So Long, and Thanks for All the Turkey

Thanksgiving went well. Our turkey turned out great, despite taking over an hour longer than we’d anticipated (the Big Easy is awesome, but slow): crispy on the outside, moist and juicy on the inside. The brining approach is clearly the way to go. This may have been the best turkey I’ve ever had.


Our guests had a good time, nothing got destroyed (I guess we had our share of destruction last night, thanks to the mongrel Bijou; see previous entry), and we have a ton of leftovers. Yeah, things went well.

Today is also my birthday (I was born on Thanksgiving, so every so many years my birthday falls on the same day as the holiday; this was one of those years). I’m a whopping 39 (and dear God, I sure do look it). I made Teresa promise NOT to plan any surprises, and for once she honored my wishes. There was a brief interlude after the feast involving a birthday cake, but that was it.

A couple of weeks ago, Teresa asked me what I wanted for my birthday. “A pony,” I replied. Well, guess what Princess Kendyl got for me?


I can’t ride it, and I can’t brush its hair, but I can grin like an idiot every time I look at it. And I do.

I also got the last remaining James Bond books from Teresa, so my collection is complete. Oh, wait. Cue the backstory!

I’ve been on a big James Bond kick lately. I remember watching most of the earlier films when I was younger (I’d ride my bike to nearby Hubbard to rent them on VHS, probably around 7th grade or so), and I recall buying a few used paperbacks from the Canby Book Exchange (but I’m not sure if I actually read them). Anyway --- I really enjoyed 2006’s Casino Royale, and I totally dug Daniel Craig as the new Bond (however, Sean Connery will always be the only true James Bond), and Quantum of Solace looked promising. Three of the Connery Bond films came out on Blu-ray, and I snagged ‘em…. And then my OCD tendencies kicked in. I decided that I would read all the original Ian Fleming novels (all 15 of ‘em) AND watch every Bond movie (all 22 of ‘em).

I initially tried to find the first book (Casino Royale) at the library, but came up empty. Of course by now I was on a mission: I HAD to get my hands on the damn book. I left work early one early November day and hit Barnes and Noble, and what I found there was truly amazing: the entire collection, 15 books in all, in gorgeous retro-style paperbacks.


I had to have them. To hell with borrowing tattered old hardback copies from the library! These editions were things of beauty, and I longed to possess them. However, money being tight and the holidays fast approaching, I held off ($14.00 times 15…. well, that’s way more than I had any right to spend). I decided to head downtown to Powell’s to see if I could score some used copies, to at least sate the new addiction that was gnawing at my insides like a gopher in heat. And, surprise of surprises, Powell’s had marked down several of the new editions to $5.98 (that’s new, not used!). Now there was no stopping me. I grabbed a copy of every marked-down title, which amounted to 8 books. I devoured Casino Royale in two days, and hungrily reached for the next one… and realized with horror that I didn’t have it. See, in my feverish rush to acquire the books cheaply, I didn’t keep track of which books I was getting. I’d bought the first book… and the final seven. There was a 7-book gap in my collection, staring back at me like a starving Ethiopian kid, evil flies buzzing about its head, cruel sun beating down like sucker-punches from God. I ponied up and bought the next two (Live and Let Die and Moonraker) at full price (I had to do it, you see; by now I was a trembling junkie in need of a fix), and read them both in a week. Teresa graciously bought the fourth book for me (Diamonds are Forever), and then gave me the remaining four books for my birthday. I’m now halfway through #5, From Russia with Love, and I’ve gotta say, I am enjoying the hell out of these books. While the rest of the world (Sierra included) is obsessed with the Twilight series, I’m kicking it old school with 007.

I am almost 40, after all. Old school is kinda appropriate, don’tcha think?


Oh, and as for the movies: I watched the first seven. All the Connerys are done, and I’m not in a big hurry to move on to the Roger Moores. I never really liked him as Bond.

The Scene of the Crime

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and, as I’ve previously mentioned, we’re hosting it this year. In preparation, our dining room table/chairs have been moved into the garage, and we’ve rearranged the living room furniture to create what amounts to a giant empty space, which will be filled by rented tables and chairs to accommodate the six of us and our fourteen guests.

This morning was like every other morning. Teresa left for work first, and then I took the kids to school on my way to work. Everything seemed normal; nothing seemed amiss. But folks, something was most definitely amiss. Maybe we were all distracted by thoughts of tomorrow’s feast, I dunno. A critical detail was missed as we raced through our morning routine.

