Chicken noodle

I have been learning to cook recently, like really cook not just make spaghetti. I have been experimenting with different recipes and stuff like that and for the most part I am getting pretty good at it. I can slice a whole chicken up in like 30 seconds now without cutting myself. this week alone I made meatloaf from scratch, a loaf of fricacha bread and fried chicken. this brings me to the problem I had last night - you see after my grandmother passed away I made sure that I got a copy of her chicken noodle recipe, which is really more like chicken and dumplings but it was always a family favorite and one of mine growing up. Last night was the first time I had pulled the recipe out and tried to actually make them.

I finished the noodle part with all the little old lady measurements like use an egg shell full of milk and stuff like that and reached a major problem.

This was exactly what the recipe said:

Bring chicken in broth to simmer.
Add milk and butter.
Add noodles.

I had no idea what to do, there was no mention of milk or butter measurements before or after this. I mean it could literally be 65 pounds of butter and three cows of milk or a teaspoon each.

 So I am in the kitchen, chicken burning, trying to reach anyone that might know what this means. Finally I got a return call from my mom who says just put in a stick butter and a few cups of milk - which i did, making butter and milk soup with chicken - it was still pretty good though.

Catfish

I just jumped into the shower and realized the luffha sponge my wife found in a box of her old things and then gave to me so that I would stop using her's is way creepier to rub on my naked body then I was expecting it too.

I just feel ashamed whenever I make eye contact with it.

Anyway, so after that never to be repeated experience I jumped out of the shower and grabbed a towel to dry off - the last thing to be dried of course being my hair, (which since I rock the ponytail I have to wrap up in a towel like a girly girl.) I wrapped up the hair and walked around the house for about five minutes trying to find the wonderful smell coming from somewhere in the kitchen - it smelled like southern fired catfish, a smell I love but a recipe I make only once in awhile.

I looked everywhere only to realize that the kitchen didn't actually smell like catfish but the towel that I used to soak up the oil the last time I made it did(two weeks ago). This was of course the towel wrapped around my head.

Apperantly two can play at this game.

 My wife came home for lunch and a group of co-workers had taken a little time to "do" her make-up and hair. They probably put some time into it but the only thing I can say about it is that it was off putting. I mean this in a nice way but she kind of looks like a transvestite. I am pretty sure she did this just to get back at me for the mustache look from the other day.

Tammy Rae Baker

Mustache

After a wonderful dinner I made for my wife I went into the bathroom and shaved of the homeless beard. My wife has been calling me "Boadie" lately because she thinks I look like a homeless surfer and it reminds her of  Patrick Swazye's surfer character in Point Break.)

See the resemblance? I actually think she calls me this because I do a great Keanu Reeves impression and she is confused.

Facial hair is pretty annoying for the most part, shaving is a pain in the ass because I have never been alert enough  in the morning to wield a sharp piece of metal against my throat without cutting myself. The only thing that makes it great is when you get to wear strange and interesting styles of mustaches. So I greeted my wife who was in the living room like this:

Hey . . hey. . . .hey pretty lady . . .

I thought it was funny, I mean there was no part of me that felt this was going to be a good look for me, however she was like physically disturbed by this. For two hours I tried to force her to simply look at me in a comfortable manner. It was impossible . . .there were several phrases floating around our house like "get away from me,"and "child molester."

At first it was funny but going into the second hour we were moving into a serious conversation about our relationship and how life would now be different now that she has seen me at my worst. I gave up and shaved it off. I could not convince her that I was still the same person but things are slowly getting back to normal.

The Grateful Dead

Today there is a world wide showing of "Grateful Dead The Movie," and even the lonely little Joplin theater shall be taking part. I don't think I am actually going, it would be fun but I really don't have any friends that share my love for the dead and I would hate to subject my poor wife to it.

I would call myself an "adolescent" dead head - meaning I don't go as deep as Bill Walton or trade basement tapes but I do have one or two of those bootleg cassettes which have passed through God knows how many hands to get to me. If I had to guess i would say that the Grateful Dead comprise about half of my music listening time.

