Taking Care of Business

posted in: Random Musings - No Comments

05.10.12 2:30 pm

I’m not afraid to admit that I am not always the most industrious person.  Truthfully, I like to have fun so for me its easy to let things that I should take care of, fall by the wayside.  However, its getting to a point where it really is starting to have an effect on my life.  So, now I am faced with a situation where I have a bunch of weekend projects that need to be taken care of this weekend.  Its nothing super serious but when you let a bunch of two hour projects build up you get put in a situation where you have to devote a 3 day weekend to taking care of those projects.  So, that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend, spending three days taking care of projects that I should have been keeping up on all along.

 

Happy Cinco De Mayo

posted in: Food - No Comments

05.05.12 10:03 am

Margarita’s and Mexican food are the order of the day.  I have no idea what Cinco De Mayo is a celebration of but I do know I am supposed to drink lots of Cerveza and Margarita’s.  It also gives me an excuse to get in the kitchen to make burrito’s and my special salsa.  Well, the salsa isn’t all that special but my girlfriend and myself both really like it so I guess it’s good enough.

I think the secret to my salsa is the use of Habanero peppers, which to my knowledge are some of the hottest peppers you can buy.  I put them in the food processor and pulse them extremely fine so they get spread evenly through the salsa.  What you don’t want to happen is for someone to get a mouthful of pepper chunks.  I find that pulsing them almost to a puree gives me a better ability to spread everything out ensuring that no one gets an overwhelming amount of heat.

My First Attempt at a Pulled Pork Roast

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05.01.12 2:03 pm

I’m making an attempt at making pulled pork on the barbeque grill.  I figure the weather is nice and they had pork roast on sale at the grocery store so what better time than now to give it a shot.  I pulled a recipe off of the food network website and figured I would adapt it for outside purposes.  Now, I’m kind of new to smoking food so I’m sure it won’t turn out all that great but the good news is I seriously doubt anything cooked in a smoker could ever actually be bad.

They say most of what we call barbeque is actually grilling and true barbeque has to be cooked low and slow.  You see, that’s the key to barbeque being melt in your mouth tender it has to be cooked at a low temperature for a long period of time.  I don’t think I marinated the meat as long as I should have but I don’t think this will have that large of an impact.  While perfect barbeque probably needs every step to be performed meticulously, this is my first foray into smoking a pork roast so its understandable if it isn’t perfect.  Now I just need the patience to wait the requisite 8 hours for it to be cooked.

The NFL Draft

posted in: Sports - No Comments

04.26.12 6:00 pm

NFL draft time, so what that means is I don’t want to be bothered.  I look myself in my house with two televisions (NFL network and ESPN), a laptop and smartphone.  I’m probably more fanatical about the NFL draft than 99 percent of the people out there but its a healthy obsession.  My girlfriend thinks its kind of weird but she understands it so she gives me the space I need.  Of course I have to make it up to her when that three day period is over but there is give and take with everything.

Happy Birthday Fenway

posted in: Sports - No Comments

04.21.12 6:59 pm

I just want to take a minute to wish Happy Birthday to Fenway Park in Boston.  Although I am not a Red Sox fan I love historic ballparks and when it comes to that, there isn’t one that sits above Fenway.  In a world that is constantly focused on bigger, newer and better its always good to see something old and great.  Particularly in sports where teams are always lobbying for new stadiums with huge jumbotrons and luxury boxes.  I’m also a big fan of Wrigley Field which is of course another old stadium.  Now, I do like how the newer baseball stadiums they are building like PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia are being built to resemble older stadiums.  They obviously don’t have the old school ambiance of the legendary parks but I applaud them for trying.

The Sinking of the Titanic

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04.14.12 11:40 pm

On this date 100 years ago the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and sank.  To this day it is probably the most famous maritime tragedy in history.  It also changed the way safety is looked at on ships.  I like to go on cruise vacations and during those vocations there are various safety drills and rules that need to be observed.  Some of these rules are annoyances and no one wants to interupt their vacation to do a muster drill, no matter how brief.  However, I understand the importance of these drills and where they all got their beginnings.  A couple of months ago when the Costa Concordia sank we saw what happens when safety regulations are strictly observed.  That too led to a re-examination of maritime safety regulations which will also lead to safer ships.  Just as the sailing world hasn’t seen a tragedy the magnitude of the sinking of the Titanic since 1912 lets hope the sinking of the Concordia leads to 100 more years of relative safety.

Snoring Pets

posted in: Pets - No Comments

04.08.12 2:22 pm

I can’t believe how loud my cat snores.  She is a pretty large cat, I’d say she weighs about 17 pounds but still she sound like a human being.  Its actually pretty cute but also very weird when you are sitting there watching television and you hear snoring coming from across the room.  I especially like it when company comes over and they hear it.  I always pretend like I don’t hear anything because it drives them crazy.  I also have a dog that snores but he weighs 150 pounds so its no wonder that he sounds like a truck driver that hasn’t slept in 3 days when he snores. You can hear him even when he is on a complete different level of the house.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2

posted in: Gadgets and Such - No Comments

04.03.12 3:10 pm

I was checking out the new Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 and am really impressed.  I haven’t yet jumped into the tablet market since I don’t want to spend 500 dollars for an iPad and haven’t really been blown away by anything else.  Well, this tablet looks like it may be a game changer.  Obviously the specs aren’t up to the standards the iPad has set but the price point is only about 50% of what it costs.  To me this is definitely something that needs to be taken into consideration because I’m not made of money.  The question is can it give me enough performance that I won’t find it lacking.  The only thing worse than paying for an overpriced gadget is paying for a gadget that doesn’t do what you expect it to do.  I think before I make a commitment I will wait to read some more reviews and maybe then get a hands on to see if the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 fits my requirements and expectations.

Starting My Own Business

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03.28.12 6:25 pm

For quite a while I’ve had an idea in my head for a business.  I guess you could call it a travel concierge business that would help people deal with some of the headaches of traveling.  What I mean is helping with things like getting a dinner reservation, setting up a tour or maybe finding a driver for the day.  It would be area specific since I don’t believe in trying to boil the ocean.  But, expansion wouldn’t be out of the question later on down the road.  Now, interestingly enough today in USA today I read an article about how these types of services are really proliferating and thriving.  Maybe its time for me to dust off that old business plan and go into business for myself.

Sean Peyton Suspended

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03.23.12 3:05 pm

 

Looks like the Saints will have some issues when the season starts off.  Its kind of hard to be an effective team when your coach gets suspended for a year.  In fact, I can’t remember ever hearing about a coach getting suspended for anything and certainly nothing to the extent that Sean Payton was suspended.  For those of you who don’t know it was found out that the New Orleans Saints had a system in place for rewarding players who injured players on the opposing team.  This “Bounty” program was implemented and administered by the coaching staff.  Obviously this goes against the rules of the NFL and because of that 3 coaches including the head coach of the Saints was suspended.  In addition the GM of the team was suspended since he was told to stop that program but kept it going after the warning.