Bijou didn’t get locked up. She spent the entire day in the house, unsupervised, on the loose. Ladies and gentlemen, I call your attention to what used to be the living and dining room area of our house.


Teresa had a large stash of Partylite candles, still in their boxes, which Bijou chewed into oblivion (in fact, we’re expecting her to shit a giant candle any time now). Six large decorative grapevine balls (I don’t know what else to call them) were reduced to countless sad little brown twigs. She dragged a 2-liter bottle of 7-Up from the kitchen into the living room and chewed a hole in it, creating a large puddle (at least it was colorless). Surprisingly, she only destroyed one DVD (out of the hundreds at her disposal): Teresa’s copy of Young Guns. Blaze of glory, indeed.

It could have been worse. She could have pissed all over the place (she’s clearly house trained). She could have destroyed the furniture, but she didn’t (I guess she’s spent enough time on the couch to respect it). Hell, she could have torn up the carpet, but it seems perfectly intact (well, except for the giant wet spot, which will hopefully be dry by tomorrow). So yeah, it could’ve definitely been worse. But hell, the day before our big holiday gathering? Really?

Thanks to Logan for cleaning it up. That dog is DAMN lucky I wasn’t the first one home.

Little Girl, Big Truck

Cute little girl
Big, big truck
You can’t be more than five feet high
Why do you need such a huge rig?
Do you long to touch the sky?
Do you feel yourself growing taller
as you climb up those heavy steel steps?
Do you feel mighty and strong
as you slide into that big cab?
You’d fit into a Fiat or a Miata, easy
But hell, that truck is huge!
You could run me off the road in that thing
And you might,
since you can’t see over the fucking steering wheel.

Pre-Thanksgiving

As mentioned in a previous entry, we’re having Thanksgiving at our house (thanks to my big mouth last year). The plan was to do our standard deep-fried turkey, since it’s always a hit and makes people think we’re really hip (culinarily speaking), and god knows we need all the help we can get in the public perception department. But as we got closer to the holiday, we began to dread to inevitable messy pain the ass that deep-frying a turkey brings.

And then we went to CostCo, and there was a light at the end of that peanut oil-soaked tunnel.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Char-Broil Big Easy.



Deep frying… without oil? We looked at one another and, in that solitary suspended-in-time moment, a mutual decision was made, without words, without hesitation.


Yesterday (Sunday 11/23) we test-drove the beast, so to speak (and, since our reputations; nay, our very honor was riding on this, a pre-holiday attempt seemed wise). We injected the turkey with a healthy amount of garlic and herb-infused liquefied butter and, after resolving a propane tank issue (a frosty regulator, which we deduced was caused by the square-headed dope at the gas station overfilling the tank), we fired it up on the back porch and dropped the turkey in.



We waited. And waited. Our digital meat thermometer crept slowly up toward that magic number (165 degrees). We decided to take it out a bit early, since it would continue to cook as it rested (you can typically go up about 10 more degrees during the resting process if you cover the turkey with tin foil). We brought the turkey inside, thermometer still in place, covered it in tin foil, and whipped up the side dishes (mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, and rolls). We kept an eye on the thermometer, waiting to see 165 appear.

It didn’t. It never did.

What went wrong? We couldn’t figure it out. As panic blossomed like a rose in a warm room, we decided to put the turkey back in the fryer and cook it some more. We fired up the Big Easy again, dropped the turkey back in, and waited for the thermometer to creep its way up to 165.

It didn’t. It never did.

We got frustrated. Hell, we got mad. We gave up on the turkey fryer, brought the bird back inside, and started pre-heating the oven in defeat. I then suggested that maybe we should cut into it, just to see. Teresa pulled out her sharpest knife (no, not from her purse) and commenced carving. The meat inside was beautiful, apparently fully cooked. It was then that we realized that the fryer hadn’t failed us at all…. the digital thermometer had. The turkey was fully cooked and mostly moist (the outermost meat was a bit dry, undoubtedly from being in the fryer too long) and delicious. The dark meat was perfect. Absolutely amazing, especially since it spent well over an extra hour in the fryer.



The verdict? The Char-Broil Big Easy is awesome. Just make sure your meat thermometer doesn’t suck.

Cattywampus!

