By the way, I have a draft on this blog that dates back to early August. It’s an outline. It was an attempt to “catch up” on our lives (for those that don’t track us via Facebook). If I find some motivation, I may dig up some pictures and flesh that draft out and post it. Of course, by then, it will be months and months out of date. C’est la vie…

Is That Music From a Video Game?

I’ve mentioned in the past that almost all of my original music sounds like video game music. To be more correct, it sounds like video game music from old PC titles or from old consoles – back when video game music was all synthesized. As mentioned before, it’s because I don’t really have good software and equipment for recording actual instruments (which could only include guitar or mandolin anyway), but I do have halfway decent MIDI composition software.

Well, I’ve written a few more songs recently. I always start on my guitar. But in order to flesh out the piece and add all of the layers together (without suitable equipment and/or software for recording and overdubbing), I type it all up in MIDI Compozer.

You can rummage through the two links above to hear some of the songs I’ve posted previously. And I now have three new tracks to submit for your listening pleasure:

1. Driving Through The Storm. No, this is nothing like The Doors’ Riders in the Storm. Don’t ask me how I come up with song names. It’s often random. Something pops in my head as I listen to the tune, and – boom! – there’s the song name. Sometimes it’s an impression I get from the music, and sometimes it’s just a reference to something I’ve had in my head recently (from reading, surfing, etc…). I can’t say for certain the source of this title, so don’t focus too much on titles.
2. Helios. This is actually the most recent tune I’ve written. I’m sure Malin is tired of hearing it by now (she probably hasn’t heard the whole thing through even once, but likely heard bits of it over and over as I was composing…).
3. Starry Void. This was something I wrote years ago (2002 I think?), but just now got around to completing it in MIDI form… I wrote it when playing around with a fancy digital effects processor I borrowed from my brother. I’ve recently purchased that very same effects processor from him, so I’ve been dorking around with some of the same sounds. The main effects that influenced the writing of this tune were in from a wicked-sounding preset featuring lots of echo.

Music Less Likely To Be Heard In a Video Game

Just over a year ago, I also posted non-MIDI tracks. The only ones I have are ones I recorded in high school (with the assistance of my then-neighbor and friend Keith Groover – who happened to have a four-track tape recorder/mixer).

In that previous post, I indicated almost all of them as “Untitled”. They now have names. Here’s a recap. (Same logic – or lack thereof – behind the titles as for the MIDI songs.)

1. Forward In Reverse – Take 1. Apologies in advance for the very poor recording quality. The backmasked voice is courtesy of Keith Groover. I think he’s saying something like “Drink milk. It’s good for you”…
2. Forward In Reverse – Take 2. No voice. Different guitar sound. Better recording quality, but less interesting performance.
3. This Saturday. The intro is slightly plagiarized. I’d give proper credits, but I can’t remember the guy’s name (he was in a guitar class of mine my senior year in high school). The vast majority of the tune, however, is all original.

And now – previously unreleased recordings! These first four are old (from high school, like all of my other recordings). Pretty much all of the original music I wrote in high school was hard rock / progressive metal (okay, maybe “progressive” is a little pretentious and arguably untrue). These songs are no exception.

1. The Conqueror Worm
2. The Ancient Mariner
3. Resonance
   
4. Long, Dark March

These next and final three were recorded with fellow musicians (a band per se) and played by a DJ at a “Casino Night” holiday party where I worked (at the time we were NewEnergy Associates, A Siemens Company). No, it’s not my voice. No, I do not play all of the instruments (unlike all of the other recordings above). Our band called itself many things. The NewEnergy Rockers might have been the most suitable name, but Artie Fufkin and The Dictator-Tots was always my favorite.

