Turkey Goodness

Hello everyone.

As we wrap up November 2011, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that this past October marked five years of me doing this blog. Yay!

Of course, I probably should have mentioned that last month when it was actually five years to the day, not today. What's the point in celebrating a five year, one month, and two day anniversary?

But I didn't realize I'd passed the five year milestone until a couple days ago. I have a hard enough time remembering my own birthday, let alone my blog's birthday, so cut me some slack.

I've been teaching myself HTML and CSS lately. I'm also planning on learning Javascript and some other computer languages, programs, and/or software in the near future. I have an idea for a website that I'm going to try to build myself, either from scratch or by customizing a template. I had been thinking about trying to find someone to build the site for me, but then I just thought, "Why can't I build it myself?" I already have some basic HTML experience from this blog, from our photo site, and from other projects, and I'm fairly intelligent, so why not learn how to do it myself?

But I'm quickly discovering that this sort of stuff is incredibly tedious to study. It's not terribly difficult--it's just all right-brain stuff. Or is it left brain? I always confuse the two. What I'm trying to say is that it's all logical stuff. So I find myself walking around with a headache most of the time. Maybe it's just a tumor and completely unrelated to the HTML and CSS language stuff. Or not.

I think it will be much easier once I start playing around with the language instead of just studying it. I'm probably going to fool around with the colors and fonts and formatting right here on this blog. I won't make any big changes (at least not on purpose) because after five years, I'm used to this layout the way it is. But I used the stock Blogger template when I first started this blog, and I'm really bored with it. So I'll probably change the colors at the very least.

The new project won't have much to do with what I do here, so I plan on continuing with this blog. Although, the new project will kinda involve Tucker. Stay tuned.

Thanksgiving News

Well, the turkey we made seemed to be a hit because Cathy and I sure got lots of compliments. I think if we're going to do it again, barbecuing is definitely the way to go. Here's what we did:

We started with an 18 pound turkey. I didn't want one that big, but it was the smallest one we found. Also, full disclosure: I broke one of my rules and didn't get a sustainably-raised turkey, mainly because a sustainably-raise turkey would've cost around $100 and required a drive to Spokane. So we caved and went to the local Safeway instead.

Here's how we prepared it. We thawed it in the beer fridge for a few days prior to Thanksgiving. By Thursday morning it still hadn't thawed all the way, so we soaked it in cold water in the sink for a half hour or so. Meanwhile, we:

• Cored two apples and cut them into chunks
• Peeled two Mandarin oranges and split them into segments
• Diced a couple stalks of celery 
• Diced an onion
• Peeled several (don't remember how many) cloves of garlic and cut them in half.

We mixed all those ingredients with some fresh sage and stuffed it into the cavity.  Then we coated the turkey skin with melted butter.  Finally, we put the stuffed bird in a roasting pan and put the neck, giblets, and extra stuffing in the pan around the turkey, and added a cup or so (didn't measure) of white wine to the pan.

For the barbecue, I started a chimney of "real wood" charcoal (in Eugene I used to get mesquite charcoal, but the closest I can find here is "real wood"--it doesn't say what kind).  When the coals were ready, I dumped them in the barbecue and put the turkey pan on the grill.  It barely fit under my Weber barbecue lid.  I started a second chimney, and when that was ready, I added it to the first, along with some mesquite chips that had been soaking in water.

From then on, we checked the barbecue every once in a while to baste the turkey and see how things were going.  Incidentally, we couldn't find a turkey baster (though I'm sure we have one somewhere in the house), so Cathy went to Safeway to buy one, and of course they were all sold out.  All they had was one meat injector, which she picked up.  It actually worked better than a baster because we could baste with it and inject juice into the turkey.

A couple hours in, I added a third chimney of charcoal, and that was all I needed in total.

About four hours or so after we started, it was done.  Here's what it looked like:

Not bad, eh?

We also made slow cooker stuffing and garlicky mashed potatoes.  My sister made sweet potatoes, homemade bread, and a couple desserts, while my nephew's wife (my niece-in-law?) made salad and another dessert, and my niece brought drinks and deviled eggs.  Everything was fantastic (except the deviled eggs, which I think are always disgusting, so I didn't have any, though other people said they were good).

In short, it was a success.

It was also lots of fun to hang out with the family.  Even though we live within an hour or two of each of them, we don't get to see them very much, mainly because they live an hour or two away.

