My last project

So being inspired by the yule tide and the Datamancer website. I decided to do my first keyboard modification. If you can even call it that. It is more of an arts and crafts project. I mean what else would you call spray paint and superglue? My wife is a scrabble addict and a laptop user who is constantly bumping the mouse pad. SO what would be better than this? It isn't perfect but the old keyboard was a Goodwill find for 5 bucks and the mini scrabble tiles were found on ebay, so if you are going to take the chance of screwing up royally you may as well screw up cheaply! It turns out she likes it and it still works after a minor dis-assembly scare. So the beta test was a success! Next step is a real mod. Ohh what a catastrophe I foresee that being! 

Yaaay booze!

Last spring we (ok my wife) cut our blackberry brambles back...way back. Firstly because they are a nuisance and secondly because they are wild blackberries and are a little on the bitter side with lots of dead growth. She had read how sometimes a good cutting can add to the flavor even if they are wild. So she cut them back and watched them grow, and grow, and grow. So she next started threading them through the fence that keeps the great outdoors out of our lawn. Thank goodness she did too because they really filled out over the summer! So a few months ago the blackberry's along our woods were ripe and ready to pick. Sure we could have said forget it let the critters have them but where is the fun in that? Not to mention we are both frugal, to the point of being miserly sometimes, so why lose the blackberries to a bunch of birds who never ran a lawn mower in their lives?! So after clearing off a goodly section  we had a good haul of berries. Now wild blackberries have lots of seeds and these were no exception, but they were nice and sweet (yaayy baby!). So contemplating a bit I decided I would try something different with them.

Way back in 2009 we took a trip through bourbon country. Bardstown, Kentucky by name and found a little delight called white dog that we both loved. Growing up it was called moonshine but this is the good stuff! It is white whiskey before it is aged in new oak barrels (Google bourbon whiskey and you can see why bourbon is so lovely and why the only TRUE bourbon comes out of Kentucky!). So since white dog was not for sale at the time we figured we were out of luck in having any more the foreseeable future. You could only sample it in the factory tasting areas at that time. However a earlier this year I came across an article that said white dog was being sold! Hooray! So I went to the Washington State package store and went looking and finally found a bottle labelled white dog but bottle here in Washington State. HUH?! Well I am adventurous even if I am a purist and figured it would not be good. Turns out I was right. It wasn't good. It was as the French say, merde, so it sat untouched along a bottle of psuedo-grappa (from the same company). Until....

I took the blackberries and mashed them up and added sugar and let them  infuse in the white dog. Over two weeks it infused and was strained and sampled and re-sugar then left to age/infuse/simmer/percolate in the cool garage until tonight! We sampled it and it is yummy! So here it is! All we are waiting for is our guests to arrive in the summer so we can share it with them. Although a bottle is being reserved for my father-in-law who looks to be stranded in the far flung reaches of Switzerland this upcoming year. I think it will need posting to him by Saint Bernard...just to keep his spirits up!

Photos courtesy of my beautiful Bride!

Looks like Tamarind infused tequila is next! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

So Santa came down the chimney last night and filled the stockings. Everyone went to bed at a semi-reasonable time and woke up ready for Christmas! So we opened up most of the gifts and everyone seemed very happy with their haul. I know I was very happy with mine! The kids biological father came over and we opened the last of the gifts. Then everyone Skyped and called over favorite people all over the world and I made a very late lunch that consisted of breakfast. The kids retired to the X-box and engaged in a little modern warfare while the Mrs. and I sampled one of my gifts. A bottle of absinthe! Now I don't like anise but I found out I like absinthe. It is a very nice tipsy feeling without the drunky, muddle headedness of other boozes. I have a crush on a green fairy! LOL!!


So nicely tipsy we started working on pupu's and supper. It was a major undertaking that my wife pulled off with aplomb and fantastic results. Pupu's were spinach dip a sour dough bowl and french onion dip and chips. Dinner was roast duck, smoked turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, broccoli and brussel sprouts with a sparkling cider to wash it down. Desert was an egg pudding delight that was cooked by the #2 boy that was taught to him by a nice German grandpa! Thank you!! Now for a long nights sleep....after a longer night of cleaning up. Thank you Santa!!


And yes Mom I went to church last night.

