Category Archives: Life In General

My cooking nightmare

January 6, 2015 6:45 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is a reprinted article from Thanksgiving 2007.]

Well my parents are out-of-town for the holiday but of course everyone expects food and no one was making the offer to cook so with less than a week to go I made a decision.  On an errant whim (and fueled by overconfidence borne out of watching too many episodes of Gordon Ramsay’s Cooking nightmares on BBC) I decided to fill in and cook the family Thanksgiving dinner this year.

A totally traditional menu.  The turkey of course, homemade stuffing, freshly made cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, veggies, gravy, cornbread muffins, and pies.

I got a thanksgiving cooking book and started shelling out big bucks at the local supermarket for the best stuff I could get my hands on.  First thing to look at was the oven.  Which I didn’t.

Wrestling a 20 pound turkey into a tray and tying up the legs and buttering it up and hoping that it doesn’t fall on the floor.  Keeping it cool but not cold overnight.  I got up at 5 and started the day.  The oven turned out to be underpowered. Luckily I started the turkey at 6.  Lucky cause at noon it still wasn’t done.  Didn’t help I suppose that I was looking in on it every five minutes.

The cranberries were the best.  Cranberries with raspberry preserves with a hint of lemon, and cinnamon.  Well worth the couple of bubbles of cranberry sauce that burped and scalded my arm with blazing hot cranberry goo.

The potatoes were another matter.  My level of respect for my mother took a huge leap.  It’s no wonder that peeling potatoes is a punishment in the army.  I find it remarkable that I didn’t slice my fingers up with all that peeling.

The stuffing was touch and go.  I added the bread along with poultry spices, chicken stock, pecans, raisins and sausage.  It looked like old oatmeal, but I gave it a stir and it passed it through the oven to give it a golden brown color.

Around noon I got desperate and cranked the oven to 500 degrees.  After half an hour I took the bird out and made the gravy.

Ideally the veggies were supposed to have been freshly chopped and prepared but while I was shopping I looked and considered and I knew I wouldn’t have the time.  Frozen.  Hopefully fresh next time.

The pies, jeeeeeez, the pies.  One can of pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar.  The sweet potato pie.  Yet more peeling.  Boiling them and then mashing them.  More spices but with orange juice added.  They took so long I was jumping up and down at the dinner table checking on them and they came out just in time.

By comparison the cornbread muffins were a breeze.  They had to share the oven with the pies but they got done faster.

In between everything running into the dining room and setting things up.

Round 5 in the afternoon running to change out of the food smeared clothes and washing up cause promptly at 6 everyone arrived.  Three brothers, my sister, my sister-in-law, and 4 nieces and nephews.  My sister and sister-in-law helped clean up and I lucked out that the dishwasher didn’t have a mental breakdown.

I don’t know how mom does this every year, and I can understand why she gets touchy afterwards.

Maybe pizza next year.

Posted in: activities, cooking, food and drink, holidays, life in general

Decaffeinating

December 29, 2014 6:43 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Last Friday night I was trying to wind down from a hectic holiday week and decided to do some writing and enjoy some tea at Te house of tea in the Montrose area.  After a couple of pots and about two hours worth of writing I found it was still somewhat early so I headed to Siphon coffee for a Mocha latte.

Fifteen minutes later I began to regret this.

Don’t get me wrong.  Caffeine and I have had a long and profitable relationship.  Ever since I got my first taste of Coca Cola as a child I got hooked.  Back in my high school and college days I could drink as many as seven or eight cans of Coca Cola a day and not feel any ill effects.  Cola drinks have helped me pull all nighters in school and they were definitely the key to a four-day and four-night work marathon that I had to do back in the late 90s.

The only time I ever did go overboard I had to really push things.  Freshman finals were coming and I needed a boost to keep me going.  I got a giant (back then it was giant) 44 ounce travel mug and filled it with Jolt cola (a cola drink with twice the caffeine of normal colas) and just to go that one extra step I added two caffeine pills.  I was ill for an entire weekend.  I felt constipated and nauseous at the same time and couldn’t fall asleep and had to lie awake for the entire ordeal.  Now you know what caffeine poisoning feels like.

This Friday didn’t feel that bad but I felt somewhat anxious in the pit of my stomach.  I was wide awake till about midnight when I could finally doze off.

Over the past few years I have been curtailing my caffeine intake severely.  First, about 6 years ago I weaned myself off regular cola drinks and onto diet cola drinks and then to bottled teas.

