Today's episode of Tony's Treehouse is brought to you by Alton Brown, chef extraordanaire of the Food Network. The theme ingredient: ham. On Good Eats, Alton Brown did ths crusted ham that I've been dying to try for a long ass time. Problem is, that's the kinda of thing suitable for a large group of people. A smallish ham could easily feed 10-12 people. Last week I got a ham intending to use it for Thanksgiving, however there was one there already. Whoops. So that guy got put aside for another day.
That day was today. Alton's original recipe calle for a 'city style' ham, with a layer of fat on the outside. By the time I made my way to the store, anything like that was all gone. So another ham was chosen in a brine, sans fat layer. The crust seemed weird to me, but fuck it...some things you just gotta try once. First went on a layer of brown mustard, then a layer of dark brown sugar, then a layer of crushed ginger snaps. A little brandy was sprinkled ontop of that layer. Into the oven at 350 degrees for 2 hours (the ham was already cooked) until everything was crusty and great. Go to www.foodnetwork.com and search for ham, and filter for Alton Brown and do that recipe! It is so worth it!
Along with that was a gratin with leeks and steamed broccoli.
Thanks Alton!
Oh yea, and the Chargers won! And mercifully our legs were not killing us from all the walking we did yesterday!
I've never been to the LA Auto Show or any auto show for that matter. There's a Hot Import Nights that makes its way to San Diego that I've managed to miss the last couple of years. Then again there's not much allure of checking out trailer queens and pimped out cars that never see duty as what they were intended: to be driven. Granted some of those owners actually drive their cars. But seriously, how many people after putting $60,000 into a rolling audio/visual sound system will take their cars to Burger King or use it to commute? Or how about the ones who dump ludicrice amounts of money into making their car go-fast fast, and don't drive it for fear of blowing a rod through their oh-so-pretty carbon fiber hood.
Me and Kiki needed a mini-get-away and a little road trip was perfect. We headed out of SD around 12PM and made decent time up to the Auto Show. The place was a damned mad house! Mental note: don't go to the auto show on the 2nd to last day its held. Still packing the D80 and the speedlite, people got out of my way when I needed to take a picture. I respect the exotics, but seriously I will never see one in my lifetime sitting in my driveway. Kiki wanted to see the Nissan Rogue, Saturn Astra, Acura RDX and something else that I forgot. We also saw some other neat cars. One disappointment was the BMW 5-series that I have been having wet dreams about for the longest time. When the seat and steering wheel are in a decent position, my shoulder is brushing up against the b-pillar. Grrr!! The SAME problem I have with the 3-series! Kahn!!!! However I fit quite nicely into the GMC Acadia. Even with the sunroof, that thing has tons of head, leg, shoulder and hip room - hey man for big people, that stuff matters. lol
The piece de resistance was the Pontiac G8. Mmmm. Pontiac didn't have the fucker down on the floor to get into like every other new car...grrrr!! Ok, not like every other, but still that car is going to be a HUGE deal for GM when it comes out next Spring and I want to play with it!!! 362HP, 385 ft/lbs, rwd, sophisticated suspension, more interior room than the 5-series...mmmmm.
Two standout things at the show: 1) Lexus had a dyno setup on the concourse outside where people could sign up an take a 1/4 mile run in the new IS-F. OMG that thing souned sooo vicious! 2) The Nissan GT-R is way hotter in person, than ANY picture of it could give it credit for. That thing is just sick. Respect.
In addition to the Auto Show I took Kiki to and by some of the places I used to hang out. We went to Marina Del Rey to jetti where I used to go and think A LOT. I would usually go to this place about 2-3 times a month, no matter the weather and just chill out. Then we went to the Cheesecake Factory on the bay in the marina. Hands down one of my favorite places to eat in Southern California. After that we went to Santa Monica and walked up and down the 3rd Street Promenade. Then it was over to the pier. Santa Monica has changed A LOT since I left there. Google is now our old building, which makes sense with the infrastructure upgrades we made to that sucker. One whole building off of Arizona was ripped down and it looks like parking structure is going there.
I was dreading the drive back to SD too. We had been walking for about 10 hours on and off, and our legs were working. So to go sit in the car for 2 hours for the drive back south...ugh. The drive was fast and easy though. We talked about the choices the people in The Mist had to make, listened to music and just enjoyed being on the road. Good times.
The turkey got its revenge on me. So did the ham, stuffing and everything else I consumed. In simplest terms:
8:00PM: Passed out on Akilah's bed.
9:00PM: Threw up.
Food poisoning was NOT the culprit. Naw, instead from 1PMish right up until 8PMish I drank. Pretty much anything after 3PM was a blur. Akilah filled in the details and they were not pretty at all. Apperantly I made a full on ass of myself. Kiki took care of me though.