Ahhh the holidays

So my Bride has been a trooper lately. Work has been more stressful than necessary for her and it is time for her to chill out a bit. Unfortunately it is the holiday season and 2 weeks of having the all kids around will probably be a mixture of joy and frustration. Teenagers are horrible creatures as a wise woman said! But you know what? We are going to look on the bright side of things and enjoy the holidays! As part of the whole holiday experience I had my first roasted chestnut last night. How many times in your life have you sung the song? I know that I have sung the first line from the song countless times…mostly because I don’t know the rest of the song. However I never ate a chestnut until last night. You know what? They are awful things. OK not awful but they are not to my taste. A little too…chest nutty I guess. Mushy too, but mostly chest nutty. Well at least I tried it and that is what counts! Never get so old that you won’t try new things, no matter how chest nutty they are!

So I must confess this is the first Christmas in a long time where I am looking forward to opening my gifts. Sure there is always that nice feeling of getting something, but the real excitement has been gone for a while and I just took that as part of getting older. I mean adults don’t get nice toys and shiny bobbins attached to gimcracks and geegaws! Adults get socks, and clothes, and stuff that is needed. Gift cards and the like so that they can go out and buy practical things! Being an adult at Christmas is a pain! Now don’t get me wrong my Mrs. has done an excellent job of teaching me to open up to the Christmas spirit! I am eternally grateful for that too! Now I get joy from watching others get their stuff and I can go “Ooooo look! I did that, I made that smile!”

OK, sure that is nice but don’t you really want to look forward to getting you own something nice too? Luckily I have a wonderful wife who has been working hard to get that excitement back for me. It has only taken her 5 years, which is pretty much record time too as I am a notorious Scrooge!! The best part is that she has put that holiday spirit in me just in time for me to get excited about something the kids got me. You see I have a big thingy under the tree with my name on it! By thingy I mean it is big and round and wrapped up and I have no idea what the h3ll it is!! I know it isn’t socks, or clothes, or stuff like that, it is a big ole something and who wouldn’t get excited about THAT?! Also I have a bunch of stuff’s under the tree for me! Smaller thingies that are just begging to be opened! WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!! Also my Bride has a big ole stack of lil’ thingies for her to open! So do the kids! My baby boy has his thingy in the mail and should be getting it soon! I am so stoked for Christmas I could pee my pants!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well it’s not ticking…….

So I found a round tin of what appears to be cookies on my desk today. Everybody got them but I don’t know who they’re from. Rumor has it the boss got them for everybody but I don’t know that for sure. I mean it could be an assassination attempt. Poot has tried to kill me twice this month by grabbing my foot while I am heading toward the stairs and once while walking toward the glass coffee table. If not for my ninja like reflexes my wife’s dog would have ended my life, in a manner that would have looked like a complete accident, which we all know is the perfect assassination! I don’t know why Poot wants me dead but I suspect it has something to do with a ball, or food, or a ball made of food. But that is just a guess. It could also have something to do with the fact that the dogs stocking is empty. Last year their stocking was filled with goodies well before everyone else’s. It seems to me the ole girl may be feeling a little left out and is trying to grab my attention about it. I should probably find a way to tell her that killing me is a bad way to fill a stocking and it would actually put her on Santa’s naughty list! Ok it was just cookies! Turns out the boss here bought a big tin of cookies for everyone and they are this really nice ginger cookie that are thin and crisp and very nice to eat! Hooray for the holidays!

Happy Anniversary

So we pulled off our anniversary. A little late but well done if I do say so myself. It was a beautiful room in Seattle at the Pan Pacific Hotel (sorry no pictures). The staff was very accommodating and very professional (example of that in just bit). So just to review things a bit... it has been a chaotic time over the last two weeks and we had decided to forego our anniversary until  a couple of nights ago things get settled down and my Bride says she could use a big tub and some time away from all of the mess. So we sat down filled out some Christmas cards and looked on the internet for some deal on rooms with big tubs. Things were not looking good and we were starting to get frustrated and grumpy when we called an end to the search and went to sleep with me telling her to forget everything and I would handle it tomorrow when she was at her swim meet. So after a few hours of sleep my Mrs. goes to work and I get up a little later to do some last second mail, gift buys, kid planning, kid sleep over at her dad's, and web searches for a room with a tub. At about 2 o'clock things are wrapped up on my end. My wife gets home earlier than planned (YAAAYY!!) and we work on getting the kid/teens handled. We get on the road at 845-ish when the idea of obtaining a bottle of wine becomes a good idea for later in the evening. So we do what comes naturally....for us any way. We stop at the Circle K and grab 2 bottles of Boones Farm and hit the road! 

