Shameless blog plug

I stumbled upon a blog that I though I would share called The Fanatic Cook. For those of you who use RSS feeds I'm shamelessly pluggin the site. :)

ON A PLAAAANNNNEEEE.....

Keep meaning to get around to this.....

On Aug 12th R&L called and invited me over to help celebrate (read "help drink all the beer") the graduation of L's brother from Bama. I didn't make it on time so by the time I arrived everyone present was thoroughly blasted. I drank some beer, sat on the deck (my favorite thing to do over there beside talk with R&L), and met a number of L's family members. The best part was that L's grandfather was present.

This guy is like 108 years old. He sat on the deck most of the night knocking back beer as if he were a different animal that could only extract oxygen from the bubbly contents of a good brewsky. He put all us youngins to shame. Somewhere around 1:30 or 2:00, he decides it's time to go to bed. He gets up, shakes my hand, and gives R a hug. During the hug (and it was one of those manly-over-a-handshake kind of hug) I hear this sound. A few minutes later, while R and I are just standing around, R looks over to me and says something to the effect of, "Was it me, or did he just fart when he hugged me?" I think I just about broke a funny bone laughing at that.

Took two days off work to go down to Mobile for another BJD Rib Extravaganza. Had a chance to hit the picklefish for old times sake on Thursday night (and visit Jan, which is always nice). The great Porter and I were up until sometime after 4am jamming on the 6 string. Spent most of the day Friday grinding working with MS Money and making a budget (thanks Mr. Porter!!) and had a visit with Dewitt. Saturday, I was back on the guitar and decided that I was so into practicing that I needed to bring the guitar to BJD to play. Porter decides that if I bring mine he must bring his and we have to play in public.

We get there early, hang out have a few beers. People show up, food is ready and we have a good time. It took me a long while to get the nerve up to break out the guitars, but finally I do around 9:30ish. Doug and I put on a little show to which Doug received two...that's right!!! TWO.... rounds applause (you go boy!!!)... for his solo performances. I was really nervous at first but after three or four songs, I calmed down and played pretty good for me. Bringing the guitars was a great idea in my opinion and I think Doug and I should start doing it more often. I know that I'll be bringing mine down to Mobile on every trip from now on.

After our concert (I called us "Doug and his trained Monkey"), Mr. Davis hooked us up with a private showing of "Snakes on a Plane". Free admission, free popcorn (garbage bag full), 12 people in the theater.......that man deserves mad props!

After returning to B'ham on Sunday, I immediately took a little trip to Gardendale to visit Monkey Boy. Found his apartment, it's about 30 to 40 minutes away depending on traffic. Had the chance to hang out a bit with him and made sure he was available as my heavy gunner for the potential beer-fest that may be at someone's house next weekend.

Gallbladder madness...

I discovered today that our Support Manager has had her gallbladder removed. She did not have a stone like I did, but instead had a malfunction of the organ. The symptoms are pretty much the same between the two cases, with the exception that a stone generally involves more pain that is induced more rapidly. As sick as it may sound, I'm kind of happy that I found another gallbladderless individual. If for nothing else than and understanding soul.

What brought this discovery on though, was that Big'J's wife was told today that her gallbladder was only performing at a whopping 11%. The doctors suggested removal. Big'J and I spoke about it a little and it seems that his wife sees it not as a matter of if, but when. So, it looks like my gallbladderless support group will be growing to a size of three.

It sounds sort of sick, but I wonder if this might provide a common ground between me and Mrs. Big'J? Over the past year or so I've been slowly becoming a little more comfortable around her, but still miles away from what I would consider normal. We'll just have to wait and see. My search for the perfect get well gift begins. Wonder if they make a gallbladder stuffed animal......

Home grown goodness..

Big'J's father apparently has started a "small" garden on their new land. It's so small that he barely has enough room to grow just about every vegetable (and some fruits) known to mankind. Yesterday, Big'J brought me nine ears of corn from this garden. Being has to how I am more experience in the consumption of corn vs. the preparation, I contact my resident food crazy, BJD.

After asking BJD how best to prepare fresh corn, he suggested I try fried corn and then we discussed proper prep and cooking. It was pretty darn tasty, though I think I should have added a bit more black pepper near the middle to end of the cooking process. Along with the corn, I had cut up some white gold potatoes in to small (< 1 inch) pieces in prep for boiling. I happen to re-consult BJD at this point in which he pointed out that I'm dumb and decided to school me on the following equalities:

Corn == Starch
Potato == Starch
Meal = Meat + Vegi + Starch
Meal != Meat + Starch + Starch

Having already semi-prepared the potatoes, I couldn't just throw them away. Instead, after some more discussion with BJD, I added about 1 to 1.5 ounces of EVOO, salt, pepper, Thyme (because you always need more thyme....get it......thyme.....time.....bah!!), 12 gazillion shakes of garlic powder (b/c I don't like to deal with real garlic yet) and coated the potato pieces. Dumped this mixture into a backing dish, top with parsley, cover and bake at 400 until fork tender, then remove cover and broil until you get a crispiness that you like. I must say that was damn fine eatin (or better yet, it was "Good Eats" - one of the best food shows EVER!!!). For meat I procured some butterfly cut pork chops. Tasty!