1. Siemens L3 Waffle House Club Band – sung to the tune of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
2. Jesse Davis – sung to the tune of Weezer’s Buddy Holly. Jesse Davis was the name of the President and CEO of NewEnergy when I started and when we recorded this. We had some other fun tunes that celebrated the CEO – like Rick Springfield’s Jesse’s Girl and Rock Me, Jesse Davis sung to the tune of Falco’s Rock Me, Amadeus. I’m still working on getting some video posted to YouTube of the NewEnergy Rockers’ live performances – which include these latter two JD tunes.
3. Cleveland Rocks (Daugherty, Humphries, and McNeil too) – sung to the tune of The Presidents of The United States of America’s Cleveland Rocks.

He’s nearly the size that Will was when Will was three months old. He’s wearing Will’s hand-me-down “3-6M” onesies already. He weighs over 11 lbs. He’s already really good at moving that head around – goodbye, floppy neck syndrome.

We have more pictures. I know I’ve been bad about posting any of them, but I will post more soon. Now that I’ve returned to week, free time seems more and more scarce.

Sorry for the lame “filler” post. I’ll post again soon (hopefully) with pictures and more text to describe all that has gone on in the past month here.

We hope everyone is doing well!

Ewan James Strider Humphries was born on 5:44am on April, 20^th 2009. It was good timing because my parents were already in town to attend a grandparents’ day at Will’s school on that very day. Around 11:30pm Sunday night, Malin started to have contractions, and we headed to the hospital.

It was an even shorter labor than with Will – which is typical from what I understand (meaning that labor for second child is typically shorter than first).

I suppose it was lucky that it passed quickly because Malin had the horrible misfortune of getting a complete a-hole anesthesiologist. He was not very personable. He was short with us and mildly derisive, too. Malin had just been given Stadol (a pain-killer that doped her up solid) and was irritated that she was having trouble sitting straight up (which was due to the aforementioned medication). Then he f’ed up the epidural. After it was obvious that the epidural was ineffective (several hours with noticable lack of pain relief), he then insisted that the epidural catheter was properly placed (which it wasn’t) and decided not to re-do it. Several nurses and the nurse anesthetist were witness to it and said they would put in a complaint. Prior to being discharged from the hospital, Malin retold the story to the midwife, who was sure to get the doctor’s name to put in another complaint. (He may not have a job at the hospital for long…)

What followed was a heroic endurance of labor pain on Malin’s part. At 5:44am, the doctor showed up just in time to catch the baby as he was finally ejected from the womb. Ewan was free at last.

Mercifully, Malin’s medication-less labor was at its end – the product of which was a healthy-sized 9 lb. 3.2 oz. baby boy that measured 21.5 inches long.

The nurses cleaned him up and gave him the usual quick inspection:

And then they handed him to mom and dad:

The nurses took Ewan up to the nursery to give him a bath. Shortly after that, he started to breath faster than newborns usually do. After a few hours, his respiration appeared to slow to normal and his oxygen-saturation was okay, so the nurses decided he could finally leave the nursery and come to our room in the hospital.

While Grandma and Grandpa Humphries were hanging out with Will at grandparent’s day, Ewan’s other grandmother, Annie, came over for a visit:

And shortly after that, the other grandparents made it over:

Ann returned with Will in tow, and he seemed to take to his new little brother pretty well:

Will, hamming it up as usual:

Will was a little bit sheepish at first, as he often is. When Ewan cried for the first time, Will got scared, covered his ears, and ran for the door to get away!

After everyone left, Malin, Ewan, and I tried to take a nap. During this time, we noticed Ewan’s breathing seemed to be labored. He was breathing very quickly and heavily, and his nostrils were flaring. We called the nurse, who took him to the nursery to examine him.

Unfortunately, he was then sent to the NICU because his oxygen saturation was lower than they like to see. All sorts of scary possibilities were presented; but, even early on, the doctor thought it was probably bad reflux: stomach acid made it far enough up Ewan’s esophagus to get into his lungs and cause the distressed respiration.