I feel like ass. My mouth tastes like ass. Before I showered this morning I smelled like ass.
The worst part was how I am told I acted last night. Turns out that I can be a mean, annoying and pain in the ass drunk.
Go see these: The Mist and Hitman. The Mist is a great example of what happens when you put a bunch of humans into a confined space and stressful circumstances...and then watch them tear themselves apart. People who are oridinarily well meaning, intelligent and civic minded will really just flip in times of intense diversity. Where's Maslow and his hierarchy of needs when you need it? Absent social services, government, an army to protect and literally being able to see the world...people will fill in the blanks with anything and anyone relatively plausible. The ending is really fucked up but if it had ended any other way, it would have made the movie lame.
Hitman, wasn't just a pure run and gun flick that I had thought it was going to be. Based on its video game namesake, I was expecting to just 90 minutes of purely blowing shit up. But no, the movie played a lot smarter and had some unpredictable twists and turns. There is one scene where it did get kinda game-like. Agent 47 is in a bad guy's parlor and there's lots of shoot 'em up going on...and he's diving over bars, taking cover behind pillars...all the while picking up random firearms and giving the bad guys lead overdoses. It's a fun romp, dare I say worth full price.
Today was a damned mixed day if there was one. I spent a good chunk of my day trying to convince the American Express people that I could count and that my billing statement was wrong. No less than 6 calls were made. The 5th call abruptly ended because the person hung up on me. I said fuck it and walked away or I was gonna cuss somebody out. I called back later on and finally got someone who would listen to me. The entire morning before I was like, let me show you what I am seeing on my statement - I am being charged TWICE for these items. 'Oh no sir, if you do the simple math, you will see there are charges and credits and it all makes it a wash'. Well no you dumb shit, I am STILL being charged twice if the charge appears TWICE on the statement. For months this has been an issue. I kept asking them, do you have a fax machine or email that I can send you a screen shot of this thing. 'Oh no sir, we don't have email or faxes.' WTF?! You have a web site, but you don't have email or faxes?!
Call #6
She gets it. She gets where I am coming from. Or may be she just detected my frustration and saw that I needed just to be heard for a change. She looked at the account and immediately saw that indeed one of the charges had occured twice by the retailer. The 2nd charge would have to be investigated. Fine by me. I thanked her as much as I could. Finally SOMEONE listened.
Those Amex commercials about a World of Service only works when you get a rep who will actually listen to you.
So I ran into one of the would-be party goers who said they may or may not come. I fully expected them not show mainly because they don't plan. And even if there was a plan or if they said they would show, they would just wait for something else to come along. Anyway, turned out that a bunch of people were going to a wine tasting beforehand. No biggie. A lot of them had touched base with me and said that if they weren't too whooped would come through later. Well none of the wine party people showed or called or anything, so I'm thinking they really were ripped.
Come to find out they all went downtown club hopping after the wine tasting. So I guess they DID have enough energy after their wine tasting. So the food, planning and what not that went into getting ready for those other people was wasted.
I know it shouldn't bother me. People have a right to change their minds and do other things. On the otherhand I just think about those people who acted gung-ho about coming through for weeks leading up and they just bail. One person in particular is on my shit list for not even saying Word One. They influenced the selection of the date and didn't bother showing, calling or anything. I wanted to have Game Night much earlier and not so close to Thanksgiving. And then to leave a comment about 'shouldn't have made plans for after', when a) Game Night was on there long before and b) acting like I didn't know what went on afterwards.
If people were more upfront about shit I guess it would bother me a lot less.
Why make the effort? Next time, if there is a next time, a lot less effort will be applied into worrying about other people's requirements.
So the 2nd *Annual* Game Night came and went with some fanfare. It was a lot of fun, with a lot of food and there was a good showing. My boy Chris came through with some of his Cajun Scrimps; whole 20-25 count shrimp slathered in butter, fresh rosemary, olive oil, fresh garlic and shrimp boil seasonings. Good times! Chris (different person, different gender) came through with a sweet and spicy brie she made right there and then. Kiki asked for an old favorite of her, spice rub wings and made those. I wanted jerk wings, which I need to friggin master how NOT to burn those! The fat from the olive oil and the fat from the chicken wings keep dropping and causing flair ups. Grrr. Last of the meats was a 3 lbs tri-tip that I had marinating for no less than 4 days. Grilled on low indirect heat and Jack Daniels smoke chips...that sucker came out great!
Oh yea we played games too. haha! We played a game of free poker because apperantly no one brought money or may be because it wasn't a pay week? LOL Kiki got her friend to pilfer a Guitar Hero II set and that was played may be for like 30 minutes on and off. Then we got into Catch Phrase. I need to poll people to see if when they play Catch Phrase does it really get as boisterous and argumentative as it does with us?!
