The Joy of Things, including Christmas

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Our Christmas here was good - lots of food, had some fun, presents of course. Invariably people will ask me what I got, so here is a list of some things:

• A keyboard - earlier this year Liz and I were talking about playing music, and I said that if I could play any instrument it would probably be the piano. So, she bought me a keyboard for Christmas. I'm looking forward to trying it out - though am also quite intimidated at the same time...
• A beginner's keyboard book - luckily, because I had no idea where to start...
• DVDs - The Dark Knight, Hot Rod, Inception (jointly with Liz) (all of which are great movies), and Liz also got me the entire first season (also called Book 1) of Avatar The Last Airbender!!!
• A slanket
• A lot of Star Wars stuff (an apron, pancake molds, ornaments)
• A Clapper (for the lights, according to Liz "They're not just for old people - they're for all lazy people!")
• A shirt from Ireland
• More stuff that I won't list because the list would get too long

Also, yes, we did get a lot of snow. We didn't have a White Christmas, but instead it started snowing on the 26th and it didn't stop for quite a while, along with very strong winds. Reports about depth vary widely, the deepest point on our back deck was about 18 inches or so deep. I've never seen so much snow. Unfortunately due to "blizzard-like" conditions, there is no snow on the trees, which is often what helps add to the photogenic nature of it. We lost power, but luckily it was restored after about 25 hours.

On Sunday we made a quick run to the grocery store to get some food for dinners before the snow got too heavy. While there, a kid was climbing on a display, and their mother took them down of it. I looked down where the kid was climbing to see the item I was looking for! Still looking at the shelf, the lady looked at me strangely, like I had been watching her child suspiciously or something. I explained:

Russell: "Thanks! I was actually looking for that (pointed) and didn't know where it was!"

Lady (in thick accent): "You're from South Africa, too?"

Russell: "No, I'm Australian..."

Lady: "Well, they're all pretty much the same!"

Russell: "Hahahaha"

Note: I actually said "Hahahaha" instead of laughing. That was when I walked away.

Now, to the meat of the post. You'll notice later that that was a very punny statement to make.

We had ham as part of our Christmas dinner. It was absolutely delicious. Everyone knows that I think bacon is great, but the pig really needs to be given credit - it produces a lot of tastiness. When we were cleaning up, Andrew noticed a piece of ham sitting in the ham drippings/run-off. He ate it, and told me how delicious it was. I took some ham and dipped it in there. It was amazing - it was like ham coated in ham. So I took the run off and put it in the fridge. I decided I would dub it "Ham Concentrate".

The next day Liz and I were heating up some left overs for lunch, so I took out the Ham Concentrate and noticed that all the fat from it had settled on the surface. I scooped off the fat and noticed that the remaining Ham Concentrate was now like a jelly. I took some out and put it on top of the ham, peas and carrots and then put it in the oven. It was incredible - ham coated peas and carrots and hammy ham.

Tonight we made pizza for dinner. The plan was to make pizza for dinner last week, but the night we were going to, Friday, was Christmas Eve and we were busy and didn't get around to making dinner. So, I decided to modify last week's pineapple and onion pizza idea. Sure, ham and pineapple is a classic and the obvious choice here, but with the ham supplies dwindling in the fridge and the rest frozen, I reached again for the Ham Concentrate. I spooned some into a small pan and heated it over a low heat to get it liquidy again. I then put the pineapple and onion in there. A word of warning, though. Even though I dubbed it Ham Concentrate, it works best if you use a lot of it. Three spoons wasn't enough to flavor the pineapple and onion. Or, perhaps it works best on things that don't have much taste of their own or something.

So, next time you bake a ham, remember the Ham Concentrate. You'll be glad you did.

In case people wanted to see, here is a slideshow of pictures from the last few days, featuring Christmas, snow and Ham Concentrate.

Winter's here... damn bitch.

Winter has now arrived in the US. But you'd be excused for thinking it has been here for a few weeks already given the cold weather.

Yesterday was a day of rare occurrences. The one that was most widespread was a lunar eclipse. I love that sort of stuff, but was also really tired. Totality (the moon being completely covered) was supposed to start at 2:41AM local time, so rather than set the alarm I agreed with Liz that if one of us woke up during the eclipse we'd wake the other. I first woke up at 12:55 to see everything bathed in the glow of the full moon. Hadn't started yet, so I went back to bed. I later woke up at 3, and it was dark. "Awesome!" I thought as I walked downstairs. Unfortunately the darkness was because of the complete and total cloud cover that had engulfed the sky. I even went out the back for a few seconds (that was long enough in the cold) to check there weren't any breaks in the cloud. There weren't, so I came back inside. Liz was awake and asked me what the story was, so when I told her we both went back to sleep. I took this photo of the moon earlier in the evening, before it was eclipsed...

