It has happened. I have been sucked into the realm of Facebook. I signed up to help my mom out with a contest she was hoping to win a chance to guest conduct the MOTAB. She needed daily votes, so I pitched in.
It was a fun mini-project. She asked that I help her with her audition video. This is what we got on take three. We wanted something a bit more visually appealing than the majority of the entries (A still shot of them at church or classroom). The winner did a great visual display with cuts to him in the woods, in a gazebo, outside a building with cool pillars, etc every 5 seconds. So I did what I could in a single take because I wasn't confident that I had the know how or time to makes something that elaborate.
I was pretty happy with it and was glad that the camera picked up the music that well. It was also fun playing ninja by walking in a way to minimize shaky camera.
Soooo... Since then I've been on Facebook and liking things...and sharing things. I think I still have grasp on reality and real interactions, so I think I have a good balance. Feel free to look me up if we haven't become "friends" already.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
What a Dutch Oven Has Taught Me
My Mom was kind enough to get me a nice dutch oven for Christmas a few years back. It was pre-seasoned and ready to go straight out of the box.
I think what really got me itching for one was Curtis's potato sausage bacon casserole. He made that for us a couple times when we visited him and Hannah. I love the idea of cooking stew, cobbler and all things delicious in the out of doors. Especially when all you have to do is put stuff in the pot and heat it up.
I was able to get some good use out of our dutch oven for some time. We tried to replicate Curtis's casserole (good but pales in comparison to the master chef)...Emily made some excellent beef stew...I made peach cobbler...life was good. Then after one meal, mabye chili (which has acidic tomatoes that eat at the seasoning), I didn't clean it out as I should have and it rusted on the inside.
So I decided to ask the Internet on how to get our dutch oven back into working order. Basically the verdict was to scrub, scrub and scrape the rust off. I tried steel wool to some success, but I think I just made it worse. Every time I thought I had it and washed it off, I would put it in the oven to quickly dry it, it would look even rustier. I read that vinegar would help remove the rust so I tried some of that and got about the same result.
Eventually I decided that I just need to start from scratch and blast the seasoning off of it. So I put the dutch oven into the oven on a cleaning cycle. I was silly and used mugs to use as stands figuring ceramic would be okay with the intense heat. The ceramic was just fine, it was the glaze that melted a bit where it touched the bottom of the oven. We now have three rings of glaze in the oven. So I guess that was my fist lesson that I learned.
After burning off the seasoning. I dusted off the dutch oven and let it sit on a shelf for a long time. Luckily it didn't spoil. My wife is the adult leader for our church's girls camp this summer and she wanted to use it. So I got a wire brush accessory for my drill and started cleaning off the residue and got it as clean and shiny as I could. And I coated it in Crisco and baked it to begin the seasoning process. It's looking good and I hope that I can keep maintaining it so that we can use if for a long time.
Lessons (Re)Learned
I think what really got me itching for one was Curtis's potato sausage bacon casserole. He made that for us a couple times when we visited him and Hannah. I love the idea of cooking stew, cobbler and all things delicious in the out of doors. Especially when all you have to do is put stuff in the pot and heat it up.
I was able to get some good use out of our dutch oven for some time. We tried to replicate Curtis's casserole (good but pales in comparison to the master chef)...Emily made some excellent beef stew...I made peach cobbler...life was good. Then after one meal, mabye chili (which has acidic tomatoes that eat at the seasoning), I didn't clean it out as I should have and it rusted on the inside.
So I decided to ask the Internet on how to get our dutch oven back into working order. Basically the verdict was to scrub, scrub and scrape the rust off. I tried steel wool to some success, but I think I just made it worse. Every time I thought I had it and washed it off, I would put it in the oven to quickly dry it, it would look even rustier. I read that vinegar would help remove the rust so I tried some of that and got about the same result.
Eventually I decided that I just need to start from scratch and blast the seasoning off of it. So I put the dutch oven into the oven on a cleaning cycle. I was silly and used mugs to use as stands figuring ceramic would be okay with the intense heat. The ceramic was just fine, it was the glaze that melted a bit where it touched the bottom of the oven. We now have three rings of glaze in the oven. So I guess that was my fist lesson that I learned.
