Bringing the Drama

this weekend i pretty much stayed busy and it was great. friday was one of my fridays off, so i went and saw The Bourne Ultimatum (awesome) by myself. i think the last movie i had gone to see by myself was “The Life Aquatic”, so it had been a while. anyway, for a 1:25 pm movie there were about 15 people in the theatre. the movie was great, i really liked it. i then drove into town to get a new inspection sticker. the only place in town i know to get inspection stickers is this mechanics’ place where this old man does the inspection. i actually wondered the night before if there was another guy there, i’d be wondering where the old man had gone. the guy had been there since i can remember going with my parents. anyway, i went, and the old man was there, and did my inspection. i wanted to tell him “i’m glad you’re still here”, but i figured he wouldn’t want to know “because last night i thought you might have died since last year”. i was happy to drive away with a sticker that says 08 08….since it expires next year. word.

saturday i went with jacob to watch soccer at a pub in NOLA. it was pretty fun….the drinking at 9 am was weird, but we were able to fit in with the rest of the soccer crowd. the team i have become a novice fan of, Arsenal, won their game 1-0. i watched it with a couple of other Arsenal fans who were more hard core than I was. when the guy next to me started citing old players, and why Arsenal isn’t as good as in years past, i just nodded along like i knew he was talking about….then i took a sip of Guinness. i’ll be sure to go back, and then i can say “well yeah, remember that game against Man City they won 1-0?”

also, in job news….i had gotten an email last month for a job opening (with the same company) in Virginia, so i sent my resume that afternoon. the job seemed pretty interesting, and i figured ‘what the heck?’. Thursday i got back from lunch and had a voice mail on my phone. it was a guy from Virginia who wanted to set up an interview. so i called back, and scheduled the interview for that afternoon. the hour between setting it up and the interview was hard to concentrate. the phone interview went well, but phone interviews are tough because even though i knew i was being genuinely excited about the job, i thought “this answer sounds like a canned answer over the phone”. i think i probably said ‘awesome’ 15 times, so i probably could have used a thesaurus. plus he couldn’t see my facial expressions either….such is the disadvantage of the phone interview. talking to the guy though, it sounds like a job i would LOVE, so i’m hoping the job comes through. i had thought about it one night last week, just how awesome if it would be to get the job, just off of the generic description that i had sent my resume off of. after hearing more details of it, it would really let me tap some creativity and do more working with people instead of all math and computers. so for the next week, i’ll be pretty anxious.

AND to top it all off….the Pecan Ale was spotted over the weekend. i picked up a sixer last night, and tasted it today. i give it a thumbs up.

last week sometime, Amazon had this crazy sale on a set of knives. They were KitchenAid knives on sale for $30. I quickly emailed Kari to find out if it was a good deal. The only knives i have are the ones that came with my “all silverware in a box” from Walmart that I bought when I moved into my house. She said they were a good deal if I cut things in my kitchen, which I do, like meat, fish, vegetables, etc. I bought the knives and they came today. The box was dented up, but the contents came out of the box okay, which is the most important thing. The red handles are cool, and the sweet looking knife block looks good in the kitchen. Thanks for the advice Kari!

i had a ridiculous day at work. basically the problem is, i’m trying to work with this computer program to do analysis, but i don’t know enough about it to really do things fast. i was kind of thrown into the fire with it, and it’s been frustrating. i’ve had to ask people every 10 minutes almost to help me do simple things like change the colors or the views. fortunately getting help hasn’t been a problem, but i hate having to ask for it all the time. plus there’s this creepy guy at work who’s starting to work in the new group i’m starting to work in, and he snuck up on me today while i was typing something. i sit with my back to the area where people walk at the end of a hall type thing, and usually i can hear people coming, but not this guy. he kind of has this arrogance about him that i don’t like too much. i think he means well, but he doesn’t always seem that way. hopefully things will improve tomorrow, because i didn’t have much of a good day today.

i went and ran errands tonight, and stopped off at the store to pick up some bread and replenish my beer drawer. i saw the sign below:

Jacob and I had gone to the Brew Pub a few months ago and had this and it was awesome. however, because it was their Select, it was only available at the Brew Pub. now though, they will be mass producing their sweet pecan nectar for the immediate regional area to consume. glory glory hallelujah!

