Pork – The Other White Meat

We have decided to give the grill another go for 2007.  On Friday, we cooked some chicken.  I’ve pretty much got that down now.  I just have to grill 8 minutes on each side and perfection.  Well, I haven’t done pork yet and we has some pretty thick chops sitting in the freezer. 

Nancy threw them in the fridge to thaw out on Friday night.  Well it didn’t quite work for us to grill them up on Saturday since we had plans during the day and Nancy had to be at work at 3PM.  So, we decided to grill them up today.

Unfortunately, I’m not skilled in cooking pork.  So, I called my brother, Impwerx, up and asked for some advice.  He simply told me to treat the pork like a steak except that I need to tenderize the chops.  He told me to give it an extra kick, to switch the Worcestershire with apple sauce and to add a smidge of cinnamon. 

Well, I don’t own one of the meat tenderizing mallets.  Nancy came up with the idea of using the rolling pin.  Since the meat was still vacuum packed we could pound the porkchops as much as we wanted without worrying about making a mess.

We didn’t have any canned or bottled applesauce, but we did have those little snack pack applesauces that are meant to go in lunch boxes.  Those applesauces also had cinnamon already in them.

So we got out or handy vacuum marinader that we use with our Foodsaver.  Nancy opened up one of the snack packs of applesauce and laid it down on the bottom of the container.  I rubbed in the Montreal Steak Seasoning an both sides of the chops and laid the meat down on the bed of applesauce.  Then we put the rest of the applesauce on top of the chops.  We vacuum packed the container and let it sit in the fridge for an hour.

With the exception of my running out of propane half-way through the cooking process, it was pretty painless.  Those suckers were juicy and the applesauce combined with the seasoning came out rather nice.

We will be definitely adding this to our list of grilling recipes.

The Mighty Battler of Accumulated Sleet

The mighty battler of accumulated sleet

Well, as some of you may know, I live in Oklahoma City now and if you’ve been watching the news you’d know that we just got hit by some severe winter weather.

Nancy and I have been pretty much cooped up since Friday because we’ve had a constant barrage of sleet falling on our fair land.

Nancy wanted me to dig out the front stairs as it fell, but I felt we should wait until most of it had fallen. Well, that day happened to be today (Sunday).

So, I dug out my thermal shirt and my old snowboarding gloves and face gator and went outside to tackle the sleet.

Nancy had the intelligence and foresight to purchase a snow shovel before the frozen stuff started to fall. Unfortunately, after sitting on the stairs for a couple days, the weight of the sleet must’ve melted the stuff on the bottom because we had a good half inch of ice on the stairs with about 4-6 inches of sleet on top of it.

So, the snow shovel was kinda useless. Fortunately, I still had my landscaping shovel that we purchases when we built our flowerbeds at the Houston house. It has a flat blade instead of a curved one. It proved to be quite useful.

Nancy came out and took a few pictures because she needed some winter weather pictures to go with some scrapbooking embellishments that she had in her collection.

After getting the stairs scrapped, I had to salt them. So I went to the garage and grabbed one of the 2 fifty pound bags or salt Nancy had purchased with the snow shovel.

Well, it became heavy quickly. I had to walk around the entire complex to get from my garage to the front stoop. So when I got to the stairs, I couldn’t hold onto the bag anymore and it fell out of my hands and hit the ground. Well, the bag blew it’s sides out and there was salt everywhere.

Fortunately, Nancy brought me a large Ziploc plastic container that I used to scoop up the salt and get it onto the stairs.

Well, now the stairs are clear and I have a sore back, but it was a good outlet to blow off some steam.

Ramblings from the Road

Well, I’m still traveling for the job.  I’m still doing laps back and forth to Houston.  I moved away from the city but it’s tractor beam is locked onto my ship and won’t let me escape it’s pull.

I was sitting in the airport at OKC and doing my usual thing while waiting for boarding to begin:  Listening to my podcasts and people watching.

I must say that my observations are giving some credence to my theory that air travel and being a female business traveler don’t mix.  Or at least, they don’t mix painlessly.

I don’t know how many females I saw doing the 100 meter dash down the concourse trying to get to their gate before they stopped taking passengers.  Now, the male business travel has an advantage.

The advantage is what is often the advantage to when it comes to running…..footwear.  The man has his shoes.  Even though there are many colors, shapes and sizes a man’s dress shoe can come in they all have one thing in common.  That is they have a very low heel and flex very nicely.

