking through a window at the same sun any day. I learned so much during the process, and now that it has slowed down I feel like I've learned even more. Which is great.

Just as I was about to fill in the world of happenings in my life since the end of August/September the batteries died in my keyboard and mouse all died at once. I've been hell bent on getting the best battery charger in the universe and so I finally had an excuse to set out to find it. I used to love and cherish my rechargeable batteries (circa 2001) but I had a terrible problem of forgetting them on the charger and they would ooze their insides all over and ruin the batteries. So I found one that shuts off after a completed charge and now I'm back in the bloggers seat. I'm excited about not blowing boatloads of cash on batteries anymore.

One very exciting thing in my life is a new laptop! Old Lil Mac the first gave up the ghost a year or so ago and with a new excuse to get one (work) I dove in. Isn't she pretty?

This picture represents a large percentage of my disposable income since 2004.

Next up: Pears!

Now that I'm making wine for a living I thought I should try my hand at fruit winemaking at home again, which until last night had been a complete failure. Laura's co-worker offered some pears from their tree and when asked how many we would like I said, "as many as you want to give us" which ended up being six 5 gallon buckets full, or this sculpture. It took Laura and I approximately 12 hours combined to peel and chop all of these little buggers. Two days after we finished the job I found a little gem in a book that read similar to this "it is unnecessary to skin pears for wine making" this caused me to weep only a little. So after we froze the pears, something one should do when making a fruit wine, I borrowed our little press from work and set about juicing them. Like so:

This is our whole batch of chopped, slightly (accidentally) frozen pears

Juice!

More juice!

Crap I added to the wine, excluding that garlic bulb back there.

A full bucket, quite tricky to bring from outside to in.

Check out my oxidized juice, this made me nervous for brown wine.

A miracle! The juice clears up during fermentation!

The 6 gallon batch is set to be a holiday spice blend, from top to bottom that is 1/3 vanilla bean purchased in Barcelona, whole cloves, a cinnamon stick, and a nutmeg...nut. Another full gallon will be plain 'ol pear wine, AKA the control group in the experiment. So this is my biggest batch of home made wine yet, pretty cool.

For our first (belated) anniversary Laura took me up to Michigan for a completely fantastic getaway. She found us a great B&B on the shore of Lake Michigan where we were able to walk the along the lake searching for beach glass and fly my big kite. They had hot tub which was a fantastic way to unwind at the end of the day.

Found boat.

There was a big storm the day before we arrived and we found this washed up on shore. As much as I hate aluminum canoes, they really can take a beating.

While we were there we explored a bunch of really cool and a couple not so cool wineries:

Favorite winery/brewery/distillery of the trip

Pinot Noir?

A still!!

Their harvest was just beginning, I was thankful that ours was pretty much wrapped up.
I loved our trip out there so much, I was able to relax for more than one day in a row and we came home feeling rejuvenated and excited about many more years of life together.

The next weekend Laura's parents came down for a fun visit to frollic in the fall weather. We took them to the great place called Allerton park which has tons of sculptures, a giant mansion and some great walking trails.

On another day we explored a crazy awesome corn maze over in Indiana.

I was picking hay out of my underwear for the rest of the day because of this shot. Remember kids, crack kills.

Its pretty rare to see so much corn growing in one spot so we got a picture of it all...

We Finished!

After that I needed a break from everyone and everything, as you can see we had been very busy with going places and doing things. So for the weekend of my birthday we went to a new place and did nothing! It was so great! We went to Sand Ridge State Park and did almost nothing. We attempted a hike but turns out this park was a giant sand dune 50 years ago and all of the trails are sand, it was like walking on a beach but without water anywhere close. We set out for a five mile loop and managed about a mile before we turned back. Quote of the day "Tony, I'm not having fun" "me neither" and we turned around without another word. After that we ate my unseasoned yet still delicious foil dinner and slept through a peaceful rain long into our slow starting morning. Would I go back, not without a horse to ride. So probably not.

This is what the trails were. Note the lack of any solid footing.

For some reason the State Park system in Illinois thought Prohibition was a good idea and doesn't permit alcohol in any of the parks. (I'm sure ethanol is excluded though) So we brought a disguise for our wine bottle.

We had an alternative motive for camping, which was to use our new screen tent. I've been in the market for a canopy tent of some sort since last winter for our BockFest shenanigans and Laura one day said, "why don't you just get a screen tent, that way we will use it more than once a year?" A good point taken. Turns out most screen tents are really shitty. What I wanted was something simple. A screen tent with a tall roof (obviously). It also needed walls to keep out the rain should it decide to do that while using said tent. After much research we ended up with this beauty:

It's HUGE! We joked about pitching our tent inside it, but since it had the picnic table in it already we decided to forgo that idea. This thing has enough space for a picnic table, a cooler or two, and easily four camp chairs with room to move. All of the walls are attached and roll up, or can be stretched out into an awning, or tied down to keep the wind and rain out. I'm excited to have this guy around for years and years.

The next weekend was Darktober Fest and Halloween! This year I went all out and made my own costume. For some reason I decided I wanted to be a scarecrow made entirely from burlap. Which is itchy business. I used this site for the pants and they are so easy! I'm thinking about making a pair of PJ pants for myself now since they didn't take much time at at all!

Jinx helped me a bunch.

My final costume:

Laura won the creepy zombie award:

My parents won best couple costume:

They make a couple of a good dead skunks.

Whew. The busy lives of the Jacobson family kept going but this is the home stretch! A couple of weeks ago we headed down to Music City, thats Nashville to you laymen. My lovey sister and her husband ushered us around their stomping grounds for a great weekend filled with fun and surprise. First off were these really great (edible) sheep that welcomed us after a long 5+ hour drive.

The next day we headed up to the Yazoo brewery for a tour filled with interesting info and generous pours of the good stuff. While on the tour we ran into a group of Brits who were out celebrating a bachelor party (in Nashville?). We ended up hanging out with them for quite awhile and as it turns out I look like Ben Afleck. I disagree, but they were a fun bunch. After that we headed downtown for an evening of food and on foot exploration. We ran into our British friends again at Tootsies randomly for a brief moment before one got kicked out for removing his shirt on stage with ladies present. We also enjoyed a pretty underwhelming experience at Coyote Ugly, I've since decided is not a place worth going back to. Especially if you have to pay a cover.

Matt Damon and our new foreign friend

A bachelor party check off, 20 empty glasses stacked in a tower.

Worlds most obnoxious pants

Me winning a chugging contest

Him not winning. Go team USA!

Amanda, Andy and I were excited about travelers not wanting glasses in their carry on. Laura is not.

Bee pollen shots. They tasted like hay smells.

Booze Booze Booze Booze, Hangover. Bee Pollen?

I assumed all of Nashville roads would be cobblestones, not so. Only this alley was.

Oops!

The next day brought us good fun at centennial park where they have a giant Greek Parthenon building that now stores art for people to look at. We didn't have a chance to look at that but we did walk around and take some pictures. We also hit up Third Man Records, which is very tiny, and picked up some new vinyl from a band called the Greenhornes, very good stuff.

For the finale of this longass post...The Festival of Trees Gala! For you out of towners the Festival of Trees is a giant fundraiser for the local Danville hospital foundation. This is the hospital you don't want to get stuck at on the wrong side of an emergency (says some funeral directors I have formerly been associated with). Anyway, all of these companies and individuals buy these fake christmas trees and decorate them to the nine. To kick off the whole deal they throw a gala, AKA a big event where old people dress in clothing not appropriate for their size and age, which is held in the local hockey arena. There is free wine and beer along with a martini bar hosted by a bar which is ironically is not in the county the hospital serves. Laura and I love the event because there is some phenomenal people watching and looking around at the decorated trees is nice too. We had a wonderful time and got some exciting martini glasses that light up different colors, but I didn't get a picture of those, so here is a picture of us instead:

Hows my little reader in 2011?

2011-10-26T08:30:00.000-05:00

2011 has been off to a slow start for reading because of two things, less time spent reading, and the first book I read.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Fantastic book. I've had different people from all sorts of different parts of my life telling me to read this book since the springtime and I'm so glad they did. The hunger games is an exciting story about a girl attempting to survive a battle to the death with many other contestants. It is a page burner no doubt. There were no boring parts and the author's vast imagination was running wild with excitement and creativity. If you like exciting fiction and a fast read, I recommend getting started on this trilogy. I can hardly wait to dive into the second part.

From Vines to Wines by Jeff Cox
From Vines to wines was an extremely informative book on starting your own vineyard to making wine from scratch. The author threw in a little humor to keep things light and also made everything very understandable. On the other hand its also a how to book with some very long boring parts. Hence my very large gap between book updates. He also makes some very bold statements on winemaking techniques which, like everything else in the world should be taken with a grain of salt. Different strokes for different folks as they say. I would only recommend this book to someone who is either looking into planting some grape vines as it is quite descriptive on how to approach that, or someone who has a little bit of winemaking experience as many of the things mentioned seem to rely on a bit of prior knowledge. This book should not be used as someone's only reference guide but paired with several more sources of information.

The Passage by Michael Cronin
I really enjoyed this book. Even though its the first I've completed this year it might already be the favorite of 2011. Its a hard one to describe but I'll try, It is a story of adventure. It begins with several unrelated stories that eventually converge and then all abruptly end. Which was unexpected. The middle of the book pretty much starts a brand new story 90ish years into the future. The world has changed drastically and the population of the USA is severely depleted, the survivors live under lights which keep the infected away. Until one day someone (from the first half) makes their way into the colony and everything changes and a new adventure begins. I'm purposefully being vague, the book is fantastic, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes a good adventure novel. Don't let the size scare you (800+ pages), Cronin manages to keep the story moving rapidly along through each page. Oh yeah, if it weren't for the last 10 or so pages this would have still been a great book but he threw in a gigantic cliffhanger at the very end. I can't wait to read more of the series as it comes out.

Hows my little "bare" foot?

2011-10-01T00:41:00.001-05:00

Today I went for one of my most enjoyable runs of my life.

Its not to common for me to use enjoy and run in the same conversation or even sentence, but its true! Today I tackled my first trail run at Kickapoo State Park (a few minutes from the house). There were hills, trees, beautiful changing leaves, and gorgeous views of the river here and there. The temperature was perfect and the sun was shining through the leaves. How could anyone not enjoy that.

But there's more...

My good pal Jon recently found me some Vibram Five Finger (Trek Sport) Shoes for a measly $25 at REI and generously picked me up a pair. For those who don't know, those are the shoes with toes. My first impression of these new kicks is nothing less than thunderous praise. They are ridiculously lightweight, and feel like a thin protective extension of my foot, sort of like a nice fitting sock but with toes and a hard bottom. Its been raining like crazy lately and the trails were wet in some places and there was no issues with grip on wet uneven areas and even when I moved through a wet area they seemed to dry just as fast as skin would in a similar situation. I'll test the water more in the future though.

So by now you might be thinking, toe shoes Tony? Really?!
Well yes, but there is some history behind this that I've been meaning to share with my faithful readers for ages and today's run sparked it all.

So here it goes:

In the spring of 2010 Laura's brother Scott sent me an Email containing three links with not much preface other than interesting reading. Ever since reading the articles I've not shopped for footwear the same since then. The articles went out of their way to claim moving around barefoot was a more natural, healthier, and better way for any person to walk/run/jog.

So this is my soapbox, I'm going to give you the rundown of it all using some great articles that have inspired or informed me into this way of movement.

This article is a great one and is mostly responsible for convincing me that barefoot is the way to go. To sum it up people have been walking against evolution ever since the modern shoe became an important accessory to our daily lives. It goes on to give evidence showing barefooted people and athletes alike can reduce injuries and relieve some chronic pains by simply taking off their shoes. My favorite example of how shoes work against feet is when you look at an empty shoe on a table, you will notice the toe area curls up. You will also notice your toes don't naturally look like that when standing barefoot. Shoes are designed this way to help you rock forward. It later goes into more detail about how your sensitive feet are desensitized when wearing shoes and a person's body naturally tries to correct these feelings and generally gives a person more opportunity for injury. The article goes deeper into the subject too, and if you've made it that far I'm sure you'll be interested enough to reach the end.

This video is related to this article, its pretty painful to watch but you can get a good idea of how a person's running gait changes with the removal of their shoes.

This article does a fantastic job at showing you how shoes, particularly heeled shoes ruin a person's posture and feet. It also shows how walking or running around barefoot can change it almost immediately. The second half is a somewhat dated but still relevant review of Vibram's Five Finger (VFF) shoes. He makes a good case for flat footed people to make the switch towards the bottom.

On a side note, although, its not my story to tell, I know a person who just by wearing her VFFs for a period of time she went from needing to wear shoes with orthotics all the time to being comfortable while walking around barefoot. Which as I understand it was an uncomfortable task beforehand. Another person I know has actually been able to wiggle his pinky toe that used to be permanently curled into the next toe, just by running in his VFFs for a several months.

The writer of this blog entry is a giant minimalist advocate and believes strongly in ground feel, what your feet can actually feel when walking around barefoot. Its a really great piece and not terribly long, it brings up a lot of good points about how we pretty much blind ourselves to the ground below us. I think its a very good article explaining why one should want minimalist footwear.

So what does this all mean?
Going barefoot is a really great idea everyone should consider. In honesty its not realistic, people work, they walk on streets with gravel and broken glass, they use public gas station rest rooms, barefoot living is a scary proposition, barefoot home living is not.

So the next step is shoes, mankind has been making shoes since they have been tanning leather, hence the moccasin, more or less a bag tied around one's ankle. No one wants to be cut or wounded on the bottom of their foot so you're going to want a some protection. Nowadays there is an expanding number to choose from, but by no means a vast sea of choices but they are out there. Some shoes are accidentally minimalist, for example; ladies who have been rocking flats for ages, you're a step ahead. Try and find some that don't look like the heel is raised any higher than the toe, very little if any arch support, and obviously a very very thin sole.

To make shopping easy for you try these brands/shoes:
Sanuk
Toms
Merrel
Vibram Five Finger
Soft Star
Innov8
New Balance Minimus
VivoBarefoot
Saucony Hattori
Feeling Cheap? Buy some ugly water shoes for $2. Same idea.

So how has my tansition been? Slow, as it should be. I've switched entirely to running in the Merrel Trail Glove and its amazing how challenging its been on my calf muscles. For me since I've had knee surgery (and issues with it since then) I'm particularly interested in the prospect of reduced knee stress/injury prevention. Laura has actually had a quicker transition period to minimalist shoes thanks to her extensive foam flip flop wearing (or so I think). Since I really dislike the chunk of fabric between my big toe I only enjoy slide style sandals, unfortunately no such minimalist version exists...yet. So I've still got fat sole sandals. I recently bought new work shoes only to bummed out that a few months later Merrel released a waterproof minimalist shoe. Hopefully they will still be around in a few years when these current fatties finally wear out.

I hoped I've piqued some interest in the subject because I've found it fascinating. If you're wondering what finally inspired this epic post, I would tell you it was the smile that spread across my face running through the woods on a gorgeous autumn afternoon.
If you do choose to dive further into the wonderful world of "bare" feet. Merrel has a great resource for beginners right here (I like the NY Times article).

Hows my little newsflash?!

2011-09-22T15:45:00.001-05:00

**NEWS FLASH**
For the first time in Facebook's short history the overwhelming majority of users applaud the new changes on Facebook citing fewer options to publicly share their private lives. Bob Abooey enthusiastically posted on Facebook's wall "I've never been more excited to have fewer options!" The changes come on the heels of Google's new social network Google+ which allows sharing of thoughts, photos, and allows users to communicate via video connection, among many other features. Mark Zuckerberg (film star and CEO) claimed these exciting changes are to differentiate the Facebook experience from it's competitors. "By having a virtual network in which friends and strangers alike can't communicate openly, the new 'face' encourages real life encounters and facilitates networks of individuals in their physical environments." He later continued, "No more will friendly smiles and waves be interpreted as strange or creepy events but as a friendly encounter that will promote verbal communication."

Some of the newest changes include:
Photos are now only visible to those who are featured in them.
Friends must now pass a 5 question quiz in order to connect to each other.
Profile photos have now been replaced with Mr. and Ms. Pacman images.
The Wall & Chat has been replaced with "call" and "visit".
Due to popular demand "like" has now been changed to "dislike".
Business pages now have the ability to "export to yellow pages".
Users can now only invite 30% of their friends to any event they create.
Privacy settings are now very simple:
- Share with everyone ever
- Share with my friends who passed the quiz.
A new "report stalker" button.
The revamped inbox features cursive writing samples and links to local pen and paper suppliers.
Status updates will be limited to one submission per day.

One of the largest changes announced was Facebook will now only store uploaded data for three days instead of indefinitely. Zuckerberg lauded this change as a fantastic change for the network as a whole since it had been growing at such a rapid pace the infrastructure was "getting expensive" and this change should solve those issues relatively quickly. Privacy advocates cheered for five entire minutes during this portion of the presentation.

Also a user specific printed edition of the new Facebook will be printed and mailed to each user's household. This is to encourage sharing with their neighbors and friends they regularly see. Yearly printed editions will be made available through local libraries to ensure users will still have the ability to randomly browse both friend's and strangers profiles alike.

Users have greeted these new changes with praise and cheer. The future certainly looks bright for the social giant.

Hows my little celebration?

2011-08-29T08:35:00.003-05:00

We made it a whole year!

The year old cake was good too.

Hows my little teardrop?

2011-08-24T17:22:00.005-05:00

Today I lost one of my best friends in my life. My dog Chip. Almost all of my faithful readers have met him, and nearly all have experienced bruised shins from of his mighty tail. Chip had been a great friend to me through his nearly thirteen years, he taught me patience when he chewed through nearly everything I've owned. He guarded me at night. He was always around for me when I needed someone quiet to sit with. And he never failed to lick my fingers after a meal. I'm happy to say that he died a happy dog who ran freely, played joyfully and loved everyone. I have many great memories of him and will cherish them for the ages.

I miss you little buddy.

Hows my little hater?

2011-08-07T07:50:00.002-05:00

Lately I have found myself saying more frequently, no thank you, I don't like vegetables. Which generally incurs a "really?" to which I respond. Yes.

It's interesting telling somebody you don't like something because almost always your next five minutes of conversation goes into a scavenger hunt of other things you don't like. Such as when I refuse a salad, so you don't like lettuce? (but it doesn't have any flavor! "yes it does, and its nasty") What about Carrots? Peas? Do you like celery? How about spinach? Not even Brussels sprouts?

I also don't like nuts mixed into food. For example, I HATE nuts in ice cream. Its not because I don't like the flavor. I hate biting into a frozen nut, it hurts. Then you're forced to suck on it for a while to get it warm enough to chew. Which pretty much eliminates any delightful ice cream flavor you once had in your mouth. But if you give me a bag of mixed nuts on a hike I'll eat them.

I have another friend who doesn't like fruit. I'm amazed that when I'm around him how often I hear people ask things like, "not even bananas?" "what about blueberries?" "Orange Juice?" He is always very polite with this series of questions but you can see its not his favorite subject.

I'm very guilty of said questioning, but why do we do it? Do we all want to find out how much of a freak people are or aren't? Do we do it to find a common ground? Then what do you do. If you tell a fellow hater that you also can't stand cucumbers does that make you better friends? Lord knows that's not going to be a conversation point for the rest of the night.

I don't think I'll ever know but its something to think about.

The sad thing is I DO like vegetables. I just don't like fresh ones, with the exception of Broccoli and Cauliflower, I can't stand either of those in any fashion. In fact if you cook just about any veggie for me I'm sure I'll eat it or at least give it a try for your amusement. A few weeks ago Laura and I went an entire week on a vegetarian diet, and I lived! We had all sorts of delightful foods, I would recommend everyone giving it a try once.

So the next time someone announces they don't like a food, sit back and listen to the conversation and smile. If you feed it just right you can make it a game and say, well I don't like _____. Eventually the group will reach an understanding at something everyone likes thus reaffirming everyone's good friendship.

Hows my little scent?

2011-07-26T07:49:00.003-05:00

One day when Laura and I first started shopping together I asked if she wanted to run to the store and get some shampoo. She must have thought it would be a quick trip and agreed. After she watched me sniff nearly every bottle of shampoo and shampoo + conditioner she nearly lost it and she's never stood in the shampoo isle with me since then. Ten minutes later we left with my chosen "product" in hand.

