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What to do on a sunny weekend? Why, hose down your local spider web, line up hard drives and take videos and photos of them all, of course! It is pretty insane just how fast that hard drive head moves. Check out the video below.
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I had a lovely time tonight celebrating my friend Bill’s birthday. Happy birthday Bill!
Here’s a photo; be sure to click through to see them all:
B-Day Dinner Fun
As well as two videos from the night. You had to be there:
http://vimeo.com/27804406 http://vimeo.com/278045291 minute, 52 seconds
So, y’all remember how much I loved American Born Chinese? Mr. Yang’s latest is Level Up and I just finished it. It’s great! Not quite as good as ABC, but it stands on its own.
There were a couple things about this book that resonated with me. The first is the addictive behavior of a young kid playing a video game. And not just any video game, but the video games my generation grew up on: NES, Super Mario Brothers, Zelda and the like. I actually wasn’t that good at these games back in the day, but I wasted hours down at Freeway Variety, the local five and dime store, watching my friends play (oddly the only mention of Freeway online is the glossary for a movie from some guys who grew up in my “hood”). To this day there’s still a few friends who I can say, “Elf needs food” and they’ll finish the saying with, “badly!”.
The second thing that resonated with me was that at that age, I read a lot of comic books. I would go to Comic Relief (clearly I haven’t been in a while, I just found out they’re closed, R.I.P.), go around the corner and by two slices from Arinell Pizza (it was 1/2 the size back in my day. Really!) and sit and read comics. That same night I’d go home and read every comic I’d gotten that day. Then I’d re-read them. How does this tie into Level Up? Well, I just couldn’t wait to start, let alone finish, the graphic novel, so I sat and read it as fast as I could, just like back in my salad days. Just like the protagonist in the book and his video games.
One big difference between eating Arinell’s pizza or 10 rolls of Smarties ’til I’m sick while I read comics and graphic novels, is now I’m all grown up! I can have adult drinks while I read. Ya know, like Bees Knees! My wife recommended a recipe from Not without Salt. Bees knees are tasty! Oddly, I think I might try the next ones with a bit of rosemary:
NWOS suggests doing the honey syrup like simple syrup: 1 to 1 of honey to water, bring to simmer, let cool and use. However, I cheated and just did the 1 to 1 measurement using piping hot water, and then stirring the bejeesus out of it. Worked fine and no dirty pan.
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Well, OK, not all three together. First up, while doing dishes some hot water hit some congealed butter at the bottom of a Pyrex. The butter melted, but not into tiny particles, but into larger circles. It was memorizing. Well, it was for dorks like me, have a looksee:
http://vimeo.com/23070136Now on to the tasty Vodka. This is slight variation on the standard Cosmo:
The best part? I’d tried to do the same with tripple sec and a lemon the night before and my super cool wife bought me the right proper Cointreau and a lime. I came home to find this (see first pic) which I had to make into a tasty drink using the above proportions:
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Wow! I doubt I’m the first to discover this, but a spicy Martini is damn tasty. Here’s how it went: Our friend from twtitw was over and had brought a batch of his tasty Pickled Carrots. The next day I was enjoying the last few carrots and paused. “Hmmm, you know what would be good?”, I thought aloud. “A spicy martini with the dregs of the pickled carrot juice!”. Indeed, it’s true.
I started by taking the recipe from Chronicle Books’, “Mini Bar: Vodka“:
Pour the two ingredients over ice in a shaker, shake, decant into an iced glass and add in twist (w00t!) or olives (gross).
My version is the same, but instead of vermouth, I used the pickle juice and instead of a twist I used some of the jalapenos. The end result is oh my, just so tasty! I’m not sure why I’m adding these photos, they’re pretty bland and poorly lit.
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These photos were taken over a 24 hour period. Though I didn’t know when I started with the sunset last night (first up below), these photos very much ended up being an homage to my friend Steven and his blog. Primarily I appreciate his pause in the day to take photos of the lake and reminder that your devices are not your master.
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My in-laws have an awesome back yard and against their above ground pool I found a mom and her baby spiders hanging out in their web. After finding an improv light source of an upside-down steel dog bowl for a mirror and a watering can as the mirror tripod, I had an impromptu photo shoot. Only four or five came out OK. I aspired to make them as good as Hans’, but no luck. Where’s my DSLR and macro lense?!
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The wife busted this dish out a few nights ago. Tasty times!
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Some folks think that you need to get those little packets of mix to make a good cup of cocoa. They’re wrong! Here’s how we do it at home:
Ingredients:
Steps:
Enjoy! (ostensibly the 4th step ;)