After burning off the seasoning. I dusted off the dutch oven and let it sit on a shelf for a long time. Luckily it didn't spoil. My wife is the adult leader for our church's girls camp this summer and she wanted to use it. So I got a wire brush accessory for my drill and started cleaning off the residue and got it as clean and shiny as I could. And I coated it in Crisco and baked it to begin the seasoning process. It's looking good and I hope that I can keep maintaining it so that we can use if for a long time.
Lessons (Re)Learned
- Problems don't go away by ignoring them or covering them up
- Problems require hard work and sometimes won't go away on the first try
- Maintenance is an important part of life to keep us happy
- It's nice to be able to have nice things. Because you know how to care for it. (Conversely: this)
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Footloose - Rehearsal Night One
Setup for a musical production is always...well a production. It will be amazing to see all the pieces come together...Lighting, backstage, musicians, performers, and sound. Especially when a lot of it is done by students and parent volunteers. Being down in a hole (It's really a nice auditorium/stage and pit.) with a bass I only really care about musicians and sound. It's a smaller group than what I've seen for their shows. We have 3 guitars, 2 keyboards, drum set, percussion, reeds, flute and bass.
There are a few things to sort out before too long. There are two monitors in the pit that aren't doing anything. They are plugged into something but no one knows how to get our own sound to come out of it. From my pseudo-trained eyes, it looked like that the stage mics were being pumped into the monitors. My training is based on years of computer work (Inputs are where stuff goes in and outputs are where stuff comes out) and some experience while touring with BYU's International Folk Dance Ensemble. So hopefully they'll be able to sort that out.
The other issue is that the bass has a lot of exposed parts. More than any of the other shows, I've done. Not that they are all fancy solos, per se, but parts where I'm the only one playing anything of note. So I have my work cut out for me this time around. And some of it has funky rhythms. For me I have to listen to rhythms. I'm not that great at reading syncopated rhythms from sheet music.
In prepping for the show, I listened to the soundtrack and played along. One thing I always forget is that the soundtrack doesn't include the between scene music. Luckily it's usually reiterations of the other songs, so it's not so bad. Mostly I need to run through the songs some more to get my muscle memory up to speed.
There are a few things to sort out before too long. There are two monitors in the pit that aren't doing anything. They are plugged into something but no one knows how to get our own sound to come out of it. From my pseudo-trained eyes, it looked like that the stage mics were being pumped into the monitors. My training is based on years of computer work (Inputs are where stuff goes in and outputs are where stuff comes out) and some experience while touring with BYU's International Folk Dance Ensemble. So hopefully they'll be able to sort that out.
The other issue is that the bass has a lot of exposed parts. More than any of the other shows, I've done. Not that they are all fancy solos, per se, but parts where I'm the only one playing anything of note. So I have my work cut out for me this time around. And some of it has funky rhythms. For me I have to listen to rhythms. I'm not that great at reading syncopated rhythms from sheet music.
In prepping for the show, I listened to the soundtrack and played along. One thing I always forget is that the soundtrack doesn't include the between scene music. Luckily it's usually reiterations of the other songs, so it's not so bad. Mostly I need to run through the songs some more to get my muscle memory up to speed.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Fruit Trees
My wife comes home one day from stopping by her Dad's house. She regales me of how her Dad is buying fruit trees from Stark Brothers and they are currently having a special where orders ship for free. And the special was ending that night.
At first I was a bit resistant to getting fruit trees for our suburb-scape grass patch in the back of the house. Em and I have been dreaming for a while on finding a little bit of land that we can comfortably raise small animals (chickens and rabbits and children) and grow a sizable garden. So she wanted to "practice" with some trees right now. I really didn't want to put in too much effort and money into something we won't get to reap the full benefits of since we kinda want to find a farmhouse and live there. That and our backyard (more often than not) is full of stagnate rainwater that won't drain into the ground due to bad engineering or super clay-ey soil or both.
She reminded me that I have some "ill-gotten gains" (Her words, not mine) coming my way after I play bass in Footloose at my old high school. (Which by the way is going to be really fun to play...several bass solos I need to work on...and I get to hang out with my Mom.) So I sunk about $100 in two apple trees and an apricot tree with some assorted fertilizer and soil enrichers (Our dirt is junk that they used to make the houses sit a bit higher.)
The trees were shipped from Missouri and arrived this week and last night under the light of twinkling stars and my headlamp I dug holes and planted the trees. I was pleasantly surprised that the dirt where we planted the trees is a lot better than the dirt close to our house where we have some small garden beds. (We had to put in manure and topsoil to make it usable.)