Fast forward to recently. Have you ever wondered, if you were a super sniffer and were quite sensitive to the aromas of the world, could you imagine the cacophony of smells every individual reeks of?

On a typical Day I leave for work smelling like:
Fruit Extract, Glacial Water, Deep Sea Mint, Menthol, Fragrace Free (Yet a very nice perfume smell), Wilderness, Open Air, Freedom, Sunflower Oil, Chamomile, Cocoa, Radiant Mint, Iceberg Mint, Jojoba, Fresh Scent, and Outdoor Fresh

Think of all the things you put on your body that smell:
Shampoo
Conditioner
Face Wash
Soap/Body Wash
Shaving Cream
-After Shave
Deodorant
Toothpaste
Mouthwash
Hand Soap
Lotion
Clothing
-Laundry Detergent
-Dryer Sheet
Hair Products
-Hairspray, Mouse, Gel, Ect...
Cologne/Perfume

If you're going outdoors, throw some sunscreen, bug spray, and Aloe on your person for good measure, and its no wonder people attract mosquitoes.

What about those unscented people? You can't tell me they are little slices of scentless heaven, because in a world of Fabuloso, Pledge, Dish Soap, Bleach, Sweat, Ammonia, Dirty Dish Rags, Pets, Gasoline, 24D, Mineral Oil, Scotch Guard, Candles and Incense there are scents you just cant avoid absorbing. This of course leaving out any food smells you might be leaking (beans, asparagus, garlic, rum, old person, ect.) Not to mention there really might only be one truly fragrance free product out there and at this point its probably not worth it. Plus think about it, look at the ingredient list of an unscented product, there is no way that the factory they make it in smells only like B.O. Grease, oil, and Concrete. No those places reek of 20 different chemicals, one of them being a fragrance or another chemical to dull the other odors. Its a bunch of crap if you ask me.

So my question is, where is the company marketing the all in one? The company that has several choices of different scent lines that include everything on my list and more all in one package. Has it been done? Do people really enjoy all of the different smells they apply on themselves and thus stink of? I guarantee there is no one out there who matches their perfume with their mousse and maybe its about time to consider it.

Of course a product like that will never work in this world of more, how could a slogan "smell like just one thing" work.

Hows my little construction?

2011-07-18T08:10:00.004-05:00

For the last few weeks the little free time I've had has been spent building a new trellis for our garden. Anytime I build something I can generally guarantee myself that it will never end up like I planned. This was no exception.

It started simple enough, I wanted a new trellis for the garden since I ended up burning what was left of the one I poorly lashed together with Bamboo and crappy string last fall. We also have a neighbor that has a lot of crap hanging out around the outside of his garage often so it would double as a small screen to that.

My first mistake was after I bought all the wood I realized I had too much so I thought, well heck, I'm going to make it bigger! After I had it all constructed I realized I was one piece short.

The trellis is comprised of 5ish inch squares (with the exception of that one row of rectangles, how did that happen!?). Each piece is notched to fit together like Lincoln logs (only poorly instead of nicely). Since I'm terrible at getting mathematics to work for me in the real world I avoided using them at all costs, and it shows. After a large amount of hammering, glue, and screws everything pretty much fit together. And this is a sturdy beast. I've now vowed to get a nice large straight edge ruler/square before my next project.

The best part was when I showed my hard work off my Dad he goes, "This is held together with nails!?"
I said, "Yeah! They are smaller and look nicer."
"Then, why do some parts have screws."
"Oh, well those were problem areas."

We pretty much then realized I didn't buy anything suitable for outdoor use. So if the stain/varnish doesn't flake I'll be happy, and all of the screws and nails will probably rust in a few more days of this humidity. But I maintained, this is for the garden, its supposed to look a little rough, hence my less than ideal craftsmanship.

I also learned I should have stained everything before I put it together, I probably would have saved at least 3 hours of staining time, and I might have actually put on the 3 coat minimum it looks like it needs. Whatever, its for the garden, it's supposed to look rough.

As you can tell, I'm very proud of this piece of work, it looks like if I had built it on time the beans would have actually grown up it this year. Instead we are going to have a sad bean crop since we lost so much to the bean-rabbit fence separating session. But it does make a nice looking wall hanging out in the middle of our yard.

Since I haven't mentioned this years garden contents yet I'll fill ya in: Tomatoes Sweet Corn, Green Peppers, Habaneros, Chilli Peppers, Pole Beans, Red Cabbage, Brussel Sprouts, Red Potatoes, Lettuce, Carrots, and Sweet Potatoes.

Hows my little Friday?

2011-07-15T08:06:00.002-05:00

Today is my Friday.

Yep. In fact it is Friday July the 15th. All day it will be Friday, and the 15th. But this week on Tuesday of all days a complete stranger told me as she was ringing up my foam brushes it was her Friday.

Who the fuck does she think she is!!? Julius Cesar? No, she was a clerk at Menards, not a commander of the largest standing army in the world. She was in no position to change our tried and tested Gregorian calendar.

So what?
Well folks, everyone gets days off (if they work). Some people get two days in a row, others get more and fewer, and Friday always happens after Thursday. As far as I'm concerned my Friday happens right before your Saturday. So let it be known world, your Friday is mine too, don't tell people its your Friday just because you are about to get days off in the middle of the week.

In order to prevent further outrage I have prepared a few statements you could use to replace "Today is my Friday":

I'm not working the next couple of days!

I am glad to have some time off tomorrow.

Today I'm doing well, I have a couple of days off starting tomorrow.

My work week ends at a different day than a traditional worker and thus my week ends on strange days such as Wednesday, and sometimes even on Sundays! This is exciting to me because I can get a babysitter tonight and get drunk with my friends and sleep in tomorrow. So it will seem like the Saturdays I remember when I was in school! Really though it will be Thursday and I'll have to come back to work on Saturday.

Hows my little Northern Getaway?

2011-07-06T08:25:00.007-05:00

This was a phenomenal long weekend.

Laura and I spent our time in the Washburn area. Taking a couple of extra days off made the 9+ hour drive entirely worth it. We have made it a habit recently to spend almost as much time in our car driving to and from our destination as we do awake at our destination.

The excuse to get away came in the form of a wedding for one of Laura's old high school pals Aubrey. The wedding was great, the ceremony was short and sweet, and the reception had great food and an open bar. Their family made hundreds of different cupcakes which were all quite tasty. Best of all the weather cooperated wonderfully.

The next morning we woke up and we drove into Bayfield to enjoy breakfast on a great recommendation at EggToss with pals Matt and Ashley. After that we hopped into the Davis family boat and zipped all around Lake Superior for a tour of the Apostle Islands. We got a bit of swimming and Frisbee time in as well. Since I'm the worst person to take to the beach if you want peace I decided to keep myself busy with a sculpture project so that everyone else could relax on the sand.

The next day was more of the first! Only today we added some water skiing and wakeboarding to the mix. I just barely fit into Scott's wetsuit and was happy about it because the water was pretty frigid in places. I'm happy to say I didn't forget how to drop a ski and live.

Laura also impressed me with her hidden wakeboarding skills.

We spent the rest of the afternoon frolicking around the beach and in the surprisingly warm water with sunburns aplenty.

That night we headed over to Bayfield to watch the fireworks and I think I can say that the display we saw was one of the best ones I've ever seen.

We woke up on our final morning stiff and sore from the previous day's activities and hopped into the car to twist all of that stiffness into a slow almost ten hour lower back torture session. I'm still a bit sore as of this posting and I'm blaming the car ride home.. I hadn't really recovered from my Vegas shenanigans and the marathon so this weekend was just what the doctor ordered. Mind, Body, and Soul revitalized.

Hows my little Grill Master?

2011-06-26T19:37:00.011-05:00

This weekend Laura and I finally got our brand new grill fired up!

As I am with all inanimate objects I grow attached to, here is my tribute to the old fella:

I received the old grill as a very generous gift from the Aamodt family (which I think they were just as happy to be rid of it as I was to have it) in the summer of 2007. It remained a faithful food preparation device until only recently. The poor old fella has undergone multiple surgeries and is now dilapidated beyond repair. It barely survived a 600 mile move south and since then we have replaced various screws, the burner, drip guard, and both main cooking grates. The igniter never worked so we learned early on how to throw matches in just right to avoid singeing as many hairs. Alas all good relationships must come to an end eventually and this one is no different the top shelves are now rusting so much we deemed them hazardous to our health because we sometimes found chunks on our food. We used that shelf as a cooking surface frequently for larger meals and the giant hole that has now materialized has rendered it pretty much useless.

Our new grill is a classic tale of the bright shiny monster replacing the old rust bucket. I'll let the pictures do the work.

We thought it would be good to burn off anything that might be clinging to the cooking surface.

Since this thing is a beast I decided the first thing cooked on it should utilize all of the new features our old grill could not measure up to. Some Grass fed local lamb shanks and ears of corn cooked on low indirect heat for an hour. The fat broke down, the corn was delicious, and we smiled. Happy almost anniversary us.

Hows my little marathoner?

2011-06-20T22:00:00.004-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I have successfully completed my first and only marathon.

First I want to thank everyone who said good luck and congratulations, motivation in all of its forms was greatly appreciated. I would especially like to thank my lovely wife Laura for worrying about me on all of those long runs and baring with my resolve to tackle this task. I am especially grateful for her willingness to get up in the morning and bring me water and food on my long runs.

Running a whole marathon is an amazing feat, but the real amazing feat is the training one must endure in preparation for the big race. For those of you not familiar with this portion I'll give you a bit of reference. I began my training officially on February 14th for the race taking place June 18th. Due to a knee injury I ended up running just over half of the miles I was planning on running. Total I ran 241 miles, estimating the pace I was generally training at that means I spent about 41 hours of jogging around the streets of Oakwood and beyond.

Also I had a training buddy from afar, Aaron who was an excellent motivator. If you ever decide to put yourself through this torture, get a buddy. It makes complaining more fun because you can share your pain with someone who understands completely. In theory you and your buddy will stick to the plan better too.

After being a spectator since I was just wee boy watching my Dad run the race it was really great to be on the other side of the event as a runner. Running Grandmas is a great experience, I took the scenic railway to the start line (my last big tourist attraction to do in Duluth), they had tons of outhouses at the starting line, and a lot of pacers to keep everyone on track of their goals.

Its an interesting race in the sense that for the first 20 miles there are very few spectator spots, so its just you the lake and 10,000ish fellow runners for a good few hours. With great scenery and the wind at our back though it was actually quite enjoyable, except mile 10 when you can see the lift bridge for the first time and its a tiny speck on the horizon. In fact, at mile 15 you get to see it again and its no bigger, that is a giant mental hurdle. Its not until you get into town that you really get crowds of people yelling, go runners! Which is a great time for that because everyone is starting to hurt then.

Aaron and I stayed together and on a great pace for the first 17 miles. We found a couple of rabbits to chase who looked like they were out for an easy jog and things went quite smooth for awhile, I think due to pain, tired legs, and a slow water stop I lost all three of my pacers in about a minute I tried to catch up but my legs wouldn't let me. So I began plodding along and quickly got passed by the 4 hour pacer and towards the end the 4:15 pacer, which under normal circumstances would have been disheartening by then I had long since decided 4 hours, while a noble goal, was now replaced with a JUST FINISH DAMMIT mentality. I did not finish strong, I plodded all the way into the finish area where I was ready to lie down and cry. I was thankful for the shirt I got for finishing since I was frigid. At the finish, since I'm not one to pass up a free massage I waited in line for a massage that was phenomenal. I have a feeling that my speedyish recovery was aided greatly from this.

I got my time while enjoying my post-race beer and it broke down like this:

10k: 54:40
13.1: 1:59:34
20: 3:09:44
25: 4:12:49
26.2: 4:28:12

You can easily see how hard I crashed, notice that 16 minute final mile.

Altogether I enjoyed my marathon experience (as much as one could while being tired and sore so often) but I wouldn't do it again I think half marathons are much more sensible to train for and to run. So to my Dad and everyone else who has run more than one marathon, well done, I'm impressed.

One of the best things about all this running (and sensible eating) I managed to lose 15 pounds by race day. This is a big deal for me since I gained 20 pounds when we first moved south and its been tough to lose ever since.

Hows my little Sinner?

2011-06-15T13:22:00.002-05:00

Everything they say about Las Vegas is true. Its called sin city for a reason, a damn good one. The city that never sleeps, also justified. I'm going to get it out right now. The hangover, and all of the ridiculous things in it are entirely plausible. That said, I'm done comparing Las Vegas with that movie. Also since I was here for Justin's bachelor party, I'm leaving out some other interesting details that shall remain in the desert.

Three days in Las Vegas is plenty, I would even go on record and say that two and a half is perfect. But don't get me wrong I had a great time!

The weekend started with "free" drinks at the bar while slowly gambling 19 quarters away. After staying up late and a decent steak and eggs breakfast we laid by the pool where after buying some beer I lost my ID. Panic ensued for multiple reasons such as, what can you do in Vegas without an ID, or How do I get home, or How do I get another room key?? Luckily a Lifeguard found it for me and I was saved. After some Sin City Brewery Brews we headed to the Stratosphere for some action on the rides.

I decided to jump off the top of it because its not often you get to fall 855 feet only to be saved at the very last second. I calculated it cost about $8 per second. I screamed for all 12ish of those seconds. But it was a wild good time, I'd never done anything like that before, including bungee jumping so for a guy like me it was a blast. Now that I've don it you may not call me a Chicken, Scaredy Cat, Wimp, or any other monikers that might imply less than crazy brave, I have a certificate that says so. At one point on top I caught myself thinking, oh wait, I need to get strapped in before I go out there and jump...

Afterward part of the crew headed to Fremont street for some extra good times. Fremont street is the shit, and I recommend it. There are lots of different casinos(duh), live music, a very cool LED roof over the street which most people openly drank on, and lots of street performers. I gambled just enough money to afford the zip-line over the crowd and under the lights. I was very excited about adding some extra thrill and since it was closing time I asked for a "end of the night pissed off and everyone and I'm ready to get the fuck out of here shove" which was ended up being great, I went super fast and loved every second of it. Afterward Brian bought me a generous gift of my first ever lap dance, after-all we were excited about celebrating our "22nd birthday" with a "groom to be".

I would recommend a cabana at Bare, especially if you're feeling wealthy.

That evening we hiked to the Welcome to Las Vegas sign, it really is a welcome sign, take a cab, spend 5 minutes to grab your picture and head back into town. After that we headed back to Fremont Street for some more gambling and lights. Justin dared me to bet $100 on black. I did and dear lord I almost threw up because I was so nervous watching the ball bounce around.

After heading to bed early Matt and I headed out around town for a tour, we almost won $1,000,000 but didn't. We walked through Cesar's, The Venetian (which was gorgeous), past Paris, and watched the Bellagio water fountains. The fountains are everything I was hoping they would be and surprisingly a little more so. I'll never hear "All that Jazz" the same way again.

Things of note for future travelers:
Las Vegas International is an amazingly simple and easy to navigate airport. Taking cabs all over adds up. Don't buy a drink from a casino unless they are advertising that it is special. Strippers are crafty. Don't leave anyone behind. Travel by limo for evening activities. Sleeping during daylight is probably better. Talk to strangers. Find a hotel that has a good pool. Get a gigantic drink in a fun shaped glass. Collect 100 hooker cards. Stay up all night. Feel utterly miserable briefly.

See you again Vegas, but dear lord, not anytime soon.

150 150 300

Hows my little Warrior?

2011-05-17T08:13:00.004-05:00

Last fall Laura sent me this link from her brother and said check this out! I was immediately hooked on all that was Warrior Dash. We all signed up in November for the race (which was already filling up) and started getting excited.

For those that don't know what a warrior dash is, it's a 3ish mile race with obstacles, mud, goofy people in costumes, and a whole lot of fun. They have this race all over the country and we chose to run it in Georgia. The courses vary from place to place but they are generally similar.

Thanks to a stranger on Facebook I am able to show you our course obstacles by ugly photo collage. The guy wore a video camera on his head.

The whole event was ridiculously fun (and extremely well organized) and I loved hanging out with the Davis warriors.

Laura and I dressed up as Punk Rockers. For my costume I got hellbent on finding Red Plaid tights and after probably 2+ hours searching on the internet one night I found this site just as I was about to give up on the dream. The tights made my outfit perfect, but the Boondock Saints shirt from Goodwill also pulled through really strong. The best part of all, my mohawk managed to stay standing right until the end! After I crossed the finish line is when it finally fell, which I thought was amazing because Laura and I were having a hell of a time keeping it up at the house before the race. It was a last minute tweak to make it a liberty spike/fan mowhawk. Twice as ugly thus even more perfect.

Post Race Smile.

Laura and I split a Turkey Leg. mmmmmm....

They had a really cool program where you could donate your muddy shoes to a shoe recycling program. I was able to donate two pairs and Laura tossed in a pair for herself too. I love recycling shoes, it bothers me to throw them away when they could still be wrapped around a foot. Judging by some of the other pictures I've seen this pile easily quadrupled in size by the end of the weekend.

I can't wait for Warrior Dash 2012 (if the world doesn't end first).

Hows my little Haircut? #7

2011-05-15T10:00:00.001-05:00

The grand finale:

I picked up this hat a few days ago for my bald head. It is 88% paper and 12% polyester. I had no idea how cold my head would feel after shaving it down all the way. This was a good $13 investment.

I was convinced that I would look significantly more ridiculous with no hair.

Hows my little Haircut? #6

2011-05-14T09:30:00.001-05:00

"Mohawks were originally sported by warriors of various Native American tribes, the hairstyle was adopted by a squad of the U.S. Army's bad-to-the-bone 101st Airborne Division during World War II, before being commandeered by punk rockers in the 1970s."

Back in November with Laura's Family we signed up for a race called Warrior Dash, it sounded like a grand time full of costumes, obstacles, mud, running and fun. I probably needed a haircut back then but I decided shortly after I signed up, I'm cutting my hair into a Mohawk for this event.

I really began to loathe the long hair in the last couple of weeks because of several reasons, number one was I hated showering at night then again in the morning because of how nasty it looked. Number two it got everywhere, eyes, face, ears, Laura played with it, and it turned into a giant frizzy puffball with any sort of humidity around my person. I felt immediate relief when the hair was cut away from my ears.

Was the cut worth it? Totally.
Here is the progression:

"When one wears a mohawk they represent, a world with no rules or boundaries."

Hows my little Haircut? #5

2011-05-13T16:56:00.004-05:00

"French braid has several practical advantages: it can restrain hair from the top of the head that is too short to reach the nape of the neck, and it spreads the weight and tension of the braid across a larger portion of the scalp. Its sleeker appearance is also sometimes viewed as more elegant and sophisticated"

This was easily the most painful hairstyle I endured. At the same time though it was one of my favorites because my hair was out of my ears eyes and face.

Hows my little Haircut? #4

2011-05-11T23:41:00.000-05:00

"An updo is a hair style that involves arranging the hair instead of allowing it to fall freely. It is more commonly associated with elaborate styles for special occasions such as a prom or wedding."

Ever since I came up with the idea of a different hairstyle per day Laura has been on pins and needles for curling my hair. I was expecting to look more like this:
Sadly I'm not little, cute, nor blonde.

After Laura was done having fun burning different parts of my head and ears I thought I looked like a girl ready for the Prom. Naturally this is what came next:

Hows my little Haircut? #3

2011-05-10T21:58:00.002-05:00

"Hey greaser, need a haircut?"

Two for one Tuesday!

"You sold my dead bird to a blind kid?"

Hows my little Haircut? #2

2011-05-09T21:07:00.004-05:00

"The emo hairstyles tend to symbolize freedom of expression and the fact one is not afraid to show others what he is thinking."

I've never pretended to be an Emo kid mostly because I've never understood the asymmetrical haircut, especially when it covers an entire eyeball. But this was my best shot. Since I'm not cutting my hair at all for my styling this week I decided against spiking it up in the back.

Laura my hairstylist, did a phenomenal job at cleaning up the train wreck I created with the flat iron. It took me a solid two minutes before I figured out how to hold my hair and the flat iron while simultaneously pinching it together and keeping it away from my fragile ears.

In traditional emo fashion I've taken the liberty to include my camera in the mirror.

I had no idea how long my hair really was until it was straightened.