We had been through the NICU experience before with Will. This time was a little easier because the symptoms were not nearly as severe as Will’s extremely low platelet count. Nevertheless, it was not easy to have to visit the NICU in order to see the new boy and to see him hooked up to to so much (machines that monitored his breathing, pulse, and oxygen saturation; oxygen supplied to his nostrils; and an IV drip to provide him fluids).

Luckily, some of the scarier sounding possibilities (like cardiac/heart condition and pneumonia) were slowly stricken from the list as results from tests rolled in. Ewan’s breathing was quite intense and difficult during his first night as he recovered from his earlier breathing troubles. He also got a little bit of congestion in his nose and sinuses, which doesn’t help at all since newborn’s only know how to breath through their nose (except when they are crying).

After that, he seemed to recover quickly. The nurses and the doctor continued to see signs of severe reflux though. The NICU doctor is great – very thorough and extremely protective of all of the babies that end up in his care. But apparently Malin and I seemed like a responsible couple, so he made a deal with us: we follow all of his instructions to the letter, and he would let Ewan go home. We finally left the hospital with Ewan on Wednesday, 4/22.

We have been struggling to follow the doctor’s orders because they require putting Ewan on a strict feeding schedule that is timed compatibly with his medication times. We are still figuring it out. Ewan occasionally appears to have reflux symptoms – wincing and swallowing an hour or so after feeding – but there have been no severe episodes, and hopefully there will be none. His medicines, Reglan and Zantac, seem to be helping.

So we’re finally all at home, and there is a great measure of comfort for all of us in that. Thanks to everyone for all of the well wishes during these past few days. We will no doubt be getting even more pictures of the little guy and will post them here soon!

We’ve had a lot of other stuff going on lately, too.

My mother-in-law got re-married to a very nice guy. She’s just got a buyer for her house, and tomorrow will be a fun day of moving furniture. Luckily not for me. Movers will be picking stuff up from her house and moving some of it in with us and the rest in her new house where she lives with her new husband. Malin will be dealing with that since she knows where all of the furniture is going, and I have to work…

Malin is still pregnant – but just barely. She’s about to burst, so she’s not likely to be in this state for very long. Due date is in one week. I will be taking three weeks off from work when the new one arrives. I am kind of looking forward to that since my current project at work has been up and down and a little high stress lately.

We’ve had all sorts of fun dealing with unreliable contractors lately. The roofers finally put a new roof on the house – before Malin went into labor luckily. Crummy weather for the past several weeks did not help this effort. They were supposed to be back tomorrow to put up the new siding but called today to let us know they may not be able to find a match for our type of siding. If they can’t, they’ll have to work with insurance to potentially re-side the entire house (!?!?!) so that we don’t have one exterior wall of the house that looks different from the rest… Soon our hail damage saga will be behind us. I can’t wait for that day.

I’ve been brewing like mad (3 batches in 3.5 weeks). I have to get it out of my system since I may not have an opportunity to do so for a while after the baby comes.

That’s about all that’s been shaking ’round these parts since I last posted (about a month ago). Hopefully I’ll be prompt with pictures after the new guy arrives.

• The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, 12/24/2004. This was our first experience of this kind – a chef’s tasting menu at a very highly-rated restaurant. We were addicted.
• Quinones, 07/29/2006. Our first experience at Quinones (the best restaurant in Atlanta).
• Quinones, 12/16/2006
• The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, 12/22/2007
• Quinones, 07/26/2008

In July of 2005, we had a fine meal at Seeger’s (which has since closed), but failed to get a copy of the menu…

In June 2006 we took a weekend trip to New York to eat our way around the big apple. The most memorable food experiences were at Le Bernadin (though not as great as we had hoped) and Babbo (un-freakin-believable). Unfortunately, we didn’t think to snag copies of the menus there either…

We did get a few photos from this trip though:

La Pizza Martha at Luzzo’s:

My college friend and New York local, Bob:

Malin during lunch at Les Halles:

Also on the list that weekend were visits to Pommes Frites (dozens of interesting condiments available including curries and flavored mayos) and the Brooklyn Brewery.