Anyway, with an 18 pound turkey, even though we insisted that our family take some with them (they didn't seem to mind too much), we still had lots of leftovers.  Over the weekend I made a batch of my "award-winning" chili, substituting leftover turkey for the beef, but keeping the pork.  It was an all-white-meat chili.  I still plan on posting the chili recipe here at some point, I promise.

Cathy also made a damn good stock out of the turkey carcass plus some onion, celery, and seasonings.  Then she used some of the stock to make turkey noodle soup.  We also had turkey tacos.  And turkey sandwiches.  So many turkey sandwiches.

Fortunately, all the turkey is now either gone or is in soup or chili in the freezer.  I think I've had enough for a while.

And Now, A Musical Interlude

After posting a Tortoise video in my last blog, I realized this is the video I should've posted instead. It's not that the music is any better here than in the live video--it's just that this video is a lot of fun, especially for someone into photography like I am. Here it is:



Reading Materials

This one is going to be a long one.  Cue the obligatory "That's what she said" joke...

• Matt Taibbi talks about the UC Davis pepper spraying
• Naomi Wolf has "the shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy" 
• Joshua Holland says Naomi Wolf is full of shit
• Right-libertarian Ron Paul consultant Lew Rockwell criticizes conservatives who sided with the UC Davis police
• An open email about Occupy Austin by anthropologist and anarchist David Graeber 
• Even Martha Stewart has a sense of humor
• Five ways our generation ruined the OWS generation
• The ten stupidest objections to OWS
• Right-wing website reporters were beaten by NYPD, then helped by Occupy Wall Street protesters
• Occupy Eugene protesters targeted Wal-Mart on Black Friday
• In other Wal-Mart news: an older customer put a video game in his waistband to free up his hands.  In response cops slammed him to the floor, leaving him bloody and unconscious
• And to complete the Wal-Mart trifecta: if the cops don't injure you, your fellow customers will
• South Carolina cops killed a man with a Taser because he wouldn't stop his bicycle when they called to him.  The man was deaf and mentally handicapped.  The cops were there in the first place because someone reported seeing a man fall off his bike.  Standard procedure?
• An Ohio woman was assaulted, and the cops end up taking the victim to jail, forcibly strip searching her (some of the cops were male) while someone videotaped it, and then leaving her nude in her cell for hours.  Standard procedure?
• Miami cops caught on tape laughing about shooting an unarmed protester in the face.  Standard procedure?
• The militarization of the police continues
• Three for the price of one: Teenage high school student said Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback "sucked" on Twitter and was forced by principal to apologize after Brownback's office complained; student rightly refused; then Brownback ended up apologizing for sucking so bad.  See?  Sometimes news stories have a happy ending.
• Thanks to the Bush tax cuts, the average top 1% will get a tax cut that's worth more than the total income of the average bottom 99%
• Speaking of Bush, he cancelled a trip to Switzerland over fears he'd get arrested for engaging in torture.  Now if they'd only apply the same standard to Obama...
• You can't even count on "respectable" publications like Time if you want to be informed
• You can't even count on "respectable" TV networks like The Discovery Channel if you want to be informed
• No, it's not 1950, but sometimes it seems like it is.  A Kentucky church banned interracial couples.
• As if it's not strange enough that an Amish clan goes around cutting the hair and beards of other Amish people, the clan leader's name is "Mullet."  If this were an Onion story proposal, it would be rejected as too far-fetched.
• Tee-hee
• The benefits of being a polar bear zookeeper

In Closing

Do me a favor, drop by check out my friend Erin's new website, Cross Sectional Views. She's a great writer, and her posts are insightful and always worth a read.

Now here it is, your moment of Tucker (taken last August):

Rob

DW&F: Wine, Gourmet Cheese and Failure to Fail

Hello everyone!

What a great, if lazy, day. And who am I to rock the boat by working hard on an intro? So let's get to it!

Daily Win and FAIL!

Win: Wine and gourmet cheese


Today, Cathy and I enjoyed the last shipment of my Cheese of the Month Club that I received in December, which was a gift from her sister, Christy, and it was the gift that kept on giving all year long! We busted out two of the three cheeses from this shipment, one of which was a "Pinconning," a cheese named after the shithole town in Michigan that is located just north of Bay City, or in the area along the edge of the palm between the thumb and index finger if you're using a hand as a map as most Michiganders do. If you live somewhere else, you don't have the luxury of being able to display a body part as a map, except for a few places such as Rosebud, Texas.