Hows my little Haircut? #1

2011-05-08T21:56:00.004-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen my hair has not been cut in well over six months. It is beyond the point of annoying and I am thrilled to announce it will be hacked, in its entirety, this weekend. Right down to the skin.

To celebrate my haircut saga I will be rocking a new hairstyle each day this week and showing you right here.

The most obvious place to show the progression is the beginning.

Here you will notice my long mane. For some reason my hair gets curly around the back of my head and about four inches out from the top. It also hangs out in my eyeballs, ears, and face far too much.

Laura loves to play with my long hair. I hate it.
She puts it behind my ear which is probably the worst thing next to wet socks. Her next favorite thing is to try and put it into a pony tail. Which as you can see is quite disgusting.

The real bane of my lengthy locks is the fact that I have to comb it every morning to tame its poofy characteristics. The added 35 seconds to my morning routine blows.
I'm sure I'm not getting any sympathy right now.

By now you might be wondering (if you even care), why on earth are you growing this terrible mess on your head.

This is not the answer:
"Long, thick and healthy hair is frequently a sign of fertility and youth. As hair grows slowly, long hair reveals several years of a person's health status and reproductive fitness."

But I will show you in several days.

Just know, I won't be doing this again anytime soon.

Ooh! I almost forgot, if you have any style requests that don't involve cutting, send me an idea.

Hows my little Distance Runner?

2011-05-02T07:56:00.002-05:00

This weekend was Illinois Marathon weekend. What fun it was! Last year I signed up to run the 5K last minute and surprised myself by staying injury free, so over the summer and winter I kept running and decided to run a whole marathon. That made sense at the time.

This year I signed up for a new event called the I-Challenge, you run the 5K on Friday and either the Half or Full Marathon on Saturday. I chose to run the Half marathon as a fitness checkpoint for Grandma's in June. Since I knew at least one other person doing this challenge we managed to get Laura and a few other friends roped into the 5K on Friday night, which was great!

I've had a great time watching Laura build up her running endurance from hardly a mile to running the entire 5K in only 34 minutes! To me there is nothing like having a friend or two shout your name while you're running and I was happy to be there at the end to hoot on Laura and our pals as they reached the finish exhausted and happy.

Saturday was the half marathon and due to a mysteriously appearing knee injury (same as my surgery knee) I was apprehensive to say the very least about this run. But my knee held up for all 13 miles and so did the rest of me!

Running events are so great to watch and participate in because of all of the great people watching. Obviously the fit bodies rocking their various forms of sexiness is a big draw. Everyone's different running forms inspire questions like, how did you make it this far looking like that. Then there are the fools who wear costumes. I always thought they were fun to watch for but this time I got stuck on pace with 'Waldo' for about 6 miles and holy shit if I heard WHERES WALDO yelled at me that often I would have flipped. It was a good costume, but boy did that get old. Needless to say it was good inspiration to pick it up for the last three miles and get away.

My chip time for the half was 2:07:10
My chip time for the 5K was 27:13 (a 9 second improvement!)

Since last year I did a body composition measurement I was excited to do another one this year to find any differences.
Here are my results:

Weight:....(2010) 199.4....(2011) 198.4
Height:....(2010) 6'4.7"...(2011) 6'4.3"(!)
BMI:.......(2010) 24.......(2011) 24
Body Fat%:.(2010) 16%......(2011) 15%
Body Fat:..(2010) 31.9 lb..(2011) 29.9 lb.

Warrior Dash and Grandma's Marathon will wrap up this guy's planned running season. Bring 'em on!

Hows my little horse?

2011-04-02T09:12:00.009-05:00

Horseradish is a very strange herb. First off, is the very unique flavor, only somewhat comparable to wasabi. The most interesting versions of horseradish are 'spicy' or insanely hot. Unlike a chili pepper though, it doesn't scorch your mouth and the burning sensation won't linger afterwards.

When Laura and I moved to Oakwood her parents brought us a nice gift of a horseradish root. I wasn't well experienced with the herb at the time and planted it because I was excited to grow something. Yesterday I dug up the first real harvest of it. Boy was I in for a surprise.

I set out to make the hottest horseradish I could possibly muster. During my research I was constantly reminded, do this outdoors or in a well ventilated area! Naturally I thought the internet being what it is, full of pansies I ignored the warning. This made the rest of the process much more challenging.

The process was actually very easy.

First you hack up the horseradish into pieces.
I was surprised about how good its fragrance was at this point.

Next in a food processor/blender with a tablespoon or two of water (next time I'm going to try vodka) process to desired consistency.
This is the part you actually listen to the warnings. Naturally I huffed a big lungful to see what was going on with it and immediately began coughing, crying and dancing around the kitchen yelling WOO!!

This was Laura's first reaction after sniffing it.

After that add a couple tablespoons of vinegar. For a very hot experience add it a few minutes afterwards. For mild heat you can add it before processing or immediately afterwards.

The effects of the horseradish at this point are very strong and trying to spoon it into a container is challenging when your nose is running and eyes are streaming with tears, use caution and speed to minimize this.
Here I am trying to scoop it into a jar, not exaggerating the need to hold it that far from me.

Next up of course is the taste test! My only benchmark for crazy hot horseradish is from St. Elmo in Indianapolis. Their shrimp cocktail is delightful and almost intolerably hot.

Did I succeed in making the hottest horseradish I could?

I'd say so.

Hows my little Season?

2011-03-25T08:37:00.002-05:00

This week I got a wicked sunburn pruning grapevines out in the vineyard. I learned a valuable lesson, you can get sunburn in March even if you aren't laying on a beach somewhere near the ocean. Sunscreen is still required.

Our plants are now emerging which is always a great sign to see we didn't kill them all at the end of the summer.

This year was the first year I didn't get out and downhill ski at least once since 1994. This is a tragedy since this is one of my favorite things to do in life. Good thing we just got Laura some nice skis.

Hows my little Island Survivor?

2011-03-19T09:44:00.004-05:00

A few months ago Laura and I utilized Netflix to tackle the monster that is Lost. I made it halfway through season two and quit. Laura is still hooked for some reason but I don't see a point. I've had friends say 'wait until season four!' or 'season 2 and 6 are the worst' and another friend say as a whole it was a general waste of time. I'm calling it quits because it only limped along on a ridiculous story (fuck that button!) and several friend's hopeless reviews. If the last season is one of the worst what is there to look forward to? That is a lot of time spent watching something and waiting for it to get good, only to disappoint me again in the end.

Through each character and what I know of them thus far I will give you my reasons for giving up on Lost. Feel free to litter my comments with spoilers and rebuttals, because I don't care enough to waste any more time on this show.

I'll go with my favorite to least favorite:

Kate:
I loved Kate's story! She had this mysterious criminal past, and wouldn't open up to anyone about it. Plus, she is a fox. When I found out she held up a bank for a stupid little toy airplane that she and her long lost married sweetheart buried, she completely lost her interest factor.

John Locke:
I really loved that this guy knew everything about wilderness survival despite his past life was at a box factory. I didn't watch enough to find out why he had all those knives or how he got put into that wheelchair. His whiny past, ohhh Dad! You used my Mom to steal my liver! Woe is me I'm so bitter (rightfully so) but then he creepily stalked him? Come on!! Then all of his crazy 'the island will tell us' rants got old. Then his obsession with the stupid button, that whole part just killed it for me.

Mr. Eko:
Big badass dude who spoke very little and caused almost no commotion. What was there not to like about this guy.

Killer Jungle Polar Bears:
Rawr!

The Others:
The fact that they had a boat with an engine was impressive. The fact that they could quietly surround people in the dark and disappear without a trace was the only thing left that me interested in the show. Why did they take Walt? Who cares.

Smoke Monster:
I liked this character because all it did was scare people, shake trees, demolish trees, and zip around looking all black and smokey.

Shannon:
She is high up on this list because of her swimwear scenes alone. Other than that I hated just about everything else about her.

Sun:
She was so innocent and rarely complained, plus she was super fine, I understand why Jin didn't want people looking at her. Her lack of backbone was a bit frustrating. A flower kept her with him?! COME ON!! She secretly learned English to escape that guy. Lame Lame Lame.

Hurley:
I would've liked to have played a drinking game for every time this guy said dude. Drinking double if it was the first word he said. I would've liked to have known more about the origin of his numbers more but oh well, seems like they curse everyone who encounters them, what more is there to know?

Charlie:
I feel like he will either die or turn to the dark side soon. His hopeless drug addiction was pathetic and was very easy to give up on. It was a bit endearing how fatherly he was with the baby. This guy had the best untapped creepy potential.

Sayid:
I never understood this guy, he set off to walk around the island, got distracted and never tried again. For all anyone knows they are on an island three miles off the coast of Australia and they are all just facing the wrong way. Why didn't he try again instead of getting tangled up with Shannon and torturing people even though he "hates" it.

Sawyer:
I disliked this character because he was a Jackass. I liked Freckles the best of his nicknames. At the end of my watching he had the only story worth hearing beyond my viewing.

Jack:
Jack was so annoying, he made a terrible leader because no one listened to him but Charlie. He was a giant pushover. Worst of all he kept the tension high with Kate for far too long. His back (ha!) story with his wife was boring, and who can feel bad for a guy who got his own father fired from his hospital. Not me.

Mike:
This guy is hopeless. After Walt was taken I don't understand why he ever listened to anyone. I would have gotten myself killed trying to find that kid, what happens after he does inevitably find him again? I'm sure they get rescued or something just in time to bring all of the other stolen kids with too so that they are all safe. Happy Ending.

Michelle Rodriguez:
She can only be typecast as a bad-ass who drives fast things, kills things, or blows things up. Trying to get her to act in something beyond that is hopeless. She single-handedly ruined several episodes of season two by talking too much. I'm sure she dies. I disliked her presence on Lost so much I've refused to look up her character's name.

As many of you know I'm not a fan of many TV shows, especially dramas without much excitement. Lost kept me going with hopeful excitement but followed with let downs and frustration. Sure there was a lot of mystery and some great character twists and development but so few of those were worthwhile it was time for me to stop. I hope you'll understand.

Hows my little goat?

2011-03-06T18:45:00.009-06:00

BockFest 2011 was a great success by any standard. It was fun, the beer was good, the food was good, people were tied up, someone barfed, and there was fire.

The day started out with a tasting of the 5 homebrewed Bock Beers. I was very excited that all of the beers we sampled were delightful. I ranked mine last. Nathan's brew won the grand BockFest prize of a giant Beer Stein! Everyone was very excited for him since it was his first brew he made on his own. My beer failed to carbonate in time for the event due to many reasons, I also forgot to get it chilled in time, two big negative strikes, my brew earned last.

During this time we ate and ate and ate. Some of my favorites were a cheesy pretzel and this pocket of food thing that was amazing. There were tons of good desserts too which I munched on all night as well. Laura made a delicious Potato salad that I really wish we could have had tons of leftovers.

After the tasting we broke out the penis stick and began caramelizing our bocks. As the night wore on and the copper began heating more thoroughly we got some really great caramel flavors from the beer. My favorite part was the warm caramel head and the cold body.

Next up was one of my favorite parts, the obstacle course around our house. It involved hopping, spinning, blindfolds, and some knots. It was done in pairs and we had a really fun time watching people navigate a simple figure 8 dizzy and blindfolded balancing a beer on a tray. Ryan and Jana won the grand prize of two Paulner 16 oz. beers.

The weather didn't cooperate with us the best and it was cold and windy (it didn't rain!!) but the fire prevailed and the heaters we had in the garage were a great help. I actually really enjoyed the bit of snow we had falling around us as we were standing around the fire, it made a great atmosphere for the evening.

Since everyone had a great time I think we will try and make the second annual BockFest happen in 2012.

I'll see you there with your beer and food!

Hows my little hair?

2011-03-02T08:37:00.002-06:00

I recently found out I have a patch of grey hairs.

...

On my butt.

Hows my little romantic getaway?

2011-02-27T09:09:00.002-06:00

Last weekend I surprised Laura with a romantic getaway to the land of Door County, Wisconsin. This was our first trip to the area and we were both quite excited to be there.

I like trying to surprise Laura so I kept the destination and activities suppressed to a few hints: we haven't been there before, it will take between two and ten hours to get there, and we will participate in things that we like doing.

I blindfolded her on Friday morning with my smart wool socks. I completely forgot that she doesn't have much wool tolerance and I thought she was going to scratch her eyes out. I forgot to get gas before we left and needed to stop an hour into our drive so I let her take off the blind fold there. I was a little bummed, I was hoping to make it through Chicago.

Our adventures in Door County were great, we visited 3 wineries, a brewery, found some geocaches, enjoyed our larger than expected room and its ammenities, ate a few delightful meals, and even found some time to relax with a couples massage.

We both decided that we need to go back in the summertime when more things are open and we can swim around.

Hows my little Green Fairy?

2011-02-10T09:10:00.006-06:00

I've been enamored by the idea of absinthe since somewhere around 2003 when I read an article in Maxim about this drink that had "mind altering" properties. It was just an idea until last November when Laura and I found a bottle in a store in Wisconsin.

After drinking (nay, choking it down) it using the traditional louche method of preparation before the wedding we were going to, I decided I would like to find a way to make absinthe drinkable. Besides, the shits expensive.

A side effect of this day-long experiment is also my pursuit to see if the green fairy really does exist. My prediction at this point is that I'm just going to be drunk by 2:00 and ready for a nap by 4. During my time off I have placed this duty upon myself and will faithfully carry it out for my faithful readers, hard as it might be.

9:30am
Czech or Modern Bohemian Method
I'm choosing this method first because of two reasons. If you don't know, good absinthe is around 110-130 proof. So having burning liquid and any sort of intoxication do not mix well. This method is frowned upon by absinthe purists because of some snobby thing it does to the flavor. I say screw em.

The method: Dripping Absinthe over a sugar cube into the glass, ignite the sugar cube and the caramelized sugar drips into the glass, after about a minute stir in remainder of sugar and some ice water to create the louche effect. Absinthe used: Lucid

So that was largely dissapointing. I was expecting some exciting flame or something more. What I got was pretty, but still a quite small blue flame. As far as drinkablity goes I would actually say this method is more drinkable than the traditional way.

Czech or Modern Bohemian Method Success. Though a mild one.

Just like in Myth Busters, I need to try this again to achieve my desired flame effect, next glass I will soak the cube in the absinthe for a bit then I will burn the cube.

11:00am Soaking the cube did not lengthen the flame time or change the amount of flame. I dripped on more after the flame went out for another try, and it seemed to burn longer. For this to be a cool effect though it needs to work on the first try. Another day I might try a longer soak for the cube. I have other methods to try today.

Please note this photo was taken in the dark on the second, second try.

Interlude: To find the Green Fairy one must slowly sip their Absinthe, so not to become intoxicated with alcohol quickly and overpowering the side effects.

1:30pm
Straight
I've learned over the years one can't really judge how much they like something without trying it at the same time as another for a very accurate comparison. Drinking absinthe straight is not necessarily frowned upon, in fact a purist will congratulate you for not ruining it with water. But you don't get the cool louche effect.

“Anti-alcoholics are unfortunates in the grip of water, that terrible poison, so corrosive that out of all substances it has been chosen for washing and scouring, and a drop of water added to a clear liquid like absinthe, muddles it.” —Alfred Jarry

The Method: Sipping from a shot glass to attempt to appreciate flavor differences. Absinthe used: Absente & Lucid

Absente: smells faintly like nail polish remover. It has a very strong herbal flavor which isn't bad if this was a green tea. There was a long delay before the expected shudder one gets when taking shots. Unfortunately I have another sip left. This is extremely strong, and this one is only 55% alcohol.

My stomach has just asked me to take a break between samples.

2:00pm
Lucid: Lucid has a much stronger herbal smell, it hardly smells like alcohol. Although it does make my stomach churn a bit from the smell. Wow! This didn't make me cringe! It has a much brighter flavor and less herbaly. I keep thinking its got a flavor of lemon but it doesn't, I think maybe its just a crisp citrus taste. Either way, I'm going to need to take a break from this while my stomach get back in line. Lucid is 62% alcohol. This one will sneak up on you for sure.

3:00pm
Classic French Absinthe Ritual.
Pour absinthe into a glass, place a slotted spoon over the glass and a sugar cube on top of the spoon. Pour ice cold water over the sugar cube until it breaks down completely. Add more water if needed to suit your tastes.

This had a very strong herbal flavor and smell. I can't imagine having more than one of these in a sitting. The sugar makes it very sweet and since only water is added it seems like a very light tea. I'm not a fan.

This is the point that I burnt out with drinking Absinthe today. It has such a strong herbal flavor paired with high alcohol and top it off with some very apparent dissolved sugar, I was spent. The results? Maybe if I focused harder on drinking this liqueur more frequently I might have had better success finding the fabled fairy or intoxication, but really all I felt was sick of drinking it. I can at least leave to rest I still do not like Absinthe much and now need to seek out some way to mix it rather than the traditional methods.

With that I'll leave you this quote I found when looking up the drink.
“The first stage is like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things, but if you can persevere you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see, wonderful curious things.” —Oscar Wilde

Hows my little epic shift?

2011-02-06T23:26:00.000-06:00

About two weeks ago Laura and I made a decision that will no doubt impact our lives for a long, long time to come.

I have been presented with a unique opportunity where hobby and career can meet, and have taken a job as an assistant Winemaker at the Vineyard near our home called Sleepy Creek. And I couldn't be more excited about it. I start the 15th.

I've been asked lots of questions about what I'm going to do and really, I'm not sure, which is a bit thrilling. I know what goes into making wine at my house but anything outside of that, I'm completely clueless, and that's one of the most exciting parts, the learning.

What I do know is I will be learning just about every aspect of winemaking, I'll also be able to rock some of my design skills for some marketing work and other exciting things. I know that I'm going to be on my feet mostly and not clicking my mouse several thousand times a day. I also know I am going to become a pro at making dirty things clean.

One of my favorite parts about my job to be is the location, in Oakwood nothing is close to us except this place, and now I can bike to work daily. My commute has shrank from 25 minutes by car to 15 minutes (or less) by bicycle.

The decision was actually tough, in early January I was offered a new position within my company. I was still a designer, but in a different part of the company doing more exciting work. I got my own office, a comfier chair, a closet I didn't know what to do with, and a shelf that I put a can of peanuts on once. My co-workers were fantastic and open to ideas, and in general it was a large improvement over what I had been doing. A few days later a rare chance popped into my life and said, HEY! You'll regret this if you don't take me, I listened. Comic Sans resigned me as of Friday the 4th.

Laura has been kind enough to allow me to have a week off between jobs. I plan on doing very little each day, with the exception of making delicious meals for my lovely wife each night. I also plan on tackling some sort of new adventure each day. Tomorrow's Adventure, a duck.

Hows my little Chicagoan?

2011-02-02T17:39:00.010-06:00

First off, this is incredibly late, second I will apologize for the fact that most people are more anxious about the post that will follow this one

Laura and I this year decided to see if we could mix up our Christmas celebration with Laura's Family. One fall afternoon I proposed the idea to them, 'Hey what would you think about having Christmas in New York or maybe Chicago?' Laura's mom was immediately interested and Laura's Dad, the hermit he is was not excited. Long story short we decided to hang out with her family in Chicago.

Since we've moved down here we've talked about having a long weekend up there doing all of the tourist things we could and this seemed like a great time.

We did tons of fun stuff:
We saw the Blue Man Group which was so fun, they put on such an excellent show, I didn't realize it was half 'play' half music. Definitely a great experience that I would recommend to anybody.

Day two we went to the Shedd Aquarium which was great, last time Laura and I went there the dolphin and whale Aquarium wasn't open, and this time we got a Christmas themed show with dancers and a Santa on a Boat and even some really cute penguins along with our Dolphins. We also stopped by the Sears Tower (I know the name changed but come on) We got to see the sun set over flat flat flat Illinois and my pictures from up there didn't turn out so hot. We also walked the Mag Mile a bit, and got thoroughly disappointed on Navy Pier. If you're looking for someplace fun to take a bunch of screaming under 15 year olds that is the place, aside from that it was a major bust, we were just hoping for a place to eat and the selection was dismal at the best. Whew! The fun part came next.

