Reunions: Part I

Last night we traveled to Ames for the 4H State Conference.  Holly was on the 4H State Council in 1994–1995 and this year they invited back the one, five, and ten year State Council alums.  Out of about thirty people from her year, a total of three showed up.  Since I was never in 4H, the whole thing was pretty foreign to me.  We also had a nicely overcooked chicken breast as the main course of our $20/plate meal.  Oh well, at least it was kind of fun to be in Hilton Coliseum again.  This weekend Holly has her ten year high school class reunion.  That should be more fun at least.

Weekend in Des Moines

Now playing: Stone Temple Pilots - Plush

This past weekend we travelled to Des Moines for Dennis McDaniel’s wedding.  I’ve known Dennis since kindergarten, but haven’t talked to him much outside of emails since high school and college.  They had an outdoor wedding and although it was plenty hot, it dried up after some heavy morning rains.  It was good to see him and some of my other high school buddies and their families.  Things are going pretty well for Dennis right now with getting married, and he was just promoted to captain in the Windsor Heights Police Department. 

The hotel we stayed at had some utility issues.  The whole second floor, which is where the wedding block was at, lost power at about 2AM.  Fortunately, the lights in our room still worked, and all we lost was the air conditioning.  Other rooms lost ALL power.  We received a 25% discount, which was fine with us, but other folks who lost all power are trying to get that night’s stay totally free.  I hope they succeed.

In a small world incident, we ran into another high school classmate and his family at our hotel.  Ryan Royer was in town for a family reunion and we ran into him at breakfast.  It was good to see him and his three month old son, along with the rest of the Royer clan.  It’s funny how you run into people you know in places you’d never expect to. 

Kahn's Top 20 Albums

Lists are all the rage these days, so here’s my list of my favorite 20 albums.  Greatest hits collections and other compilations don’t count in this list.  The rankings are not significant, they are just in alphabetical order.

• AC/DC – Back in Black
• Alice in Chains – Jar of Flies
• Audioslave – Audioslave
• Boston – Boston
• Cake – Fashion Nugget
• Coldplay – Rush of Blood to the Head
• Evanescence – Fallen
• Green Day – American Idiot
• Guns ‘n Roses – Appetite for Destruction
• Live – Throwing Copper
• Meatloaf – Bat out of Hell
• Metallica – Metallica (Black Album)
• Motley Crue – Dr. Feelgood
• Pearl Jam – Ten
• Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
• Pink Floyd – The Wall
• Pink Floyd – Wish You were Here
• Stone Temple Pilots – Core
• Van Halen – Van Halen
• Weezer – Weezer

BBQ

I must be getting old because two of my favorite summertime hobbies are gardening and barbecuing.  It’s hard to get a real feel from the garden from this picture, but things have really taken off in the past two weeks.  Hopefully it will start producing in a couple more weeks.

I absolutely love to grill, and last year for Father’s Day, Holly gave me a BBQ cookbook.  It’s been a lot of fun trying some of the recipes for rubs and sauces in there.  The book also gives good instructions for smoking meat using a gas grill.  I soak wood chips in water for a few hours and then put them in a foil pouch that I poke holes in so the smoke can escape.  Then I just turn on the one burner and put the packet of wood chunks over the flame.  All the meat goes on the other side of the grill and cooks with indirect heat, like this:

I put a rub of dry spices on the ribs and let that cure for a few hours.  When the grill is ready, I put them on and used a mop sauce that consists of the rub and some vinegar.  Finally in the last ten minutes or so, I put some homemade BBQ sauce on them.  You don’t want to put it on too soon, or the sugar in the sauce will burn.  The finished product looked like this:

MMMMMMMMM!

I think I’d like to get an actual smoker some day.  I’ve never made a brisket, but that’s definitely on my list of something to try.  We keep trying different rub and sauce recipes.  The goal is to figure out what we like the best and tweak it into an original recipe.  Maybe some day I’ll enter a BBQ contest.  

Quick Thoughts

Here are my quick thoughts for Wednesday, June 15, 2005.

• I laughed for probably two straight minutes the other night when Holly told me that the name of her mom’s hairdresser was Rod Pump. 
• Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” really sounds like he’s saying “Tony Danza?”
• Rod Pump, man that’s funny.
• I bet Michael Jackson releases yet another greatest hits compilation in the upcoming months.  Apparently he still has a fan base, as was evident by his supporters at his trial, and a greatest hits is a sure way to get some quick money.