The second, more isolated incident, occurred in our kitchen. I was making breakfast, and I cracked an egg. Double yolker! Some people might not think that was too weird, but given the amount of eggs we use and the infrequency with which we see double yolkers it was certainly awesome.

Tonight I killed some time by taking some photos. It's good to get out and take photos for fun - something that I really should do more often. I didn't do it for too long tonight, the cold and the breeze were small obstacles. I took photos of the moon again, well, more things in front of the moon. They were of my Lego clone trooper captain.

The breeze blew it over...

Black Holes: They don't suck

We went to Hamden today, which is just outside of New Haven to visit one of Liz's college friends, Steve, and his wife Kristen. Tiff was also there and we went to the Yale Peabody Museum for a couple of hours. It was fun - they had a black hole exhibit. That's where I learned that black holes don't suck. Apparently you more fall into them if you get too close.

Other exhibits included the dinosaurs in the Great Hall, the mammal exhibit, meteorites and the birds of Connecticut. The birds were cool - every bird in Connecticut was represented (in stuffed form). I liked looking at the raptors. They also had skeletons for saber-tooth cats, prehistoric "homo" specimens and dinosaurs. I found out that the dinosaurs were skilled surgeons. When a human badly breaks a leg they would have a metal rod inserted in there to help the healing. There was a dinosaur specimen that had a big metal beam running through it's entire body, so to be able to insert that must have taken incredible surgical skills - and also metal working knowledge. They also had a massive prehistoric turtle skeleton.

We got kicked out of the museum at closing time, then went and had some Japanese food for dinner with Tiff.

Also, I must tell everyone about a cool movie we saw this week. Both Liz and I enjoyed it immensely - it is up there with the best movies I have seen this year. It was Scott Pilgrim vs the World. It was really cool. To me it seemed like a mixture between a movie, video game and comic book. I liked the style, the way people played their parts, the story and even the Universal logo and fanfare in 8-bit form.

One of the stars was Keiran Culkin - yep, Fuller from Home Alone. When the movie first started I said to Liz "I know that's Keiran Culkin, but he looks like someone else to me..." It took me almost the entire movie, but I finally announced to Liz "Why the hell does Keiran Culkin look like Tobey Maguire?!?!"

If you haven't seen it, you should - Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

Thanksgiving 2010

Today marks the 1st Wednesday of December. That means that last Thursday was the 4th Thursday of the month, better known as Thanksgiving. I could bore you with the history of Thanksgiving, but I won't, and will concentrate on what we did for the day instead.

Psyche! I found something interesting out about Thanksgiving, as long as you trust Wikipedia, which I do. Apparently, Thanksgiving is celebrated in Australia, but only on Norfolk Island (I know, who cares, right?!). From Wikipedia:

In the Australian external territory of Norfolk Island, Thanksgiving is celebrated on the last Wednesday of November, similar to the pre-World War II American observance on the last Thursday of the month. This means the Norfolk Island observance is the day before or six days after the United States' observance. The holiday was brought to the island by visiting American whaling ships.

I looked into it further, and it referenced the Attorney General's website, so it's actually legit.

Now, Americans, that doesn't give you free rein to start running around saying that Thanksgiving is celebrated in Australia. To give a sense of scale:

• Norfolk Island is only 13.3 square miles (just over half the size of Manhattan). Australia, as a whole, is 2,941,299 square miles.
• Norfolk Island has an approximate population of 2141, compared to the nation's population of 22,540,116. That's .0095% of the population.

Back to the story of our Thanksgiving.

Because Thanksgiving dinner was being held at our place, preparation for us began on Wednesday night, when we cooked up some cranberry sauce and Liz produced some pumpkin pies. I say Liz produced the pies because as soon as the Ashes cricket started streaming I was out of the kitchen.

Cranberries in the saucepan...

...turned into cranberry sauce!

Thursday we woke up ready to cook. The turkey, which I took under my wing, took about 3 hours from start to finish. It was a 12 and a half pound masterpiece of meat and basting. After baking for an hour I started the basting process - every 15 minutes I would open the oven and put more liquid from the bottom of the pan over the turkey. It worked out awesomely well - the turkey wasn't dry at all.

The turkey, as it entered the oven

Basting - note the dollop of liquid under the baster

People - Richard, Barbara, Gail and Bruce (Gail's brother) - started arriving at around 2, so they got to witness the final preparation of sides and the carving.

Liz prepares to carve it up

The complete meal consisted of turkey, sweet potato and apple, gluten free stuffing, peas, mashed potatoes (from Gail), shallots, carrots and stuffing (from Barbara), parsnips (not pictured) and gravy. We also washed it down with sparkling (from Richard) and regular apple cider.

I've never been full on Thanksgiving, but I thought this could be the year. I started off with this:

After I ate that I loaded it up again. And then one more time for good measure.

