Decisons..

For my birthday my wife asked me what i wanted. I thought long and hard and for the longest i was going to get wiifit. Well the time has come and I don't think i will get it, but instead I am going to get a new grill.

I have been wanting to get back into charcoal grilling. I have had a gas grill that my family bought us 6 years ago when me and my wife got married. It is high time that i got back to charcoal grilling. I have been looking at different grills, but the grill that keeps popping up as a quality grill is the weber kettle grills.

If you go to amazon and do a search for weber kettle grills, you see dozens of 5 star reviews for the 2 kettle grills that they make in 22.5 inch diameter. One is the Weber One Touch Silver and the Weber One touch Gold. The differences that I can tell is that the gold has a ash "bin" on the bottom to help dispose of charcoal ash easily.

The One touch silver does not have this "bin", but instead just a pan below it. I have read that a clay pot works very well for collecting the ash also if you have the silver. All you do is get a clay pot an put it on the "ash pan" and just let the ash drop in the clay pot instead of the pan.

The difference in cost is about $50. Is the cost worth the ash catcher? I don't think so, I think I can spend $50 on accessories for my new grill. Also I can get the silver down at my local Walmart along with a nice clay pot :-). There are a few mods that I want to do the grill when i get it. One of these mods is adding a thermometer to get the grill temperature.

So there you have it, I will be getting a grill for my birthday, something that every man should want and have. There are plenty of different grills out there, but I don't think there is one that comes from as good of a company as Weber. They make a quality product that will last for years.

Once I get it and grill, I will write about my experiences. I know that fathers day is coming up and I can think of no better thing to do but to grill.

Memorial weekend come and gone..

It came and went, and with it, my birthday. What exactly happened I am not sure but I will share with the 1 or 2 people that read this blog.

This year we decided to travel back to West Monroe, LA and spend Memorial Day with family. It just happened that my wife's (Tiffany) brother and wife (Brandon and Pam) were also coming into town to be with my wifes family also.

We left early Friday morning so we could get into West Monroe to eat lunch with my wifes family. This was the first time that we drove any large distances with our new addition, Mason. He slept most of the way, only to woke up and cried about 30 minutes outside of Monroe because of a dirty diaper.

Saturday was an interesting day. My wifes family decided to go to Natchez and after driving all day to get to West Monroe getting into a car and drive for another 2 hours was out of the question. We decided to meet up with some friends that we have not seen in awhile and visit. We ended the visit and went back to the in-laws house.

Later in the day I decided to hang out with some old friends and have a few drinks, this was a bad idea. I knew going into it, it was a bad idea but I did it instead. I can remember talking to Eddie sitting at the bar drinking my beer saying "I feel bad leaving my wife and kids at home". I guess Eddie wanted to give me a good birthday present by buying all of my drinks and food, but I can tell you the next morning it was not feeling like a good present.

I think in that evening, I had 3 jager-bombs, and 2 shots of tequila along with all the beer that I drank. Needless to say the next morning I was not feeling well. I don't think I have felt that bad in the past 10 years and I know that I have said it in the past, but I will never do that again.

Now don't get me wrong, Eddie is not a bad guy. In fact he is the type of person that would do bail you out of jail if you needed it, or the type of person that always has your back if you get in over your head. I just made a bad decision on how much to drink.

I stayed at a buddies house for the night and I was hurting the next day. I got home around 11:00am on Sunday. Let me tell you, don't roll into your mother-in-laws house very hung over and looking like you slept in the street. That is not a good way to get on your mother-in-laws good side. I tried to eat lunch but could not and ended up falling asleep after lunch and woke up around 4'oclock that evening feeling much better and able to eat again.

Finally I get to my birthday on Monday the 26th and it went off with out much fanfare. I guess that is what you get when you get older. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, just a little meh I guess. I grilled out with my in laws and my wife got me a little cake, it was a nice jester.

Now is Tuesday, back at work, another birthday down. This was my Memorial weekend in all of it excitement. What will I do next year? I don't know but I know for sure it will be with wife and family and without jager-bombs and tequila shots.

Enjoy the rest of the week...

Crawfish Boil '08

Well, I had my boil over the weekend and I can tell you I am tired. It took a full day to recover. We had a great time, had around 15-20 people over and around 5 or so kids. Everyone enjoyed themselves and ate a little crawfish. I did not have enough, but instead gave it to my guest.

We took down 70 pounds of crawfish, 10 links of boudin, 8 hot dogs, and 10 hamburgers, and I can't tell you how many long necks. All I can tell you is that next time I will be drinking water, because the next day I was hurting, and I did not even drink that much. I think I got a little dehydrated.

Well here are some pics, enjoy..

How you like me now !!

Well, another day another dollar. I have been reading some food blogs and found a pretty good one, ifoods.tv. The site is a recipe site that has videos attached to it. You can upload your own video or watch the videos of the site owner. They seem pretty good, as for the site it is pretty good. It even has links to other food blogs. Check it out, you won't be disappointed.