This cannot be said for many of the choices of footwear the typical female executive has chosen to accentuate their business ensemble with.  I must preface this commentary by saying that I’m referring to those females who still try to stay trendy and hip in their style of dress.  You will find the female executive that must be a “road warrior”.  I say this because they are wearing sensible shoes.  But this is a hard assessment to make.  I don’t know how many female flight attendants I have seen that are wearing 6 inch stilleto heels.

I have heard women say that they must suffer for their shoes, but the suffering that would ensue from a serious sprain or, even worse, a broken ankle doesn’t seem worth it to me

What a pleasant surprise

There was a very loud knock on the door which got Belle and Coco barking because an unfamiliar noise can not be heard unbarked.

So I walk to the door and peek through the window beside the door to see who it is. We have solar screens installed which allows me to see out but the people cannot see in (as long as it is brighter on their side than mine so one must be careful about walking nude with the lights on at night if you don’t shut the blinds). What I saw was two middle-aged women and a girl that looked about 5-6 years old. I originally wasn’t going to answer because I didn’t recognize them, but I thought that it might be Nancy’s new visiting teachers. Despite the fact that we haven’t attended an LDS church in 2 years they still come by to visit her. I know how difficult it must be to come to a house where your message must be not so willingly received so I answered the door.

As soon as I answered the door I heard, “I’d like to give you a message…blah, blah, blah) and I caught in small print on a glossy stack of flier in the lady’s hand JW and Jehovah. Great. The Jehovah’s Witnesses.

My last encounter with a JW standing in my doorway involved a heated discussion that mainly involved my trying to get them to leave and they wouldn’t go. This time, all I had to do was listen to their invitation to some conference they were holding, accept their flyer and wave as they walk away. They did try to use the current situation between Israel and Lebanon as a selling point to convince me the Second Coming is near.

At least this time I knew better to keep my mouth shut. If I had said something like, “If I couldn’t accept the LDS what makes you think I’ll like your church?” I’m sure I would’ve never gotten rid of them.

Oh What a Night

Well, I didn’t get much sleep last night. I just couldn’t seem to get my mind to relax. Then once I did manage to close my eyes for a bit I kept getting haunted by the same dream.

I was apparently in college. What college I do not know. I was still living in my childhood bedroom in Durham, NC. A room I haven’t stepped foot in since 1986. A room that technically no longer exists since that house burned down a couple years after we sold it. Apparently, the owner cleaned out the fireplace and some of the ashes were still hot and they stored those said hot ashes in the garage and it caught the house on fire.

But I digress.

The weird thing is that Wally is in my dream in the role that he holds in real life….my best friend. The haunting nature of this dream is that we have final exams starting the next day and apparently, I have neither studied for them nor even taken the effort to attend classes all semester. Well, you see, in real life Wally hates college just as much as I do. But in my dream, he was not only prepared, but on top of everything. I kept calling him to try and find out what classes had exams the next day but he wouldn’t tell me.

Needless to say, my alarm went off this morning right when I was getting to college and walking into the exam hall (which I must say looked awefully similiar to the one I went to at my high school I attended in Singapore). I was walking in and not knowing what test I was taking.

I wonder what I feel unprepared for. I’m obviously under great duress about something, I just don’t know what

The great purge of ’06

So Nancy and I decided to put our house on the market. Well, in order to put the best foot forward with those people who are walking through our home we decided we needed to “declutter”. Declutter is a 4-letter word for homeowners. George Carlin said it best:

So when you get right down it it, your house is nothing more than a place to keep your stuff…while you go out and get…more stuff. ‘Cause that’s what this country is all about. Tryin’ to get more stuff. Stuff you don’t want, stuff you don’t need, stuff that’s poorly made, stuff that’s overpriced. Even stuff you can’t afford! Gotta keep on gettin’ more stuff. Otherwise someone else might wind up with more stuff. Can’t let that happen. Gotta have the most stuff.

So you keep getting’ more and more stuff, and puttin’ it in different places. In the closets, in the attic, in the basement, in the garage. And there might even be some stuff you left at your parents’ house: baseball cards, comic books, photographs, souvenirs. Actually, your parents threw that stuff out long ago.

So now you have a houseful of stuff. And, even though you might like your house, you gotta move. Gotta get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff! And that means you gotta move all your stuff. Or maybe, put some of your stuff in storage. Storage! Image that. There’s a whole industry based on keepin’ an eye on other people’s stuff.

I am by far the worst pack rat on the planet. Correction, I’m the second worst pack rat on the planet. My dad is the worst. He inherited the designation from his father when he passed away.

I digress…..