And now we have three 3-4 foot sticks in our backyard that will hopefully grow fruit in 2-5 years. I kinda excited.
At first I was a bit resistant to getting fruit trees for our suburb-scape grass patch in the back of the house. Em and I have been dreaming for a while on finding a little bit of land that we can comfortably raise small animals (chickens and rabbits and children) and grow a sizable garden. So she wanted to "practice" with some trees right now. I really didn't want to put in too much effort and money into something we won't get to reap the full benefits of since we kinda want to find a farmhouse and live there. That and our backyard (more often than not) is full of stagnate rainwater that won't drain into the ground due to bad engineering or super clay-ey soil or both.
She reminded me that I have some "ill-gotten gains" (Her words, not mine) coming my way after I play bass in Footloose at my old high school. (Which by the way is going to be really fun to play...several bass solos I need to work on...and I get to hang out with my Mom.) So I sunk about $100 in two apple trees and an apricot tree with some assorted fertilizer and soil enrichers (Our dirt is junk that they used to make the houses sit a bit higher.)
The trees were shipped from Missouri and arrived this week and last night under the light of twinkling stars and my headlamp I dug holes and planted the trees. I was pleasantly surprised that the dirt where we planted the trees is a lot better than the dirt close to our house where we have some small garden beds. (We had to put in manure and topsoil to make it usable.)
And now we have three 3-4 foot sticks in our backyard that will hopefully grow fruit in 2-5 years. I kinda excited.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Why couldn't this kind of thing happen 9 years ago?
I got a call today from a dear friend from church who works at a doctor's office. She asks me to help her with a walk-in patient who doesn't speak English very well, but speaks Korean fluently. I told her that I would do the best I can (even though I am the complete inverse of the patient...doesn't speak Korean very well, but speaks English fluently).
I think that a lot of foreign speaking missionaries dream of finding some way to keep their language ability at a functioning level. I worked at a driver's license exam station right after my mission to Korea and would have loved to have a Korean walk in and I would "save the day" and help everyone involved. But the years keep adding up and the only Korean I keep up with is food. And so my Korean speaking ability is probably close to my almost 3 year old son's grasp of English with random high level Gospel words sprinkled in.
So my friend gives me a list of questions to ask. The first thing I try to say is "It's been almost 10 years since I spoke Korean." But I'm pretty sure it came out as, "Ten years since I speak Korean." Then he asks if I am a Korean. I say, "American." There was a time I answered the phone and carried on a conversation and a friend of the caller asked who it was and was surprised to learn that it was an American. Although I doubt that was his intention when he asked. It was more like, "Really?! Who is this?"
The rest of conversation went something like this:
Me: Head hurt?
Patient: Yes...(and continues to list other problems/symptoms that I catch zero of)
Me: Dizzy?
Patient: Yes...(some more wonderful Korean)
Me: Healthy appetite?
Patient: I am eating well (that part I caught clearly, mostly because it's a common saying about a person's well being)
I'm not going to let myself get too down about this. I figure most of the words he was using were medical terms that I never used. But it's gotten me thinking that I should do something about my failing Korean speak.
I think that a lot of foreign speaking missionaries dream of finding some way to keep their language ability at a functioning level. I worked at a driver's license exam station right after my mission to Korea and would have loved to have a Korean walk in and I would "save the day" and help everyone involved. But the years keep adding up and the only Korean I keep up with is food. And so my Korean speaking ability is probably close to my almost 3 year old son's grasp of English with random high level Gospel words sprinkled in.
So my friend gives me a list of questions to ask. The first thing I try to say is "It's been almost 10 years since I spoke Korean." But I'm pretty sure it came out as, "Ten years since I speak Korean." Then he asks if I am a Korean. I say, "American." There was a time I answered the phone and carried on a conversation and a friend of the caller asked who it was and was surprised to learn that it was an American. Although I doubt that was his intention when he asked. It was more like, "Really?! Who is this?"
The rest of conversation went something like this:
Me: Head hurt?
Patient: Yes...(and continues to list other problems/symptoms that I catch zero of)
Me: Dizzy?
Patient: Yes...(some more wonderful Korean)
Me: Healthy appetite?