I have to admit that I was disappointed by the people who didn't know. This party was planned way in advance that people with kids could find sitters. Other folks were purposely making this plan around other things as well. So when those people who were the most gung ho about going didn't bother showing up or even calling to say they we're gonna show up, yea I was disappointed.
Oh well. It was still hella fun. Chris and Mike didn't end up leaving till 2:30AM. lol
The night started out innocuous enough. Went to go pick up my free turkey but they had already shut down the location. I was there literally at 5:08PM and they were done giving out the turkies! Is that the proper plural form of 'turkey'?? LOL Anyway, ended getting an invite to happy hour. Me and Kiki went and over the course of things, our friend told me about his podcast site with all these Black Friday deals and other sites to check out. Being the geek I am, I said lemme check this out on my phone! Pulled up his podcast site and it was the LAST thing my phone did. No dial tone, no internet, no nuthin - nada. So from inside the car, while still in the parking lot Kiki's lends me her phone so I can call Verizon. While waiting to get a customer service rep we make the quick jaunt over to the mall, the 2nd destination of the night.
Parking lot #2. So we park and we notice right in view is a Verizon store. How funny. lol Anyway, we get the service guy he does his thing on his end. Then he has me does some troubleshooting on my end and diddly works. This guy (name's Malik come to find out) is tenacious and wants to fix this problem, but almost 30 minutes later nothing is working. So I tell him, you know we're literally LOOKING at a Verizon Wireless store. He goes, yea you should go in there and get a new phone if I can. So we get out the car and we walk over to the store. He's simultaneously pulling up my account and tells me with my history and plan they should be able to just give me a new phone. And I'm like, you mean pay the deductible? He goes no I already took care of it, hand the phone to the Verizon sales person. So I did. And I guess he explains things and she sends us around the corner to their *parts counter*. Again we go through the shuffle of pulling my records up and Malik's notes about them giving me a new phone. After all that is sorted out, the tech gets me a phone and begins to configure it. Of course it doesn't work off the bat, but she works at it. All the Malik is still on the phone monitoring what the tech in the store was doing. We were on the phone for 54 minutes! I don't care what anyone has to say about Verizon, even shit doesn't work well they stick it out. Cingular/AT&T can kiss my ass!
Oh yea, I scored a gift card to Wolrd Market. I was told it probably had a low limit and not expect too much from it. However, MUCH to my gleeful surprise the card had some serious duckets (channeling my Kenny Rogers) on it. It took care of stuff I needed from World Market and had a lot left over for other stuff.
What was supposed to be a fairly simple task in collecting some firewood, turned into a back-breaking, leg-straining and torso-twisting ordeal. Basically I was thinking we (me and Mike) would go to their neighbor's yard who had trees cut and stacked neatly in their backyard and readily available to be hauled away. No. Not so much. Oh, there were trees cut down. Oh, there was wood about the property. But it was NOT 'readily available'. First we had to haul the wood over to Mike's property. THEN we had to haul the wood up this 45 degree embankment over rocks and loose dirt riddled with gopher holes. I said fuck it and what could be thrown up to the road, had its ass thrown up to the road. And THEN we had to move the wood to where it would split and stored. The splitting process was pretty dope to watch. Mike plopped the cut log into this cradle and a motor shoved the wood against this metal cleave. Some pieces split nicely. Other pieces not so much. Oh yea, then I had to load my car up and then haul it up to my place.
Bitching aside it was pretty cool. We both ended up with a fair bit of firewood and it only cost us some dirty clothes and sore muscles.
Slosh anything is a foreign concept to me. However, when the invitation for slosh kickball came meandering through my email's Inbox, interest was piqued. Slosh AND kickball. What is this strange thing? Slosh softball was familiar. Yes, I did attend UCSB and yes, that variant was popular. Turns out the same thing was true for kickball. However there was a bunch of initial debate as to one important rule: could girls be pegged out. Basically could the chicas be rendered out by being pelted with an official sized and hard kickball? LOL A seen from Clueless comes to mind having to do something about balls and a young femme's face. lol
It was great time for all. Since I had my backup driver I dove face first into it. It was clearly visible that degredation of the fine kicking technique at the beginning of the game versus by the last inning. We kept score, but no one bothered to keep track of which inning we were in. I lost count after what could have been the bottom of the 6th. After which we ate, drank, recovered and savored the sweet numbing sensation only alcohol can bring to muscles employed to complete tasks not seen since prepubescent times.
I was hurtin'. To quote Officer Murtoch (sp?), I'm getting too old for this shit. LOL
Good times!
Oh yea, the camera got a helluva workout that day. The high speed autofocus and 3fps definitely came in handy!
The Chargers choked. And the Colts choked. Was it a bad day for teams whose names begin with the letter 'C'? For fuck's sake! That's really all I have to say about that shit. Grrr.