You see Boones Farm is an inside joke we had a very nice dinner in Crete and I brought a bottle of wine and a bottle of Boones Farm (Strawberry Hill) and pulled out the Boones like that was a good bottle of wine! I shortly brought out the "good" wine but all the Americans had a nice chuckle. Turns out the Greek, Swedish and French were confused and wanted to try the Boones Farm, which we did. After multiple objections by myself it was tasted after dinner with such unforgettable comments such as "I don't think this is good but I like it" etc, etc. I wish I could have taken a picture of our Blonde friend as she sat on a low step, wine glass in one hand, bottle of pink "wine" in the other puring and drinking, pouring and drinking until the bottle was empty. So there is the joke!

Anyway we grabbed the Strawberry Hill and the bottle of Drano colored Blue Hawaiian and headed to a nice room in Seattle. We checked in and the staff was pleasant and well mannered however when we got to the room and settled in we realized we forgot the "wine". So we called to arrange to pick it up from our valet parked car and the front desk said it was no problem and would have it delivered, Now that is service! Now this is a nice hotel. A hotel fitting of an nice anniversary and designed to cure my wife of her ills after 2 rough weeks it is also much nicer than I would ever prefer to stay in. Unless someone else was picking up the tab. So here we are, slightly frazzled and a touch sleep deprived, when the young man from the desk knocks to deliver 2 bottles of Boones Farm and some tic tacs in a plastic bag bag labeled Circle K. He smile politely wishes us a good evening and a happy anniversary and hands over the bag. I had to tip the guy! The Mrs. and I both had a good a good laugh because....well of everything! Well the evening was fantastic and far too short but well worth it! I applaud the Pan Pacific Hotel and their staff for making a rotten stretch into a very happy memory!  

My Cinderella

Well earlier this month was our anniversary. The plan was to go out to Whiskey Creek steak house, still the home of the best steak I have ever eaten in my life. Seriously! Unfortunately there was a minor snag in the process that stopped the whole thing in its tracks. In fact between the comedy of errors  and obligations that was the weekend and a slew of messes that involve certain immature people in the general area of Silverdale our Anniversary was postponed! There was also the expression that an event such as that, so close to Christmas, makes gift giving a bigger pain in the toosh. Which I agree with but there was no way in the world I was going to say it before my wife did! HA HA HA!!! So my fairy tale princess and I will be celebrating it all at Christmas. However I still have her anniversary gift wrapped and ready to go in her stocking!

The tree!!

It is that time again! The lights are up outside and the tree has been assembled! And a very pretty tree I think! The best part of it is….everyone helped with it this year! No whinging, or whining, or broodiness….other than some bulls!t Emo music in the background. I can’t say that I am a Bing Crosby fan but would a little Elvis kill ya?!!! HA HA HA HA!!

A very nice surprise (2 days of bacon!)

So yesterday I was running late…as usual since I retired from active military service. My wife has been a very bad influence on me with her Mediterranean interpretation of time and schedules.  But one thing my brain did perceive was the smell of bacon. Now bacon has become this fashionable fetish of sorts. There are more websites and Youtube videos canonizing bacon than I can fathom. However I have to say I like bacon. I also confess that I did not always like bacon as much as I do now. So does that make me some bacon poser that jumped on the bacon band wagon? Maybe. It also may have something to do with the cut of bacon.

Personal history lesson here…because I love talking about me!

I grew up with thin cuts of bacon. That is just how it was. My parents were born in the depression and raised in WWII. Things were rationed and stretched as far as humanly possible to help the war effort. Americans knew how to say, “no” then and (insert patriotic rant here it should be easy). So I grew up thinking that bacon was always thin and cooked to be mostly crunchy. It took my wife coming into my life to learn that I like, I mean really like, thick cut bacon cooked to the point of being meaty and just under crisped.

So anywhooo I wake up to the smell of bacon with a slightly frantic need to egress the house. As I go into the kitchen I see my Brides oldest son cooking eggs. He wisely jumps out of the way, probably because his self preservation instinct perceives that my need of coffee could come into conflict with his health and physical integrity. My brain half interprets his mutterings and the words “a piece of bacon if you want” sink through the sleep muddied brain. Coffee in hand bacon in mouth I mumble “fank you” and head for the door. By time I am half a mile away I figure out that he got up early to make me breakfast! Now I have a dread of arriving to work late. It is trained into me. It just is and there is no changing it. But I was really touched by this, and while I won’t lie and say I went back to the house and ate breakfast, I did text him a thank you and told him how perfect the bacon was. It was too! Cooked just right and I appreciate that! Anyway I apologized that night for not being able to eat the breakfast he made and he apologized for not getting up earlier to have it ready for me!! WTF?! He said he just felt like making me breakfast. How nice was that?! So we finished up and did some decorating (more on that in a later post).