After a long walk and a rumor that part of The Dark Knight was filmed in our Hotel we decided we needed to explore. We took the elevator up to the top floor to take a look around. When the doors slid open pounding Hip-Hop forced it's way into the elevator and Laura and I froze! What to do!? My curiosity got the best of me and when I peered out I noticed that the party was on only one side, so we went to the other. After a nice look over the Chicago River and out of Bruce Wayne's Penthouse windows we decided to call it a night and take the stairs back to our room.
Halfway down we the first flight someone opened the door and shouted HEY! Whats going on? Wanna party with us? I was feeling spunky and said sure! Laura and I ordered some big city ($$$) drinks and danced to some tunes. Before everyone cleared out we creeped out so we wouldn't embarrass anyone including ourselves. It was a bit awkward being the least dressed up, by a very long shot. That was our first full day!

The Next day we hit up the Museum of Science and Industry which is HUGE! To really see the whole place one needs to spend two days looking over everything, which at a museum I like to do. Admission was free and there were some really fun interactive exhibits for kids of all ages. After that we planned on a fantastic meal at what a better place than the top of the John Hancock Building. The food was delightful as was the service and the view of course topped it all! We were looking pretty much parallel with the top of the Sears tower and that was really cool, and since its in a different part of town the change in perspective was really exciting.

The highlight of our trip (for me) was after this though, Laura found a great Wine Bar to stop in for a relaxing after dinner drink. They offered a blind tasting flight and the more answers you got right the more of a discount you can recieved. I chose the white wine flight and managed to get enough right to meet the first tier of discount! I was very proud of myself for managing to sort of guess wine by flavor alone!

I had a wonderful time with Laura's family and are happy we got to mix up our holiday time with them this year. I have once said, I love Chicago but I could never live there. I take it back, I still love Chicago, but I would live downtown with a large enough disposable income to thoroughly enjoy it's many many treats. See you again windy city.

P.S.
I would also like to thank 4G and Google maps for getting us everywhere quickly.

Hows my little chair?

2011-01-16T09:42:00.004-06:00

So long Chair! We have had so many good times since you first came into my life nearly a decade ago. You've supported my rear through good times and bad. As an outcast from the beginning I took you in and sat on you when no one else would. Even as your back support moved farther and farther from comfortable and rendered you nearly a stool. You've always been there to hold me, my friends, and family up, and I appreciated that. Chair, I want to thank you for your thankless duty as an inanimate object, over the years we've moved, rolled, mindlessly spun, and tortured cats together. All great memories. It was sad rolling you out to the curb since your wheels still worked so well and you could still support over 300 pounds, but sadly you were past due, living on borrowed years, you lived an exciting life as chairs go but your time has come and onward you move into the underworld. Chair, I will miss you, in your place this $10 inflatable ball is doing everything you did, but with comfort.

Hows my little '10 recap?

2010-12-30T17:24:00.003-06:00

2010 Has been a fantastic year for many reasons, the biggest one, my marriage to the former Ms. Davis. This year brought many fantastic things and ideas my way, and making them a part of my day to day has been an interesting journey that I am excited to continue.
Here's the breakdown:

Best:

Movie: Inception, I love movies that make you think. It didn't fall, right?

TV Show: Another year another season of TrueBlood. Its the only show I watch and I still love it. Season 3 fantastically better than two which in hindsight was less good than the first.

Concert: Third Eye Blind, This was a fantastic show from a band nobody knew was still around, these guys rock.

Album: I only bought one Album in 2010. No winners this year.

Song: Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside

Game: Angry Birds. Wow, I still can't stop playing.

Book: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, easy choice, this book was great.

Gadget: HTC EVO, this has changed my life.

Bar Night: Wisconsin Dells, $2 Jameson, dancing, and other things I can't remember.

Getaway: Spain.

Garden Growth: Sweet Potatoes!

Alcohol Fermenting Tour: The bus tour in Catalonia wine country.

Events of Note:

Random: Running as a hobby was (re?)started.

Obsession: Farmville. I'm still embarrassed with how much time I spent with it.

Newsworthy: Our corrupt Illinois governor getting ousted from office.

There are a lot of great reasons to look forward to in 2011. One of the bigge$t $adly can't be mentioned on the very public interweb$. I am also resolving to write more blog entries than I did in 2010, keeping my faithful readers better up to date on my life. Laura and I already have some exciting things planned for the upcoming year and I look forward to seeing what more it can throw at me.

2011, here I come.

Hows my little Pumpkin Brewer?

2010-12-19T09:30:00.000-06:00

Another autumn another pumpkin beer. Last year, it was such a success we decided we ought to repeat our attempt, with a few modifications. Also I was so excited about it that I decided to make a double batch of the good stuff.

We ran into several great opportunities to learn from because of our modifications. Last year we decided we wanted an even stronger pumpkin flavor and to go a little easier on the spices. It was a good balance before, but we decided there was room for improvement. This year to create a stronger pumpkin flavor we opted for a pumpkin puree which worked great! Sort of. I imagined baking/grilling the pumpkins then a quick hop into the food processor and we would be set. Not so. Our food processor quickly turned it to mush but nothing circulated so it was still quite chunky and sticky, so we ended up mushing the pumpkins by hand.

Next up we steeped the puree and had a much better result than last year.

Ryan gratefully lent his wort chiller for the project and boy that works so much better than my lame method. Although it was a bit creative in construction the fact that it worked was great was all that mattered.

Sadly with this batch I learned the hard way that one needs to be quick with their wort after it has been chilled in two ways. Number one get the yest into the primary quick. Letting it hang out in open air after its been chilled is bad news. Number two, try and control the temperature in the house a bit better to get the beer ferment quicker. Since we made this in the fall we didn't really have the heat on and the house was never that warm. Also a yest starter may have helped. These things led to a very sad morning about 4 days after the initial boil.

Those spots aren't bubbles, its mold.

Thankfully the other batch began to bubble the day the first batch molded and we were able bottle without incident. It's not quite as good as last year and at this point I'm not sure how I will be to improve it, but I have a few ideas. Also for some reason this beer in incredibly foamy, pouring it without a 5 inch head is next time impossible to accomplish. It makes me think it may not have fermented long enough so I'll have to look that one up sometime.

In the meantime, here is a shot of 2010's Pumpkin Beer:

Hows my little reader in 2010?

2010-12-18T21:45:00.000-06:00

I've decided I am going to update one post all year round with books that I have conquered rather than nestling small reviews in random posts throughout the year, this will be nice for me to look back to and for you to say, gosh what was that one book he read that sounded cool. I promise to keep the reviews brief and succinct so that by the end of the year it doesn't become unbearable.

Even though I started it it '09 I'm going to Mention:
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

The Road by Cormick McCarthy
This book was a stellar quick read about a father and son traveling across a post-apocalyptic America. Extremely touching, especially if you have a loved one you can relate it to. It made me want to brush up on my survival skills and invest in canned food as well.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
After reading War and Peace I was thought I needed something lighthearted and fun to read, so I picked up Catch-22 seeing the back cover reviews claiming hilarity and so on. Turns out it was another book about war, but this was a bizarre book full of weird characters and silly dialogue during a war. Remarkably it was still able to make some good anti-war statements while remaining, quite silly. I would recommend this for someone looking for a weird but good book.

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" & "Through The Looking Glass"
I've read Alice in Wonderland before but in honor of the recent movie (which totally kicks ass) I decided to re-read it and actually get through, Through the Looking Glass. The stories are fantastical, weird, silly and bizarre, pretty much right up my alley. If you can believe it, the Disney animated version stayed extremely true to the original story, where Tim Burton's should have been called Alice's Return to Wonderland.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
Robert Langdon's third adventure through the world of symbology. This one takes place in like 12 hours and is located in Washington DC. As usual with a Dan Brown book ending a chapter leaves you yearning to read the next. If you were a fan of the first two in the series I would recommend this one as well. There was a big shocker at the ending, but the next 20 or so pages were a bit preachy, almost like he had a message to pass along to the rest of the world. After such a fast paced book the finale was a bit too calm. But still, an excellent story.

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall
Where to start with this story... its heartfelt, genuine, and insanely funny. This is about a boy who gets his head run over by a mailman and little Edgar's highs and lows of his life following this accident. I'm having a hard time describing it beyond that. The story is fun and interesting to read. I would recommend it to anyone who has emotions.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Anyone who is a remote fan of reading, and the Wizard of Oz movie should give Wicked a try. It is a delightful spin from the movie told from an unlikely set of eyes, the Wicked Witch of the West Elphaba. The story zipped right along through her early life all the way up to her demise at the hands of Dorothy. The author definitely tries to sneak in a few moral lessons and opinions of the ways of the world, which got dry and long at times, but when he was actually telling the story it was fantastic. If you've seen the play you'll notice very quickly that it was only inspired by this book.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
It seems lately I've been finding books that have been written in non-traditional styles. The book thief is written in a way where Zusak throws you off every few pages with a phrase you can feel in your teeth, every now and then I would stop reading and think wow, that is a perfect and unexpected way to describe that. The story is about a young girl in Nazi Germany who is taken in by foster parents. And, She steals books. It is narrated by Death, who is remarkably fitting for a story in those times. From the beginning to the end I was engaged and constantly thinking about the difficulties of the times. I really loved this story, from the thoughtful way it was written to the interesting child perspective of the war. The Book Thief is not a depressing book but it has its moments, Death as you might imagine is a downer but really he is just like anyone else and is worked too hard, but still has time to appreciate the finer parts of human life. I don't say this too often, this is one of my favorite books I've ever read. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed.

The Archbishop in Andalusia by Andrew Greeley
This book was handed to me by my Dad with the intention to learning a bit more about Spain. In that sense it was great, there were lots of cultural and historical notes all throughout this book that made it fascinating and wonderful to apply to my honeymoon there. The book itself taking that out of account was meh, it seemed like Greeley tries to make the reader feel like a moron by touting his firm grasp of the English language. It is a mystery but at no point did I wonder or care about how it was to be resolved.

Brain Droppings by George Carlin
Brain Droppings is hilarious. There are so many laugh out loud funny moments it can get a bit awkward to read because I felt like giggling or laughing so often. But this is not a good book to read from cover to cover. Its full of one liners brief thoughts and ramblings from George Carlin's brain. There are giant curse words and many opinions expressed that one could get embarrassed to have visible in public. Its so funny though and if someone were to be offended I'm sure ol George would be cursing them out in his grave. I would highly recommend this book as a bathroom reader or one for the nightstand, anywhere you don't have a lot of time to read but feel like doing something.

Under the Dome by Stephen King
It's been awhile since I've read a King book, when I saw this one on the shelf at Target and read the back it intrigued me quickly. The book has a giant cast, with all sorts of different characters trapped under the...you guessed it, dome. Since its a King book it takes place in a small town in Maine where one day a dome suddenly appears around a small town cutting them off from civilization almost entirely. A politician with a dirty side an Iraq vet and many more typical townsfolk try to wrestle back a normal life. People are killed, tormented, and lives are ruined because of their new predicament. The book was amazingly engaging, little mysteries popped up every few pages and were solved slowly as the book went on, and that was exciting because I didn't find myself wondering how it was going to end but what was going to come next. This was an excellent fast paced book that I would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a big good book.

The Broker by John Grisham
I've always thought of Grisham to be a boring author writing all sorts of books on Law and courtroom drama, none of which interest me, so when Laura picked this one out for our drive to Georgia I was admittedly not enthusiastic. This book proved me wrong though. Its an exciting adventure about a powerful lobbyist who gets involved with the wrong people and suddenly is an assassination target. He is shipped to Italy to hide undercover and has many different adventures. The book made me want to travel to Italy, or become a spy. It was definitely interesting and was surprised at a lack of Dull spots. I would recommend this book, its interesting, fast paced, and full of turns that you expect and don't.

Hows my little Runner?

2010-12-06T20:16:00.002-06:00

Tonight I ran outside for 2.79 miles in below freezing conditions. This is crazy for many reasons.

Reason number one. I have signed up to run a marathon.
I've paid my moneys and I can't get a refund, I'm hooked. The marathon I will be running in is Grandma's Marathon up der in Duluth Minnesota. Awhile back I was chatting with my pal Aaron over dollar beers and we somehow came to the conclusion that we should run this marathon. His moving to Duluth made it our destiny. I'm still not sure how I'm going to do this since I've never ran anything farther than 6 miles at one time ever.

Another reason this is a silly Idea? The marathon is in the middle of June, meaning most of my training is going to be done in the winter. This leads me to my first statement, tonight I ran outside and the temperature was 15 degrees.

This summer I did some jogging to keep myself trim for the honeymoon/wedding and got pretty decent at surviving the heat. Although I never liked it I could handle it. Coming back from a run and sitting down and creating my own puddle of sweat is not something I enjoy. So now that it's winter I'm far from prepared to running in this kind of weather.

My first dilemma was what to wear, In the summer I wear shorts socks and shoes. Tonight I wore tights on bottom and top, another shirt, gloves, and an old jacket.My biggest hangup with cold weather training is what to wear on my legs. I recently acquired some sexy running tights and my dilemma was, tights and shorts or just tights. So of course I did some research on the interwebs and found some mixed reviews on how to wear said running tights. The comments I read seemed to be mixed, folks would proudly boast I run in tights only! or I wear shorts as well because I don't want people looking at my goods. After reading several people's logic I decided tights only since my running shorts on top wouldn't be worth a damn for heat retention.

This was surprisingly awesome. First, I felt super sexy, next, in fifteen degree weather I managed to stay warm. Aside from my first 10 steps, my legs were comfy. This was until I ran into the wind. This sucked, aside from my cold face, I had another sensitive portion of my body do it's best at screaming and hiding. Sadly it failed and just hurt so bad I had to turn around head back into town where I could use houses and trees as wind-blocks. I love the cold, but apparently not all of me does.

And the best part about my run? Within the first five minutes of my run a car pulled up next to me and asked if I needed a ride. I wish I was more on the spot but I just yelled, No thanks! I'm just out for a run! I bet she pulled away thinking I am the craziest person in the county.

I learned a couple of important things about running in the cold tonight.

Number one:
Find out a way to keep all of my bits warm.
Number two:
Get a jacket that will be visible at night.
Number three:
Wear a headlamp, running in the dark is ok, running on ice in the dark is not.

In other related running news, Laura and I have signed up to run a Warrior Dash in Georgia. It will be a Jacobson vs. Davis Challenge. Neither team cares who wins but we are all excited to dress in absurd outfits and run/jump/crawl our way to the finish. I'm excited to drink a beer or two and watch other absurd looking southerners cross the finish. If you haven't heard of the Warrior Dash, check it out.

I'm also running in the Champaign Marathon, I'm doing the iChallenge which is a 5k on Friday and a half marathon on Saturday. I'm running the half marathon as an excuse to make sure I'm training properly for a full Marathon. Good times!

Hows my little bagger?

2010-11-14T22:41:00.000-06:00

Paper or Plastic?
Since moving south I think I can safely say I've only heard this phrase only a small handful of times. Which is amazing since I frequent places that give me this option. As someone who likes to think of himself as an environmentally conscious individual I I like to think I give the best answer. As usual though, this isn't such simple answer to come to.

A little research on the interwebs will tell you, quickly neither is the correct answer. One should choose a reusable canvas bag, screw both paper and plastic. Sadly as most of you know I forget things all the time, including my canvas bags. So what to choose? Let me guide you quickly:

If you have two items or less, proudly tell your clerk, I don't need a bag for those, Look! I've got two able hands and only two things here. Save a bag and please hand my things to me. This goes especially for Best Buy because if you buy just one DVD or CD they throw them into a little bag and won't think twice! You have to catch them early though, I've caught more than a few clerks throwing the (not quite used) bag into their trash can after I said I don't need a bag for this, thus defeating my bag saving effort. This is frustrating.

Sadly at most retail stores you can only have plastic and that is a crying shame because who doesn't like options.

For the pure environmentalist, you should go out and educate yourself on your bag choices from the grocery store. Broken down simply, Paper is the natural one to assume is better choice but it requires trees to be turned to pulp, washing, bleaching, heating, and printing. While a tree is a renewable resource and the bag can be infinitely recycled it is a very energy intensive process to create(or recreate) one. A plastic bag is actually slightly less energy intensive to create, but it comes from a non-renewable resource and takes ages to biodegrade, and can only be recycled once or twice. (don't forget, reusing it is a good thing, but quite different than recycling).

So this naturally leaves the canvas bag, it can be used probably for 200+ shopping visits, they aren't that expensive and you can feel really good about saving some landfill space. Not to mention, many stores are beginning to offer an albeit small discount for using said reusable bag. I believe Target gives you 3 cents off your entire purchase.

My observations while actually using the canvas bag are amazingly striking. Generally when I go to the grocery store or Wal-Mart, I notice clerks stuffing 1-3 items in most plastic bags. AMAZING! counting out cereal boxes, I think the average plastic bag could hold at LEAST 5-7 items. A Paper bag is generally more thoughtfully packed, and when loaded to the max with I would guess up to 12 items. A canvass bag though, present one of those to a clerk and they look at them like puzzles waiting to be solved. I would say every clerk honestly tries to efficiently pack a canvas bag significantly better than I have ever seen with paper and easily for plastic.

So remember kids: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. If you keep those three 'R's in mind the next time you are leaving your local supermarket you can easily help our environment.

Hows my little Titan?

2010-11-04T22:17:00.012-05:00

Last weekend Laura and I ventured south for a change to visit my sister and brother-in-law (AKA Sister's husband) in the great land of Tennessee. Like the last time I approached the Mason Dixon line I realized, gosh the area around here is so pretty! Aside from the massive culture shock I would love living in this part of the country in the just about every time of year, except spring, summer, and fall, because I'm sure those months are way better just about anywhere else north of there.

Amanda and Andy were gracious hosts, we ate their food dirtied their sheets and I didn't find myself anywhere but my bed in the middle of the nights, so that was good.

Saturday we Adventured out into Tennesse where we Checked out a cotton field (which was legitimately interesting, and fun). Then we headed farther South to visit the Jack Daniel distillery, where they brew all four of Jack Daniel's Whiskey. Boy was that fun. Now that we are becoming pros at visiting places that make alcohol we can appreciate a good tour when we get one and Jack pulled through. (We only have one more wise man left!)

Fun fact that you may or may not know, the distillery is located in a dry county (only in the south right? haha) where during the prohibition era a law was enacted that made it basically impossible to repeal the alcohol prohibition from the county. The best part of any tour is trying a brewer's wares, at Jack Daniel you get a nice glass of their fine Lemonade. Although in fairness you can purchase a souvenir bottle of Jack Daniel's, which happens to have the whiskey inside.

After Jack we headed to a wonderful place to eat called Cahoots. It's an old jail and we got to eat in one of the old graffiti (not the good kind) cells. We had some fried pickles which were AMAZING! I drank a Yuengling, not sure how to say it still but this beer apparently hails from America's oldest brewery. It seems to me that it is a tragedy that they are still producing the same kind of gross recipe to this day.

After that we nailed 5 Geocaches in Lynchburg (none at the distillery surprisingly) and headed back to the Harvey residence to get ready for our Halloween shenanigans.

Halloween was a grand time. We went to a party, rocked out as Mickey and Minnie Mouse and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I managed to drop my mouse ears in a toilet, which was a little gross, but it was ok, I didn't pee yet. We saw lots of really great costumes including a sheriff, cavewoman, the new mad hatter, some queen woman, scary dead people, the progressive girl, a troll doll, a scary old lady and a few superhero looking people I couldn't place.

My Mickey Mouse costume was sexy to say the least. I wore all spandexy things and some itty bitty red shorts over it all, with a tail and ears. The shorts and tail was my Dad's from I'm pretty sure before I was born, when shorts that short may have been fashionable. Laura ever heard one girl exclaim I was wearing a speedo. which was not true although that might have been even better. My outfit was obnoxiously out of my comfort zone, but I still had a grand time. My Minnie mouse was cute as a button.

Laura lost her dots EVERYWHERE. We found them all over during the next few days. It really was amazing that we found dots in the weirdest places.

Hows my little 30's Husband?

2010-11-03T21:01:00.001-05:00

Now that I'm a husband I can take worthless online quizzes that tell me the quality of my husband-ness.

Here is a good one:

As a 1930s husband, I am
Very Poor (Failure)

Take the test!

I scored pretty well, eh?

Hows my little married man?

2010-10-02T08:50:00.020-05:00

On August 28, 2010 my life was changed permanently. I am now a husband, A HUSBAND! That is so old sounding, to me only people who are over 40 are husbands. Worse yet, wife is so old fashioned sounding I think Laura aged 40 years in one beautiful day as well. Nevertheless here I sit, a married old man with some nice hats.