You can see the dogs, curiously sniffing what appear to be alien space rocks:

And here are the two really big hail stones that Malin and Will decided to save:

We still have them in our freezer today, although the defrost cycle in there has shrunk them down a bit.

So we had to make a home-owner’s claim because we have dings in our roof and a lot of cracks and pops in the siding. Lovely. And wouldn’t you know it: the day the adjustor comes to inspect everything is the day after a wintry blizzard, so there is nothing they can do until later in the week (after the snow melts).

I don’t have any pictures of the snow unfortunately. We got a heck of a lot, and had lots of accumulation – even on the asphalt. I worked from home Monday because I could see patches of black ice on the road around my house and the traffic report on the news indicated several ice-related accidents: a patch of ice on GA-400 causing problems and all lanes of I-20 closed due to a jack-knifed tractor trailer. I decided it was wiser to wait until everything melted away, which it did that day. All that was left this morning consisted of small patches of snow in the yard that were shaded, protected from the sun’s rays.

If you want to see pictures of what it looked like, you can use the pictures from last year to get a decent idea.

Will turned four on Sunday, January 11^th. My parents were here, so we were also able to wish my dad a happy birthday that same day. My dad drove all the way down here to Fayette county to have a Darth Vader cake for his birthday.

Will had been asking for Darth Vader on a cake for quite some time. His patience was finally rewarded. Okay, just kidding – he really has no patience.

On his actual birthday, we just threw a very small party for him – immediate family only. He received a few cool gifts: two DVDs (Horton Hears a Hoo and Kung-Fu Panda) and a voice-activated R2-D2 robot:

R2 is about 18 inches tall and responds to the sound of your voice… usually. He occasionally acts up (i.e. stops working properly), but can usually brought back into shape (worst case: hard reboot is necessary). Will likes to have R2 watch him play Wii. R2 has motion detectors so he can actually follow objects with his “eye”, so it can be a little surreal to see R2 watching him and turning from the TV to Will and back as if he’s actually paying attention.

Will’s Birthday Party

The following Saturday, the 17^th, we let Will have an actual party. He invited his friends from school to come out to Dixieland Fun Park:

The kids got to play for an hours in the “play maze” and then ride on a small indoor ferris wheel. After that, we were locked in a “party room” where we were forced to eat pizza.

After pizza was more Darth Vader cake. Due to a lame restriction of the venue, it could not be a homemade cake. So we brought a Publix cake that was decorated to be a Darth Vader cake:

And, of course, after cake it was time to open gifts. You can see that some of his friends were more than welcome to help open the packages:

Most of his friends (or friends’ parents at least) knew of his obsession with Star Wars, so he received several cool Star Wars-related gifts – like a sticker book and some little action figures. The coolest gift, however, was not Star Wars-related. I don’t think Will thinks it’s as cool as I do, but it is neato. It’s a magnifying digital video recorder. It magnifies up to 400x and records to a USB thumb drive. It is an inexpensive toy camera, but is still pretty cool for getting a look under the microscope so to speak – everything from denim to human skin all looks cooler blown up 400 times bigger than usual. The gift that he least understood at the time but has ultimately come to appreciate the most was a gift card for IKEA: we took him up there, and he picked out a new night light and a stuffed animal octopus that he now insists on sleeping with every night.

Charcuterie

One of the gifts that my mom bought my wife for Christmas was a really great cookbook on making charcuterie at home. We were so giddy about it that the first thing we did after getting the book was to buy a meat grinder and a sausage stuffer. We made a country paté for New Year’s Eve dinner:

Note, the off-color of the meat is from a bunch of parsley ground into it – nothing sinister here. This recipe was basically a fancy meatloaf: plenty of pork fat, salty, serve cold. The pink ground meat in the bottom of the bowl is coarsely ground pork shoulder (aka pork butt or Boston butt). Since most of the meat was only ground coarsely, the texture of the final forcemeat is not as smooth or refined – thus it is “country” paté.

