Congrats, you crazy kids, marriage is a journey just like my 9 hour drive home today.
30 thoughts on “September 23, 2018: Married”
On the Smoker: Boneless Beef Chuck Short Ribs
These were cut lengthwise by my butcher about 1" in thickness, and 6-8" in length. There was some fat on the edges, which I would worry about with grilling (putting out fires, etc.), but with the smoker we're set.
I added some Mesquite chips in with the briquets, and about halfway thru, added corn on the cob and Brussels sprouts in a small pan to catch some of the smokiness. Later I sprinkled them with lemon juice and covered the dish with tin-foil.
Just hit 150F - I added some KC-style (vinegar-based) BBQ sauce - we are ready to eat at 160F. While waiting I made a LaCrosse, Sconnie Bloody Mary (have you been to Del's?) Absolut, BM mix, NYC Half Sour pickles+juice, celery salt, Worcestershire sauce.
this morning already??? Savage!
Well, I got up at 3:50am today with Deutschland jet lag. We ate at 11:30 which is civilish. I was dying to cook something.
This past summer, for the first time in his life, the jalapeño began to care about how his bedroom looked. He finally allowed me to throw away has valentines from last year (and the year before) and got rid of tons of junky trinkets from birthday party gift bags. A few days ago, we went to Home Depot and picked out a few things to make his closet be more functional for storage. We measured the closet and I looked very carefully at what we'd need.
Of the 5 items I bought, only two needed to be exchanged. (One was the wrong brand; in my defense it was miss-shelved . The other was the right brand but not part of the correct system within that brand.) 🙄
It kills me that I'm not better at home repair/improvement.
I feel like I've gotten much better at home repair/improvement over the last few years. We're in the middle of building a storage bench for the kitchen, and a table that will be like an extension of the counter top. I don't know that I would have attempted this five years ago, but it really hasn't been all that hard to do. It looks pretty awesome right now, and if we ever find the time to complete it, I think it will end up well.
The biggest key for me doing more of this is just trusting myself that I can do it. And the googles are your friend. You can now watch a youtube tutorial on just about anything you can imagine wanting to do.
And multiple trips to Home Depot go with the territory. We're up to at least 7 for these current projects, and we aren't done building it all yet.
Indeed. I'm becoming a damn expert at shelf building. I've also built a fence and a deck (hat tip to ch on the deck as he helped with framing). I've gotta save up some cash, but the next project I want to tackle is finishing the basement. I'll hire someone to do the wiring, but I intend to do the rest myself. In the nearly 11 I've never called anyone in and I don't intend to. But then, I have a mechanical engineering degree, so it's rather in my nature.
I have physics degrees instead of engineering, but have enough of those proclivities to have the desire/ability to figure out how most things work well enough that I can fix/build them. Between my (also physicist) wife and I, along with some youtube tutorials, we can probably figure out how to do most things ourselves. We're now to the point where, for most projects, it's more a matter of deciding between spending the time to do it ourselves or pay someone else to do it for us.
And we also need to figure in that it will likely take us at least 4-5 times longer than a professional....
Somehow the awesome reading comprehension skills I acquired as an English major are of limited use to me in these circumstances . . .
Given enough time (and enough video tutorials), I expect I could start learning, but the problem is that there's no such thing as a long, uninterrupted stretch of time to figure things out. I also suspect that buying the least expensive option doesn't typically result in the least frustrating installation.
I saw a cedar strip canoe this weekend, and I’m seriously considering building one this winter. The first problem is that I don’t have an indoor workspace big enough for this project.
My father-in-law cut down a bunch of trees lately, and I've been looking at one of them for a while now, wondering if I could hollow it out into a canoe. If my elementary social studies serves me right, there were Native American tribes that did that, possibly using fire, right?
I'd beware of anything you learned about Native Americans in elementary school social studies classes...
I dunno, my elementary school was way ahead of the curve. Heck, we were so far ahead of the curve that there's even a very popular musical theater production named after my school. I mean, I've never seen it, but I always just assumed Hamilton was about a bunch of teachers and stuff, right?
