This past weekend started out well enough. I took Friday off work because, well, I just needed a day off. I'd been putting in extra hours since before Christmas, and it was starting to take its toll. So Friday was my day. I wasn't going to do anything for anyone except me. Between work, and doing stuff for everyone else in the world, I just wanted to be left the heck alone for a day. It started out pretty well. The 5/8 took the kids to school. This is a miracle in and of itself as she doesn't normally do anything that I could do instead. So it was pleasant to roll out of bed around 9:30 in the morning, coffee steaming in the Bunn and no kids to deal with. I did need to roll some cigs though, so I popped in "The Bourne Identity" for something to watch while I rolled the cigs. The 5/8 made me an egg and sausage sandwich for breakfast. I love egg and sausage sandwiches. This is something else that doesn't normally happen (refer to above where she doesn't normally do anything I could very well do).
She brought me the sandwich on a plate. The egg still steaming, the grease on the sausage glimmering and reflecting the light of the room. It smelled exceptional. I took the sandwich and leaned back on the couch, opening my mouth in great anticipation and took a big bite, and SPLOOSH. Yellow crap practically squirts out of the sandwich, splashing my hand and covering my shirt and pants. Seriously, who doesn't know that when one makes an egg sandwich, the yolks should be fully cooked? No, really, who doesn't know this? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this little tidbit out. But I think I found at least one person in the world who couldn't figure out that an egg with a runny yolk is a really lousy idea in a sandwich. But I recovered. I went upstairs and changed my clothes, came back down and finished eating my now cold, and runny egg sandwich.
Saturday brought some bad news though. Some of you may recall that I have a hobby of brewing beer. I hadn't brewed any in about six months or so. Between being busy, and finances and what not. Just never really had the time (or energy) to devote to it. There are a couple of recipes I use which I really like, and I've had good luck with. I went over to Ale-N-Vino which is the only store in Topeka where one can buy supplies for brewing beer and making home made wine. I'm not much of a wine person so I try to stay away from that. Just don't have the palate for it. If I made my own wine, I wouldn't know if it was good or not because it all tastes kinda crappy to me anyway. But beer. Ah, beer is the most important beverage ever - next to coffee. The cost of my supplies nearly doubled. I discovered this is due to a world-wide shortage of hops. Hops, one of the four ingredients of beer. Not only does this shortage make the cost of hops sky-rocket, most of the hops I use, like Golding and Fuggle, are no longer available - period. In addition, I've been informed that it doesn't look like these varieties will ever become available again.
Now, while I have brewed some good beer, I've always followed recipes from a book, or retrieved from the Internet. I would not call myself an accomplished brewer. I don't make my own mash, and I simply don't know enough about the whole process to figure out how to make good beer with the types of hops that are now available to us. That is something I'm going to have to start experimenting with. It looks like it is going to be a long, arduous year of creating beer, tasting beer, and deciding if it is a worthy mix. It is sad really. Sad that I am going to have to drink so much beer just to find a few good recipes. Worse though, is that I'm certain some of the beer will have about the same flavor (if not consistency) of skunk water. But that is the price we have to pay for excellence and innovation I suppose.
I'm going to be keep much better records now that I'm really into the experimentation stages of this brewing thing over at http://thebeermakingblog.blogspot.com my beer making blog (which has, right now, only one entry from like 2 years ago. I have a couple of more entries around somewhere that I need to get posted up there, and I will, soon, I hope.
Other than that, the weekend was mostly harmless. We watched "That Darn Cat" (the original) which was an enjoyable flick. Strange how the boys moaned and groaned about it 1) being old and 2) being a 'kids movie', and yet, the laughed and enjoyed it immensely. Disney, back in the day, certainly made some great, quality stuff that withstands the test of time. I'm fairly certain that in 20 or 30 years, my kids will be watching these movies with their kids.
The other movie we watched was "Farce of the Penguins". And I have to say, for a guy who has pretty much been 'penguined out' over the last couple of years with the flood of crappy penguin movies and penguin everything else, this movie was a laugh riot. This is rated R and definitely not for kids, at all. It is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and stars the voice talents of Bob Saget, Carlos Mencia, John Stamos and a slew of others that I can't name off the top of my head. The movie was written by Bob Saget, and frankly, who knew this kind of stuff could come from a guy like that? It is irreverent, overtly sexual and sometimes downright nasty. All this, from the all-around good guy and nigh perfect father from the 90's sitcom "Full House".