I still needed the bottled teas as a boost in the morning to go running but in the last year I have been cutting that as well.  As a result I now really feel the effects of caffeine as I never have before.  If I control it properly I can get a good energetic boost from the caffeine but if I overdo it then I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

This just reminds me that I need to practice more moderation in everything I do and not depend so heavily on one sole factor but to develop my life in such a way that I’m in a better shape to do what I need to do.  Whatever that may be.

A healthy body and a healthy mind work better without any sort of chemical supports or stimulants.

Posted in: aging, diet, life in general

the end of the year review

December 23, 2014 6:59 AM , Leave a Comment ,

This is the end of the year review I promised months earlier.  Well since my last review post I’ve only had two major events.

The first was my entry into the world of real estate.  I took out a loan and purchased a small house in west Houston and have put it up for rent.  My hope is that I will be able to rent it for a couple of years and then sell it for a profit.  My initial plan was to try to “flip” a property quickly to generate some funds quickly but the housing market in Houston is quite competitive and good properties are hard to find.  This will take longer but I think it will be profitable.

The second event was my vacation to Costa Rica.  A bit of a headache to plan but it was so worthwhile.  You can read a recap in the previous posts.  I was somewhat sad to see my vacation end and to have to bid goodbye to my travel partner but I am already looking forward to my next vacation.

One thing I did not mention in my travel posts is that I got a lot done as far as planning my upcoming year.  I’ve laid out my goals and have edited and re-edited them until I think I have everything well planned and laid out.

If 2015 is as good or better than 2014 it will be a banner year.  At the very least I hope it will be as good as this last year.  These yearly goals have helped me immensely.  They’ve consistently allowed me to improve my life.  I’ve also enjoyed sharing the goals and the progress I’ve made on this blog.  So much so that I think I will again post 4 yearly updates in the coming year.

All I can tell you folks is to stay tuned.  It’s going to be a heck of a year.

 

Posted in: activities, goals, life in general, motivation

Sometimes you have to go on trust

December 19, 2014 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’m looking straight up at a ceiling light.  I’m at my favorite barber shop and I’m about to get a razor shave.  The barber slathers some sort of alcoholic lotion on my face and then covers my face up with a steaming hot towel.  I can feel the capillaries and arteries in my face thumping and pulsing with blood as he covers me up. It’s supposed to make my face more pliable and easier to shave.  Somewhere behind me I can hear the wheet wheet of a leather strop.

Admittedly this is something of an extravagance in these days of electric shavers and disposable razors.  But sometimes in your private or professional life you need to have an outside eye to get a better perspective on a situation or to complete a task.  Trimming a beard is just such an occasion.

I normally trim and take care of my own whiskers.  But over time I find that my beard gets skewed or tilted to one side and you need someone else to look over the situation and fix what needs to be repaired.  Working in small shops for my entire career I have always worked with outside contractors and consultants; some good, some bad.  They are now a ubiquitous part of professional life in the modern business world.

The barber takes the towel off and dabs on plenty of shaving foam.  He’s not my normal barber.  I usually get the shop owner to do this but he’s busy working two chairs over.  The shop is packed with customers.  Guys talking about sports or politics or just gossiping.  The little blonde kid in the next chair over looking wide-eyed in my direction probably not believing that I’m about to let someone run a blade over my throat.

I have to admit I’m a little hesitant too as I’ve never worked with this barber before.  But I’ve known the shop owner for years and he wouldn’t hire a rookie so I must have faith and hope for the best.

It’s like that in business and in life sometimes.  You need help in something and someone, maybe a friend or business colleague, gives you a suggestion to follow or a recommendation.  You’ve no frame of reference to go on besides the fact that you know this person and he or she cared enough to give you this advice.  If you think that’s enough then you go ahead.

I’ve been in plenty of situations where I just don’t know enough about a subject or I don’t have the time or resources to do a particular job and I need the expertise or help from an outside source.  I then need to turn to my friends, colleagues and even acquaintances to steer me in the right direction.

The secret to shaving with a razor is little tiny scrapes.  Just a few inches at a time.  No need to rush.  The true professionals don’t need to be showy just precise.  If the person or company you hire out does a good professional job then that’s worth more than a hundred flashy business cards or a slick website.  The real professional doesn’t care about looking good but instead cares about the task at hand.

The crucial moment.  My throat.  That spot right over my carotid artery.  I try not to think about how my veins were thumping and pulsing a few minutes ago.  Trying not to breathe.  A steady hand and total concentration at this critical moment.  The essence of being a good consultant.  You need to be there for your client when and where you’re needed to finish the project or product or service when it’s needed.  Not tomorrow or later on but right at that moment.

The moment passes and everything’s okay now.