The day after Will’s birthday party we found ourselves in Decatur and found a butcher shop there that sells “pink salt” (sodium nitrite) and natural sausage casings (hog casings at least). The following Saturday, the 24^th, we made knackwurst.

Here’s a pic of “water sausage” as I rinsed out the casings after soaking them for a bit in water:

And here is our wonderful finished product:

We’ve eaten some at various points over the past couple of weeks, most notably as hors d’œuvres on our Super Bowl evening.

Malin snapped a few shots of our mixer (aka meat grinder and sausage stuffer) afterwards. We call these Aftermath:

Auntie K and Uncle Cass

The day after we made the sausage, my sister and brother-in-law rolled into our neck of the woods. They had been on the east coast for the prior week, visiting family and friends all over. Since we lived relatively close to the airport, we were their final destination.

Usually Will prefers to ham things up in front of the camera, like so:

But lately he has been enjoying being behind the camera, too. Observe:

Kristie, a bit surprised by the wee photographer:

Cass, perhaps more prepared for portraiture:

Among other things, we dragged K and Cass up to our most recently-discovered chow-spot: The Porter Beer Bar in Little Five Points. Good times were had by all.

Lego Army

As mentioned above, Will has been making a habit of taking pictures lately. His favorite subject, by far, is his Lego army. I mentioned in a previous post how one of Will’s favorite hobbies is to mix and match all of the Lego-men pieces (heads, helmets, upper bodies, lower bodies) to build Frankenstein figures. Well, now his second favorite hobby is to photograph the fruits of this labor:

Here is a big panoramic shot. If it looks like several pictures all stitched together – well, that’s because it is. (If you bothered to notice little details like that, you have too much time on your hands!)

We never watch professional football except for the Super Bowl. Last year’s game was great. We were hoping for a repeat. For those that watched, they got to see another good game from what I hear. But we didn’t get to watch it all. Our cable provider lost all of the local channels half-way through the game for a good period of time. As we kept channel-hopping, trying to figure out when they’d have their act back together, we mused that this was pretty much the worst possible timing for such a catastrophe. They’ve likely lost a lot of customers to Satellite over this snafu. We weren’t too upset as we weren’t really rooting for either team.

We saw the first half, with Pittsburgh up by 10 being the last score we saw. We missed the action in the fourth quarter, the back-and-forth, the drama. We’ll survive. Heck, today I accidentally used the word “Pirates” when referring to the victors. I had not, in fact, mixed up my sports. It’s all those Ps and Ts in Pittsburg that threw me (yeah, that’s it!). I caught and corrected myself before anyone else pointed it out. But both the people I was talking with already know  that the Hump-House is, in fact, not very football. After all, we were much more excited about the home-made knackwurst hot dogs and barbecue chicken wings…

To celebrate, we all crashed a five-year-old’s birthday party. Seriously. We did. Okay, we didn’t crash it. Will was invited. His friend Aaron at school turns five on Monday. So I got some pizza. I got some cake. And the best part: it was free! (Sweet!)

I recently pulled down some pictures from Will’s birthday a few weeks ago. We had two parties: one on his birthday with family and a home-made Darth Vader cake; and another the following Saturday with his school friends at Dixieland Fun Park (with a store-bought Dark Vader cake). I’m working on getting a post together for those soon.

I’ll also have to post pictures of Malin and me making home-made sausage. We made knackwurst, and it is excellent. We found a butcher/deli in Decatur that sold us natural hog casings and some pink salt (sodium nitrite – for curing meat). So we’ll be eating barbecue chicken wings and hot dogs made from fresh, home-made knackwurst for the big game tomorrow.