Anyway, the Pinconning cheese brought up a whole lot of memories--which is not something I'm used to in a cheese--because it reminded me of my grandma's companion, Frank, who was essentially the grandpa I never had since both of my biological grandfathers died when I was a toddler. In fact, one of my grandfathers died on my second birthday, not that I really remember either of them.

Frank used to drive a truck from the Kraft cheese factory in Pinconning, Michigan, and he often talked about the cheese that he used to bring home after work. I had never tasted the cheese he talked about--at the time I was really only exposed to Velveeta and Kraft singles--but to this day I vividly remember Frank's stories of driving the truck. When I visited Michigan for the first time when I was seven years old and stayed with my grandma for the summer, Frank, who at the time was retired, was called back to work by Kraft as a fill-in. I clearly remember sitting on his lap after he got off work and commenting on his shirt, which had a grayish-black stripe across the belly from the truck's steering wheel rubbing against it. At that point, I remember deciding I wanted to be a truck driver because on his belly was irrefutable proof that he did something for a living, and the dirt on his belly was in my mind equivalent to a battle scar, which was more than I could say for the other adults in my life at the time. Sure, they worked hard as well, but did they come home with evidence of a large truck steering wheel? no way, and that's why Frank ruled!

The cheese also reminded me of my cousin, John, and my aunt and uncle, Diane and Dennis, who lived in Pinconning briefly. Just after I turned 16 in 1991, I visited them during spring break, and John took me to my first "real" concert: Van Halen (during the Sammy Hagar days). The three of them still lived there during a big turning point in my life, which was a year and a half later when my parents, brother, and I moved from Michigan to North Idaho. Not long after that, the three of them moved back to California, and all my ties to Pinconning were essentially cut off for good.

Yes, a cheese made me think of all this. And it was delicious, too, especially paired with a Three Buck Chuck Sauvignon Blanc, which the accompanying literature suggested (not the "Three Buck Chuck," but the "Sauvignon Blanc"). Good times.

We also had a Cypress Grove Purple Haze chevre, which went well with a Crane Lake (cheap) Sangiovese, again like the accompanying literature suggested. Although this cheese didn't dredge up deep memories from my childhood, it tasted fantastic, and the cheap wine from Rite-Aid actually turned out to be a suitable accompaniment.

Also, Cathy hit another home run when she made a batch of her homemade crackers! She is the only person I've ever known who makes her own crackers, and they're better than any store-bought Keebler Elf crackers by far!

The cheeses and the wine and the crackers mean only one thing: Win!

FAIL: ?

Hmm.

Today I can't think of a FAIL without feeling like someone who whines for whining's sake. Seriously, today was a great day, and I just can't come up with a FAIL. Sure, I could probably bust out some news headline about the Israel-Palestine conflict, or I could talk about Bill Richardson's apparent scandal, but these things seem to be par for the course these days, not some anomaly, and FAILs should be somewhat out of the ordinary.

No, today I experienced a FAILure to have a FAIL. It was a good day, and if you've been paying attention, you should know that I've resolved to appreciate what I have. That puts me at odds with the FAIL obligation, but I still think it's been a good resolution thus far because I've been much less of a whiny, cynical bitch than normal. Hooray for me! Of course, we'll have to see how long this lasts. Uh-oh, there I go again being cynical. FAIL!


I guess it could be worse. I could have a new, positive attitude and never post FAILs and just think everything is peachy. But that would be no fun...

Rob

DW&F: Smorgasbord Edition

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a great New Year's Eve, and I hope 2009 will kick at least three different types of ass for each of y'all. I'm thinking that the next 365 days has some pretty good potential, but we'll see what happens. My high school principal used to say, "Potential and 50 cents will buy you a can of Coke." We used to make fun of that saying (behind his back, of course). I think he would've had more luck if he used a different saying, such as, "Wish in one hand, crap in the other."

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions, mainly because I tend to break them. But I thought this year I might resolve to be more appreciative of what I have in life. As it stands, I don't spend my time thinking my life sucks or that it would be better if things were different or anything like that. I'm also consciously aware that I'm pretty fortunate in many aspects. But I do have a bad habit of when things are going well, I get used to things going well--to the point that I sometimes expect it. Expecting things to go well is just a recipe for disappointment. So I'm going to try to be more appreciative from now on. We'll see how it goes.