I know what most people think about the Dead - It's just drug music that once the drugs wear off sucks,  or they like the little teddy bears and the song Touch of Gray but I don't care.

Music should be a personal thing anyway so why the hell would I care what other people think. They are just one of those bands that struck a cord with me and I am still finding tracks that I've never heard and enjoy.

Anyway, I thought I would post a few links for those people that hate the dead in an attempt to explain myself. Just a few favorites, I promise no "Drums and Space."

Me and my Uncle 

Ripple

Jack Straw

the sun

Inside the core of the sun atoms of hydrogen are fused together to create helium. This is were the sun gets it energy. The left over protons bounce around inside the core trading places with other atoms trying to escape. It can take up to one million years for those protons to make it to the surface of the sun - it then takes them seconds to travel from the sun 's surface to the earth.

Also, the average home computer has more computing power then every computer NASA had in 1969 and they put a man on the moon. So the heat we feel on our skin on a nice spring day like today has been struggling to get here since before recorded human history and I am using my computer to write a blog about gross food my wife eats or to show pictures of my cat. I feel bad, but then again you are reading it. So I am going outside - at least until I see a bee or something.

Yard Sale Disaster

I had my first yard sale this weekend, well just on Saturday. for the past three weeks we have been gathering our unwanted stuff and packing it into the garage so that we could do this. Everything got nice little stickers with clearly marked prices - hardly anything over a dollar. I had some cool stuff in there too like an old arcade cabinet, a karaoke machine, some power tools and a crap load of frog trinkets which at one point my wife was heavily into collecting.

(why?)

 I had put a lot of thought into this this  - I went to city hall and got the correct permits and all that
We woke up at 6 a.m. (on a Saturday) and I drove all over town putting up signs while my wife went to get some change and an egg mcmuffin. I pulled the clothing rack outside of the garage and started bringing out all the chairs and arcade cabinet and we were both super excited - about 7 a.m. we were finally ready.

Around 8 a.m. we both admitted that maybe it was a little to early to open a yard sale since no one had shown up yet. I always thought those old ladies tend to hit them first thing in the morning so they get all the best stuff first - apparently those are not the people interested in a lamp made out of the fender from a 1968 Volkswagon Beetle.

At around 11 p.m. I had to make a quick run across town and left the wife in charge of the sale for a few moments - It was during this time that we had our one and only customer. I call them a customer but really it was just a neighborr and they didn't buy anything - my wife just gave them some frog lawn ornament.

The city wide garage sale is like two weeks from now and we are going to try again  hopefully it goes better.

My Cake

This morning I woke up at 4 a.m. and could not get back to sleep. Since my wife, dog and cat were asleep and nothing good was on TV I decided to bake a cake and then decorate it to depict the invasion of Normandy.

I can not claim it is 100% historically accurate because there are dinosaurs which are acting as troop transports to the army of gummie bears charging towards machine gun pill boxes made of some kind of generic brand of tootsie rolls - but the spirit of the invasion is there. (However had the allies had dinosaurs delivering troops on D-Day I think things would have gone a lot better.)

The Kentucky Derby

The Kentucky derby is coming up in a couple weeks and I have not missed one in like 12 years. I don't follow horse racing but for some reason I have to watch this one race. Perhaps it is the fact that I know virtually nothing about horse racing or maybe because the past few have been disappointing but I think this year they should change it up and make it a little more exciting. Here are some of my ideas:

1. If you can ride it you can race it. Horses have had the Kentucky Derby for 137 years and they are not even the fastest animal  it's like using mopeds in NASCAR. Let in a few jockeys on Cheetahs or Bears. or even better let some of the jockeys be bears.

The Internet officially has everything.

2. Add a new track. Running in a big oval is boring but if there were a few ramps or maybe a loop then there is not a person in America that wouldn't watch that. Who needs a big hat or a mint julep when you are watching animal after animal attempting to leap over a pit of snakes.