Nancy and I spent 4 days working on our “decluttering”. Of those 4 days, most of one day was spent cleaning up the flower beds with some new mulch and weeding. The other 3 days was spent “decluttering” my office. Nancy took care of the rest of the house. I had stuff everywhere. There was stuff crammed into the file cabinet, I had stuff in boxes in the closet. Most of my stuff was paper related stuff. We ended up filling seven 13-gallon garbage bags with confetti from the shredder before giving up and we weren’t even half way through the stack of paper that needed to be shredded. I was shredding bank statements going back 13 years.

There were a few bits of history uncovered. I found a “letter of intent” from a job I was offered 10 years ago. I have come a long way in 10 years. To think I thought 15,000/year was a lot of money back then. When I got that letter I thought I was going to be rich.

Boy did I throw alot of stuff away. I was pretty proud of myself. I felt like I was on an episode of Clean Sweep.

Needless to say, my office is unrecognizable. It’s actually useable.

After the 4 days were done, our house looks awesome. I hope that we can keep it up

Mother’s Day 2006

Well, it was an excellent Mother’s Day. I called my mom and wished her a happy Mother’s Day and we got on with our day.

We went over to my my brother’s in-law’s house and ate burgers and Brautwursts. Then we sat around and vegged as we let the large quantities of meat we just ate process in our gullets.

I always like going to to my brother’s inlaw’s place. They just open up their home and make you feel like you are a member of their family. In fact, during the Hurricane Rita evacuation of 2005, they let my parents stay in their house (Rita is a blog entry of it’s own).

I first had a sampling of my brother’s brats when I was up in OKC last September. Ever since then, I’ve been craving those brats ever since. I got to have my fill today. Unfortunately, noone in my house likes them except me so I have bid my time until I get to try them again.

Nothing bizzare happened today. So my blog entry will remain rather bland this time

Rollerbat 2006

I am currently visiting my brother and his family in Oklahoma City. We just got finished playing a game that brought back fond memories of my childhoold. It’s a game called Rollerbat. It has some pretty simple instructions.

You have a batter. He/She is responsible for hitting the ball whatever way they can. We were using a mini-basketball, but when we were kids it was played using a wiffle ball and bat. The ball is hit, you have 3 chances (strikes) to hit the ball before you are out. If you hit the ball and it is caught in the air without a bounce or richochet, the the batter is out and the one catching it is now the new batter. If the ball is caught otherwise, you have to stay where you caught the ball and roll it toward the bat, which has been laid down flat and facing toward the person doing the rolling. It is laid in such a way that the greatest amount of surface space is perpendicular to the direction of the ball.

If the ball is caught close to the bat (an arbitrary distance determined before the game), then then the bat is held upright so as to provide the least amount of surface space possible.

If the one doing the rolling is successful in hitting the bat with the ball, then they are the new batter.

Now the process by which the ball is caught reminds me alot of rugby. It’s pretty much everyone for themselves. Alot of bumps and bruises were had this day.

It was very odd to play a game, as an adult, that used to cause my brother and I to beat each other with wiffle ball bats when we were younger.

Writer’s Block

I’m having a run in with writer’s block. I somewhat attempt to do autobiographical stories with a humourous slant. I want to always make sure the details are accurate and that my recollections are clear. At this time I have a few ideas of additional posts, but I just need to figure out the best way to put it down on “paper”

P.S. Kuri, thanks for the add to your list of ‘Blogs of Interest’

The gas crisis of 2006?

Well, Nancy and I just got back from what we thought would be a quick trip to Wal-Mart for some bread and a box of drumsticks (ice cream treat) and some gas.

We knew the price was going to be steep because the marquee was stating the price was $2.97 /g and that was for the cheap stuff. We put more money on our Wal-Mart stored value card so we could get the extra 3 cents off of the gas

Well, we attempt to pull into the station and have to battle a bunch of crazies to get a spot. We noticed the usual gas tanker there filling up the station. I slide my Wal-Mart pre-paid card in the slot, choose my grade (the middle grade) and attempt to start pumping. But the gas was coming out in a trickle. Then I hear a voice from above. I now have proof that god is a female and she knew that I was trying to pump 95 octane gas. Well, apparantly, this gas station was completely out of all gas other than the most expensive (naturally)! So we had to put the pump back in the cradle, get our receipt for $0.97 and then start pumping again at the higher price. So I had to pay $.08/gallon more than I cared to.

Then to top it off, the tanker truck had one entrance blocked off and we had to try and back out of the gas station to get to the other entrance/exit, but everyone else was trying to leave as well. Plus, these people aren’t driving like one would expect them to drive in tight quarters. Instead, they are all gas and brake.

I haven’t seen chaos at a gas station since the Rita evacuation of 2005.