Now this barber has become a known quantity.  Now I can trust him to do this service for me in the future.  Hopefully that’s also true of the consultants that I trust for different projects.  But until they do prove themselves the only thing you have to go on is the word of a friend.  That’s where you have to trust that good people know good people and that your friend or colleague wouldn’t send you a bad recommendation.

That’s the moment you have to leave it all up to faith.

 

 

Posted in: business, grooming, life in general, thought

The high cost of success

December 17, 2014 6:23 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note.  This is a reprinted blog posting from June 2008]

 

I was bored Friday night and decided to rummage through the closet for things to donate on Saturday to the local charity thrift store.  As I was sorting through old college notebooks and receipts I came upon a cardboard tube with my name on it and inside was my diploma.  I had never gotten it framed partly due to circumstances and partly due to laziness.

It was early December of ’93 and I had just cleared my library record, I had settled all my accounts on campus and I had gotten clearance from the registrar to graduate.  I went home and sneezed as I was cleaning my apartment since my parents were coming for the graduation.  That was the beginning of a three week-long flu bout.

By the next morning I could hardly get up.  Heavily fortified by NyQuil and pig-headed determination I somehow attended the graduation ceremony and stumbled across the stage to receive my diploma and then went home to lie in bed for most of December.

The diploma lay forgotten in some moving box. I was out of college but poor as a church mouse and living on credit cards as I tried to find a job, so framing a diploma was the least of my concerns.

Couple years later, I’ve got a job and I wander into a framing shop and they quote me 60 bucks for framing it.  Being lazy and needing to save money for vital things (aka going out and drinking) I put it off.

So it’s 2008, I take it out of the tube to look over.  There’s a slight crease along the side of the diploma from the graduation when I, half out of it due to the Nyquil and the fever, took the diploma out to look at it and then jammed it back in the tube hard.

On reflection, graduation should have been one of my proudest moments.  Not just for the occasion but due to the fact that I received my diploma from Michel Halbouty and shook his hand.  Who is Michel Halbouty?  He’s the last of the great Texas Oil men.  It would be like an engineer receiving her diploma from Thomas Edison or an art student receiving his degree from Leonardo da Vinci.

In any case, I finally took the diploma to a framing shop and found that success does indeed have its costs, as does laziness and procrastination.  There were frames to pick, backgrounds, different types of glass, and in no time a 60 dollar frame job turned into 390 dollar job and will take 2 weeks to be done.

The diploma will be custom fitted, sealed and protected from the elements in a dark red cherry wood frame with gold edging on a maroon and white (the school colors) background.  Normally I don’t like conspicuous display, I find it vulgar.  However, some things do deserve to be displayed and some things are worth showing off. This now sits in my home office.  The only decoration in the room.

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Posted in: education, life in general, memories, school

the winter slowdowns

December 5, 2014 6:34 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been going through a slow period lately and I don’t like it at all.  It started back in November.

First I missed a day of running, then another, and another.  I would only average four or five days of exercise a week and then this week I’ve barely done 2 days.  I have to confess it has me a little worried.  But it’s not just the exercise portion of my life, though that is the most apparent, I’ve felt myself slowing down all over.

My conscience has been going over it every day and my mind has been trying to find a reason for it.  At first I reasoned it was the change in the weather.  We had a somewhat strong cold surge early in the month and that definitely didn’t help things.  Hard to motivate oneself to go out into the freezing cold at 4 in the morning.  But the weather’s moderated.

On top of everything the fitness app I had on my smartphone updated and erased 15 months of fitness records.  I was just flabbergasted.  I sent off a quite angry email to the support team for the app.  All I got back was an automated email reply.  All those records gone.  Still can’t believe it.

Then I looked at my goals page and realized I had achieved most of them.  So maybe that’s part of the problem.  I did my “epic” 16 mile run, I ran a timed race (I did fairly well if I do say so myself), I hit most of my fitness goals for the year.  Now that I have most of that taken care of maybe I’ve got nothing to shoot for.

Of course maybe it’s the opposite and I have too much on my plate.  I’ve got a trip coming up and I’m running around trying to get everything prepared for the trip, and at home, and at work while I’m away.  Maybe I’m spread too thin.

It could also just be that with the end of the year at hand and with things coming to an end that my mind is slowing down as well.  Maybe come January things will go back to normal. I don’t have any studies or proof for this but I do see it a lot in the attitudes of people who I’ve known that they seem to start coasting and doing the minimal amount towards the end of the year.

I don’t know.  I just want to get back to feeling normal.

Posted in: activities, attitude, habits, life in general

vacation work

December 1, 2014 7:04 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Even vacations can be work.  Well not really but yeah.