The Monday before Christmas, we did our celebrations and exchanged gifts with Malin’s mom and Randy. They would be with Randy’s family on Christmas morning, so came over to celebrate with us a little early.

Will loves opening gifts.

Especially when they contain anything related to Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or Batman…

My parents and my brother arrived on Christmas Eve. The next morning we all awoke to see Santa’s handiwork. After making short work of ripping through Santa’s presents, we moved on to the general exchange, during which Will made out with even more loot.

His grandparents got him a really wicked Darth Vader action figure – complete with battle damage (but no hole into which you could pour motor oil or grapefruit juice, no dispensor fist…). They also gave him a video game to which he has been addicted ever since: Lego Batman for the Wii.

Malin got him a Yoda action figure. After all, every plastic figure villain needs a plastic figure hero upon which to whoop ass, n’est-ce pas?

Malin and I also bought Will this Georgia Tech baseball cap to match mine:

The three things that Will asked Santa Claus for this year were a bicycle, “knight” Legos (more formally known as Castle Legos), and a knight costume. Here you can see him trying out the bicycle:

Santa brought him the Legos, too, but the costume was actually a gift from Malin’s mom.

Who knew that one of his favorite hobbies would be mixing and matching the heads, helmets, bodies, legs, and accessories of the Star Wars and Castle Legos? It’s a fun hobby yielding memorable characters like the evil jousting goblin that wears a stormtrooper helmet (I’ll have to get a picture of that guy and post it here, won’t I?).

After exchanging gifts, we ate breakfast: a French Toast casserole, scrambled eggs, and sausage links. Ann made it over for breakfast, and Randy came by after finishing Christmas with his family. They joined us, along with Jake and my parents, for Christmas dinner.

Dinner this year consisted of three courses:

1. Carrot Soup
2. Fresh hand-made fettucine with a brown butter demi-glace sauce, shitake mushrooms, and pearl onions
3. Roast leg of lamb with potato croquettes

Sick Weekend

We were supposed to drive to Greenville, SC the weekend following Christmas. My parents and brother retreated to Greenville the day after Christmas. In addition to visiting with them some more, we were hoping to see our friends Audra and Jon and their young daughter Madelyn.

The night after Christmas, Malin, Will, and I went to see The Tale of Despereaux. The movie was decent – better than I expected.

The following morning when were to get ready to leave, we ended up not being able to make the trip. Malin wasn’t feeling very well, Will’s never-ending cough was a little worse, and I felt like complete garbage: a bad cold resulting in a sinus infection – complete with a sore throat and ear ache.

So we stayed home that weekend, trying to recover. Unfortunately, I felt like crap for pretty much an entire week. I finally started to feel better just yesterday (Sunday the 4^th). Sorry everyone. We really wanted to visit with everyone, but just weren’t up for the car ride, and probably wouldn’t have been much fun in the shape we were in.

The Empire Struck Back

The next Tuesday – December 30^th – Malin was feeling rather gracious. Despite her hesitance to let Will see the first Star Wars movie (she was quite upset at me when she found out that we had watched it one night after she went out), she allowed the viewing of the sequel: The Empire Strikes Back – arguably the best movie out of all six that were made (I would argue that anyway…)

Will was bedazzled by the plot twist. The realization that Darth Vader was Luke’s father – that Anakin and Vader were one – was a total head game. Okay, perhaps I’m putting words into his mouth. But he enjoyed it immensely. Until bedtime…

That night and the following night, he kept us up for hours. He would begin screeching and crying in his sleep. He would wake up from the nightmares and come wake us up. Malin was up with him between midnight and 3am the first night, consoling him and doing anything to get him to fall asleep. The next night, it didn’t begin until about 4:45am, and I was up until close to 7 trying to get him to fall asleep.

The morning after he saw the movie, we asked him what his dreams were about. He answered, “I was dreaming about Darth Vader cutting off Anakin’s hand.”