3. Landmines would be too easy and I like animals too much to subject them to that, I felt awful when they killed Barbaro a few years ago. However if you gave the crowd like paintball guns that would be pretty cool.  If they think they run fast when you whip them wait until you see how fast they can run while paintball are flying after them at half the speed of sound.

4. No jockeys - dog races figured this out years ago by using just a rabbit on a stick. I don't care if they make them remote controlled or just get a bigger rabbit on a stick but jockeys are pretty useless.

So close.

5. Weapons matches - maybe not during the Derby because that would be going to far but I totally think before or maybe after there could be some sort of trident and net vs sword and shield on horse back type situation. It is an idea whose time has come.

Near CATastrophe

I forgot my phone at my dad's house yesterday and had to drive out of town to pick it up. I think about ten minutes into my drive I realized I really needed to pee. I got there, found my phone and was about to go into the woods to take a quick piss (since he lives in the middle of no where and that is one of the fringe benefits of being a guy,) when my grandfather pulled up in his truck. Of course this normally would not have stopped me but he had his new puppy with him and much like a small child i was completely distracted and forgot. On the way home i remembered I needed to stop and get a few things like spray paint to paint the front steps hand rail so I stopped at the hardware store  - it was on the way and I expected it to take like two seconds but there was a pretty long line and by the time i got out of there I was all but crossing my legs on the drive home.
Finally I get home, unlock the door and run to the bathroom unzipping my pants on the way. I open the door and look down to see this:

I was able to hold off before there was a disaster and moved him after I took this picture. He was pissed off that I moved him but that's better then being pissed on because I didn't.

St Louis Getaway

I am back from my St. Louis adventure and it was a lot of fun. My wife and I went up and spent the weekend trying to take in the sights and experiences which the great town of St. Louis has to offer. I thought  I would post some of my pictures from the trip.

Day one:

This is the hotel room. It was a nice place near the park and just up the street from a few bars. We went to an art fair and had enough time to hit the St. Louis Art Museum  but we only got to stay about half an hour before they closed  (which was pretty scary because we almost didn't make it out and I have heard that once they lock the doors everything in the museum comes to life.) I got to see some cool stuff like an Andy Warhol painting, a Georgia O'keef and some sort of giant wooden penis thing. That night we went out and ate pizza on the sidewalk and hit few of the bars and played dart in a place with a faulty bathroom door.

Day Two:

We woke up and ate breakfast while watching the St. Louis Marathon from the front of the hotel. then we went to the zoo and watched all of the animals (elephants were pretty cool.) Then we went to the Brewery - cause they give you free beer.

We met some friends from college while there and had a lot of fun and headed back home but we had to make one last stop for Jack in the Box tacos - which is as much a St. Louis experience for me as the Arc is. We had a great time. Most fun week ever.



Raiders of the Lost Ark

Raiders of the Lost Ark is on cable right now and it has been awhile since I have seen it, actually since that whole Kingdom of the Crystal Skull bullshit I have pretty much tried to push the entire series out of my mind. However Raiders of the Lost Ark really is a good film, I actually like all of the first three films but upon watching the original I realized  some things about Indiana Jones, namely that the world would be a much better place without him.

Strangely dressed for a knight.

-
Case in Point:
1: He is a horrible archaeologist
At the opening of the film we see Indiana Jones trying to steal a religious artifact from a native people that apparently have an amazing grasp of the hydraulics and some sort of fiber optic technology - because they built booby traps beyond the realm of modern understanding. He destroys their temple then gives the statue of their god to some french guy because he doesn't even do enough research to speak simple phrases in the native peoples language like "Don't shoot arrows at me this guy is a Nazi."

South American Idol.

2: He is kind of a jerk:
Marian, Indiana Jone's love interest in the film (played by Karen Allen) reveals to the audience that the reason her father and Indy are not on speaking terms is because of the relationship she had with Indy -because of this her father is looking for the lost ark on his own without the help of Indiana Jones and ends up dead - she ends up a drunk running some bar in the middle of nowhere all  because Indy couldn't keep it in his pants.