I was needing a change. I was getting that unsettled, shifting feeling. Call it an itch. Call it a longing. We had a good thing going for a while, but the magic had worn off. Things had gotten stale at home, and I needed something new, something fresh and exciting to sweep me off my feet.

That’s right. Comcast had to go.

And yesterday, in what must be the longest installation in recorded history, Comcast got booted out and Verizon FIOS took its place. I wasn’t home to witness it (Teresa had the honor), but I can report that Keith, the installation guy, arrived at 9:00 in the morning, and by 5:30 when I got home…. Well, he was still there. In fact, he didn’t leave till 7:30, which means it took this moron TEN AND A HALF HOURS to install the same basic thing that Comcast did in less than half the time three years ago (when I got bored with Dish Network, and needed something new and exciting to sweep me off my… oh, you get the idea). Funny thing is, he didn’t even do everything right, and some stuff he didn’t do at all.

First of all, he couldn’t get our wireless network to, well, WORK. After much hand-wringing and perplexed facial gestures (in my imagination, anyway), Teresa stepped in and fixed the problem. That’s right, the CUSTOMER is smarter than the INSTALLER. Aaaaaawesome. He then had trouble connecting the new DVR to the TV in the master bedroom, even though the appropriate cables were RIGHT THERE (my own cables, incidentally, since apparently Verizon doesn’t provide its customers with cabling; interestingly, Comcast actually gave us extra sets!). So, when I got home from work, I had to hook it up myself.

Around 6:15 he ventured downstairs to do his “final programming,” which would only take “about fifteen minutes” and then he’d be “done.” Forty-five minutes later, he was most certainly not done. He finally came upstairs and subjected us to the weirdest half hour of our lives (at least my life; I can’t really speak for Teresa, but she does come from Southern Oregon, so she may have seen weirder things). Keith attempted to show us the various onscreen menus of our new service, how to use the remote (really?), and how to operate the multi-room DVR. He talked to us as if we were children for much of the time as he fumbled his way through his presentation, and you know what? That guy DIDN’T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE what he was talking about. For example:

“See, Comcast doesn’t have as much high definition juice, so they dumb it down during the day and bump it up at night, when more people are watching. But Verizon bumps it up 24/7!”

*Sigh* I could easily list a dozen other moronic things that came out of his mouth, but my favorite occurred when, in Sierra’s room, the remote was (at cross purposes) turning the cable box on and turning the TV off simultaneously.

“It’s cattywampus!” he exclaimed. My blank stare must have betrayed my complete and utter confusion, because he followed it up with, “You know, like when things are backwards, so they bump heads and don’t work. It’s cattywampus!”

Ladies and gentlemen, I think a new word has been introduced into our family vocabulary. As appalled as I was by Keith’s rampant incompetence, I can’t thank him enough for this wonderful word. I can’t believe I’ve lived almost 39 years without it.

About an hour after he left (and much jolly ridiculing behind his back), we came to the sobering realization that he never bothered to set up our email for us. Well, shit. That, my friends, is just plain cattywampus.

The Horror! The Horror!!

Predictably, I spent Halloween handing out candy to grubby little kids, most of whom couldn’t be bothered to utter a simple “thank you” upon receiving handfuls of inorganic, chemically-preserved mini-chocolate bars. The radiant Sierra was on hand to assist. Neither of us dressed up or otherwise immersed ourselves in the spirit of the night (which is strange, since we are of similar temperaments and this is exactly the kind of holiday we should relish). We ran out of candy a bit early, which means we either underestimated the number of trick-or-treaters or we were giving out too much. I think it was the latter (hence the “handfuls” mentioned above).

Kendyl, meanwhile, amassed a giant bag of candy. Props to her for kicking it old school versus dressing up as Hannah Montana like every other eight year-old girl:


Cute, huh? Now we segue into the not-so-cute. My friend Donovan, apparently reveling in the spirit of the season, sent me the following picture of himself, digitally manipulated for maximum ghoulishness:


Not to be outdone, I sent him the following, which was NOT manipulated at all (because I really am one ugly sumbitch):


“Heh heh heh,” I snickered to myself. “Anything he can do, I can do better.”

Oh, how wrong I was. In response (or retaliation), he applied his digital manipulation skills to my picture and came up with the following:


He wins. Hands down. I can’t compete with this. There is nothing uglier or scarier on the face of this earth (except maybe Sarah Palin’s dead moose collection). Happy (ack) belated (ugh) Halloween.