My daily routine and my life doesn’t end just because I’m going on vacation.  If anything, my life gets concentrated.  Those little breathers that we all have built into our daily routine disappear and I find out just how much I can really get done when the pressure is on.

I have to dig out the suitcase and take out of it all those things I “temporarily” stored in there and move them somewhere else.  Think about and find whatever clothes I will take on the trip and acquire those things that I don’t have and will need and if the place you’re going to is out of season, good luck finding beach wear in the Winter.

Some things I will buy for the trip and some things that I normally use everyday will go with me.  But which ones?

The personal kit.  That tube of toothpaste is dried out, get a new one, that razor is rusty, these pepto bismol pills are out of date, those band aids are all stuck together. Most hotels carry things like soap and shampoo but you know the one time you don’t pack them…

Cram it all into the suitcase.  Put the socks into the shoes.  Packing cubes are great but no matter what you only have so much space.  Play Tetris and try to change cubes around to get more things in.

Electronics.  How much to take and how much is overkill?

Besides all of that, like I said my life doesn’t stop because I’m going on a trip.  I have work to juggle round.  Clients that need to know you won’t be there and arrangements to make at the office.  At home I have to tag people to come check on things at home while I’m away.  I have to make sure my bills are paid and up to date till at least a week after I return so I don’t get caught short on time.

I still have to eat of course so grocery shopping.  Some of the items I will take on the trip, I need to use everyday.  I can’t pack them yet so I have to make sure I have space for it in the suitcase and not forget to pack it at the last-minute and hope that it doesn’t disrupt all the packing.

The seconds tick away as the departure date draws near.  Nerve wracking in a way.  Once the day arrives whatever gets done, gets done.  Everything else you will have to do without.

Then of course once your vacation is under way the clock starts running again and you’re counting the minutes till you have to go back.

Posted in: life in general, plans, vacations, work

Holidays and alternatives

November 29, 2014 6:58 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Just to get it out-of-the-way, I’m not a fan of the holidays.  I’m not any sort of misanthrope or anything but honestly I’m not someone who enjoys hours and hours of planned activities and pageantry and ritual.  Small little intimate gatherings planned on the fly and with little to no structure.  That’s what I like.

So you can imagine what my reaction would be to family holiday parties and dinners.  Not really keen on them.  Even less when I have to host and there’s no early escape for me.  My family has wonderful people and it’s got nothing to do with them.  Rather as an introvert I can only take so much before I feel trapped.

But as bad as that gets, the alternative of having to spend holidays alone is even worse.  I’m not talking about the Memorial days or July 4ths or Presidents days.  No one really cares what you do or don’t do on those days.  The big ones, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.  Those are the ones that get to you.

I’ve spent a few of those alone over the years.  Sometimes it was bad scheduling.  The other people in the family had other plans or were otherwise engaged.  Sometimes it was a last-minute snafu and I couldn’t be there.  Those things can’t be helped.  Of course sometimes it was bad planning on my part.

One New Year’s in particular I decided I should pass the holiday alone on vacation.  I went to New Orleans for a week.  The week itself was fine.  The crescent city loses nothing in Winter and I argue that the cooler weather actually makes the experience better.  New Year’s eve however was anything but a good experience.

All day long I got the sense of people planning and getting ready for something special.  I know that I came here alone and that I hadn’t planned to be with other people but before it didn’t matter.  Now all of a sudden it did seem to matter.  The restaurants were booked solid and they would not take single diners for any reason.  I don’t remember where I ended up eating.  As the evening wore on and I was in my hotel room I suddenly got this sense of claustrophobia and extreme solitude.  I needed to be around people.

So I headed over to the French Quarter and wandered round waiting for the stroke of midnight.  I  ambled into Jackson square where the fortune tellers come out at night and do readings.  Just out of curiosity I consulted one and asked her about my future.  She was a palmist and went through her routine of ogling and tracing out the creases in my hand.  Finally she pronounced that I would die around 45 years of age from a heart attack and I would be alone.  Not exactly what I’d been expecting.

I wandered the crowded streets full of semi drunken revelers, tourists, sailors, pick pockets, thugs, and policemen.  Sometimes the throng was so densely packed that I could barely get through but in spite of that I felt alone.  Midnight came and went.  People all around me were doing the midnight kiss or hugging each other and wishing each other a happy new year.  I wandered off into the darkness away from the celebrations that would go into the dawn and silently walked back to my hotel pondering the hard-won wisdom that I had just acquired.

I went home the next day and asked my family all about their New Years and listened intently to each and every detail.  I don’t say that I look forward to holiday parties and planned activities for holidays but it’s definitely preferable to the alternative.