Have not been playing much of anything gaming wise. I think that I am getting WiiFit for my Bday on the 26th of this month. I say that because that is what I asked for. I am looking for a reason to play my Wii. After sending in my Guitar Hero III disk to get replaced, I have not been playing much of anything. I have thought about selling my Wii, but just can't get around to do it. If the WiiFit does not do it for me, it will be on Ebay.

Mason is sleeping more and more in the evenings and staying up more and more during the day. Getting nice not having to wake up 3 times in the evening.

I have a Softball game tonight at 8:30, hopefully we will win. The big crawfish boil is this weekend, really looking forward to that. As of right now, looks like we will have more than 20 ppl show up. I will have the grill fired up for any meat that needs to be cooked. I will have pics, so expect them to be up on the site sometime early next week.

Later..

Counting pennies

Well, another day another dollar. Thats what they say right? Well I downloaded a price-book spreadsheet. If there is someone that does not know what that is, it is a spreadsheet that keeps track of how much you pay for groceries. In an effort to save money, I am trying it out. I have now added milk and eggs that I got at Wally World earlier today.

Not much going on today. I had a softball game this evening at 6:30 and we lost :-( oh well, comes and goes, I believe we are 3-4. Not doing so well, but its only a game. I think I got bumped up in the game, I was catcher, but when the right fielder missed 2 balls, I got bumped to 2nd base. I think it was a move up :-)

Not much going on in the world of blogs that I read... but I did make some tea last night using, wait for it, a pot and the stove and not the tea maker !! I know, what was I thinking. Well it turned out pretty good if I say so myself. Out of the gallon that I made, it is almost all gone. I think someone besides me likes it.

I have a crawfish boil this weekend if I have not mentioned it yet, and I am not the only one looking forward to it. When I got home from work, my neighbor stopped me and told me how much he is looking forward to it also. As it is looking right now, it will be around 80 degrees and sunny this Saturday, I can't wait. Right now, I think we have about 15-20 people that will be there in one form or another.

Well, time to get my little girl in bed, till next time...

If anyone is wondering...

I have starting to try and cook more. With 2 kids now, going out to eat is getting quite expensive, so I have been trying to cook more. My goal is to cook, atleast 1 good meal a week. Meaning no leftovers, no sandwiches, etc.

I hit up slashfoods.com a lot lately, it is a blog about cooking. I found this recipe and thought it would be good to try. All it is, is the white cheese dip from the Mexican restaurants. You know the one, the dip that you want to get but don't because it is so bad for you but ohhh, so good :-) .

Ingredients

1 C. shredded Asadero cheese
4 oz jalapeno chilies, drained and chopped
1/4 C. half and half
2 T finely chopped onion
2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. salt

Directions

Heat all ingredients over low heat stirring constantly until cheese is melted. Serve with tortilla or corn chips.

I got this recipe from Recpe4living.com.

Enjoy

A good weekend..

Well, the weekend is over and all in all it was a pretty good weekend. My mother-in-law came in this weekend for mothers day and it was pretty good. She got to see her new grand baby and helped out.

We went to the Farmers Market and then went to The Flying Fish for lunch on Saturday along with the Discovery Museum for Megan. It was pretty fun. I am looking forward to next weekend, as I am ready to eat some crawfish. As some of you don't know I have started a yearly tradition here in Little Rock, AR. I have a crawfish boil every year. It started last year as a house warming party, but I want to do it ever year for a party for friends and family to come visit and just have a good time.

Just to give out a link to another blog that I read, Slashfood. There is a good article on Souther Sweet Tea for anyone that is not southern, it is a good read on some good tea.

Later.

The Doctor's office

I went to the doctor's office last week to get some new contacts and to get a new pair of glasses, now a week later I have my glasses. I decided to get a good pair of glasses that would make me wear them more, so I got some nice Nike glasses that are a flex frame (bend easily) with some clip on polarized shades. I spent some money on them, knowing that I want to wear them more than I have in the past.

So now that I have them, they feel weird. I feel myself working to focus when I look at different things. Typing this post, is relative easy on my eyes because I am not having to refocus, but if I look away, say the tv about 30 feet from me, I have to readjust my eyes and it hurts my eyes and head some.

After playing with my glasses, I decide to go back to the doctor thinking that that maybe my percription was wrong on my glasses because I did not have to strain with my old glasses and my new contacts were fine also.

So now back from the doctors office, it seems that I astigmatism in my left eye. For anyone that does not know what astigmatism is to put it simply it is when the human eye is not shaped correctly. Typically the human eye is round like a marble, but with an astigmatism, the human eye is curved, less round and more oval. About 30% of humans have astigmatism but most never notice it.

I am now going to try out my glasses for a few weeks to see if I still strain while looking at things and if my head still hurts. If it continues to hurt after a few weeks, I will go back in for a recheck.

So now you know you know about my trip to the doctors office and that I have an astigmatism.

Later...