After eating we needed a little time to digest, so we waited a while before having pumpkin pie and rice pudding for dessert. Some people had tea, and others had warmed apple cider.

Liz with a pumpkin pie

Mission accomplished: everyone fed and happy, and me, I was full for the first time ever on Thanksgiving.

Of course, there were leftovers. A lot of leftovers. Here was my dinner on Friday night:

Reheated and eaten from an oven safe dish. For convenience. We also had leftovers for breakfast and a full Thanksgiving dinner again on Saturday night. There are still some turkey scraps...

Very draining

Hello!

This week has been very draining. Actually, in a manner of speaking, this morning was draining, and the rest of the week wasn't so much. To fully understand, I need to take you back a few weeks. Our bathroom sink was starting to get a bit slow on the draining side. It wasn't so bad, but it was noticeably slower. We left it alone, but during this week it started getting worse. This has happened before, and so yesterday morning, as part of the Great Apartment Clean of Fall 2010, I disconnected the stopper from the sink and started digging around. I've done this before, and it has always helped. The usual suspects came out, some hair, some dirt, some still white soap. Satisfied with my digging, I connected the stopper again and ran some water through. Still slow. That's weird.

I walked out into the living room and picked up the new little flashlight (Australian translation: torch) that Liz got me for my birthday. It's a cool mini Maglite - it has different features such as strobe, SOS and a few others, that are all selected via a twist of the wrist thanks to an accelerometer (at least that's what the documentation leads me to believe). I disconnected the stopper again and looked down...

At that moment, I felt like I was in a movie. It was the type of scene where people at war see the opposing army and just how big it is, and they realize they're going to need a much bigger screwdriver and to change their tactics if they're to win the battle. We had so much more to do that I left it, and decided to finish the other tasks that needed to be done around here, and put it off until tomorrow. Basically, I sounded a temporary retreat to rethink my strategy.

Last night we brushed our teeth before bed, and the water just sat in the sink. I told Liz about the massive clog I had discovered, and that I was going to look at it in the morning. Luckily the water had all drained by this morning (we weren't sure if it would or not), so before I showered I readied for battle. I took everything out from the cupboard beneath the sink. It was an easy thing to do, because it is all in a sliding drawer. My plan had changed from yesterday: the new plan was to outflank it, catch the clog by surprise. I removed the stopper like yesterday, hoping to make the clog look up - it would never suspect a sneak attack from beneath. I put a bucket down, and removed the bending pipe beneath the sink. Armed with the trusty screwdriver, the longest we have, I started to dig. Small chunks fell out. I didn't want this to happen - now the clog knew I was onto it. Trying to end the battle quickly, I stabbed upwards - the screwdriver pierced something squishy. I twisted the blade and yanked it downwards.

PLOP.

The clog was massive - an entwined mass of hair, soap, dirt and a small rubber band for good measure - a couple of inches long. The smell of death (clog) filled the air. I called my trusted lieutenant.

"Liz..."

She stopped when she saw the clog, then began running water through the drain. The minions of the clog started dropping into the bucket - we were winning the battle. The screwdriver returned to make some more pivotal strikes, then, the battle was over. Connecting the bending pipe and stopper again, we ran some water, and it all drained successfully. The territory occupied by our hideous clog foe was free again. And, as a special bonus, there were no leaks. My lieutenant took the fallen enemies outside, and I showered.

I reflected on my victory - thinking about how this had to go on the blog, and about how satisfying it is sometimes to get things done around the place. No matter how small. We've actually gotten a lot achieved in the last 24 hours, which people may see the fruits of soon.

Now, if only I could change that light bulb in the bathroom. That, though, is a battle for another week.

Catch up

It's been so long since I posted... Most activities lately have revolved around the wedding, but I expected that they would. We've made some big decisions (bigger than charcoal grey) and should be in a position to make some announcements soon. It's good that we're trying to get so many big things done now, because it means that we won't need to worry about them later on and can take our time handling the small things. Apart from all the wedding stuff, here are some other things that have come up and would have been talked about on here, had I been keeping up to date...

Last weekend Richard came over and hung out for a while. He was talking to Liz who was also reading a wedding book at the same time. Sensing that she wasn't listening, he jokingly said "It's going to snow tomorrow!" Liz looked up and said "Very funny, Dad." The next morning she woke up, showered and checked the weather. Possible snow mixing with rain but probably not making it to the ground? That's pretty funny. Then, I got out of bed and looked outside - snow falling, to the ground. It turned to sleet about 5 minutes later, so, where I was at least, there wasn't anything on the ground. Except for on our back steps, which looked like a sno cone had been poured on them.