Showing posts with label Weekend. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weekend. Show all posts
21 January 2008
07 May 2007
We're going to PUMP YOU UP!
I was a beautiful weekend in Topeka this past weekend. Well, at least Saturday was beautiful. Saturday we attended our first Mater Dei Spring Fling. The spring fling is a fancy name for a school carnival. I don't know why they didn't have it in the fall as other schools do (and as Assumption did before the merge), but that is the way they roll at Mater Dei now. It was fun. The kids had a great time. Little Sister ran off with her friends almost as soon as we arrived. She hung with us long enough for us to buy her some tickets, but after that, there was little use for mom and dad. The boys showed up late as they went canoeing out at Lake Shawnee with the Boy Scouts.
The Troop is planning on a three day float trip this summer, probably in June. The usually try to fit one in every summer. Two summers ago they cut it short because the temperatures were well over 100 degrees and there was worry about sunstroke and heatstroke. That year the oldest was with them while I was with the middle boy at the Webelos three day summer camp. That was one hot weekend. I must have gone through seven or eight gallons of water each day. It was so hot that even getting in the lake to swim wasn't much of a relief.
So the boys showed up quite a bit later than the rest of us, but they still had a good time. There were some activities that were geared towards the older kids. There was a bungee run, and an inflatable obstacle course. The parents and some of the kids seemed a bit dissapointed that there was no cake walk or cake shuffle. That had always been a great revenue stream. At Assumption we always had sugar poker, which was another great revenue generator. People would spend $10 in tickets to try and win $2 worth of sugar. The poker at this carnival was for cinnamon rolls. The rolls were good, heck they are delicious, but I simple didn't see people lined up to win rolls, like they were to win the sugar.
In the evening there was a dinner. Ribs ($9) or chicked ($5). We took mom with us as she was alone for the evening since poppy was up at the casino (natch!). The dinner was good, the ribs and chicken were excellent. The sauce could have been a bit hotter, but I suppose they had to cater to the greatest amount of people as far as the heat level of the sauce goes. We didn't win anything in the raffle, but we only put about 15 tickets in so that is not real surprise. All in all, Saturday was good, day. The kids had fun and nobody ticked me off.
Sunday. Sunday was a different story. The 5/8th had gone to bed early on Saturday night as she was simply worn out by the days activities. I stayed up and watched Saw III. It was ok as those types of movies go. I'm not a huge blood and gore fan, but I like to see what contraptions the Jigsaw Killer will come up with for each succeding movie. It always amazes me what people can imagine. I watch things like that and think 'man, someone had to think that up. Thank God he writes movies and doesn't act out these dark thoughts.'
On Sudnay morning I awoke and the rain was pouring down. Coming down in sheets. The light outside was that muted purplish blue of thunderstorms. The lightning and thunder were in full force. 'This is a Monopoly kind of day' I thought. 'After breakfast, I'll have Little Sister break out her Sponge Bob Monopoly game, and we'll just have a great family game day and play Monopoly all day, and crack open some rootbeer and have some rootbeer floats and just have a great day.'
Making my way to the kitchen I pulled open the freezer to find some sausage to go with my eggs, but couldn't locate it. I sent Middle Boy down to the basement to check the big freezer for some. "Oh wow, the basement's full of water." he exclaimed. I replied that the basement gets a bit damp when it rains. It always has. We have a heavy raid, and we get some water on the floor. Nothing much, but the floor gets a bit damp. After a while though, I thought I'd better go and see because he knows the basement gets damp, and yet he thought enough about the wetness to say something. I peeked down the basement steps and sure enough, we had about 1/4 of water covering about 75% of the floor.
Well, CRAP family game dat was just cancelled, and here comes 'family clean the basement day.' After returning from Lowe's where I purchased their last affordable water pump (Home Depot was already sold out of them by the time I got there), we set to work. Really, it could sort of, kind of, in a round about way be seen as a good thing the basement succumbed to the water. Some parts had gotten fairly rank in the junk pile categroy. So this was a time we could get all that junk out. We'd been meaning to for some time now, but just didn't have the motivation. The wet floor gave us the motivation. At least we weren't alone. Driving through the alley one could see most of the houses in the area had garden hoses sticking into the alley with water spewing out of them. Since the alley doesn't usually require watering for the weeds to grow, I am assuming they, too, were draining their basements.