This blog post is incredibly late but how can I pass up writing about such a great day in my life? I can't.

Since many of my faithful readers were present at the big day I'll go easy on those details. The day was just amazing in so many ways, the first and foremost was how incredible it felt to be surrounded by all of my favorite people in my life. From my best friends growing up to distant family members and everyone I've met in between.

The ceremony was gorgeous, since the day we reserved Lief Erickson Park I said, its going to be sunny, warm, and windy. We got all of those things, and it was great. I would have roasted in my suit without that wind.

Our main man Aaron got himself ordained just for us and he exceeded everyone's expectations in every way. For that I've carved an even bigger niche in my heart for the little fella.

When Laura and I initially began our planning I asked her if we could write our own vows. Reluctantly she agreed. When the time finally came for me to finally get cracking I realized how awesome of an idea this really was. Mostly because I sat down for several lunch hours and thought about all of these different reasons I love Laura as much as I do. It got pretty sappy at times but it was great. Then I got to think of our future together and jam all of those thoughts and feelings into our agreed timeline of approximately one minute.

When the time finally came to recite them, I was hoping to have mine memorized but as I was standing around with Aaron I realized there was absolutely no chance I was going to be able to do this from memory. From the moment I stood on top of those stairs to wait for my bride I realized I was going to cry and there was nothing I could do about it. With a chomp on my bottom lip I was able to keep it from quivering while waiting for the big moment. When my turn to read came around, the waterworks began and continued through my whole blubbering vow. Who can blame me, I was extremely happy to be in that spot marrying the former Miss Davis.

While getting ready Rich told me, "stuff some Kleenex in your pocket, you're going to need it". That was some of the very good advice from the day, because boy did I need it.

Last minute Laura and I decided we ought to book a Limo to get around with our wedding party for pictures and whatnot. The thing we ended up in was pretty shabby. I was talking on the phone to this guy and he was talking up all of these lights, TV and premium sound system. What we got was a decked out short bus. I'm happy it was cheap.

After a long (interesting) time of taking pictures with the folks all around town we made our way to the Greysolon Ballroom for our reception. I can now appreciate how a bride and groom can get annoyed with the clicking glasses but at the same time, it was fun kissing Laura a bunch.

After our grand entrance which according to the ushers went about as smooth as your average Duluth Road. Laura and I cut the cake which I had no idea what we were doing there. After that we sat down for some grub. For whatever reason I had no appetite, which sucked because the meal was delicious, and the cake was phenomenal on top of that.

Toasts went remarkably smoothly I was expecting some embarrassment but got none really so that was a welcome surprise. Justin surpassed Laura's expectations, and I have a feeling a few other people's as well. Not mine though, hes good shit.

Before the wedding I made a little medley for Laura and I to dance to, since we couldn't decide on just one song. I kicked it off with Tenacious D's most famous song as a brief intro into a song that Laura and I peacefully woke up to one summer morning in Duluth. Its called, Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Wonderful World) by IZ, That somehow mushed into Hard to Concentrate by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, A song that after I realized how hard I'd fallen for Laura it constantly reminded me of her. Knowing my luck its about killing your wife or something. We ended on a more uptempo song where we had this little choreographed bit with a dip and kiss, The song was You and Me by Dave Matthews. We should have practiced a bit more because I think we were off on our dip, but oh well, it was still fun to try.

I would like to point out to everyone that I removed Laura's garter with nothing but my teeth. This is something I'm proud of.

Garters are impossible to fling like a rubber band, fellas who toss garters in the future, wind up and chuck it. I don't think someone has cleared the group of fellas in the history of mankind. BJ I saw your hand touch it so you're up next buddy.

Also, I think if Justin had a nice pair of boobs I could have topped Laura in the Dollar Dance, but he didn't so she kicked my tail.

Then the dancing begun, I especially had a great time watching my niece and nephews roll around on the ground and trying out all sorts of new dance moves together. Colin and Emily were the rock stars of the little people crew and danced like pros late into the night with anyone who would move with them. It was tons of fun watching my friends and family interact with them on the dance floor.

After that everything began to blur, I danced, sang, jumped, and laughed with everyone I ran into. I really thought Laura and I would be glued together and walking all over and making nice 2 minute conversations with everyone but that wasn't the case at all. I think I saw her like 5 times, talked with all sorts of people but not everyone, which I regret, but there is only so much time!

I was sort of hoping Laura and I would scamper off early to our sweet suite but we stayed until the lights raised and then took off. We said our goodbyes and got some excellent advice along the way. By the end of the night we were both pretty damn pooped. Nothing could wipe the smiles off our faces, and nothing did.

Laura and I realized we have an extremely generous circle of people we associate with and really appreciate everything our wonderful friends and family have done for us, and gave us in honor of our marriage. As corny as it sounds, just having all of those people there meant so much to me. Just to give myself and everyone else an idea of how much love we were given, we had travelers from: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, Arizona, and Washington. No wonder I cried so much.

Again I want to thank my best friends, great family, and especially my parents and Laura's for giving us the opportunity to make our wedding day the beautiful, perfect Duluth day it was.

Hows my little honeymooner?

2010-09-15T17:21:00.005-05:00

Due to popular demand, I'll be honeymooning before getting married.

Spain. España. Eat. Comer. Wine. Vino.
Love.

Our honeymoon in Spain was perfect, to put it simply. I was not prepared in the least for what I saw. I'm not sure if my taste of Ireland was spent in a haze or if I just wasn't prepared to experience what Spain had to offer but when we emerged from the underground Metro onto the flourishing Gran Via in downtown Madrid I was in awe.

Buildings with untold history and architecture existing before the the birth of America rising all around us, Neon signs, Schweppes, small fast cars, people coming, going, talking, whole building wraps, soft glowing street lamps, and McDonalds, welcomed us at the top of those stairs. The 'wow' I breathed out fit snugly with the rest of our honeymoon, perfect, and constantly amazing.

When Planning our trip I had in mind an ideal wind-down adventure throughout Spain. We began as tourists and ended as honeymooners relaxed, tanned and completely full of anything the Sea, Pigs, and Spanish grapevines could offer us. In the end, that is exactly how it played out. We began in Madrid, 1 full day; then Barcelona, 4 full days; Seville (seh - vee - ya), 1 full day, Tarifa, 3 full days.

First there was Madrid:
After finding our hotel Laura and I both were completely overwhelmed, after a long uncomfortable flight from Copenhagen, a less than courteous front desk, and a complete realization that we did not study enough Spanish, we needed some dinner. If it wasn't for that walk along all of the narrow roads and through the Plaza Del Sol to find our hidden restaurant on a terrace below the street I might have lost it. Our first dinner as Honeymooners consisted of some of the most delightful olives I have ever eaten, acorn fed pork chorizo, Baby lamb leg for two, and a whiskey ice cake. A bottle of Spanish wine (only 14 euros!?!) completed our wonderful calming introduction to the city and country.

I'll try to go easy on the details but some stories aren't worth leaving out. Hopefully the pictures will be enough.

Madrid is fantastic, I love the narrow roads, all of the places to eat, the high buildings that constantly surround you and the energy of a city that is always moving. Boy do they move, I'm convinced you have to have almost no fear of death to drive in the city, the scooters, and cars completely disregarded the lines on the road, when there were any, and they had to be traveling twice the posted limit.

I started the day off with a bang and broke the LCD on my camera right away in the morning. It was replaced later that day, nearly drove me nuts/to tears. Thankfully I know a thing or two about cameras, because the clerk helping me didn't know any English so I was still able to replace it with something comparable.

The Prado was amazing and I wish we spent more time there, but at the same time, I would have needed a whole day to see all (or most) of the amazing artworks, really I only wanted to see Goya's works but Valazquez definitely surprised me and I found myself enjoying his paintings quite a bit.

The Royal Palace was magnificent as only a palace could be. With its 2,800 rooms and ornate sculpture decorations and the throne room!! Wow.

We putzed around several more places before we knocked the McDonalds meal off of our to do list right away. I enjoyed the beer I had with my McPollo (McChicken) quite a bit.

Barcelona is a completely different city than Madrid, (duh) The roads are wider the sidewalks accommodate more people, randomly all over the city you catch truly awful scents of old musty urine and there are so many more exciting things to do in the city.

Walking around on our first day we found our way to the top of Montjuïc looking over the city and our first glimpse of Sagrada Família. Down to the harbor area we saw a nude couple of men and boy one of them was immense. I still can't get over how long he was. I'm convinced he could accidentally swing it into someone trying to pass him. A beautiful dinner looking into the harbor and out to the Mediterranean was how we finished the night.

Our visit to Sagrada Família could be a post on its own, so I'll keep it brief and let the pictures do the work. This was began in 1882 by Antoni Gaudi and it is slated to be finished in about 30 years. It is still being built to the original designs.

Gaudi's Park Guell is also spectacular, if it weren't crawling with tourists and was within walking distance to me I would hang out there all the time.

Our third day in Barcelona we stopped by the beach for some sights and a swim in the sea. I had a great time floating around in the water and looking at all of the boobies. Laura and I even found the not so hidden away nude portion of the beach where we saw one guy who aside from us was overdressed by wearing just his iPod/headphones.

Hiking around Las Ramblas and the Gothic quarter was outstanding. I had fun imagining shit all over, horses, no cobblestones while trying to find my way to the blacksmith to have my sword repaired.

One of Laura's favorite parts of the trip was to La Boqueria. Apparently one of the oldest, or largest or something like that, food markets in Europe. And holy cow was it a place to behold. We had a great time looking at all of the different sorts of animals that were splayed out in various forms of death and butchered-ness. I loved all of the different fish and sea things. and the fruit stands were extremely welcoming because of all of the warm colors and delectable different fruits. I bought a bottle of juice and I used to think Naked Juice was thick and tasty but its nothing compared to the fresh pressed juice I drank while strolling around. We were pretty impressed with the number of places you can find olives, and the different things stuffed into them. If the market was open earlier on our stay in Barcelona I think we would have had a grand olive feast, instead we had a few garlic stuffed olive snacks. And the peppers! we saw the largest red peppers I've seen in my life, I could hold one with two hands easy.

Try to ignore that woman looking right into the camera, I think she is casting a spell.

One of the less exciting parts of our trip happened this evening. At our hotel we found a pamphlet for a free Ghost Tour in the Gothic quarter of Barcelona. We were thinking YES! this sounds sweet, old city, old ghosts, creepy area, what could be better? So we decided we would attend if there were other people there as well. Sure enough there were a couple of other guys and we were early so we hopped into the group. Unfortunately for us one of the guys was the guide's friend and he took off in the first minute of the tour, and we were left with a strapping young man who looked like he could have been a linebacker in college, quite athletic and muscular. So here we are walking around dark narrow roads in a foreign country on a ghost tour walking through nearly vacated streets, with two dudes and my new wife. This is pretty much what horror movies are made of.

Well the tour was kind of Lame and we were more scared of the possibility of becoming kidnapped than with any sort of haunting. Our guide didn't seem confident, nor did he seem to believe his own stories, but it was still neat to walk around that part of town. We escaped with our lives and tipped our guide 5 Euros and took off like a couple of bolts of lightening.

We needed wine afterwards, and some dinner.

The next day we headed into the Penedes Wine country and toured a couple of wineries and a Cava (sparkling wine) producer. While on our tour we got a wine and cheese pairing lesson, sampled some grapes from the vine, and snacked on some jamon and bread. I had a great time seeing how wine production is just a humongous version of what we do at home, plus harvesting.

Day seven took us to Seville, a city I fell in love with and will go back to again. To start our adventure we got conned into having our palms read by some crazy chain smoking Spanish ladies with some sort of weed sprig they were handing out. So after I had my palm read in Spanish she very rudely asked for money, When I saw Laura pulling out her wallet I grabbed her and we headed for the hills and threw away their leafy thing. It was a very odd moment since thy obviously didn't know English yet knew monetary words extremely well. Apparently they didn't get the lesson of polite word usage.

Later we toured the third largest church in the world, and it is also the largest Gothic church in the world. Holy cow it is grand. It is fantastically ornate and to know that its been essentially the same since the 1600s is just amazing. Also or main man Christopher Columbus lies in rest here which was actually really cool because his coffin thing is held by four statues of kings. There was also a crown on display that was just unbelievably lavish imbued with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other stones I don't know, all set in gold.

That night we had our most romantic evening including a walk along a river at sunset, a gourmet meal for two followed by a relaxing bath for two in the giant tub in our room. Perfect.

Day eight was probably my least favorite day, by a long shot. Today we rented a car and drove from Seville to Tarifa. If it weren't for the internet and it's vast database of things needed for navigation and crafty ways to obtain them we couldn't have made it to Tarifa. (thanks Garmin!) First I swear the Spaniards don't believe in Street Signs (if there is one there is no standard layout/height/size ect.). Second and worse, I had the opportunity to drive a Manual transmission with almost no experience.

To start the day off right Laura and I slept in and took our time getting to the rental place, only to be greeted with a 'we don't have your car. You're late.' Who knew you actually needed to show up when you said you would? Not me. After we managed to secure a car and I was pretty much shaking with nerves to the parking lot I somehow managed to pull out of our spot with absolutely no troubles, no stall, no rough start just pure smooth driving. Great!! That was until we go to the ticket arm to get out, I put in my ticket and the arm went up and I stalled the car, about 15 to 20 times in a row. I'm not exaggerating either, cars were honking, some dude even pounded on our window and fiddled with our emergency brake. Of course they were mad I was blocking the only exit. Laura was crying, our GPS was recalculating even though we hadn't gotten anywhere, and I was failing miserably.

Miraculously we escaped the lot and made it through the first light. But the next 15 or so lights we hit I stalled the car miserably each time, and many of those lights we went through several sequences of red to green. Another dude even pounded on our window at this point and in great English (after yabbering in Spanish) told us to put on our hazard lights, that seemed to help. Thankfully Laura pulled herself together and navigated us out of town like a pro. Once I managed to get the car moving, everyone was right, every gear past first is a breeze, I kicked ass on the highway. I even managed to make it through the toll with no troubles.

When we parked the car at our hotel in Tarifa I was badly stressed out and saw it as a good omen that we checked into our 8 room hotel at its bar. It was also relieving to have the biggest room in the joint and our short walk to the Atlantic Ocean calmed me the rest of the way. Needless to say I wasn't excited to drive back to Seville in a few days.

Our trip in Tarifa was an amazing experience that I want to repeat again. Our hotel was out of town so we ate at the attached restaurant that had a great variety of food and wonderful back terrace/garden that we hung out in nightly. We spent two days relaxing in the sun, and I took a day of Kite Surfing lessons which I would LOVE to take up as a hobby now. One day I built my first sand cathedral, AKA a cross with a spire and a wall around it. This was also the first time we figured out how to use the internet on our phones.

On our final day we were ready do leave, I was cached out on communicating in my poor Spanish to everyone, and we had to begin our travels westward. We found our first and only geocache of the trip near our hotel overlooking the Atlantic and Africa. Later we drove uneventfully (I figured out the car by then) to Seville and Took a train to Madrid.

The flight home was uneventful, I watched three movies and played some blackjack. It was fairly comfortable and we even got a couple of 'free' drinks! Scotch and Coke was my vice, Wine for Laura.

So altogether how was Spain?
Fantastic. We had a great time eating, looking, walking and smiling. Going into the trip I wasn't sure what to expect, now that I'm done I realize Spain is a phenominal country with tons of history wealth and art. We've learned a lot of cool things that we would do differently next time around and also a lot of great things we would repeat. For example future travelers, Pay the extra hundred or two and fly direct to Barcelona, Madrid is cool but Barcelona has way more and a beach. We would spend more time in Seville since it is such a fantastic clean city with new places to explore around every corner and tucked into every alley. The only thing we would change from Tarifa is to grab a hotel on the beach (instead of a mile walk from one), by then we will be Kiting pros and we will hang 10, (if that is even in style or proper slang). I would also like to hit up the Rioja region, Granada and the Costa Del Sol and perhaps Gibraltar. If we found ourselves there in the next 10 years, I would for sure give Ibiza a 3 day try. The country has so much history, culture and excitement to offer, it would be a shame to not return. We were after all on our honeymoon, walking in and out of museums wasn't high on the to-do list but add 30 years to our current age and we will be in our prime history appreciating age. Laura and I said we are going to go back when Sagrada Família is done and I don't think its an empty promise.

Thanks Mom and Dad for the tickets over, without your extremely generous gift these memories wouldn't have been possible, we had such a great time and I know we will never forget it.

Hows my little smartie?

2010-08-22T21:52:00.002-05:00

As a self proclaimed gadget nerd I have some difficulty leaving the house anytime I am about to do something fun. If I am leaving the house for more than one day this just compounds the issue.

I am blessed to have the issue of wondering, well am I going to geocache? I'll need my GPS and unless I do some thoughtful planning ahead I'll need to bring my laptop. Will I need some internet access? (when wouldn't I?) I should bring my laptop. My camera comes regardless. Will we be driving in a place I've never been? Better bring the other GPS. Will I be bored for more than a couple of hours? That iPod will help.

Since we are headed to Spain soon for a couple of weeks I've been doing some thinking ahead of time, what will I need in Spain? Obviously we are going to find some Spanish Geocaches, of course I'm going to need the internet, we will be renting a car, so I'll really enjoy having that other GPS, I will be confined to a plane for 8 hours, I'll be in need of that iPod. And I'll need an archaic manual page book. To get all of them charged and functional I'll need my old/hefty/power hungry/loud/hot laptop.

So with all of these things I want to pack I thought, well how much of a vacation is this anymore, I really want to unplug unwind and just relax 100% of the time, maybe hop online to get some tickets for a tourist thing but that would be it. Here comes the savior of the week. My HTC EVO.

I've resisted, gave in and typed, then deleted an entire blog giving love to my newest gadget. My phone. All of you are familiar with the iPhone, who isn't anymore? Well to give you the short description of it, the EVO can do everything the iPhone can (pretty much) and sometimes more (rare). Suddenly I realized many of my problems were solved in one little piece of hardware. The phone has a GPS complete with a stellar Geocaching app. Built in Wi-Fi. A camera. And a hard drive I can pump full of new tunes. Oh! and a Spanish/English translator for those situations my shitty Spanish won't get me anywhere.

So my gadget pack list has been/could be reduced to one item. But as the nerd I am, some things are just better at doing their 1 job than this guy is at all of them. So what will I pack? A dedicated road GPS (with maps of Spain) for that Taxi driver we just can't get through to. My iPod, because 80 Gigabytes of music is always better than 8. My camera. And my Evo.

Heart.

Hows my little Shopper?

2010-08-20T17:23:00.002-05:00

Last weekend Laura and I did some overdue shopping for me. As many of you know this is one of my least favorite things to do, and my wardrobe shows it. I have very few shirts under 2 years old and many over 6 years old. So I've decided I need to remedy that a bit, freshen things up if you will.

I have bought some clothes in the past few years so I'm not totally in the dark, but this weekend I had a certain goal of making sure all of the things I got fit me properly, brainless you might think but I've always just bought shirts that were XL because they covered my body and that was that. In recent years I've been buying the occasional Large size just to mix it up. Many of the shirts I got at that size they were borderline too small.

But not this weekend. Further proof of expanding America, I bought a couple of shirts at a Size MEDIUM!! that still had room to spare. I am a giant, I am not a medium sized person. What size do short skinny guys buy now? I'm not sure they make XS sizes for men, do they? I made out like a bandit though and got a some good deals and some nice threads.

One thing that sort of bugged me was, I am/was in the shorts market since some of my old pairs are, well just that, old. I don't understand the explosion of the plaid pattern everywhere. Why would someone want more than one color of plaid I don't get it. To further my shorts shopping woes most of my only other options were cargo shorts with Giant poofy pockets. So if a guy already has a pair of plaid shorts and a pair with giant poofy pocket what else can someone do for some variety? May as well buy myself a fighting cocks white hat and call myself a fratboy douche bag. Lame.

In retrospective it just might be my shopping location. In fact that probably has a huge influence on the over sized clothing and the lack of selection. I think that the only place for a guy to buy stylish clothes is Express, after that...Macy's? Its a good thing Indianapolis and Chicago are just short jaunts away.

Hows my little Purple Finger?