 

Posted in: holidays, life in general

What’s your alignment?

November 21, 2014 6:40 AM , Leave a Comment ,

From time to time people post all sorts of little quizzes and memes on social media.  One of the more prevalent ones deals with alignments such as what they had in boardgames like Dungeons & Dragons.

Some background.  In these boardgames you had to make up a character.  This reflected what values you wanted to represent in the game so you could be wise or strong or agile.  Further the game allowed you to customize the character by choosing your character’s outlook on life.  This was determined by two variables.

The first variable is fairly easy to understand.  Good, Evil, and Neutral.  Are you good or evil or somewhere in between. Are you the type of person that kicks puppies or rescues kittens out of trees or stops to consider what to do based on the situation.

The other variable is also somewhat self explanatory. Lawful, Chaotic, or again Neutral.  Do you follow the letter of the law in every situation?  See a rule and break it just because or again go with what your gut tells you to do.

These two variables form a matrix with nine elements and when you start mixing and matching elements you get some pretty interesting results to consider.

an alignment matrix using characters from popular movies and tv shows

An alignment matrix using characters from popular movies and TV shows as examples.

 

For example let’s consider lawful evil.  Wait, that’s possible, you ask?  Quite so and it makes for some extremely interesting and seemingly conflicted characters.  A person that believes that the rules of law and civilization must be followed but then turns around and uses that very law and order for evil purposes.  In many ways the scariest of the combinations.  Look at some of our own real world examples.  Hitler, several of the roman emperors, the Russian czars.  On a more local level think of a crooked city official or policeman that uses the law for his own corrupt purposes.

On the opposite side of the matrix is the Chaotic good.  Someone that doesn’t want to hurt anyone or do anything bad but just can’t seem to live by any sort of rules.  I think that describes a fair portion of the population, don’t you?  Hard to come up with world leaders for this combination as by definition they don’t work well within systems.  In the real world this would be your messed up friend that always means well and wants to help but his life is an eternal mess of unresolved issues and pending problems.

True neutral is a combination that gets mistaken for good neutral quite a bit.  I think it’s something that some people strive for but really don’t comprehend or consider the ramifications of that combination.  Sometimes you do good, sometimes you do bad, sometimes you follow the rules and sometimes you don’t.  The overriding consideration is how the situation will affect you personally and sometimes that will make you look like a heel.  Real world examples are kind of tough.  Thomas Jefferson comes to mind as he advocated rule of law but on the other hand he was a revolutionary.  He preached equality and brotherhood but owned slaves.  A character such as this would be a person that did what he needed to survive but occasionally did something good for others but with the understanding that it somehow benefited him.

So what am I?  Well when I was a kid and played this game I have to admit I always went for the lawful good.  Goody two shoes that I was.  It wasn’t till later in life that I had a chance to really sit down and think about all the implications of it all.  True neutral?  no.  Probably somewhere between neutral good and chaotic good

 

Posted in: life in general, thought, writing

worthwhile books?

November 17, 2014 6:11 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I was doing some winter cleaning the other day.  I don’t do spring cleanings.

Besides removing a ton of dust and a pile of receipts from Walgreens, Starbucks, HEB, and a half-dozen other places I found about 20 books scattered round my room.  Books I’d picked up on a whim at places like Barnes and Noble or at half price books and just had not read at all.

I love to browse round bookstores for a long time.  Usually when I shop I head in at breakneck speed and go directly for what I want but looking for books is different.  One of the few times I take time to dawdle and promenade up and down the isles looking at books from one genre to another. I specially like to linger in places like half price books.  The place feels like a kitschy flea market.  You never know what you will find from one visit to another.

I will get the book that I came in for but I usually pick up 2 or 3 other titles.  That’s the problem.  Since these aren’t the books I came in looking for I will bring them home and lay them aside here and there and six months later I have a small library of unread books that aren’t exactly what I like but I picked up for some reason that now escapes me.

Some selected titles?

“A model world” by Michael Chabon.  Admittedly an interesting writer but I have no clue why I picked up this small volume of short stories.

“Galactic derelict” by Andre Norton.  I possibly picked this up because I read her stuff back in college but that was for a totally different storyline.

“Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”.  One of those books that I “should” have already read but haven’t.

“1491” by Charles Mann.  A sort of Atlas and history book of the Americas before Columbus

So now I’ve got all these books to read and no excuse to buy anything else till I finish these off but to be totally honest, some of these I really don’t want to read.  I’m thinking of just tossing them in the box of books to be returned to half price books without reading them.  But I think I will give them a glance at least.

Something made me buy them in the first place so there has to be some good in them.

 

Posted in: books, life in general