Enough of this blathering on and on about stupid crap that no one cares about except two or three people! Let's get back on track for 2009!

Daily Win and FAIL (Bonus Edition)!

Win: Family and holidays!


We headed up to Sandpoint and my side of the family all gathered at my mom's house on Christmas Eve. Above is my great-niece Angela and the enormous stuffed dog we got her for Christmas, which she, after much soul-searching, contemplation, and deliberation, decided to name, "Wilbur." That's her mom and brother, Micah, to the right in the second photo. Micah is growing so quickly that he's almost a real person now!

This is where not having kids pays off. We can visit our relatives a couple times a year and ooh and aah about how adorable the kids are, but we don't have to worry about feeding and clothing them, changing their diapers, dealing with them if they throw a tantrum in public, worrying about them 24/7, and being completely responsible for them and everything they do for 18 years. When we go to the grocery store and hear a kid screaming twelve aisles away, we can just throw up our arms and say, "Not our problem!" Win!

Oh wait, that wasn't the original point of this "Win," was it? It was about family, and it was great see the North Idaho crew.

After Christmas, we headed west to Cathy's parents' house.

This is Cathy's sister, Christy, and her wanna-be lap dog, Kodi. The two of them flew down from Alaska to Sandpoint (actually Spokane), and if you're a regular reader, you may remember them as being our tour guides during our Alaska expedition last September. It was also great to see them again, as well as Cathy's parents.

It's always a treat to head up north and see the family, and no, I'm not just saying that because a few of them read this blog. Win!

Win: Sledding down my sister's road

My sister, Christine, lives on a road that is appropriately-named Hellroaring Road:


View Larger Map

For some reason, Google Maps calls a different road to the south "Hellroaring Road" and calls my sister's road "National Forest Develop Rd 2431," but they're wrong, and hers is actually Hellroaring Road, I assure you. I think. Anyway, she and her husband, Sam, have a beautiful home that Sam built as well as a yak farm, all of which is located in the satellite photo to the right of the clear-cuts. Hellroaring Road ends (and the sled route begins) right near the upper-right point on the clear-cut area. From there it goes up and to the right, then turns somewhat down and to right, before curving upward again and hitting a big, nasty switchback (where the sledding route ended) just before hitting Pack River Road. Just look at the above satellite/map that I went through all the trouble of posting. It's the main line across the satellite photo!

Though it's hard to tell from the photo, the road is downhill the entire time, sometimes rather steeply (click on the "Ter" button to see a topographic map), and when we were sledding down the hill, it was of course covered with plenty of snow:

Here's my niece, Aurae, and her boyfriend, Noah, as they are flying through the air after hitting the jump that Sam built with his plow at the bottom of the hill just before the big switchback. As if the mile-long sled run wasn't action-packed enough! I'm sure these two will make some chiropractor very happy some day, based on the audible "thud" I heard as they landed on the icy road surface just past the jump, which was then followed by them moaning and groaning in pain (and laughing).

Aside from the vertebrae-compressing Evel Knievel impressions, the sled ride down the hill is always fun, and it's something I look forward to every time we go to Sandpoint in the winter. The best part is that there's a truck waiting at the bottom to drive you back to the top so you can go again. And when you're wet and cold, you can always go inside the house and sit next to the wood stove and sip piping-hot cocoa. Win!

FAIL: Snow in Portland?

Initially, we planned on leaving Eugene the Monday afternoon/evening before Christmas and staying the night in Portland with some friends. To make a long story short, Portland ended up with something like 67 feet of snow, and since they never get snow, the two plows owned by the city and county (one apiece) were not nearly enough to open the roads. Our only route to go east from Portland, I-84, was ostensibly closed between Troutdale and Hood River, so we ended up having to go over Santiam Pass to Redmond on Tuesday morning and didn't get to see anyone in Portland like we'd planned. To make matters worse, our friend who was going to fly into Portland for the holidays and see some other friends in Portland apparently ended up stuck in Seattle, and I don't think any of them got to see each other, either. FAIL!



Win/FAIL: The drive

After leaving Eugene, we crossed Santiam Pass without too much difficulty. Even though the pass got much more snow than I-84, those mountain people are prepared and know how to remove it. We were supposed to chain up to go over the pass, but the road was pretty clear, and I didn't feel like pulling over and getting dirty. So I just pushed on without chains or snow tires, and of course the Subaru handled brilliantly. The Beauty of All-Wheel Drive! Just ask this guy. Win!