“You mean Luke’s hand.”

“Yeah. And about Darth Vader freezing Anakin.”

“You mean freezing Han Solo.”

“Yeah.”

It’s kind of funny how he calls everyone Anakin. When he first heard of Indiana Jones this past Spring/Summer, he kept calling him Anakin Jones. I guess he really likes the name Anakin… It’s a good thing Will doesn’t get to name the new baby.

In an attempt to save ourselves another sleepless night, we put a night light in Will’s room the next day. No nightmares since. It will probably be quite some time before we allow him to see this one again. Although, naturally, the next morning when we suggested that he shouldn’t watch the movie again because it gave him such nightmares, he responded, “No, it’s good for me!”

Dirt, Dirt, and More Dirt

On New Year’s Eve, Randy graciously brought Malin a humongous truckload of nice, dark dirt for her garden. When I say big truckload, I mean it. He brought over a Dodge Ram 4500 with a hydraulic-powered bed specifically made for hauling dirt and mulch – literally.

So that afternoon was filled with shoveling a truckload of dirt onto the beds in Malin’s garden.

The next day incurred even more work, of course: tilling. I got to use our baby tiller – the “cultivator” – to re-till the beds and mix the new, dark dirt with the existing soil and clay.

While we were busy out there, we also moved our hop plant to the garden (it was previously in a natural area off the side of the house).

New Year’s

One of the gifts that my mom had gotten for Malin was an excellent cookbook named Charcuterie. Ever since pouring through its pages, we wanted to cook something from it.

So on Tuesday we went and bought a reasonably-priced meat grinder (an attachment for her Kitchen Aid mixer). We had decided to make a country pâté since all the ingredients were easily available – except for pork liver (which is really hard to find around here). We substituted chicken liver in our preparation of a Pâté de Campagne. The result is tasty – a salty, cold, meatloaf that is elevated to new heights thanks to the use of pork fat (to improve its flavor), sweet spices (think pumpkin pie spices – to make for sublime seasoning), and a small amount of liver (to smoothen the texture).

The pâté, unfortunately, was not actually consumed on New Year’s Eve. We prepared it that day/evening, but it wasn’t ready to eat until the next day.

So that night we made braised beef short ribs with some reheated potato croquettes from Christmas dinner.

We didn’t quite make it to midnight. We offered to let Will stay up with us, but he crashed around 10:30pm. We decided to toast around 11:30pm (Lindeman’s Pêche, not champagne) and then go to bed. We didn’t feel like pushing ourselves to stay up that last 30 minutes. Perhaps that’s lame, but I’d say it’s not. I’d say it’s lame to stay up late for the sake of staying up late. After all, we weren’t at a party or even around other people this year. So with Will asleep, there would be nothing interesting at midnight that we had not seen dozens of times before. Besides, we had both had crummy nights of sleep recently thanks to Will’s Darth-Vader-induced nightmares…

Tasty Tacos

This past weekend was my last weekend of vacation. I greatly enjoyed these two weeks at home, but all good things must come to an end it seems…

On Friday, we met our friends Scott and Karyn at Taqueria del Sol. We caught up, saw their baby daughter Zoe (whom I’ve seen only once before – and she had grown a lot since then), and ate some tasty tacos. We’ll be seeing them again soon because Malin is going to take some pictures of Zoe. I mentioned that we’ll bring some home-made sausages (thanks to the magical instructions and recipes in the Charcuterie book). To that, Scott replied, “As long as they’re turkey sausages.”

He is a bit disdainful of fatty indulgences like sausage. Turkey sausage – ha! I have no problems making a turkey sausage. The book even has a recipe for one. But it sure as hell will include pork fat – because turkey is far too lean to make a proper sausage by itself (as is virtually all meat except for pork shoulder and beef short rib…)

After lunch we returned home. The weekend was slow and relaxing. I brewed beer last night (Sunday). All is right with the world.