I miss The Dugout.
Didn't they also hunt bison using spears? You could try that!
We're giving Newbish his choice of room when we move in tomorrow afternoon. I look forward to 15 year old Newbish being deeply disappointed in whatever choice he ends up making.
We're moving in a few weeks too (out of the in-laws', into our own place again finally!). We're trying to keep the idea that the room assignments are temporary - and that there will be more rooms available in the not-too-distant future (2 - 5 years?)(hopefully less, for at least one in the basement, but that'll require egress windows). But so long as they can have their choice of posters on the wall, they'll be able to make the room their own, and change it as they grow.
Good luck to both of you with the moves!
R. I. P. Lee Stange. The article refers to him as "former Red Sox pitcher", which he was, but he pitched for the Twins in the early days of the team. He was eighty-one.
Yesterday morning, we went for a quick hike through the Tiergarten in Berlin by the former Danish embassy (and now our hotel). I thought it was weird that the trees had numbers tacked on to them.
A postscript on my recent Berlin trip. In and around 1994, I was working for a Mpls-based health insurance behemoth in their international division. On assignment in Switzerland, I was riding a train from Zürich to Winterthur. The old woman on the seat next to me on the train had a 6-digit number tattoo'ed on her wrist.
So my Twitter was blowing up about how bad the Vikings were playing. I thought it was probably an overreaction and they were losing like 10-3.
When I saw it was 27-0 I laughed. So glad I don’t watch football on glorious days like today.
Instead of watching dudes kill themselves, I'm out on my deck making beer and watching Joe tie killebrew in times on base. Much better.
I haven't checked my twitter feed yet for the Emeritus's inevitable "The Vikings are going to the Super Bowl" tweet.
I got it: the vikings are going to the super bowl and half the roster will have a lifetime of cognitive disability.
mayyyybeeee.
CNN defense lawyer on Cosby sentencing just used milieu, proclivity and conundrum. Oh, and by the way, doing quaaludes is no longer acceptable.
Watched this ramen flik on way back from BER. Now planning to make a batch myself.
On the Smoker: Boneless Beef Chuck Short Ribs
These were cut lengthwise by my butcher about 1" in thickness, and 6-8" in length. There was some fat on the edges, which I would worry about with grilling (putting out fires, etc.), but with the smoker we're set.
I added some Mesquite chips in with the briquets, and about halfway thru, added corn on the cob and Brussels sprouts in a small pan to catch some of the smokiness. Later I sprinkled them with lemon juice and covered the dish with tin-foil.
Just hit 150F - I added some KC-style (vinegar-based) BBQ sauce - we are ready to eat at 160F. While waiting I made a LaCrosse, Sconnie Bloody Mary (have you been to Del's?) Absolut, BM mix, NYC Half Sour pickles+juice, celery salt, Worcestershire sauce.
this morning already??? Savage!
Well, I got up at 3:50am today with Deutschland jet lag. We ate at 11:30 which is civilish. I was dying to cook something.
Britt Robson at The Athletic on the Wolves (paywall?)
This past summer, for the first time in his life, the jalapeño began to care about how his bedroom looked. He finally allowed me to throw away has valentines from last year (and the year before) and got rid of tons of junky trinkets from birthday party gift bags. A few days ago, we went to Home Depot and picked out a few things to make his closet be more functional for storage. We measured the closet and I looked very carefully at what we'd need.
Of the 5 items I bought, only two needed to be exchanged. (One was the wrong brand; in my defense it was miss-shelved . The other was the right brand but not part of the correct system within that brand.) 🙄
It kills me that I'm not better at home repair/improvement.
I feel like I've gotten much better at home repair/improvement over the last few years. We're in the middle of building a storage bench for the kitchen, and a table that will be like an extension of the counter top. I don't know that I would have attempted this five years ago, but it really hasn't been all that hard to do. It looks pretty awesome right now, and if we ever find the time to complete it, I think it will end up well.
The biggest key for me doing more of this is just trusting myself that I can do it. And the googles are your friend. You can now watch a youtube tutorial on just about anything you can imagine wanting to do.
