My First

On Open Letter to my first Weber Grill.

Why did you run away?  It’s been over ten years now since you left, and I still think about you sometimes.  It was the night before Father’s Day when you left.  Why did you go?  Did you like the houses across the street better than the apartment we were in?  Did you not like our neighbor, the gas grill?  I had such big plans for us on that Father’s Day.

It was painful, but I have moved on.  The grill I’m living with now is much more understanding.

After 10 years now we are still going strong, even after the warping grease fire that’s made it hard to get the grill properly placed.  Our relationship is so strong that we’ve had a small barrel grill and a smoker move in.  There isn’t even a hint of jealousy. 

Even so, after all these years I still think about you.  I guess you never forget your first.

Scooter-less

So the time has come and gone and the spot in the front yard that I thought was the 2011 rabbit nest was, in fact, empty.

Un-Americanized

I like Chinese food; however what we usually get here is Americanized Chinese food.  It’s not bad though I have had Overly-Americanized Chinese food which is nasty.  I have been looking for Un-Americanized Chinese food.  I once heard that a truly authentic Chinese restaurant typically only prepares one of the eight regional cuisines of china.   

I have finally found one near me house.  The Famous Szechuan Pavilion 

Its in what used to be a drive through coffee shop.  Ordering my food was difficult.  Though the owner/cook/waitress/busboy’s English was surely better than my Mandarin.  I got the Dan Dan Noodles.  When she asked it I wanted “Small or medium” I though she meant how big a bowl, you know, like a whole or half order kind of thing.  So I got the “medium” Portion size isn’t what she meant.  I found out what she meant was a small or medium spoonful of Sichuan pepper stuff.  My mouth was nice and numb after the first three or four bites.  I could still taste it, but the heat sort of disappeared.

So today at work my Chinese Cultural Consultant brought me:

Sichuan peanuts! 

Very tasty, and not mouth numbing!  The best part though was the back of the package.

I think that’s a great symbol for “CRAP THAT’S HOT!”

Randomness, Part II

Kansas

There’s no salad in Kansas.  Well, there is no good salad in Kansas.  Once, back in the 90s, when Sandy was in graduate school I got to go along as free labor for the field work portion of her thesis.  We were in Kansas to visit a salt mine in the lovely town of Salina (which rhymes with Vagina.  What?  You thought I’d say Regina?)  Anyway.  While we were there I once had gotten the “salad bar” with dinner.  It consisted of browning iceberg lettuce, some carrots, Bac-O bits, and ranch dressing.  Things have progressed, some, in the last 15 years.  We were in Kansas City recently and I managed to get this:

At least the Iceberg lettuce wasn’t brown – yet.  We weren’t there for the salad though.  We were there for The Great Wolf Lodge.  It’s a hotel with an indoor water park attached.

There was also miniature golf

What is the costume he is wearing you ask?  That’s part of the other attraction – Magi Quest. 

It’s an adventure game, with stations set up all around the hotel.  Basically is runs the kids around in circles all day.  We spent two nights, which was just about right.  Any longer and I think they would have started getting bored.

This was almost what I would call a vacation.  I got to spend some time sitting on my butt reading and generally doing nothing.  My favorite part may have been finding this on the way

Once, a long time ago I have vague memories of going on a vacation as a kid.  Every time we stopped for a meal, it was at Stuckey’s, but that’s a different story.

Braised Boy Scouts

So the weekend after the “Bacon and Poo” meeting we had a two night campout planned. 

The reason I say braised is that when I woke up at about 2am Saturday morning it had to still be in the mid 80s with 110% relative humidity, and no matter how much of the Nylon tent I unzipped no air was moving.  I didn’t sleep.  I braised in my own sweat.

But, I digress.  There was a two fold purpose to the trip. 

One was for me to get a few of the first years together Friday morning and go shopping for food for the weekend.  Well that didn’t work out so well.  I had some family stuff planned for Friday morning that ended up running over.  Instead, after everyone was gathered for the trip to the camp site, we divvied up the money and ran to the farmers market.  Boy scouts are suppose to be thrifty, BUT trying to feed 14 people, 5 meals, with an average of $20 per meal isn’t thrifty.  It’s cheap.  So we got the farmers market, divided the kids into 5 groups of 2, and gave them each $15 for their assigned meals with $30 for Saturday night dinner.  The menu plans was:

Dinner 1: Hot dogs, buns, ketchup, and watermelon.

Breakfast 1: Eggs (two dozen), Bacon (1 pound, so yes one strip per person, oh, and it got burnt), and Sunny Delight (two bottles, cause apparently the scouts who did this meal, really like Sunny D),

Lunch 1: Sandwiches.  Two slices bread, one slice of lunchmeat, and one slice of cheese, no condiments, but we had chips!  Doritos and Cheetoes!  

Dinner 2:  The big one! Uh. Bratwurst and dump cake?  Really that’s it?

Breakfast 2: Pop tarts, mini-honey buns, and Oranges.

The other main purpose was to get the first year boys to finish their fishing merit badges.  All they had left to do was to catch, clean, cook, and eat one…

They caught enough for everyone,

But they were too small to fillet. So instead they got de-scaled, gutted, and beheaded.

Some liked their fish, but most of them ate as little as they could get away with.

Another theme of Boy Scouts is to give back to the community, aka service projects.  In this case it was using nearby native material to build up a crossing point on a creek for the farm’s small tractor to get across with the brush hog.  As the scout discovered it easy to get things stuck, and buried in the sand

The tractor got stuck going across, thankfully not too terribly, we got it free in short order.  It did not get stuck on the return trip.

The boys got a lesson in “you get what you pay for” Saturday night.  They didn’t want to spend the time to gather dead wood for the camp fire.  So the camp fire didn’t last long, which was fine with me.  Camp fires when the day’s high had been in the upper nineties aren’t all that fun.  There were some skits and a scary story by the Scoutmaster.  The scary story really came out of left field.  It was a story of the great economic meltdown of 2008 and pending monetary meltdown.  The story seemed to be based from the perspective of “hard money”, and I didn’t agree with where the story said things were headed.  After a long day in the sun, and a bad night sleep I figured that the scouts weren’t really listening (or understanding if they were listening) to a story of high level macroeconomics, so I didn’t say anything.

All in all it was a sweaty, hungry, sleepy, dirty weekend.  Just the way it should be!

Musical Heresy

I read a column in the online version of the local newspaper all the time.  “The Life Sherpa by Joe Holleman.  Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t: this one though upset me.  Marginalizing someone’s, anyone’s, death isn’t very, Christian, nice, human, whatever.  Either way the comparisons he makes in the article are so off base.

Amy was 27 when she died.  She lived the “rock-n-roll” lifestyle and it caught up to her.  She released 2 studio albums the last one topping out at number two on the US charts and had one top 20 single.  At the end she was booed off the stage for being “under the influence” while performing.  She was made out to be the bad guy for failing rehab.  Without her we wouldn’t have Adele or Duffy.  Even Lady Gaga has given Amy credit for opening her door to success.

Is there a good comparison for Amy out there?  Why yes.

He was 27 when he died.  He too lived a “rock-n-roll” lifestyle and it caught up with him.  He released 3 studio albums the last one topping out at number one on the US charts and had one top 20 single.  At the end he was cheered on stage for being “under the influence” while performing.  He never even tried to rehab.  He didn’t break ground directly for anyone, but still was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Any idea who yet?

Jimi Hendrix…

One is vilified, the other idolized.  Why?