Afterwards we went to watch Kiki's sister and bro-in-law karaoke. Ok, now that's just a funny scene. Some people are good. Some people are really good. And some people are really, really bad. LOL. The only criteria necessary to get me up there to sing are: a) LOTS of alcohol and b) a song I know. The fomer would be easier had than the latter. For some reason I am not a lyrics persons. I hear a song's hook and focus on that. It won't be till years later will I realize the song I loved so much, is so fucked up. LOL. Prime example, Jimmy Buffet's song about pina coladas. Sounds like a fun song don't it? And it is. But you gotta really listen...haha! Chris and Mike got skills. Man, the last time I did karaoke has got to be back in 2002 in SF.
While Kiki was off having a girl's day, I stayed home and worked out HALO 3. I love, love, love that game. However it seems that I jipped myself by beating it at the normal setting. May be I'm getting that good or just getting used to the controllers...but now it's getting way easier to play. Playing a FPS (first person shooter) with a keyboard and mouse is way different than with a game controller. The last controller I used on the regular was the original NES's. Long live Contra. Long live Legendary Wings. Long Super Mario Brothers (the original). Long live Ninja Gaiden bitches!!! Woohaaa!!!
Looking around at the young college babies drinking their sodas and ice teas, because they're too young to order the beers they probably rather be drinking...I got thinking about about life at the beginning of college. Way back then I was much more gung-ho about college. I studied everyday for 4-6 hours, on top of going to class. When I wasn't in class I was in the computer lab learning about this great new thing called 'electronic mail' - LMAO! How you 'scan' pictures from magazines and put them on the 'world wide web'. *rolls eyes* haha! Back then if you were getting on the Internet using a 9600BAUD modem, you were king shit. Back then I also worked out 2 hours a day, because there was nothing better else to do. I ran with the track team, played basketball with folks from church and would run the hill behind the school just for the helluva it. A year of doing that earned me my very own six pack. That had to have been about 100lbs ago.
When someone asks me about where to head downtown, I naturally lean towards Visions. It's no secret, I love this place. It's trendy without being pretentious. It's upscale, while you can still rock jeans. And it's the kind of place that people remember you after going for a few times. I usually go there on Thursdays, but my friend needed a place to take her friend that didn't have a ridiculous cover and reasonable drinks. Ding, ding. Visions, anyone?
But there's a hitch. Our friend forgot her ID at WORK, so we all head back to work to then head back downtown. No worries. Road trip. I'm playing DD, so I have to stay away and sober. No worries. After playing musical parking spaces we score a parking spot a block up from the club! Why is this worth mentioning? Have you ever tried to find street parking in a downtown city AND score one near where you were going?!?! Yea, free parking downtown nearby...about as common as a legit Big Foot sighting.
We got hooked up. Scored us a couple of seats at the bar, the girls were drinking and doing shots. I danced and drank some, but couldn't really let loose like I wanted to because I was DD. Next time. Pooh. One thing of note was all the pretty people trying to get their way. Women who demanded things because they looked relatively cute, showing a relative amount of cleavage and leg. Or men, who clearly spent some time in the gym and wore the *in* clothes. Watching these 2 groups of people interact was so so interesting. Anyway, we ended up closing the club and didn't get home till like 2AM or so. Good times.
Today's entry is brought to you by the wonderful world of workplace unprofessionals. Without getting into details I overheard a story of how an employee was fired because they called another employee 'nigga'. And the person telling the story, says it wasn't the recipient of the shout out that was offended by rather another employee who overheard it. The person telling the story called the person who was offended "uppidity". Now I get that people who work together closely often tend to be a bit more social with each other. They let down that professional barrier we all have around us. But I have a problem with this story for 2 reasons:
1) There is no place for that kind of language at work. Unless you happen to be working as a writer on a TV/movie set, cutting hair in a barber shop or may be somewhere else...it's really not the kind of language to use at work. I don't care what you're relationship is with the person.
2) It bothers me when people act way too familiar with others at work. Professionalism goes out the window. Why is it *bad* to conduct yourself differently while you're at work, versus while you're on the clock? Male/female, black/white/asian/latin, whatever...the way we act at a BBQ or at a bar SHOULD be different than the way we act when we're working.
I've worked at places where sales folks get together and drink after meetings/training/client visits and they have a tendency of letting loose big time. The flirting gets turned up. Somebody is sitting on somebody's lap by the end of the night. A few people are off to the side, close-talking, body language signaling the prelude to extracuricular activities. Then the next day, they're back in their business attire and back in *the mode*. Now THAT in my opinion is how it should be. That's the kinda shit you leave for after hours. But no, some people act the same way AT work, outside of work.
Some departments are granted more casual than others, but still...where is the professionalism? For damned sure if someone at work walked up to me and was like, "sup my nigga" - I would be offended even the person was black.