Patient: I am eating well (that part I caught clearly, mostly because it's a common saying about a person's well being)
I'm not going to let myself get too down about this. I figure most of the words he was using were medical terms that I never used. But it's gotten me thinking that I should do something about my failing Korean speak.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Binocs
My wife recently unearthed a once thought lost forever treasure. Our basement flooded over the weekend (shouldn't happen again with our new 1 hp sump pump that replaced a 1/3 hp pump) and she ran over to my parents house to find an extra pump. My parent's weren't home so she was looking everywhere she could think of and found something else instead.
I was pretty sure these were lost in the move from my parents old house to their current house. These belonged to Boppa (my Dad's Dad) and we inherited them when he passed. I would take these out on the roof of the garage and look at birds. Mostly cardinals, mourning doves, robins and chickadees. At night they were good for looking at the stars. They have really strong magnification. Each eye piece can be adjusted individually.
I'm really happy that my wife found them. It gives me something to remind me of Boppa and something fun to share with the kids (They're made of metal, so it's quite sturdy). I'm looking forward to packing them with us on hikes and campouts to discover and explore together.
I was pretty sure these were lost in the move from my parents old house to their current house. These belonged to Boppa (my Dad's Dad) and we inherited them when he passed. I would take these out on the roof of the garage and look at birds. Mostly cardinals, mourning doves, robins and chickadees. At night they were good for looking at the stars. They have really strong magnification. Each eye piece can be adjusted individually.
I'm really happy that my wife found them. It gives me something to remind me of Boppa and something fun to share with the kids (They're made of metal, so it's quite sturdy). I'm looking forward to packing them with us on hikes and campouts to discover and explore together.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Our Christmas Tree
We decided to go old school this year and cut down our own tree. Thankfully we have an amiable Gran who let us remove a tree from her land. We set out to get it one late afternoon thinking it would be a somewhat simple endeavor; go up the hill into the woods, find a tree, cut down said tree, drag it down the hill, and strap it to the Trailblazer.
The majority of the smaller pine trees to be found are some kind of cedar. None of them were very filled out. My wife and daughter found a tree on the very edge of her property. It was around 30 feet tall, but the bottom part was mostly bare so we figured we could fell the tree and pare it down.
All that we had at hand was a run-of-the-mill bow saw. I started cutting into the tree that had a diameter of 5 - 6 inches. We took turns at first and even tried two manning the bow saw which was less than effective. At this point our daughter was getting bored and wanted to get back to Gran's house and play there. So my wife escorted her down to the house.
Meanwhile I'm still trying my best to get through this tree with a bow saw in the failing light. I had only managed to get in about the width of the blade (an inch) around most of the tree. Then I hear this ATV coming towards me from the adjoining property. For some reason (my personality) my reaction is flight instead of fight. I'm thinking it's dark, I'm alone, they might think I'm on their property (being so close to the edge), or it could be a poacher with a shotgun who is trespassing and he has a shotgun. So I hear the ATV come close and then sit for a while; I never see it. I hide behind a tree and act like a deer instead of announcing myself. Brilliant. (Hey! I'm a person! Any deer you didn't scare off driving that ATV over here, I already scared off by being here hacking at this tree! That would have been an appropriate response.) But he probably has a shotgun and it's dusk and he has a shotgun. So I take off down the hill. Luckily he never fired, but I hear the ATV patrolling around the top of the hill.
I traipse into the house grateful not to have any holes in me and my wife gives me a questioning look, What are you doing here without my Christmas tree!? I relay my story and she tells me I'm an idiot (rightfully so. It's stupid to act like the animal in season - being all quiet, hiding, and bolting). But mostly I'm glad to not have been shotgunned. My wife insists that we have to go back up and get the tree because that is what we set out to do and to not have done what we set out to do is not part of the plan. Somehow between me and Gran we talked her out of it and we left the tree for another day.
On the appointed day, I set out in the morning to tackle the tree. Still only wielding a bow saw, I march up the hill to bring down the tree. I don't know how long it took (an hour or two), but I managed to fell the tree. Then I cut off the bare scraggly bottom. Now comes the arduous task of dragging the tree down the trail. I sling my trusty, rusty bow saw over my shoulder like a commando wearing extra ammo and transport my spoils off the hill.
I thought I would be able to get the tree on the SUV by myself, but I couldn't. Luckily my brother-in-law came over to help Gran and he helped me get it up. He also helped get it back on after I foolishly thought it would stay with twine. We used paracord the next time. Then we got my house and realized the tree was still too big and chopped off another three feet so that it would fit through the door. It now stands 14 feet tall filling half of our vaulted ceiling front room.
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