and now a story from Nashville, that will explain the current picture caption on my flickr. Saturday afternoon, Trey and I took a ride over to the Country Music Hall of Fame, which btw, is awesome. I had been back in 2003 and Trey as a lifelong resident of the Nashville metro area, had never been. The current rotating exhibit was for Ray Charles and his connection with country music, which was a lot more than I had ever known. On the way into the HOF, we saw some tents set up where some food lines were being put together. I thought since the Titans were playing that night, that all of it had something to do with a company renting out some space and promoting stuff. How wrong we were. What awaited us outside will forever stay with us.

We emerged from the HOF (the building in the background of the picture), with our John Wayne coffee mugs to find the entire area blanketed with people dressed in country garb.

We had parked two blocks away on the other side of this giant crowd of people, so we calmly walked underneath the caution tape and through the crowd. We weren’t going to try to get any of the food or anything, because we didn’t know what exactly was going on. We asked one of the first event staff people we saw and the discussion went like this:

Trey: What is all this?
Event Staffer (looking for a badge on us then not seeing one): How’d you get back here?
Trey: We’re not trying to get food, we just want to know what’s going on?
Event Staffer: I can’t tell you. Keep walking.

Two seconds later as we walk away these two ladies and a guy come up to us. The first lady looks at us and whispers “I can tell you the secret.” I whispered back “What is it?” She told us the organization was what we thought at the time Shockley. I think she was expecting us to know what it was. When we looked at her like we didn’t, she said they were the biggest health product in the country. Again, blank stares. She then gave us her card with her info on it. Apparently whatever she was selling has been featured on Oprah. We told her we wouldn’t tell anyone, but she said “TELL EVERYONE!”

After they left, we continued walking still not knowing what the hell was going on. Trey still had to know, so he found a guy with a badge and several ribbons (apparently a successful employee). As Trey walked up, I saw the guy look for a badge on Trey. I stood in the street and took the above picture and I thought someone was going to come accost me for taking it. Anyway, the conversation with Trey and the guy goes as follows (if Trey is reading this, feel free to correct me buddy!)

Trey: Hey, what is all this?
Guy in Black Cowboy Shirt: Shockley….we’re having our convention in Nashville this year and it’s a country theme. Last year they rented out AT&T park in Frisco and it was a baseball theme.
Trey: So do you guys all work for Shockley?
Guy in BCS: Well, not exactly, we’re all our own independent contractors.
Trey: OH! So it’s like Avon!
Guy in BCS: uhh…well
Trey (walking away): Thanks! Bye!

He comes back and as we walk to the other side of the block tells me of the exchange. We get to the other side where there’s a policeman guarding the other side of the ‘convention chow wagon area’. He asks us where we came from, because obviously we didn’t have badges. We told him we just walked under the caution tape on the other side, and how we had been at the Country HOF. Trey recaps the exchange with the first lady. The cop laughs and says “Well, you’re really not supposed to be back here. Where are y’all from?” I said “here. We’re just walking back to the truck.” He laughed again and said “well, y’all have a nice day then”. We wished him the same and drove home.

I guess that’s what we get for not watching enough Oprah.

this past weekend i went up to Nashville to visit some friends. i had an awesome time, like always, did some things i’ve never done before, some i had, and also had a mishap. i’ll type about the stories on their own later this week. they range from the funny, to the comical, to completely bizarre. the pictures that i took are up, so now i wait for Trey’s to fully explain everything.

anyway, i came home yesterday to triple digit afternoons and 80+ degree evenings. what happened Al Gore? i thought the Live Earth shows were going to stop the global warming phenomenon? i went outside to water my plants at 7:15 and just standing there with the hose started sweating. it was miserable. in addition, i think i’m going to just come back with cactus if more of my plants decide to kick the bucket. i’m watering like a fiend though, so i’m hoping complete disaster can be averted.