3. He is greedy
Somehow he knows that shutting your eyes saves you from zombie demon ghost melting your face off and after all the Nazis are killed  on that island in this fashion he simply takes the ark back to America instead of letting it go to Hitler - where he would have opened it and demon zombie things would melt his face off -  earth saved! No Invasion of Normandy, no dropping bomb of Hiroshima, and no Vin Diesel in Saving Private Ryan.

Even the little girl hates his acting.

Instead he tries to get his fortune and glory by taking it back to the states only to have it locked in a crate. He outsmarted the Nazi's up until that point there is no way "Operation Melt Hitler's Face," did not cross his mind. He had to have made a decision to try and sell it to pay off some of his outstanding gambling debts or something.

Laundromat misunderstandings.

I woke up this morning and found out the dryer was broken. For months I have been waiting for the washing machine to give out because it has been making an strange noise but to my surprise the dryer quit on me first. So I was left with two loads of wet cloths - one in the dryer and another in the washing machine, luckily there is a laundromat not too far away and i thought  how bad could it be to hang out there for an hour. Huge mistake.
I was not prepared for the crushing sadness one finds in a laundromat in Joplin at eight in the morning. Crying children, chain-smoking grandmothers, some homeless guy sleeping in the corner next to the soda machine and the looped sound of pac-man eating pellets over and over - it was something right out of a Burkowski novel.

I loaded the dryers and after about two minutes of that environment i had to go outside and sit in the car. There was a moment when I actually saw someone eating a doughnut drop it  into a washing machine while unloading it, then pick it up and continue eating it.
Since it took like half an hour and i now had a hunger for doughnuts i walked about a block to a little doughnut shop and picked up a couple then returned to my car and turned on the radio.
Since there was no baseball game i turned the channel to  a talk radio format on my XM, it was sort of like a Howard Stern type morning show and there was a bit they were playing in which the comedian Gallagher (the guy with the sledge hammer) was being accused of racism by a black comedian on the show - it was funny, i know it doesn't sound like it but there is something that makes me laugh when i hear some one ask Gallagher why he hates black people. I didn't think anything about this until a giant white SUV pulled up next to me - backwards of course so that the drivers side door was next to my open window - since it is satelight radio there were a few curse words - and since this was a black comedian talking about race there were a few times he dropped the N bomb. (In context it was funny - but out of context horrible and racist - like many Richard Pryor jokes might sound if told by someone like myself.) It was at this time Marcellus  Wallace climbs out of his SUV and is right next to my window listening to this program completely out of context - I immediately turned the channel to the grateful dead station - (no misunderstandings there.)

Does he look like a bitch?

I knew this guy  heard the N-bomb drop on my radio, a few times, and then saw me quickly change the channel - scared that I might have offended this 300 pound thugged out, SUV driving, gold chain and sunglasses wearing gentlemen I turned away and looked into my glove box while he was unloading his laundry next to me - it was uncomfortable because while this might have been the nicest guy in the world I was pretty sure I had started off on the wrong foot with him and the slightest look  from me might send him over the edge. The only thing i would think of was to ignore the situation and play with the car's cigarette lighter which was th first thing I saw.
The guy comes over to my window, leaning in to the car with his elbow and says to me, "you looking?"
I didn't even know what he was talking about but all i could say was,"I'm just waiting on my laundry." Trying my best to use an inflection in my voice that said, "please don't think I'm racist and be offended. I love black people or rather I really hate all people, but ceratinly I don't dislike black people more then white people or latino people. I voted for Obama and even dated an asian girl once." It was all in the subtext of my tone.
He sort of laughed at me, and walked inside.
I really wanted to leave - just take off without my laundry and hide out of embarrassment. I just stayed there and waited a few moments while he loaded his washing machines inside and then got in his SUV and left.
It wasn't until I had my laundry loaded in the car an leaving that i realized what he meant -

He saw a guy (me) in his car wearing a tie-dyed shirt listening to the grateful dead with a small black tube (my new cigarette lighter) in his hands and messing with it nervously - he came over and asked me if I was "looking" to buy pot. Which made it a little better because I would much rather be mistaken for a pothead then a racist.

sprinkler

I voted today and in as on every election day I am reminded of the sprinkler lady. Who is the sprinkler lady you might ask? Only my favorite YouTube video of all time - it's a few years old so some of you might have seen it but the rest are in for a treat. I am reminded of her on every election day  because she votes. You can hear it in her voice - she votes in every city election and every time i go to the polls I see these older ladies and think to myself "is that her?"