2010-08-09T20:09:00.009-05:00

This weekend Laura and I jumped on the opportunity to do what most Americans would skip out on in a flash. That was to wake up early on a Saturday morning and harvest crops. For fun.

As many of you know we live about 3 miles away from a vineyard which has been a blessing here in Cornville. The place is called Sleepy Creek and we have had some grand times here, and you can bet if you visit we will take you down to check it out. After some free tastings and a bit of local art you've got a nice little place to chill out at. We've seen several concerts here including Trampled by Turtles and a striped version of Blessed Union of Souls (remember them!?)

You can imagine that Laura and I get out here pretty often, we have even befriended the owners, Joe and Dawn, who are both incredibly nice and seem to never get tired of answering questions about their wine. Since we began frequenting Sleepy Creek we had heard about the Purple Finger club, which if you volunteer your time they hook you up with a discount on their wine, amongst other things. Since we are fans of their wines we decided we need to get volunteering so that we can try and get some discounted wine. After over a year of missed opportunities we managed to line up a chance to help them out.

Next time you see Laura, tell her she has nice muscles, shes flexing.

Picking grapes is not exciting business, you can learn some gossip through the grapevine but that is about it. Other than that the goal is to not trim part of your finger off. Being the giant I am, I was a bit uncomfortable (and sore) since I had to bend over every two minutes to make sure I got everything. The breaks with food and drinks made up for this though.

I enjoyed playing fetch with Daisy into the pond on our break.

After making my own wine for the past several years it was really cool to see how the concentrate juice I buy gets made, and on Saturday we learned just that. After we picked around a ton of grapes (literally 2,000 Pounds!) We watched them get crushed and de-stemmed, which I would imagine would take hours was done in only about 20 minutes, way cool.

All the grapes the crew picked.

This was supposed to be a action shot of the crush/de-stemming process, looks more like a picture of Bill though. Notice on the bottom left (or try to) the stems in that black box, looking all pristine and grape free. Amazing!

I got to stir the crushed grapes, with excellent form.

This is the press, before pressing, that greenish exorcist looking spew is actually unpressed juice, the flavor was phenomenal and it was deliciously sweet.

The one drawback I could find with the whole day was a complete lack of naked virgins stomping the grapes into mush. In fact there was no stomping at all. Someday I'm going to find and stomp grapes for wine making, mark my words.

After that we came home and we both napped. What a day!

Hows my little Calorie Counter?

2010-07-05T15:37:00.002-05:00

Two weeks ago I began counting nearly every calorie I've consumed to provide some insight on the foods I eat. As I've told people I almost always get the, WTF you're a skinny bastard you're making me feel lazy look. Then I generally follow up the comment with a, this is just for fun, to see how many calories are in the food I eat, a learning event.

I recently upgraded my phone to one that accommodates apps, and I've been keeping my food diary on it. Having one of those on my phone makes it really easy to keep track of what I am eating because I always carry my phone around with me and it makes it pretty easy to quickly add the food I eat. The app has a database of thousands of food items with complete nutrition facts. It even has a bar code scanner which makes it really easy for finding packaged foods. During my two weeks of logging I wasn't able to find anything that wasn't at least close to what I was eating. The app even has a weight tracker and exercise log for accurate calorie counting.

What did I learn? First off as weird as you might find it, I found that the days that I ate more than my 3000 calorie 'limit' I found that the next day I weighed more. Duh. For some reason I never really thought about it like that, I think I just assumed when you eat unhealthy foods you gain weight. This taught me, I can eat a lot even relatively healthy food and still gain weight.

I also learned the unhealthy foods I ate really weren't packed with tons of calories. For example, yesterday Laura and I had ice cream cones for breakfast, 150 calories. Now compared to these other breakfasts it doesn't look so bad: 2 Eggs in a basket with a glass of OJ, 512 Calories, a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios, 376, Calories, Oatmeal with brown sugar 330 Calories. Now I know you can't base your diet solely on calories for this reason, there are plenty of other qualities of food that are important. I would also say I stayed full longer from the ice cream than the cheerios.

Another thing I learned was when you go to a party and graze on delicious dips, chips, several beers, nearly a whole rack of ribs, a Daiquiri, and delicious red velvet cake with cool whip and fresh fruit on top for dessert, you can consume enough calories for nearly three days of eating. Which is what I did yesterday, my normal calories I 'should' consume in a day is around 3,000 yesterday I at 8,400. I now know how people can get fat so quickly. Hell two Miller Lites had more calories than my ice cream cone breakfast.

I think another thing I learned was if I ate enough fruit to get full off of I add so few calories to the count its almost felt like cheating. That was pretty cool.

Altogether if someone really wanted to get serious about losing weight a food diary is really a fantastic way to learn portion control and how eliminating your stereotypical unhealthy things from your life isn't the way to go but to limit the amount of everything.

I'm nearly back down to my college waist size and you can bet this has really helped me learn how much or little food I can consume to help me get back to where I was before.

Hows my little girly mag?

2010-06-21T19:53:00.002-05:00

I will admit it. I really enjoy reading magazines for women. Honestly what guy doesn't get a kick from those ridiculous Cosmo quizzes? When I was much younger I used to read my mom's Redbook subscription even though I didn't quite understand what handling his manhood meant. They are perfect magazines for poops too because the articles are so short!

When I signed up to run the 5K I was asked if I wanted a few free magazine subscriptions so of course I said yes because I like to read. I signed up for Outside, Self, and Shape.

Self and Shape rock. They are full of nutritional information, real fitness success stories and lots of hot babes. Every now and then I get a sidways glare from someone who realizes what I'm reading and I just shrug. Call me a pervert or a man with a healthy appreciation for beautiful women, who happens to be interested in nutrition and exercise, whatever.

I've flipped through Men's Health and a few other similar magazines at the Y and other places before and compared to these, they Blow. They are full of pictures of men with giant and disgusting muscles and bodies that I have absolutely no desire to work towards. Not to mention every other advertisement is for some sort of protein shake or something similar. My Dad bought me a giant can of that in High School and I was against it then as I am now. Call me a purist but all I really want is to be fit, any muscle I put on is simply a byproduct of that goal.

Dark colors and bold fonts aside, the content is largely the same, Full of nutritional information, graphs and fast facts. The girly ones pile on the pastels and pinks and if I look past the pon ads and the Makeup articles I've got some seriously enjoyable and informational reading, and not to mention all of the attractive ladies in tight fitting exercise garb I don't see why more men don't read these magazines.

Hows my little terd?

2010-06-18T09:47:00.000-05:00

1 Green poop is really funny, sometimes hilarious, three days of Green poops gets a bit concerning.

Hows my little redesign?

2010-05-27T22:45:00.003-05:00

My big-mac was giving me some funky business, so I got a new design started. Give me a few weeks to get it looking all nice and me. I am enjoying this orange and blackness so get used to that. In the mean time enjoy this photo of Jim Beam. And following story

This weekend I went camping with Laura and 4 friends. After a couple of bags of wine and several pulls of Jim we slept. The next morning for whatever reason I awoke at 5ish unable to get back to sleep. So I got up and wandered around the site and decided I needed to drop the Cosby kids off at the pool. I was walking to the ca-mode not feeling at the top of my game and realized between the six of us we ate nearly 10 pounds of meat the night before, this was going to be epic.

I sat down on the old can which was just inside the main door, but with no door in front of the stall I could have been in a great position to shake anyone's hand to welcome them to the shitter. Since I had no interest in doing such a thing I pushed with all my might and will.

Before sitting down I noticed that this happened to be a deep toilet, 10 feet or so. Maybe its newer?

With a great relief to my colon I relieved myself what was probably 2 pounds of protein and a soft bloop! I heaved a sigh of...disgust. I got a splash back.

Uhhhhgghh...

What do you do!!!??!?!

Imagine this, you're hung over, the nearest body of water is a flooded river capped out and your at leat 2.5 miles from the nearest bit of privacy, it is also between 5 and 6 am.

I sat on the box completely disgusted with myself and nearly wept. Not only did I have an epic poo of the year. But anyone else's epic disintegrated poo of the year was now in liquid droplets on my rear. What do you do!? I whimpered, wiped my cheeks and in between while briefly considering washing my rump in the public water fountain. With my pride swallowed I drizzled hand sanitizer on my fingers and made pancakes a broken and privately humiliated man.

Hows my little gamer?

2010-05-08T09:23:00.014-05:00

Hello my name is Tony I am addicted the dumbest simplest video games ever.

That felt good.

My computer game addiction started at a young healthy age when we played number munchers in elementary school. I loved and hated that game because I was so bad at math it was too much of a challenge but that frog thing that ate the numbers was worth it. Oregon trail was really my vice in those days. I used to buy as many bullets I could and skimp on the wagon wheels and food and I would just hunt buffalo the whole time, it wasn't until I saw someone dodging rocks in the river that I found out there was actually a point to the game other than to hunt.

At home when we updated to our new windows 95 computer I was crazy addicted to this game called Ski Free. My sister and I would sit at the computer and make this guy go off jumps and dodge trees and then eventually the abominable snowman would attack and eat the skier, and then we would repeat.

After a while we outgrew that game and got turned onto Cosmo, Commander Keen, and Lemmings. While my friends were busy figuring out where the 1-ups were in Mario 3 I played on my computer, forever banned from a childhood Nintendo.

So for whatever bad influence my parents thought a little plumber jumping around would cause, my big brother Dan turned me onto Doom II and Wolfenstien. With the internet at school we were able to find cheats and shoot/explode/maul aliens and Nazis until big red pixels poured over the ground.

It wasn't until we got Sim City 2000 that I found out I had a problem, I would turn off the disasters and turn the speed up and eat dinner, after I would have tons of money and would build Arco's all around town and highways and terraform the land destroy churches and power-plants just to see what would happen, then I would turn the disasters back on and riots would burn the city down or aliens would attack and I was forced to repair and start over, awesome. I'm sure I can easily attribute at least a week of my waking life playing this game.

In middle school I was finally allowed a PlayStation, as long my grades stayed up. Sure enough they did. Which aside from the Tony Hawk series bore no addictions.

High school brought my graphing calculator games, which were AWESOME! I rarely actually graphed things on it but god did I play games on it. It was probably a result from never playing Tetris on a Game Boy as a kid.

One day at basketball practice someone said, have you ever played Snood? Its awesome! Many of you know how much of my life snood took up, but I'm sure few of you know just how much snood I used to play. I think easily I could say I have played Snood for at least two or three weeks my waking life. I took a nice break from it after high school but eventually got myself a laptop and equipped it with snood in college and it got me through countless hours of boring lectures while taking notes. Since I could listen to the instructor and play at the same time.

But in between there I stumbled across the addicting game of all games, I'm still too scared to play the newest version of it, for fear of getting sucked back into it. I spent so much of my time playing my first senior year of college I earned a certificate. The game: Line Rider. Probably the most fun any one person could have by just drawing lines on a computer screen. The object of the game was easy, your character is a little sledder and you draw lines and he sleds on them, if he goes too fast and hits a bump he falls off. You could make loops, jumps, half pipes, and even little decorations if you were really good. Sometimes it was just as fun to see what you could make the little sledder do after he fell off. There are some pretty awesome youtube videos with some people's amazing feats with line rider. My certificate of suck was awarded by Miz Fuller, because I was playing that instead of working my homework for the millionth time.

My latest addiction, and the inspiration of this post:

FarmVille.

What a god damned waste of time. Seriously, there is nothing to this game yet I sat down nightly for 7 months harvesting my digital crops and celebrating mediocrity. I still can't pinpoint what really kept me hooked. In the end after I built my Villa and got a groovy barn and a house on a hill I decided there was nothing left and gave it up. It might have been that it was something fun to do on Saturday and Sunday mornings while I waited for Laura to get up but, that still doesn't explain my during the week play time. What upset me the most while playing it was there is no challenge to the game, none! The hardest part of the game was to make sure you harvested your crops on time, which is nuts because after you plant them the game says you need to harvest these between a few hours and several days from now! Thats it! After that the hardest part is avoiding Zynga's attempts at getting you to spend real money on the game. I'm happy to say I'm done and I'm not looking back.

Its hard to say what the future has for me. I know I'm looking forward to Diablo 3's release and beyond that its just going to be something I stumble across. I do have a decent amount of will power, I have thus far managed to avoid all contact with apparently one of the most addicting games of all time, World of Warcraft.

Wish me luck, I'm slowly conquering my addiction...for now.

Hows my little runner?

2010-05-01T22:15:00.002-05:00

What fun!
This weekend was my first timed race in like 6 years and naturally I am running something completely different than what my body may have been used to back in the day. A 5K (3.106856 mi) Vs 400M Hurdles (.24854848 mi). I started running in the middle of March to get all ready for it and have had some good success. My original goal was to finish around 25 min, but then during my training I realized that was probably not going to happen and figured I would probably finish in about 30 minutes. In all honesty the goal was to finish in general, with the ultimate goal of running the entire time. Both were accomplished, with a time of 27:22, not bad! I now realize why my Dad said he started off in the slow group, because you can definitely see some better scenery as you advance in the pack, I think I'll remember this for future races.

Yesterday while I was picking up my info for the race I had the opportunity to measure my vital stats by taking off my flip flops and sanitizing my hands, I think it is a fun thing to share so here you are:

Weight: 199.4
Height: 6'4.7"
BMI: 24
Fat Index: 16%
Fat Mass: 31.9 lbs. (!)
Body Type: Athletic
Overall body health: Good-Excellent

Hurray! Its been fun (doing some extra) running for this 5K because I have actually been able to notice my body thinning up quicker than from just swimming, which sort of confirms my learning that swimmers have a harder time losing weight, for an unknown reason. Ten boxes of girl scout cookies threw quite a wrench in that process as well.

Attending marathon events is also great because of the density of fit and attractive people in such a small amount of space/time. I hope to do another one.

Hows my little fill in?

2010-04-28T19:35:00.005-05:00

Briefly:

For some reason lately I've been forgetting my camera left and right. Its really really bothersome.

This weekend was Awesome! Kalahari at the Dells with a bunch of my best friends. There was lots of great catching up, laughing, water sliding and alcohol abuse by all. Uncle Ralph visited me Saturday night and told me I shouldn't take every free shot the people standing on the bar pour even if it is right into your mouth. It was fun buying different bachelorettes drinks, hopefully that karma balances out to Laura in a couple of weekends. I still kick ass at Laser Tag, but I came in 2nd to BJ, that sneaky devil.

Monday we headed out to see Third Eye Blind (remember them?!) at the Canopy Club in Champaign. Who knew they put on a rocking good live show? They all seem to be pretty excellent at their various instruments and hearing all of those sing along singles from High School was an awesome blast from the past. I'm pretty excited about my autographed vinyl (weirdest spelled word ever) that I made out with as well.

Life? Awesome. Thinking about the future has me excited, its the first time in a long while.

I feel inspired to become at one with myself. Maybe through Wii fit yoga? OK.

I'm running my first 5K is this weekend. Wish me luck its been like 4 or 5 years since I ran 3 miles. Training for this has reconfirmed, this guy is not meant to run long distances.

Hows my little Blank Slate?

2010-04-13T19:50:00.002-05:00

I had a really difficult time figuring out a title for this post, which is uncommon.

Thank you everyone for your insightful comments about my stupid food post. Sarah you're right I have leaps to go, but as Sam pointed out I think I'm making great strides from eating Doritos smothered in cheese for dinner weekly. None the less I plan on broadening my horizons a bit more from here, and as many of you now learned, I do live in the middle of nowhere. I started doing a bit of research on some CSA farms and crop share programs but alas there is nothing to be had here...yet. If I lived about 100 miles north I would have TONS of choices. I did find an organic pick your own place sort of nearby (35ish miles?) which will be helpful come canning season. In the meantime I will be extremely happy with the winery a few miles down the road and our garden in the back yard.

Anyway, this weekend Laura and I headed out to Indianapolis with my Mom and Dad for a grand time. Side note, Indianapolis has continually blown my expectations as far as coolness goes. It seems to have a lot of the hustle and bustle of Minneapolis, some of the cleanliness of St. Paul, and much more prominent history than either.

For whatever reason I didn't bring my camera with me so I apologize for a lack of pictures. We went to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway which is really a HUGE place. If we lived in the wizarding world of Harry Potter, this is where the Quiddich World cup would take place. I've known about the speedway since I was a wee lad, My mom is big into racing, and I've grown up with many of the familiar Indy car racing names. So it was pretty neat to finally walk around where the famed Indy 500 takes place. Our purpose today was to race around the track in a car, so we got all checked in walked right onto the road they drive on and got to walk all over the brick finish line and zipped around the oval going over 100, which was really cool! I can't imagine what it would be like with thousands of spectators but I would imagine it would feel like you're going twice as fast as you really are.

Next we headed out suit shopping for me and I finally found one! I can get really picky with things I wear (hard to believe I know) and months ago I spotted something I liked and for whatever reason wouldn't accept anything else. Aside from that hard to find style, my gorilla arms and skinny body make it hard to find a suit that will even fit me nicely. It was kind of an odd experience getting all of my bits measured up for a proper fit, I found out my left shoulder is higher than my right and my right arm is longer than my left, weird, but fun.

After those shenanigans we made our way to one of the coolest ideas for a Bar I've heard of. It was called Tastings, you load up a card with the cash you want to spend and go around to these different wine vending machines (for lack of a better description) and put your card in and pick out a wine you want to try. Its an awesome concept because if one was really serious about trying all sorts of different wines you could get a whole bunch in one evening without committing the money for a whole glass or bottle. I think I could have sat in that room for the rest of the evening just walking around and trying all of the different wines, they had to have close to 150 different varieties. Since we had other plans we sadly had to leave.

We went out to dinner, I've been impressed by a meal in Indianapolis before at St. Elmo's Steakouse (try their shrimp cocktail sometime it will melt your face off! Honestly!) so I had high hopes with this one. We made our way into a Brazilian Steakhouse called Fogo De Chao. I'm sure its a chain but if you're not familiar with it this is what its like, you go in and pretty much immediately head over to the salad bar, your food will be out whenever you're ready to eat it, no ordering needed aside from drinks. At the "salad" bar, which for me was awesome because instead of usual salad fare there is all sorts of meats and non-lettuce veggies to choose from and even a few cheeses. I had to show restraint though because of what was to come.

After you finish your salad you flip over this little card from the red side to the green side and a few minutes later a gaucho with a giant Skewer and Knife comes to you and slices you a chunk of the meat he has, different gauchos come all the time until you flip your card back to red. From what I can remember I gorged myself on Top Sirloin, Bottom Sirloin, Pork Sausage, Rib-eye, Chicken Leg, Fillet Mignon, Pork Tenderloin, Pork Ribs, Beef ribs, and Lamb. But there were even more things I didn't/couldn't fit into my belly no matter how I tried, the most exciting sounding was the pork wrapped in bacon. We even had sides to munch on that they would constantly replenish of Mashed potatoes, fried bananas and some rectangular vegetable thing. The star of the show though was definitely the meat, each slice was delightful and left me yearning to try to eat more, the only thing that wasn't out of this world was the chicken, but that was because it was just good.

Sunday I made some excellent progress with our honeymoon in Spain and I'm getting more and more excited for it, especially as we start to learn more Spanish. It should be a grand time. In general its going to go something like this: Art, Pictures, Walking, Food, Wine, Touring, Kite Surfing, and whatever else honeymooners in Spain can find to do.

Today I pooped out all of my Fogo De Chao and actually lost 3 pounds.

Hows my little food ranter?

2010-04-07T21:43:00.005-05:00

Many of you may remember this post all about corn, and this post will echo it a bit. First let me restate, I really hate corn. Its weird to hate something that grows all around me but whatever. Since last summer I have been annoying Laura to the max in the grocery isles reading ingredient lists on nearly EVERYTHING. First I look at if it has corn in it, then I look up how much sodium hangs out in it. After that I compare it to everything else to see if that doesn't have corn, and then from there if I can I compare my options with each other to purchase the one with the smallest amount of sodium.

Here is a short list of things that were tricky/surprising to find without/with HFCS in it:
Non-Diet Pop, Ketchup, Grape Jelly(or Jam or Preserves), Yogurt, "Maple" Syrup, Cereal.

I recently read an article that said many food manufactures are concerned that by adding less sodium on boxes consumers will think, oh no! less flavor! This is weird because I think awesome, less salt, less opportunities for heart disease to strike!