so Sunday night, the Saints played in the Hall of Fame game. it’s preseason, so the only thing that is important is that no one gets hurt. i’ve been wanting to burn the Joe Horn jersey i had bought last year after he unfortunately signed with the Falcons in the offseason. I still like Joe Horn, but when he refused to take a pay cut after last season and signed with ATL, i couldn’t keep the jersey anymore. I wasn’t going to wear it again, and I couldn’t sell it. So to ensure the season started sans jersey, Jacob and I toasted a couple of shots and then I burned the jersey.

from then on the night became a blur between the game (we stopped watching sometime during the 2nd quarter), dance dance revolution, wii, and finally Thriller dance party. trust me when i say it was the greatest preseason game party ever. almost 200 pictures were taken (a scant 45 posted on flickr) and each one of us was captured laughing hysterically at least once. i can’t wait to do it again. it had been a while since i had a party like that, probably before Katrina, so it was great to have my close friends back in the house for a get together. i hope we can do it a lot more often.

i work in eastern New Orleans in the middle of a giant marsh pretty much. we have seen alligators and boars before driving to and from work on occasion, which most of the time is pretty cool. yesterday morning I was driving the carpool team to work, when what i thought was a black dog began to trot across the road in front of me. as i got closer i realized it was no dog, but a wild boar! it was about the height of the front of my car! all that ran through my head was that kid that shot that giant boar a few months back with a handgun and how my car was going to be really hosed if i hit this thing head on. Chad and I both used colorful language as the moment of truth came closer. i started trying to slide up out of my seatbelt away from the side of the car that i was going to hit the pig. i didn’t see tusks, but Chad said he did. i didn’t slam on brakes or anything, everything was happening so fast. the boar must have slowed up, because i was able to pass and then he hit his face near the back right wheel. i’m not sure if he hit snout first or what, but i heard him clip the back part of my car. we looked in the mirrors to see him continue crossing the road unfazed by the face plant on the Honda. we arrived at work safely and checked out the car. we didn’t see anything, and the only scratch was on the splash guards, which may have been there before. they’re definitely scratches, so if the boar did hit somewhere it was there. i’m hoping his snout is okay, because hitting your face on a car going 50 mph probably doesn’t feel good.

i’ve been wanting to learn how to cook for a while. not necessarily hard things, but just things i could realistically do. i pass the baking aisle in the supermarket all the time seeing the cake mixes, and wonder if i could figure out how to do that. i have the cake pans that came with my multi pack of non stick cookware, and i have bought eggs before. so the other night, i went about trying to bake a cake. after seeing how people like Kari can make elaborate cakes involving boiling icing, i was just hoping to make the cake come out like the picture on the box.

since i don’t have a mixer (yet), i decided to use a fork to combine the eggs, cake mix, oil, and water. not bad, and it didn’t come out too lumpy, in fact, not lumpy at all. however, the directions where it called for two minutes of medium speed mixing was a bit tough. you try to mix cake batter for two minutes with only a fork, trying to twirl your arm like a mixer. they should make that some kind of machine at the gym. after the batter was mixed, i poured it into the pans. i sprayed them with Pam even though as mentioned they are non stick. i figured better safe than sorry, and Pam does do a good job of keeping the meat from sticking to the grill. after the called for 35 minutes on 325, i took the two cakes out of the oven. much to my shock, they did not rise properly. the horror:

unsure of what to do next, i let the cakes cool as the directions said, thinking that somehow they would flatten out. they didn’t even rise to the top of the pan. i was concerned, but figured things would work out. i came back to find that nothing improved, and i was going to have to somehow work with uneven cakes. i laid the first down on the tray, thinking the cake would smush back into itself and flatten out. unfortunately this plan was misguided, because the cake cracked down the middle:

i was not sure what to do. i consulted Carla who was online at the time thinking that as a girl she could help me out. she told me about using dental floss to even off the top of the cake, which i was able to do for the second cake, which worked to perfection. i iced the first layer of cake and filled in the crack with icing. i laid the second layer down on top, and tried to hide the imperfections. it came out rather well considering everything was uneven, and you really can’t tell there was a problem.

most importantly, the cake tasted good, and the first foray into real baking was successful. i want to try again to figure out how to make the cakes rise properly, because i have recollection of my mom making cakes that when they came out rose to the top of the pan completely flat. now…next step, KAHLUA CAKE!