After the pass and a quick pit stop in Sisters (the biggest tourist crap trap in Oregon), we turned left in Redmond and headed north up highway 97 toward Biggs. This was Cathy's first time and my second time ever driving this section of the route, so it was interesting to see new stuff but simultaneously annoying that we had no choice but to go that way. We hit I-84 well to the east of the closed area in Biggs (where we learned that the closed part had actually opened that morning and we probably could've gone that route), and the roads weren't as bad as they could've been the rest of the trip. Win!

Here we are traveling through the Gorge. I should probably be paying more attention to my driving than taking pictures, but what can I say? I like to live dangerously!

Unlike most people in Eugene, I learned how to drive in snow, which included my first winter in Michigan in 1991, when I put my 1987 Plymouth Horizon in the same ditch twice--the second time rolling and totaling it. That was a tough lesson to learn, but I learned it, and now I'm for the most part comfortable and confident driving in snow, other than the knowledge that there are lots of other people on the road who don't know what they're doing. Those people frankly scare the crap out of me. Fortunately, they decided not to crash into us. Win!

Anyway, we made it to Sandpoint in a little over 12 hours, which is not bad considering the drive was 568 miles (give or take). Tired and Hungry Win!

The drive back home was a different story. The night before we left, we heard about a "Severe Winter Storm Warning" scheduled for 10 am the day we were supposed to be leaving in North Idaho. No problem, I thought, we'd just be on the road before 8 am and be long gone before it gets nasty.

Wrong!

Apparently, the storm didn't watch the news report we were watching, and didn't realize that it was about three hours early, so it hit just before we left. FAIL!

This is what we ended up dealing with in Spokane. It was snowy, the roads were terrible, there were people going way too fast, there were people going way too slow, and we were hung up in morning rush hour traffic in Spokane. Did I mention that we were stuck in Spokane? FAIL!



We finally made it through the nastiness, and once we turned south on 395, things cleared up, and the sun actually came out a little bit! Win!

From then on it was smooth sailing weather-wise, but because we were behind schedule, we hit evening rush-hour traffic in Portland. FAIL!

Fortunately, we didn't encounter this car or its driver. We did, however, manage to make it home after about 10 hours of driving thanks to my insistence on the three-quick-stop-maximum rule. Win!

Win: New Year's Eve

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with New Year's Eve. On one hand it has all the makings of a great holiday: socializing, celebrating, alcohol, optimism, and hardly any religious leaders presumptuously trying to convince you of its "true meaning." But on the other hand, it never lives up to its expectations. I've had great Fourth of Julys, Memorial and Labor Day weekends, Halloweens, and even Thanksgivings, yet my New Year's Eves usually run the gamut from not bad to downright pitiful, but never great.

However, this one was pretty good, and in many ways it was just what I needed. We spent the evening at some friends' house, and six of us just hung out and played cards. It certainly was no epic night to remember, but it was exactly what I was in the mood to do at the time. I also discovered a new champagne, "Cristalino," which gave me the opportunity to tell anyone who would listen that I brought a bottle of Cristal.... ino. Win!

Win: Tonight's dinner

Cathy made a fantastic dinner tonight, featuring tofu parmigiana, angel hair pasta, and steamed broccoli:

It was delicious. And I appreciated every single bite, which also helped me follow my resolution. Win!

Well, that's it for my deluxe edition of Daily Win and FAIL. Tomorrow, I'll probably be back to the regular version with one Win and one FAIL. But I'll appreciate every word of the blog posting!

So will you.

Rob

Congratulations, It's a Chipmunk!

Hello everyone!

Well, congratulations to me! I'm now a..., let's see, well, hmmm, ok, so my sister's son had a son, and so that would make me a... great uncle?

Here's a picture of the little big guy:

His name is Micah Richard. He takes after his great uncle in that he's big, weighing 9 pounds 10 ounces and measuring 20 1/2 inches long. And by the looks of those cheeks, he's part chipmunk.

I've been an uncle since I was in grade school, and I've always been great, but I wasn't officially a great uncle until three or so years ago when Micah's big older sister Angela was born. Now it's doubly official.

Anyway, congrats to my nephew Ashley and his wife Monica.

Rob