So be impressed by my culinary kung fu!

Nothing else really going on lately. I haven't heard any news about BEST in five or six days (which is sort of odd, but I'm not going to complain). A group of us from the office are going to see Talladega Nights on Thursday after work. Supposedly I'll laugh so hard I pee my pants. Big'J set up a Teamspeak server on one of his home PC's so we can chat and play Titan Quest without hugging the phone, though Titan Quest has been a beeyatch as of late and not let us establish a stable multiplayer session. I also added a new mod to X3: Reunion which adds something like 48 ships, new missions, new AI, new stations, and some other goodness. Given the mass amount of new digital crack, I've started a new game and am suffering withdrawals from being poor (that's what happens when you go from a thriving galatic empire making 3 million bucks an hour to broke).

Insert funny title here....

OK recap: Monkey Boy will be moving up here in the next week or so (today is his last day at Crapicus), Big'J's wife hasn't been feeling well and we've been worried about her, BJD is a database backing up master chief, I've been a movie watching fool, and there's a spider in my office that is smarter (and faster) than I am.

First the spider...(and if you hear me screaming in the middle of this post, blame the spider)....I noticed the little savage this morning. He jumped off the ceiling onto my desk as soon as I walked in. He (or she, but I'll stick to "he" for the sake of simplicity) is about the size of a quarter and all black/dark brown. At first I was jumpy because he came out of nowhere, but now he's all hiding in the cracks and crevices of the "Americana Office Furniture" (i.e. standard modular craptastic cube furniture). He's pretty stinkin fast, like the Lieberman/Clinton bashing on the next Grand Theft Auto game (official title "GTA 4: In Space with my Bitches"....ok not really). Of course for the last hour he's been hiding (like a Scientologists common sense....morons) and so I'm more paranoid than anything else.....what's that sound?????......Oh God, something is hunting me.........

Big'J's wife has been having some upper abdominal pain on her right side. Her description reminds me a lot of the suffering I endured when I discovered an alien growing in my gallbladder. The pain started on Tuesday, she went in to the hospital and they couldn't tell her anything conclusive. She's back at the hospital this morning for an ultra-sound appointment. As such, I'm hoping they'll definitively tell us if she has a gall stone.

Haven't heard from Monkey Boy to much. He's still wrestling with where to live around here. He and his fiancee (Cheese Girl) came up last weekend on a suicide drive (left work at 5pm and drove 10 hours up, arriving at 3am) to check out a few areas to live. Cheese Girl just about went into shock as she realized they were moving to "the country" (i.e. the region between B'ham and Cullman). Somewhere near Cullman she asked a local "Where's the mall?" to which the response was, "Ain't no mall here. We goes to Birminham or Huntsvul for dat kinds of stuff." Poor girl! Saturday night we met up at Chili's (eat your heart out Espen!!!!) for a few beers. After sitting with them for awhile and catching up I have to say that I haven't been fair in my opinion of Cheese Girl. My first impression of her wasn't very positive, but now that we're both a little more comfortable with the situation and each other, I've discovered that I was way to harsh in my original assessment.

This week has been a heavy movie week for me. I've watched Ultraviolet, Munich, 16 Blocks, Underworld Evolution, Firewall, and V for Vendetta. Ultraviolet gets categorized with the movie Elektra (i.e. the shit-pile), the effects were horrendous, story was ripped off, dialogue was almost a lesson in blithering, and the cinematography was done by a two year old. The only positive thing I can say is that I saw a lot of Milla's belly button.

16 Blocks (Bruce Willis and Mos Def) and Firewall (Harrison Ford and Paul Bettany) I would classify as good quality movies. I didn't find either one over the top or genre defining. They were both just solid movies that were enjoyable. I'll watch them again when they hit HBO.

I understand why Munich (Eric Bana) was considered for so many awards. I won't classify it as a fantastic movie, but I was enthralled (i.e. engrossed, couldn't look away) with the movie as soon as it started. It was definitely up to Speildburg's standards.

V for Vendetta (Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman) was good as well, though not as revolutionary as the original Matrix. Lots of good dialogue, up to par visual effects, Ms. Portman did a great job (she proved that she is a great actress after the Star Wars crap). I wasn't grabbed by the political statement of the movie that other people exclaim about. It hit me as more of a "man becomes monster and gets revenge" story.

Underworld Evolution was ok. The visual effects, story locations, and continuity with the first movie were very good. But I think this one suffered even more from the problems of the first movie: bad acting by key players, even worse casting, and crap writing. The fictional world they have to play in could be SOO much better, it just feels uninspired to me. My biggest beef is still with the actor (Scott Speedman) that plays Michael (the hybrid from the first movie). I'm not sure if this guy would know a personality if it bombed him Hiroshima-style. He (the character) just seems like some dumb jerk who is still too high to make sentences. Kate, however, is still looking scrumptious in the tight leather and when she takes it off for the "love scene" ...... well .... you don't see much of anything (except in profile), but she is definitely a fine specimen of the female gender.

Alright, I've been at work for several hours and haven't done a single productive thing. Back to the grind...

Happy Birthday to blog....Happy Birthday to blo...

Happy Birthday to bloooooooooog.......Happy Bithday to blog..

{sing to the tune of the "Happy Birthday" song, duh}

One year today!