And multiple trips to Home Depot go with the territory. We're up to at least 7 for these current projects, and we aren't done building it all yet.
Indeed. I'm becoming a damn expert at shelf building. I've also built a fence and a deck (hat tip to ch on the deck as he helped with framing). I've gotta save up some cash, but the next project I want to tackle is finishing the basement. I'll hire someone to do the wiring, but I intend to do the rest myself. In the nearly 11 I've never called anyone in and I don't intend to. But then, I have a mechanical engineering degree, so it's rather in my nature.
Spice rack.
that's pretty much me in the carpentry arena.
I have physics degrees instead of engineering, but have enough of those proclivities to have the desire/ability to figure out how most things work well enough that I can fix/build them. Between my (also physicist) wife and I, along with some youtube tutorials, we can probably figure out how to do most things ourselves. We're now to the point where, for most projects, it's more a matter of deciding between spending the time to do it ourselves or pay someone else to do it for us.
And we also need to figure in that it will likely take us at least 4-5 times longer than a professional....
Somehow the awesome reading comprehension skills I acquired as an English major are of limited use to me in these circumstances . . .
Given enough time (and enough video tutorials), I expect I could start learning, but the problem is that there's no such thing as a long, uninterrupted stretch of time to figure things out. I also suspect that buying the least expensive option doesn't typically result in the least frustrating installation.
I saw a cedar strip canoe this weekend, and I’m seriously considering building one this winter. The first problem is that I don’t have an indoor workspace big enough for this project.
My father-in-law cut down a bunch of trees lately, and I've been looking at one of them for a while now, wondering if I could hollow it out into a canoe. If my elementary social studies serves me right, there were Native American tribes that did that, possibly using fire, right?
I'd beware of anything you learned about Native Americans in elementary school social studies classes...
I dunno, my elementary school was way ahead of the curve. Heck, we were so far ahead of the curve that there's even a very popular musical theater production named after my school. I mean, I've never seen it, but I always just assumed Hamilton was about a bunch of teachers and stuff, right?
I miss The Dugout.
Didn't they also hunt bison using spears? You could try that!
We're giving Newbish his choice of room when we move in tomorrow afternoon. I look forward to 15 year old Newbish being deeply disappointed in whatever choice he ends up making.
We're moving in a few weeks too (out of the in-laws', into our own place again finally!). We're trying to keep the idea that the room assignments are temporary - and that there will be more rooms available in the not-too-distant future (2 - 5 years?)(hopefully less, for at least one in the basement, but that'll require egress windows). But so long as they can have their choice of posters on the wall, they'll be able to make the room their own, and change it as they grow.
Good luck to both of you with the moves!
R. I. P. Lee Stange. The article refers to him as "former Red Sox pitcher", which he was, but he pitched for the Twins in the early days of the team. He was eighty-one.
Yesterday morning, we went for a quick hike through the Tiergarten in Berlin by the former Danish embassy (and now our hotel). I thought it was weird that the trees had numbers tacked on to them.
Wow.
A postscript on my recent Berlin trip. In and around 1994, I was working for a Mpls-based health insurance behemoth in their international division. On assignment in Switzerland, I was riding a train from Zürich to Winterthur. The old woman on the seat next to me on the train had a 6-digit number tattoo'ed on her wrist.
So my Twitter was blowing up about how bad the Vikings were playing. I thought it was probably an overreaction and they were losing like 10-3.
When I saw it was 27-0 I laughed. So glad I don’t watch football on glorious days like today.
Instead of watching dudes kill themselves, I'm out on my deck making beer and watching Joe tie killebrew in times on base. Much better.
I haven't checked my twitter feed yet for the Emeritus's inevitable "The Vikings are going to the Super Bowl" tweet.
I got it: the vikings are going to the super bowl and half the roster will have a lifetime of cognitive disability.
mayyyybeeee.
CNN defense lawyer on Cosby sentencing just used milieu, proclivity and conundrum. Oh, and by the way, doing quaaludes is no longer acceptable.
Watched this ramen flik on way back from BER. Now planning to make a batch myself.