So where does all of this comparing get me? Pretty much with a larger grocery bill. But after thinking about it, buying a brand that is a few cents or a dollar more I think its worth it in the long run. $10 extra dollars every couple of weeks to hopefully prevent thousands of medical dollars in the future? Yes please.

This is what separates America's educated vs. uneducated. The educated citizen will spend more now but be wealthier later in life where the uneducated will be wealthier now and plateau while their learned peers continue rising. Weird how that relates to food.

I'm also seeing the food I eat as a standard of living. If I am only eating what I need to in order to survive, that is all I ever will do, survive. But eating good food that isn't processed much is one way to thrive in life.

I have a real hangup with the location I am currently residing in. As I would love nothing more to raise the standards of the food I eat I realistically have only one place I can buy groceries. This store has got to cater to everyone who has money and everyone who does not. Danville, IL (where our store is) has a wide spread of it, and only two grocery stores in town which belong to the same chain. So there is so very little variety. The produce section is appalling, last week I went to buy some peppers and they only had 6 SIX!!!! shrively ancient looking green peppers available for purchase.

There are also no organic food stores to speak of within 15 miles. Which is a problem, I would love to move much of my grocery buying to an organic store that sold many locally produced and organic products, but there aren't any. I also do not want to drive a half hour or more to buy these because then I'm adding more to the premium this food costs. So I'm stuck, I'm cheap but still demand good food.

Another probable place to buy good local veggies is farmer's markets. The ones around here mostly sell crafts and wares and less farm produce. Imagine that, here in the world's bread basket we grow so much "food" its not even edible in its raw form. This is a sad point to make.

But really what got me inspired to write about food was the Juice I buy. I love me some never from concentrate juice. I've been a Tropicana OJ fiend since I found that I could get that in the 128Oz Jug. HOT DAMN! As I mentioned before selections can be vast but still very limited yet for some reason I have 3 not from concentrate OJs to choose from as well as the usual brands from concentrate, like minute maid. Even fake juices like SunnyD have a showing at our local grocer.

As for other juices though I am pretty much stuck. I only have Mott's Premium and when available Simply Apple. My biggest juice difficulty though is grape juice. Can ANYONE?! help? I can't find for the life of me a brand of grape juice not from concentrate. Really I don't have a problem with from concentrate juices but if my extra appley juice is any indicator I feel like grape juice is going to be out of this world. So let me know.

Anyway thanks for listening to me rant about my food. I encourage you to read labels and empower yourself with some knowledge of where your food comes from, it might shock you.

Hows my little anecdote?

2010-03-28T22:33:00.002-05:00

When I was doing research for my Decade in Review Post I found that I used to write all sorts of silly short blogs, many were ridiculous rants of a lonely guy but I really liked reading about them, so today here is a short update on my weekend, what a good weekend it was too!

Friday:
Biked 13 miles to work(at 6:30am), took just over an hour, including shower.
Picked up 'ol Chip for his stay with us.
Watched half of Harry Potter and realized biking so far in the morning does not positively contribute to staying awake longer than 10:30 on a Friday.

Saturday:
Made a delightful french toast breakfast (new favorite bread!!)
Hid 4 Geocaches at our local nature preserve.
Watched a UFC fight at the local BWW and still don't understand how people choose to do that to themselves.

Sunday:
SKIPPED Bloody Mary Sunday, AAAHH!!! I usually make Bloody Mary's every Sunday morning for us and somehow completely forgot!?
Finished Harry Potter.
Started a new Brew, This one is a Kölsch.
Realized its Palm Sunday and didn't feel like I missed out on anything at all.

Hows my little distorted?

2010-03-02T20:36:00.003-06:00

Dear Akon and your shitty Protege T-Pain (and many others),

Your distorted voices have caused a trend that is getting far out of hand. You singlehandedly took Cher's cleverly used engineering from Believe and ran away with it, much too far away. Now since you guys can be credited with pioneering the trend (mostly) I will let you go on making music with your weirdly perfect pitch sound. Please go on with getting featured in hundreds of more pop songs that can never be pulled off live because of the amount of engineering work that goes into your recorded production. In fact, I can only imagine how shitty you sound live, especially since I doubt you can even perform a track live with Auto-Tune running convincingly. Are your concerts even live anymore? If they are I'm sure they aren't worth the ticket price anymore.

I'm sorry Akon and T-Pain for giving you the blunt of the hate because there are tons of other artists who deserve so much more than you, for example Kesha and Lil Wayne. They are using the effect just becasue they can, not becasue they can manupulate it with tact and fit it in subtely like a cetain DMB track you can find it in.

In short I hate to think that this decade of post aughts is going to be recognized by the synth vocals the 80s claimed with their keyboards, this isn't artistry anymore its a cover-up for bad lyrics and a lack of vocal prowess. I want to thank Leona Lewis for using her beautiful voice to the fullest and I can appreciate Amy Winehouse a little more or Hell even Beyonce's instrument from their necks.

Although I would like to give props to Brittney Spears, since her voice could not have gotten worse, I think she might be able to thank her Auto-Tuning engineers for any comeback she might manage surmount.

Hows my little Cutter?

2010-02-28T11:11:00.002-06:00

Laura and I recently acquired a new knife for our kitchening needs and HOLY CRAP!

It was like we were living in the dark ages of cutting, I sliced a green pepper with absolutely no sawing motions, not even the slightest!

I hereby recommend one nice knife to everyone who slices and chops. Your slicing life will improve greatly.

Hows my little weekend Warrior?

2010-02-15T06:24:00.003-06:00

What a weekend!

Laura and I have had quite the adventure with travel this weekend. We ventured up to Duluth for a weekend chock full of wedding planning and whatnot. Earlier this winter we found out that there are direct flights from Chicago through United Airlines late at night, awesome! Wednesday night we packed our gear and headed out from from work Thursday to catch our 9:15 flight. We made it up to Duluth without a hitch and stayed in the Canal Park Lodge compliments of Laura's generous parents.

Friday was stellar, I got up early and had a chance to strap on some rental skis, which didn't suck surprisingly, and headed up to Spirit with my old pal Tasha, a comp ticket from her made the morning even better. Afterwords, I met up with Laura's family and began our reception food tasting at Blackwoods. All of it was SO good it was hard to narrow our choices down to just a few dishes. That evening back in Washburn we hung out and watched the Opening Ceremony for the 2010 Olympics. I loved watching the projections on everything!

We went to bed and at about 2am I got up with a horrible stomach ache and ran downstairs and unloaded from both ends. Ugh, nothing like being sick away from home. My sickness lasted on and off until about 10 am where I had absolutely nothing left in my digestive tract. Thank goodness by the evening I was able to move around enough to get upstairs eat some chicken soup and watch some more of the Olympics.

Sunday I felt like a new (emptier) man and we headed to Duluth in the snow to catch our convenient 3pm flight to Chicago where we were excited to get home early and veg out for the night. But our plane had a different plan in mind. Due to mechanical errors we were being delayed. An hour later we find out that for some reason the Duluth Airport could not support our plane and they had to fly a mechanic up from Minneapolis another 2 hour wait. It wasn't until 9:45 and a lot of Pokemon/facebook/thankdearlordforfreeinternetsurfing that our flight got canceled. After another debacle at counter we eneded up with a free room for the night with a complimentary shuttle back to the airport, no need for a cab, right?

After some much needed Luce pizza at midnight we set our alarms for 4:20 am to catch our 4:45 am Shuttle to the airport for our flight set to leave at 5:25 am, cutting it close? Perhaps. But in the tiny Duluth airport and their two gates, shits a breeze. But no, Laura and I learned the value of the E-Ticket and the online boarding pass/check in. Instead of walking right through security and sitting in our seats just before the door shut, we waited forFUCKINGever it seemed like for some old lady and some dumbasses to check their luggage 10 seconds before their flight to work their shit out. We get our passes hop through security like expected and the attendant says, sorry you're late, it seemed like she had some pleasure in the back of her voice too.

After another half hour battle at the check in counter Laura and I decide instead of wasting another day at the Duluth airport we shall rent a car and drive to Minneapolis for some better luck with getting a flight to Chicago. Pt.2 begins at 7:30 when the rental places open up. Which blows because the car rental will most likely end up on our dime.

We found a car! We got hooked up with a Prius to drive south to Minneapolis. Once we got there we had a really smooth check-in and flight. To ice the cake from our weekend when we arrived in Chicago to have a $50 parking ticket stuck on our window. Its great to be back finally.

Hows my little astute intellect?

2010-02-01T20:32:00.006-06:00

I'm not sure when exactly I heard of War and Peace, I think probably in cartoons of yesteryear when they made jokes about big books or something. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone who had read it and no one has ever told me to read it because it is a good read. In fact, up until this past July I didn't even know what it was about, aside from what the title implies. Now that I am back into my old reading habit again I decided I finally needed to give this one a go, as a sort of life goal check mark thing.

It should be noted when I set out to read this book I needed to get a hardcover version. This was because since I've outgrown my plastic trophies from high school I need something to display as an accomplishment, and War and Peace has proven to be just that. My arms are probably measurably stronger since reading it especially because it is a physically (and mentally) heavy book. At no point in the 1215 pages did I read it lying supine with the book in the air. I haven't weighed it but I would guess it would weigh in somewhere near 10 pounds, no joke.

So for whatever reason I decided to read Tolstoy's epic. Right away I needed to figure out why its called an epic, which pretty much means that he took a long ass time (five years) and effort (historically accurate) into writing this book. I learned about halfway into reading it that the book has more characters than any other novel, which I believe. Since nearly all of those characters are Russians or French it took me about 300 pages to figure out which character belongs to which storyline. Eventually that didn't matter since they were all tied together by the end.

Since I think everyone has heard of War and Peace and few have read it I naturally assumed this book was profound and profoundly difficult to read. I thought it was going to be a twelve hundred + page test of patience, but it turns out the story isn't bad at all. In fact at times it gets very engaging and exciting. But mostly it is long. Many people will argue but I think it really only boiled down to 5 different main characters: Price Andrei the man who found out what is beautiful and necessary in life; Fat Pierre Bezukhov, who absentmindedly pondered the meaning of his existence; Natasha Rostov, A beautiful woman who embraces life and love to the fullest; Her Brother Nikolai Rostov, who embraces the military fully; and as much as I didn't want to admit it, Princess Myra, who largely goes unnoticed throughout the book because she is boring, is a devout believer in god and unconditional love.

The version I got had a preface saying that in their translation from Russian to English they tried to keep it as true to Tolstoy's original words as possible, and after reading some examples and the whole book I definitely got the impression that great care was taken to rewrite it in his style. That said, the hardest part of the book was at the beginning and end. At the beginning there is a large amount of french mixed right in with english and footnotes to bounce all around the page for translations and more footnotes for historical references. I think when I first started I was reading about 10 pages each lunch hour. The end was a whole different monster entirely though, which I really really wanted to believe that the second book of the epilogue was completely unrelated to the rest of the book but after some long reflection about it, one can find correlations. But god did it suck. He just ranted for like 40 pages about how historians interpret history and how everyone is free but no one is free. Ug, I was telling Laura about this and she said why don't you just stop you finished the story already, and I could only tell her if she had spent the last seven months doing something would you quit right before the end?

There are some parts within the story which Tolstoy goes on these ridiculous tangents on the nature of wars and those who fight in them as well as how history is interpreted. Here is of one of my favorite offshoots that actually made sense:

"A bee sitting on a flower stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and says that a bee’s purpose consists in stinging people. A poet admires a bee sucking up from the cup of a flower and says that a bee’s purpose consists in sucking up the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, noting how a bee gathers flower pollen and brings it to the hive, says that a bee’s purpose consists in gathering honey. Another beekeeper, who has studied the life of a hive more closely, says that a bee collects pollen in order to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that its purpose consists in reproducing its kind. A botanist notes that, as a bee lands with pollen on the pistil of a dioecious flower, it fertilizes it, and in that the botanist sees the bee's purpose. Another, observing the migration of plants, sees that the bee contributes to that migration, and this new observer may say it is in this that the bee’s purpose consists. But the final purpose of the bee is exhausted neither by the one, nor the other, nor the third purpose that human reason is able to discover. The higher human reason rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious for it is the inaccessibility of the final purpose."
It was parts like this that I went, WTF Leo, W.T.F.

Before reading the book I thought I wasn't going to understand it, and that was my biggest fear. Now that I'm done I think I understand the different ideas and themes to the story, and I'm happy I spent my lunch hours since July tackling it. Since I didn't know what it was going to be about I thought it was going to be full of ideas from a man who wanted to write about the nature of war and peace. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was a book about a guy who wanted to write about war, love, and god. While staged it in Russia during the momentous year of 1812. As a man who has recently had love on the mind quite a bit some of the ideas presented in War and Peace were really helpful in teaching me new ways to think of love and what its purpose serves in life.

"Love hinders death. Love is life. Everything, everything I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love."

So would I recommend it? Sure, if you've got time and patience.

Hows my little puddle?

2010-01-22T22:41:00.002-06:00

So a few days ago I was trolling around my site meter stats and noticed I had a huge uptick in hits from all around the United States and the world, I thought gosh thats pretty weird, I haven't been overly prolific lately nor have I written really anything too profound that should be catching tens of internet user's attention. The meter has a cool little function which shows where people came from in finding their way onto my site. Its been pretty neat over the years to see how people end up on my little niche of the internet and this time is no exception.

My one problem is this time I am getting referred to arguably my most shallow post ever. Now, I've already written myself off from running for some political office, since this blog would probably oust several of my less fine points of character. So I'm not too worried about this coming back to haunt me but check it out.

When you're done with that look up 'naked airport' as a Google image search and tell me what you see as nearly the number one search result? That's right my totally 'awesome' Photoshop creation with a link to my words on the internet.

It didn't take long to figure out why people were suddenly searching the internet for naked airport. With this newish airport feature that sees through peoples clothing, this technology would have probably caught the guy who lit his undies on fire on the Detroit bound plane. So what does that mean, there is probably a trained technician in some little room at an airport getting off to that group of models who cant seem to get through security in one pass. Seriously.

So when Laura and I head to Spain in August you can expect me to be wearing my iron undies to keep those horny TSA employees guessing at the size of the package in my pants. I don't let just anyone get a load of this hot body without at least a little effort :)

Which brings me to another thought, would someone wearing a chastity belt get though airport security now?

Hows my little brewmaster?

2010-01-04T21:20:00.008-06:00

Ladies and Gentlemen! I have succeeded in making my first beer from scratch! Yay! Several months ago a friend said hey, we should try making a pumpkin beer that actually tastes like pumpkin. We thought that this would be a great idea since we hadn't tried a good pumpkin brew ever let alone one that tasted like pumpkin. So naturally since this was a challenge that seemed out of my reach I accepted and promptly began my research into pumpkin beers.
The three of us agreed that we all are really enjoying wheat beers currently and we thought we should attempt a pumpkin wheat beer. Since a pumpkin wheat beer recipe, is hard to come by my work was cut out for me. I was successful in finding one but the recipe seemed complex and out of my league, I homebrew for pleasure, I'm not into the science of brewing. So I did some more research geared towards the noob I am and found about a billion pumpkin ale recipes and another thousand wheat recipes. I decided I would combine the best ideas that I thought I could pull off and get brewing from my own pumpkin wheat recipe.

I've decided to post the approximate recipe (and pictures!) for fellow pumpkin wheat lovers so that they can attempt their own version. Most of my steps here are estimated becasue for whatever reason I got rid of my notes before I got this entry together.

Here are my ingredeants for the brew:

As you can see:
Wheat Malt Extract
Pale Malt Extract
3 Baking Pumpkins
(I guess there are pumpkins grown for cooking & carving, they are not to be interchanged.)
Vangard Hops (alpha acid 4.4)
Fuggle Hops (alpha acid 4.8)
(Wheat beers are lightly hopped for less bitterness)
Allspice
Cloves
Bottling: Priming sugar and caps

and of course, some expired hefeweizen live yeast.

Why expired yeast? Because I didn't check the date of course!
Apparently I'm lucky the yeast even did anything, whew.

So the first step was to hack the pumpkin up into a bunch of chunks and bake at 325 degrees, this apparently makes the starches in the pumpkin turn to sugar, or gets that process started. Do that for an hour. If for some reason you haven't started drinking beer while making it remedy that error while this is baking ideally another pumpkin beer to either shoot for or to beat.

Baked punkin chunks.

After this step you make a giant batch of pumpkin tea by steeping it for about a half hour to an hour. We ended up combining that statement and steeped for like an hour and a half because we didn't think we were getting enough color in the water. Don't let your shit boil though, or the sugars will go away and your beer will taste funky. Ours came to a boil for a few minutes on accident.

This picture is to show that it took a longass time for the water to even look like the pumpkin chunks were doing anything. Very apparent, right?

After you're all done soaking the pumpkins we kind of pressed the water out of the chunks and got the malts into the brew and began our hour long boiling process. More beers were drank here. Stir every now and then and enjoy.

We hopped the beer for the last 15 minutes. The second variety hops was added with only five minutes left.

After rapidly cooling the beer to close to 70ish degrees F we added in our spices, 1 teaspoon of each, remembering we wanted a stronger pumpkin flavor over spice flavor. Next time I think I would use even fewer cloves. A few of those go a long way. After that we added the yeast and sealed it up!

And thats it! we didn't clear it all the way in order to leave the sediment for a creamier texture, and what a success!

Check it out:

Hows my little '09 recap?

2009-12-31T17:00:00.000-06:00

2009. There is a lot that can be said about 2009. As far as exciting years go it wasn't the most exciting year. My day to day was relatively the same, and aside from plotting to and carrying out my engagement with Laura there weren't very many huge life changing events, which is cool, last year gave me enough of those. So what happened to me this year? Here's the breakdown:

Best:

Movie: Avatar. Its been a long time since I left a movie and wanted to turn around and see it again. Next time instead of Flat-D I'll see it in 3-D.

TV Show: This year I kept my trend of hate on the boob tube with the exception of TrueBlood. Season 2 was a huge improvement over season 1.

Concert: DMB. This checked off one of my last bands to see before I die, A Dave Matthews Outdoor concert is a day long event that we did right, would I do it again? Absolutely.

Album: Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey and the Gru Grux King. There isn't even one track that I skip on this one. I love their big sound.

Song: Owl City - Fireflies. Repeat - Repeat - Repeat Heart.

Game: I almost had to nix this genre this year, but a new PS3 and GTA IV saved the day.

Book: I don't think I read any books with a copyright of 2009 this year, so hands down Tolkien's Return of the King blew every other book I read in '09 out of the water. The story starts off running and the ending is extremely fitting and satisfying for all of the characters I grew to love through the series.

Wine: The Wine Cube (any flavor) from Target. Decent wine and a great price.

Bar Night: I don't know if its considered the best, but its the best story. Ask me about moonshine and Sink the Biz sometime.

Getaway: Colorado! I love the mountains, a lot.

Garden Growth: Spicy Pickles!

Events of Note:

Random: The flooding of the kitchen :(

Obsession: Growing things carried into 2009! Our Garden Rocked. Until the thief struck.

Newsworthy: It's called swine flu dammit.

There is lots to look forward to in 2010, first off our wedding! I'm really pumped about our Honeymoon as well just because I plan on doing a hell of a lot of relaxing, there have even been some rumblings of a trip to Spain! Which would be awesome. I'm also excited about our Garden V2.0 after learning some things this year. I've debated putting this in but whatever, I might get my first useful smart phone! I'm also excited for our various wanderings around the mid-west.

Bring it on 2010.

Hows my little decade in review?

2009-12-23T11:33:00.013-06:00

Wow! I've lived long enough to recall an entire decade. Loyal fans, I would like to thank everyone who helped me accomplish such an amazing feat! So in addition to my annual year in review I thought I would review the past 10! years of my life as I can best recall. Since I started this blogging thing way back in 2004 I've got a few years that can only be recalled from what little memory my brain utilizes. The rest are going to be links back to some important blogs from my history of blogging. Enjoy my journey through life via blogs

The Year 2000:

Y2K anyone? Nope. Pretty sure I left the computer on overnight though just to see what would happen.

Solidified the best group of friends any person could ask for during this year. With this group I was carried through Mounds View High and beyond making memories I won't forget and others that have long been lost.

Began thinking about thinking about college, because my mom said I should.

I was introduced to 'The Living End' and my love for music can be traced back to that point.