Been watching some TV too. I keep giving The Clone Wars a chance, but so far this season it has been tremendously disappointing. Continually jumping around the timeline, giving screen time to characters who really aren't that important, filling in boring story lines. Heck, Anakin has been in only a couple of episodes - he fought in one, in another he dropped Ahsoka (who hasn't died yet) off then flew away, then last week he played whipped secret husband to party-planning Padme. This is the guy who's going to become Darth Vader. I don't want to see him being told to make sure the droids buy fruit and don't get ripped off!!! Hopefully they'll turn it around soon. Starting tonight. Obi-Wan gets back on the screen after a few weeks away.

One cartoon that hasn't been disappointing has been South Park. Awesome all the way. The last 3 weeks have seen them carrying out a superhero story arc, which built on an episode from last season called "The Coon" (the Coon is Cartman's superhero persona). It told more of the back story of Mysterion (my favorite), and introduced characters like Tupperware, Toolshed, Mosquito, Iron Maiden, The Human Kite and Mint Berry Crunch, collectively know as the superhero organization Coon and Friends. One of the elements that I enjoyed about the episodes was the comics that they integrated into the story - they had the look of stylized story board sketches which I had seen for South Park before and looked cool.

We've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender as well. I'm really into the show and keep wanting to know what's going to happen next. Good thing about watching a show years after its release is that you can watch more straight away. Right now I'm liking it much, much more than The Clone Wars. We've finished the first season and are now a couple of episodes into the second. It's already created a few questions for me, which Mike, who is a season or so ahead of us, has told me are answered later. Zuko is my favorite character - he's a banished Fire Nation prince trying to capture the Avatar to regain his honor.

Behind our building at work is a canal/inlet that leads out to Long Island Sound. From the fifth floor the waterway does not seem very wide, and a few weeks ago Brian thought he could throw a rock across. He couldn't, so now Mike is keen to try. I got some rocks at the beach last weekend, and Mike and I tried yesterday. Mike landed probably 80% of the way across, me about 60%. We're going to try again, but I know I won't get all the way. From our throwing point, the shortest distance to the other bank is around 80 - 90 yards at high tide - if you skew the angle a little, it blows out to 100 yards. I know I'm not throwing a rock 100 yards!

Tomorrow is the 4th Annual Queens County Chili cook-off competition and pig fest, which means we're making chili tonight. If it's anything like last year's contest it will be a lot of fun - eating chili and chili dogs - it's a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

Mmmm... chili... but what I want most of the time is peanut butter. Here in the US a lot of peanut butter has junk in it, so we try to get stuff that has as little as possible in it. Problem with that is it can get expensive. We were getting an organic one when it was on sale, but it was still more than regular peanut butter. All it was was peanuts and salt, and it was good (in taste and ingredients). But then we went to Trader Joe's a couple of weekends ago and I saw they had organic peanut butter: cheap organic peanut butter (by that I mean inexpensive). Only ingredient - peanuts. It is great. It spreads well, even straight from the fridge (the other one kind of came out in big chunks, even though it was smooth).

I'm beginning to wonder if it is finally happening - I'm getting on the US peanut butter wagon.

One decision down, many more to go...

In amongst all our regular weekend activities, like grocery shopping, Liz and I managed to do some other stuff this last weekend...

Saturday saw us running errands, one of which was to return a book to the library. While there we checked out (multiple meanings of the words) some wedding books. The most beneficial one, I feel, that was picked up was "The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Being a Groom". I've read a little bit of it, and it's told me a couple of interesting things.

We also went to a Bush concert. It was pretty good. It was at the theater in the MGM Grand "Hotel" and there weren't a lot of people there. It got a bit over the top at the end as the lead singer, Gavin Rossdale I believe his name is, started pulling girls up onto the stage. They were all dancing while they played their last song. One girl thought she was in a strip club I think, because she was doing some pretty "I'm not in front of a large crowd" moves.

Saturday also saw us make our first decision about the wedding. It wasn't a large decision, but it was our first, and every decision, no matter how small, goes into making up the whole. We decided, wait for it, that grey is going to be part of our color/colour scheme. I'm happy about it; I love grey. To be more exact it's charcoal grey that made the list, so I guess people (at this stage that includes Liz and I) will see how it is incorporated on the day. Well, we'll have to decide before then.

On Sunday we checked out a couple of possible venues. One of them is no longer a possible venue because it wasn't very good. It didn't speak to us at all and wasn't what we were looking for. The other place is still a possibility, but we want to check out some other places as well, and find out more details about this place to make sure it will fit what we want to do.

We watched some more Avatar: The Last Airbender as well. We're 12/20s, also known as 6/10s or 60% of the way through the first season (based purely on episode count, I'm not counting down to the second or anything like that).

I should go make a start on dinner. Pizza tonight. Not taco pizza though. I'm going with bacon, pineapple and onion. I haven't had bacon in a while. I don't know why - bacon is great!