 Anyway, I love to confidence in her voice she knows what the deal is.

A hero, almost.

The other day I had to make a Wal-Mart run to pick up a paint brush and some tuna fish - for two unrelated matters.
I went for the paint brush first because it was closer to the entrance and after I had made my selection I headed towards the tuna fish- on the way I saw a small child maybe 4 or 5 hiding inside the shelves of the hardware department -sort of like two aisle are back to back but there is just enough space for a four year old child to climb in between. (by the way aisle is the dumbest spelled word ever.)
I noticed him and thought he must be hiding from his parents but I couldn't see anyone else around. No one was within five aisles.
The first thought was this kid might need help but my second thought was if I try to help this kid and someone finds me with a four year old child in a wal-mart I might end up doing jail time. I don't look like the kind of guy you want hanging out with a four year old - the beard and ponytail can sometimes give off the impression of child murderer to those who don't know better.

The kid wasn't crying or anything like that, and it wasn't like there was some guy with a beard and ponytail watching him while sharpening an ax, so i thought I will go pickup the tuna fish and if he is still here when I come back then I will do something at that point.
I went to get my tuna - $.59 a can - it was a great deal. Then i headed to the checkout counter and went home. I completely forgot about the kid in the hardware department until i was already home for like an hour.

I would like to think that if he would have been my kid then he wouldn't have run away in the first place but if he had then i like to think I would have remembered to look for him - however on both counts I feel I might be wrong.

My New Pants: (Apperantly I'm a child Part 2)

Some of you might remember a blog I wrote about a week ago about my wife treating me like a child and buying me a pair of blue jeans but not letting me wear them unless there was a special occasion - these would literally be my "fancy pants." I complained about this because I felt I was being treated like a child and it really wasn't justified.

Last Friday we were invited to a dinner party with some friends and it was deemed a worthy enough event for the "Fancy Pants" to be worn for the first time. I returned them in a less then new condition apparently so I felt it was only fair to admit that perhaps she was right.

Beer

This was not my fault, I spilled a small amount of beer on my leg after coming home from the party because I was distracted while saving the life of a nun holding a newborn puppy. I don't feel bad about this one because it will wash out easily and both the nun and puppy were thankful.

Bacon Grease

This was spilled before the party while I was making stuffed mushrooms to bring with us. I felt I was justified in having this stain because it happened in the process of making one of my wife's favorite foods and they were a big hit at the party. As many of you know the better ingredients you buy the better to recipe turns out in the end, with that in mind my wife bought bacon as fresh as possible -which means still alive. Anyone that has not spilled a little bacon grease on their pants while trying to keep a 400 pound pig inside of a skillet is simply more of a man then I.

 Flour

You would think this came from before the party while I was cooking, but it wasn't. This came after the party when i was trying to clean the counter in a crossfire hurricane while I howled and the wind and the driving rain - but it's alright now, in fact it's a gas. . . .(sorry the radio is on in the background and I got a little carried away.) Actually I think this is okay because while the pants are now dirty the kitchen counter is clean and I never eat pizza directly off of my pants so it seems like a fair trade to me. 

???

I can't say I know exactly what this is, I am guessing paint or maybe some sort of ethnic spice I am not as of yet familiar with. I know that it is hard and smells sort of like Cinnamon and tar.

 Paint

This one I am sure is paint, Titanium White. I felt it was ok to paint a mountain scape with oils while wearing my new paints a couple days latter because once bacon grease gets on them it isn't coming out right? This was my first attempt to paint with oils and it turned out ok, and as far as I can tell this was the only incident the pants suffered during the process.



Not bad for a first attempt.