And that was the weekend in Topeka. It was wet and messy, but it wasn't near as bad as those that suffered so tremendously in Greensburg, KS. Man, that place has been almost literally wiped off the map.
Technorati Tags: Storm, Flooding, Rain, Water, Carnival
The Troop is planning on a three day float trip this summer, probably in June. The usually try to fit one in every summer. Two summers ago they cut it short because the temperatures were well over 100 degrees and there was worry about sunstroke and heatstroke. That year the oldest was with them while I was with the middle boy at the Webelos three day summer camp. That was one hot weekend. I must have gone through seven or eight gallons of water each day. It was so hot that even getting in the lake to swim wasn't much of a relief.
So the boys showed up quite a bit later than the rest of us, but they still had a good time. There were some activities that were geared towards the older kids. There was a bungee run, and an inflatable obstacle course. The parents and some of the kids seemed a bit dissapointed that there was no cake walk or cake shuffle. That had always been a great revenue stream. At Assumption we always had sugar poker, which was another great revenue generator. People would spend $10 in tickets to try and win $2 worth of sugar. The poker at this carnival was for cinnamon rolls. The rolls were good, heck they are delicious, but I simple didn't see people lined up to win rolls, like they were to win the sugar.
In the evening there was a dinner. Ribs ($9) or chicked ($5). We took mom with us as she was alone for the evening since poppy was up at the casino (natch!). The dinner was good, the ribs and chicken were excellent. The sauce could have been a bit hotter, but I suppose they had to cater to the greatest amount of people as far as the heat level of the sauce goes. We didn't win anything in the raffle, but we only put about 15 tickets in so that is not real surprise. All in all, Saturday was good, day. The kids had fun and nobody ticked me off.
Sunday. Sunday was a different story. The 5/8th had gone to bed early on Saturday night as she was simply worn out by the days activities. I stayed up and watched Saw III. It was ok as those types of movies go. I'm not a huge blood and gore fan, but I like to see what contraptions the Jigsaw Killer will come up with for each succeding movie. It always amazes me what people can imagine. I watch things like that and think 'man, someone had to think that up. Thank God he writes movies and doesn't act out these dark thoughts.'
On Sudnay morning I awoke and the rain was pouring down. Coming down in sheets. The light outside was that muted purplish blue of thunderstorms. The lightning and thunder were in full force. 'This is a Monopoly kind of day' I thought. 'After breakfast, I'll have Little Sister break out her Sponge Bob Monopoly game, and we'll just have a great family game day and play Monopoly all day, and crack open some rootbeer and have some rootbeer floats and just have a great day.'
Making my way to the kitchen I pulled open the freezer to find some sausage to go with my eggs, but couldn't locate it. I sent Middle Boy down to the basement to check the big freezer for some. "Oh wow, the basement's full of water." he exclaimed. I replied that the basement gets a bit damp when it rains. It always has. We have a heavy raid, and we get some water on the floor. Nothing much, but the floor gets a bit damp. After a while though, I thought I'd better go and see because he knows the basement gets damp, and yet he thought enough about the wetness to say something. I peeked down the basement steps and sure enough, we had about 1/4 of water covering about 75% of the floor.
Well, CRAP family game dat was just cancelled, and here comes 'family clean the basement day.' After returning from Lowe's where I purchased their last affordable water pump (Home Depot was already sold out of them by the time I got there), we set to work. Really, it could sort of, kind of, in a round about way be seen as a good thing the basement succumbed to the water. Some parts had gotten fairly rank in the junk pile categroy. So this was a time we could get all that junk out. We'd been meaning to for some time now, but just didn't have the motivation. The wet floor gave us the motivation. At least we weren't alone. Driving through the alley one could see most of the houses in the area had garden hoses sticking into the alley with water spewing out of them. Since the alley doesn't usually require watering for the weeds to grow, I am assuming they, too, were draining their basements.
And that was the weekend in Topeka. It was wet and messy, but it wasn't near as bad as those that suffered so tremendously in Greensburg, KS. Man, that place has been almost literally wiped off the map.
Technorati Tags: Storm, Flooding, Rain, Water, Carnival
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