What a mess

Wednesday, the contractors came in and ripped out the kitchen floor.  So now we just have the sub-floor, and you can definitely see the water stains on there.  Unfortunately, it looks like they are also going to have to take out the island counter and cupboards because there is most likely moisture under there too.  We also noticed that the sub-floor was rotting near the deck door, probable from a leaky door.  So, I think we’re going to suck it up and have a new deck door installed.  The wood around the frame is starting to rot as well, so it’s really the best move to replace it, rather than patch it up and just delay the inevitable.  I know we’ll get our money back, and then some, when we go to sell this house in the future.  In the short term though, my costs are starting to add up between the new door, the new water main shut-off valve, and the insurance deductible.  I guess it will be nice when it’s all done, but I think things will be a mess for at least the rest of this month.

4-0

We had our first real test on our softball team last night.  We were the home team, and down 9–5 going into the bottom of the sixth.  The bats hadn’t been there for our team much to that point, but in the bottom of the sixth, we scored five runs and went up 10–9.  The other team didn’t score at all in the seventh and that was the game.  I had a very good offensive night, going 4–4.  They were totally giving me the middle of the field, so I was drilling it right over second base.  I came pretty close to taking off the pitcher’s head a couple of times too.  Luckily, he never got his glove on it, and I never hit him.  It was probably good that we had a close game so that we can regain some focus.  It’s hard to stay sharp when we are winning big every week, and we tend to start getting sloppy.  We just have to avoid our traditional end-of-season meltdown this year.

Garden

I think summer is finally here, and stuff in the garden is really starting to grow now.  I’ve expanded it every year that I’ve had it, but there isn’t much room left to expand past what I have now.

It’s hard to tell what everything is in the picture, and there is some stuff that I couldn’t get framed that is still further to the left.  So this is what I planted this year.

• 4 rows of sweet corn
• 21 hills of potatoes (Yukon Gold and a variety of Red)
• 2 rows of peas
• 1.5 rows of green beans
• 16 tomato plants (Roma, Celebrity, Grape, and a couple other varieties from my Uncle Norm)
• Zucchini
• 2 hills of mini pumpkins (white, and orange ones)
• 1 hill of “Goblin Egg” gourds
• 3 short rows of carrots
• 4 broccoli plants
• 4 parsley plants
• 2 celery plants
• 25 pepper plants (Hot Jalapeno, mild jalapeno, bell, banana, Anaheim, and a couple other varieties from my Uncle Norm)
• 1 short row of garlic
• 5 short rows of onions (white and yellow)

I just can’t wait for stuff to start producing!

6 years!

Yesterday was our six year wedding anniversary.  Sometimes it seems like it’s been a lot longer than that, and other times it seems like it’s flown by.  We did get a babysitter for Saturday night and we went to dinner at Famous Dave’s and saw a movie. (Star Wars III.  First time for Holly, second for me.)  Here’s to many more years of happy marriage.

Flood update

It’s been a rough week.  The water damage specialists came in and cut chunks of drywall out of my ceiling in the basement.  They put big blowers and de-humidifiers in the basement and kitchen to help dry things out.  Maybe I’ll post some pictures of the mess this weekend.  Hopefully they can get the flooring dry in the kitchen.  Yesterday they noticed that the current vinyl and underlayment were put on top of an old layer of vinyl and underlayment.  That dual layer is making it difficult to get all the moisture out. 

The one water damage guy is a real tool.  On the first day, he was ripping off the baseboard in the kitchen, and I really wanted to tell him to “Say no to crack.”  It reminded me of that old SNL skit with Dan Akroyd repairing a refrigerator.  This guy needed some Man Show Crack Spackle.  I pointed it out to Holly, but she refused to look.  If only I had a quarter… Also that first night, he just kept talking and going on about all their qualifications and jobs they’ve done before; typical salesman stuff.  He told me about how much fun he has with this job because he gets to tear up people’s houses.  He also mentioned that they teach them in water damage school how they need to be careful with their customers because some people are so traumatized by water damage, that it’s like a death in the family.  I couldn’t help but thinking, “Why are you telling me all this?  Less talk, more work!”  This guy is probably only a couple of years older than me, but yet every time he leaves, he says “Take it easy, young fella.”  Who says that anyway? 

I’m sleeping a little better now because yesterday we figured out the root cause of the flood.  It turns out that the valve on the dishwasher requires 20–120psi to operate properly.  When I shut the water off, there was very little or no pressure, so I essentially had an open valve on the dishwasher.  Everything would have been fine if the water main was actually off, but it turns out that the valve on my water main is not fully sealed and water was still coming into the house, albeit, at a fairly slow rate.  It found it’s way up the opening in the dishwasher and over the course of the weekend, filled up, and overflowed.  So I need to get a new valve on the water main.  For my peace of mind, I’ll probably just keep the old one on, and have a new one installed, so that I have two shut-offs.  I never want this to happen again.