Began my annual pilgrimage to the Houston Family cabin over memorial weekend. (or was this in 99? hm.)

2001:

Napster was shut down, right after we got cable internet too!

Where were you on September 11th 2001?
I was spending the night on Tony Czech's couch because our school's construction delayed classes for two weeks and I had nothing going on. His Dad called in the morning to tell us to watch the news. From his armchair I watched live footage of the second plane strike the World Trade Center. Spent the rest of the day feeling empty and sad while glued to the various news outlets on TV.

Peed into several jars with my friends at least one may still exist to this day. Learned that poop will liquefy after several years sealed in a jar exposed to the elements.

Actually began thinking about college.

Took the ACT 3 times, fell asleep during the first two tests and didn't break 20. Test three I stayed awake for and did significantly better. Imagine that!

2002:

Applied for colleges and was accepted by Bemidji State University.

Began building my own desktop computer as a hobby.

Got hooked on Diablo II and video games in general.

Read the Harry Potter Series (which had been released) in two weeks.

2003:

Took a big fall after throwing myself off a big jump at Wild Mountain. Probably messed up my knee on this day.

Graduated High School, couldn't have been more excited to get out of that place.

Left the home nest for my freshman year at BSU.

Walked onto BSU's Track team and ran Hurdles. My Mom and Dad made many various treks around the region to watch my meets, something I didn't fully appreciate until recently, especially since my races lasted between 7-62 seconds.

Binge drank for the first time. Nearly an entire 750 ML of Vodka and Green Gatorade, using Reece's peanut butter cups as chasers. Survived.

Got my cartilage in my ear pierced. Future employers ruined its longevity.

2004:

Left East Side Beverage before the end of the summer. Learned a valuable lesson about the working world and life.

Found out my knee was always sore because I had torn my medial and lateral meniscus in my right knee. After some surgery I felt a lot better. After a lot of work I could run around again.

Met Sarah Fuller, an inspiration through the rest of my college career.

Transferred to UMD.

Joined a new internet phenomenon called The Facebook.

My first semester at UMD was an epic failure, taking 3 classes and 14 credits I was busier than shit and found that a Computer Science major was the wrong direction for me. With a D in one class a F in another (both required for the CS major) I began rethinking the future of my college career.

George Bush somehow got reelected.

2005:

After the easiest semester ever and a sharp turn around in grades, (not everyone can double their GPA) I decided to pursue a Graphic Design Major the following school year.

How I decided on Graphic Design

Pretty much sums up my free time my second semester in Duluth

I am still a bad speller

Worked for College Pro Painters and got shafted in pay, time working, and enjoyment of a summer job. Quit before the end of the summer and threatened my employer with a lawsuit over 32 unpaid dollars.

Purchased my first car! A purple 2003 Dodge Stratus.

I had my Appendix removed.

2006:

Got a job at the Edgewater Waterpark in Duluth and grew to slowly hate it before I transferred to somewhere less hated within the hotel.

Accepted into the GD program into UMD! Graduation here I come!

My Heart doesn't work like yours.

Purchased my first laptop an Apple Powerbook G4, as of this post it is now obsolete without an Intel processor there will be no future updates available.

Began winemaking as a hobby using Stabbers' beer making kit.

I still don't like TV & its overdue for innovation

My parents sold the house I grew up in to move to Covington, Indiana. Pay special attention to the last couple of lines from that post.

Began a semi-monthly tradition of Titacular Tuesdays!!

I decided to force myself into liking beer. The reason was to actually enjoy a Guinness at the brewery in Ireland. 100% success.

Traveled over an ocean for the first time EVER!

The Red Hot Chili Peppers released Stadium Arcadium, easily my favorite album of the decade.

Pluto was demoted from the solar system. Down to 8 planets. My very educated mother just served us nothing...?

Was introduced to a fine young woman named Laura Davis. Love at first sight? That might be debated for the ages. Our first date: Tea and the grocery store. Little did I know she would help change the course of my future.

2007:

Best Story Ever.

Found out I'm a bit Lactose Intolerant

The beginning to the end of paper. (written before the Kindle and Nook were released)

Somewhere along the line I began to grow more mature.Not everyone would agree though =)

Jinx popped into my life.

Began Geocaching as a hobby.

I predicted the 2008 election results.

Began working at my first Graphic Design Job for Late Night Kirby.

Its called sharing not stealing.Historic and epic lawsuit against a music stealer right in Duluth, MN. She later appealed and ended up paying MORE! Oops.

2007 was my most prolific blogging year of the decade with a total of 109 posts

2008:

My cat learned to fetch

I can't believe they still charge this much.

I put an end to the masturbating neighbor.

All that hard work paid off!

My favorite April fool stunt.

I discovered myself.

I GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE!!!

I moved from Duluth. You should enjoy it like I did.

I moved in with my parents after saying I wouldn't.

I bought a house!

Attended Obama's election celebration Didn't realize he was going to spend all of the whole worlds money.

Began using a Loofa. Will never go back to the old bar in the foreseeable future.

2009:

Experienced the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

Continued reading like a fiend again. Oh how I missed it.

Hopped on the Twilight saga bandwagon.

I consider this my living will and expect my legacies to follow it until I come up with something legit.

I made my own Headstone sample!

I already had a vendetta against corn. In 2009 it became stronger.

I planted, weeded and harvested the first garden of my own, with great success!

Saw my first movie in 3D.

I began my engagement to marry!

2009 was my least prolific blogging year of the decade (while I had a blog) with 35 entries.

Altogether the aughts (I still hate that name) were full of change, excitement, surprise, and adventure. I hope to include perhaps fewer life changing moments in the next ten years but more adventures around the globe. Life is always full of surprises and new twists I can't wait to tackle them with a smile and story to tell afterward.

Do I have any predictions for the next 10 years? I certainly do!
Gadget Predictions?
* I bet in 10 years video chatting over a cellular service will become reality, the quality still won't be very good by 2010 and it will cost more than most people are willing to pay.
* In the next 10 years we will see home TVs which are 3d ready become a huge flop because people won't want to use the glasses to make it work.
* By 2010 a glasses free 3D TV will hit the market and be extremely expensive.
* In the next 10 years we will see a revolution in cable programming, be it chose your own subscription or some form of order at will. Similar to streaming your Netflix choices online.
* Ebook readers are going to take off as Eink devices become embedded in more everyday items. Especially as color Eink devices begin to appear.
* Most laptops will cap off at 1 TB of storage many will have "only" 500 GB as the netbook begins to take hold.
* By 2010 most laptops will have some multi-touch capabilities thanks to the iPhone.

Life Predictions?
* I'll be getting married!
* Dear lord it makes me nervous to say this but I feel like 10 years isn't unreasonable to say a child of my own could happen. *shiver*
* Something will cause my departure from Illinois.
* A new (to me) car!
* I will see at least 3 new countries.
* I'm going to start thinking about writing that novel materializing in my brain.
* Freelance work of some sort.

Hows my little Winter Wonderland?

2009-12-15T20:45:00.003-06:00

Winter.
Make it be known to the world that I love winter. I'm not a summer kind of guy. You might be thinking that I'm entirely crazy, I do love certain things the summer brings such as swimming in the water, the sexy tans on me and the ladies, as well as the oft smelled BBQ wafting through the neighborhood air. But winter, I just love winter.
First off, I love the cold. I'm pretty sure Jacob and I have at least one thing in common and that is that we run a little warm on the inside (maybe the rippling muscles as well :) so because of that when its winter I get to comfortably wear long sleeved shirts. I hate the idea of fashion being stylish without comfort. Completely not me. I tell everyone in the summer you can be only so naked, so on those hot humid days with no access to a body of water sweating on your couch just gets nasty and uncomfortable. What do you do in the winter when you're cold? You bundle up in a giant comfy sweat shirt, wrap yourself up in your big fuzzy blanket and possibly a loved one with a cup of hot something and enjoy a movie. Add a fireplace to the mix and you've got something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. How many sweaty thirsty people sitting three feet away from each other do you see in his paintings? None. If it exists, show me.
I digress. Why else do I love winter? I love winter sports, Even though I rarely ice skate I love it. I love watching all the cool winter sports on TV, downhill skiing, bobsledding, snowboarding, and even the occasional figure skating competition is tolerable. Building snow forts, sledding, and snowball fights are some other awesome aspects of winter I can't get enough of. My most of all favorite winter time activity is downhill skiing.
I love me some skiing for many different reasons. One is the pure thrill of hurtling myself down a hill at speeds I will never know within feet of trees, giant poles, idiot Texans, and cliffs. Another is the never ending challenges that skiing presents itself from hill to hill. Trying bumps and trees is a challenge I can't seem to stay away from, despite the danger of breaking any sort of (my own) limb because of a caught edge or miscalculated turn. Not to mention its quiet, and you can spend some really excellent quality time with your friends. Altogether skiing brings out all of my favorite aspects of a sport.
Which brings me to my final point on winter.
Never in my life have I been any less excited about a season such as this upcoming winter. Since moving down to our lovely town of Oakwood I've realized that winters here SUCK! It has all of the great qualities of winter that every one "loves" (note the following sarcasm) The bitter wet cold that bites into your bones and doesn't let up until you shower, The never ending prevailing wind (there is a reason this area has more windfarms than anywhere else in the nation), the complete and utter lack of trees and hills to potentially disrupt said wind, and lets not leave out the lack of even dead vegetation to look at since all of the surrounding area is harvested corn and soy beans. Also because it stays below 30 for only a few days at a time one can't even get out for some quality time slipping around on frozen water.
So excluding all of those factors winters here aren't so bad. Oh, just kidding. There is no snow here either. None, we got 7 inches once last year once and it was gone in a week. You couldn't even sled on it after two days! AHHH! So without snow, hills, trees, and cold. What is the point of living in this region for the next three months? I can't think of one.
Since I'm already started, the snow plows don't even plow the roads! They cruise around with their blades up (while snow is on the ground) and dump salt everywhere. It makes no sense. Obviously they have invested in plows, why is it they don't actually plow? Driving down here in the winter, with all these already crappy Illinois drivers, really sucks as well. Ugh.

Hows my little Ark builder?

2009-12-04T20:55:00.002-06:00

This week has been a very exciting one. First off, congratulations to Mashley Midthun! I had a great time at your wedding its great to finally see you two joined in holy matrimony and that other good stuff.

Next, recently Laura and I joined the ranks of the other old folks of the world who get excited about and purchase a new refrigerator. (a word I always have to spell check) and since our RCA fridge was made before they started including water for ice and drinking as a part of any refrigerator. We had to run our own water line to this one. So, talking about this project with Laura's dad one day he says oh, its easy bla bla bla. I have never built my own house, so for some reason did not take this with the large grain of salt I should have. So I do some research, find out said project is actually easy and went ahead and bought a kit that had everything I needed to route water from a pipe to a refrigerator. Sweet.

Tuesday I decide, this is the night! I get myself amped for the project and Laura starts on dinner. So for this project to be pulled off I need to move the dishwasher out from its spot to run our line behind it. Not hard, I find out after more research. Disconnecting it is just like disconnecting a toilet, twist valve, unscrew water line, & move. So I turn our little water valve to the OFF position, I confirm this is the correct line connected to the dishwasher and begin to unscrew. For some reason the connection I'm unscrewing won't budge but the other one seems to spin fine, I think, oh great at least one of them moves, this will work out fine. At this point I have a little bucket and Laura even got me a towel to dab up my dribbles because I was expecting a few. Back to the action, I've got the valve pretty much entirely unscrewed and I think to myself, wow, I'm impressed I haven't even had a tiny drop come out of the pipe. Until.....

WHOOOOOOOSHHH!!!
Not good.
Let me tell you, when dealing with plumping things this is probably the very last sound you want to hear.

This whoosh was not just a sound but a full on deluge of water spraying, not leaking, dribbling or pouring, but spraying out of a little half inch PVC pipe. I'm not too sure of everything I was thinking or saying at this point but I'm sure many of the phrases aren't allowed on TV. So, not only am I cursing up a storm but the water coming out of the pipe is about three steps shy of boiling because it is straight out of our hot water line to our faucet in the kitchen. Not hot enough to burn though, thank god. Immediately I know, turn off the water. So, being the smart person I am I run to our hot water heater to be foiled by a lack of shut off valve. FiretrUCK, so back to the kitchen I run water shooting all over I think ooo! I'll get the hose and we can channel the water outside! I run outside grab the hose and start unwinding it while Laura is trying her hardest to get the spray nozzle off. Don't forget water is SPRAYING all over our kitchen right now. Pretty sure the nozzle was frozen to the hose so that was a wasted effort.

I putz with the hose a bit more and realize I'm just wasting time and water, I need to turn off the water to the whole house. At this point our hot water line is now cold. I run outside rip open our crawlspace door and find the shut off valve as I watch a small waterfall pour out of our floor into the crawlspace. Which considering the direction the water could have taken (the rest of the house), I'm quite thankful for that hole or holes.

It goes without saying Laura was pretty upset, especially since dinner was simmering (not burning though!) the whole time. Every one of our towels were saturated with the entire forty gallons of contents in our hot water heater. I, the man I am, walked around in shame for the rest of the night because as soon as I saw the water spraying out of the pipe I knew what I did wrong. Whatever goddamned moron who installed our dishwasher FUCKING GLUED THE HOSE TO THE WATER SHUTOFF VALVE!! I don't care if this is code or not, it has to be the dumbest idea EVER.

What does that mean? Well, when I was unscrewing the hose to the dishwasher, the side AFTER the shut off was glued TO the shutoff, meaning the only side I can unscrew is where the water comes from, not where the water won't come from.

As hindsight is always 20/20 I now know to turn off the whole house's water before beginning any sort of plumbing project. I still am not done with the ordeal because I need to cut a pipe sill and boy I can't wait for that excitement. Ideally by next week when we host a gathering of some folks for our pumpkin beer kick-off we have a working in freezer ice maker and filtered water from the fridge.

For some reason we didn't think of taking any pictures, so just imagine me running around soaking wet with goofy knee pads on my legs and a very panicked look on my face and it was like you were there!

Hows my little old fogie?

2009-11-17T22:10:00.002-06:00

Dear Diary,
How do I know when I've grown up?
Sincerely,
Twenty Something...

Dear Twenty Something,
I've decided to take this opportunity to answer your question for a change rather than existing a rhetorical question muse. First off, you signed your question with "Twenty Something", dear lord you aren't old, now when you hit the post 50 mark, you might want to start considering yourself older, maybe not quite old yet, but get used to the idea for the following ten years.

Next.

Why do you ask? Is it you've been shopping for and have purchased a new refrigerator for your home? If that's the case than yes, you are getting old, no more do you live under those carefree days of buying whatever you needed and wanted in the same trip. Now it seems like you could be looking for a single product that will eventually SAVE *gasp* you money as well as something you can imagine yourself having for more than 10 years in a row. Yes, you are old when you can imagine 10 years into the future, this is a fact.
Just hypothetically speaking of course since you never mentioned anything about a new refrigerator. I would recommend a Black Kenmore Elite brand with a bottom freezer because you are a tall glass of water and that will really make you happy to just peer straight into your newest food cooling apparatus to see the things you might be in search for. Also I happen to be very fond of French Doors above that freezer and black is not only sexy but it matches the rest of your appliances in your kitchen. Not to mention stainless steel really only costs more, you can't even stick a magnet (go figure, right?) to it, so why waste your time AND money.
So if you were to have purchased said fridge I'm certain you would be absolutely thrilled about such an every day item, thus solidifying your 'agedness' in fact I bet you would be so excited you would make the 20 minute drive home on your lunch break just to check out this device for a few minutes. Not only would you be considered old but a dork who gets off checking out inanimate objects as well.
In short I would say that there are certain things in life that will make you look and feel old especially considering your perspective on things in your day to day life. A new refrigerator could be one of these things so I will answer, approach with caution, this may make you very excited and give you that youthful feeling in your loins, but a new large kitchen appliance signals that you are in fact in it for the long haul, and if you're not already old you're getting there.

Enjoy this new product because in less than two years something wont work right and you will call this newest device of yours a piece of shit and wonder what you were thinking when you bought it, just like everything else you own. Appreciate the value it brings to you and over the years with a little less worry and hate on your mind you will feel younger than your peers and appreciate the leg up on your early maturity.
That is of course if you bought a refrigerator.
Love your rambling diary.

PS
In hindsight, a single door model would probably fit your space better....oops!

Hows my little laxidasical blogger?

2009-11-05T21:06:00.002-06:00

Holy shit I skipped the ENTIRE!! month of October in blogging? O. M. G. I'm sorry.

Dear loyal fans who for some reason continued checking,
I love you.
Love, (is that too much love?)
Tony

Anyway, things have been great around here. Laura and I are still happily betrothed and have a really big chunk of the wedding planning out of the way, which is pretty great really.

I've gotten a lot of new trinkets lately and after I got the last one I went, wow, I didn't really need any of this, I totally went against my life statement earlier in the year about simplifying things. On one hand I did get rid of a lot of Playstation things (thus unpacking our FINAL box from the move!!!) in order to upgrade to the new one GTA5 is pretty sweet, but I'm still not too good at it. But still.

We have recently come into a projector which now projects said PS3 onto a wall and the screen is about 7 feet tall. HEART!!!

I've brewed two batches of beer in the past month, a nut brown we are calling the brown nut and my first recipe from scratch, a pumpkin wheat! Which I am pretty excited to try, although I'm not sure it will have much pumpkin flavor. But if it does I will definitely post the process online since I don't think there are enough pumpkin wheat recipes on the interwebs.

We also started a wine for consumption in honor of our wedding, which should be really awesome. But its a sauvignon blanc so it might not be a crowd pleaser.

My sister got married! holy shit! the wedding was really great it was fun to be there and dance and see my brothers and their families and meet the Harvey family (who are all wonderful) and ahh, yes it was great. I'm extra excited to have all the people important to me for mine now.

I've also begun to work on ideas for the honeymoon, the world is SO big, oh my goodness I don't know where to start. I think Laura wants warm and I just want to cross an ocean.

I don't even watch baseball but f you yankees.

I've been trying to sleep more lately and I feel a lot more chipper in my day to day, imagine that.

I've pretty much given up on pandora and moved entirely to Slacker, no music stopping after 40 minutes of inactivity, yes please!

Last weekend Laura and I ventured up to the Wisconsin Dells for our annual rock out with the Austin family and boy does that never get old. I LOVE water sliding. Love it.

Who thought the "design" for the craigslist webpage was a good idea, my lord it is impossible to find information on there without using the ctrl+f function.

I really like the owl city track fireflies. A lot.

The not so new anymore Dave Matthews Album continues to steal a bit more of my love with each listening. For example, funny the way it is, the lyrics? wow! very very meaningful if you need some thought inspired.

Living in the south (most would argue this is the midwest, I would just say its the south without the confederate flag) does have its perks. You can find a republican to argue with whenever you want. But its hard to win said arguments because most of them believe every chain E-mail sent to them.

I'm halfway through War and Peace! And it actually doesn't suck. I just learned that it has the most characters than any novel, ever?. I would say that is the biggest challenge is keeping all these russian names straight. And there are quite a few names to keep straight. Especially when you thought they were dead.

I learned how to stain and varnish wood, I've seen my Dad do it a whole bunch through my life but I never bothered to ask how before. I helped Laura's dad put in a new little thing on the floor into our bathroom and it looks SO much better and it doesn't hurt when you slam your heel into it. Which is nice.

Is it bad to say I might like most of Lady Gaga's singles? Miz Fullah can probably guess what my next comment would be, considering her looks so ask her. But wow, she wears some very interesting outfits. If only there was less... =)

I still don't get twitter. Does that make me out of touch, old fashioned? Would any of you read my tweets.
"had corn floating in my poop today, wow!"
I wouldn't either.

A few days after we got back from vacation we had someone steal our ENTIRE pepper crop. Up to and including my red hot chili peppers. I still get really angry when I talk about it, and there is nothing I can do except be angry. I don't believe them when they say revenge isn't worth it.

I'm pretty sure meals taste 10 times better after working out, rendering it impossible to eat a sensible amount afterwords. Thus my lack of weight loss. Since moving here.

I've been slowly buying Reebok boxer briefs lately and my goodness do I feel sexy when I wear them. So I keep buying more because honestly how often do you not want to feel sexy.

I turned 25 and my insurance dropped $12 a month. Wait, I was excited for that starting the day I turned 22? Fuck that.