So today the first alarm goes off and what do I smell again? BACON! So I get off my butt and get ready and he has another breakfast ready for me! It was laid out on a plate with scrambled eggs and bacon broken up into it and a tortilla. I was stunned and touched….again! With coffee and a breakfast burrito in my belly this morning I was a very happy camper!! I even got a goodbye hug from the little one! Man you would think Christmas was right around the corner! Ohh wait……

Just kidding. Thanks Kid!!

Working for the weekend

Once upon a time I went to work after school, in a greenhouse then in a print shop. I graduated high school and continued in the print shop, at minimum wage or maybe a few coppers over minimum wage and then I joined the military. So after 20 years of military service I am back in the work force and working for the weekend as that 80’s band sings in their classic song “Working for the weekend”. Even when I was in the military there was a sense of working for the weekend, from time to time, however as duty days on the weekend became a fact of life that started to fade for me. Especially when I started to notice that I was having a better time at work than at play. I know that sounds bizarre but it is true because I got to play and be with friends while at work! It was great! Now that I’m out I have a job that I am enjoying. No it doesn’t have the sense of urgency that the military did but it is decent money and is pleasant surroundings, for an office. The thing is I have noticed that I am starting to work for the weekend again. The same thing happened with my Bride but slightly different. Same, same but different. Working for the weekend.

Now you may be saying “no ship Sherlock everyone does this”. To that I say, WHY? See once upon a time I found that I was looking forward to deploying and spending time with a great bunch of guys (yes, and gals too). My Mrs. also had a nice routine of work and friends that crossed over to a degree. In the movie the Shawshank Redemption there was a line about becoming institutionalized to a system and it was true was certainly true for me. When I went out it was with my military buddies, which is normal, but I found out that when I went on leave I missed the military surroundings and people. Don’t get me wrong I love my Son more than life itself and I love my parents and family too but I found I longed to be back in a military environment. When I went to Hawaii I found that if I wasn’t at work I was normally at my best friend’s house. My best friend was also at the same command and was my boss for a while. His wife was fantastic and put up with a boozed up buddy (moi) stumbling over with a rack of beer and eating dinner with them nearly every night. In fact I even recall getting calls from them asking me if I was coming over for dinner if I was running later than usual. It was a family outside my family. The best part was I could cuss, burp and fart with no fear of reprisal from my mom! My wife was able to socialize at work and her friends came in, then when she was off of work they were at each other’s houses and had a very family like situation there. It was a great thing for her too. So who the hell needed a proper weekend?

Now you see here’s the rub. The thing that my Bride and I are missing is our friends & families. Mine are scattered far and wide and hers are even father and wider. The same for our families, mine are far (about 2,500 miles), hers are farther (about 5,000 miles). So how in the world does someone make a new best friend or even new friends when that social environment is gone? There has to be a commonality, a link, an alignment of the stars or sometimes a bitter stroke of fate. Yes I can honestly say my wife is my best friend and I know I am my wife’s best (guy) friend. There is no replacing the Blonde (the “E” is European) in that department, too many tears and laughs and coffees have been poured out to replace the Blonde. That sounds weird and no it isn’t kinky. In fact it would probably make a great made for TV movie or feel good hit of the summer! But how does someone find a simple friend when there is a lack of commonality? You just end up with acquaintances if there is no commonality. I think people use the word friend too much now-a-days. The youngest obtains new best friends and new “loves of my life” weekly, ok monthly…maybe quarterly. But adults aren’t like that, nor should they be honestly. I’m sure we all know “adults” who are like that but I think they fall into the acquaintance category for most of us. But without our friends and families we just end up working for the weekend. So to all of our friends and family out there I hope you know that you are in our hearts, minds, and prayers during this holiday season. We love you and miss you all no matter where you are on this big old world!

Opera Chaotique

Poem by Charles Bukowski and sung by Opera Chaotique. The Mrs. and I really like this song...it is hard to put my finger on the why though....OK no it isn't.

to the whore who took my poems
some say we should keep personal remorse from the 
poem, 
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this, 
but jezus; 
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have 
my 
paintings too, my best ones; it's stifling: 
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them? 
why didn't you take my money? they usually do 
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner. 
next time take my left arm or a fifty 
but not my poems; 
I'm not Shakespeare 
but sometime simply 
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise; 
there'll always be money and whores and drunkards 
down to the last bomb, 
but as God said, 
crossing his legs, 
I see where I have made plenty of poets 
but not so very much 
poetry.