Ah Mikado

I was about to ask who knew who General Tso is... but I found out and thought you would all enjoy the namesake of my favorite dish's story. See this link.

General Tso Story

And to make it a little more fun. I'll treat the first person that can find my favorite phrase in this news article to some General Tso's Chicken.

I'm tagged

I got tagged by Jared to write this stuff so I'll be cool.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life
Lawn Mower
Emu Pen Cleaner (If you think they are cute, you are very wrong... very scary and dangerous)
McDonald's Crew Member
Engineering Draftsman

Four movies I can watch over and over
Princess Bride
Three Amigos
Usual Suspects
Christmas Vacation


Four places I have lived
Plainfield, IN
Hanover, IN (Home of Woody Boyd)
Colorado Springs, CO
Cincinnati, OH

Four TV shows I love to watch
Lost
Scrubs
Seinfeld
American Choppers

Four places I have been on vacation
New York, NY
Cancun, Mexico
Western Europe
Colorado


Four of my favourite dishes
My mom's lasagna
General Tso's Chicken
Skyline Chili
Black Rasberry Chip Ice Cream from Graeters (is that a dish?)

Four websites I visit daily
my.pg.com
mynetscape.com
itunes music store
cnn.com (from mynetscape)

Four places I would rather be right now
At the gym
Watching Drum Corps
In a cabin in the woods with my wife and dog.
Trying to find tickets to the Colts/Seahawks in the Superbowl.

Four bloggers I am tagging
Fuji
Miriam
Heidi
Sandra

SLC final post

The last day of the trip was comprised of some great skiing but then other events that were depressing. Snow was coming down hard on the mountain in the morning.... literally couldn't see 50 feet in front of you. As Jeff said, "That keeps the posers off the mountain" and makes for great skiing conditions. I had to remind him that I am probably in the poser category. I guess since I was there with a bunch of townies I can get lumped into none poser zone.

The skiing was awesome though. We found a great run that consisted of a short hike that no one was using, then we would come back and the wind and snow had covered our tracks. Very cool.

Unfortunately, that night I had two plans. Watch the Colts game and meet up with my buddy John Erdmann and his wife who live in SLC. He's a college buddy that sorta looks like Keenu Reeves. Unfortunately, John just bought a house and was really busy with that stuff, and we all know how the Colts game went.

Trip over - flew home the next day in a somewhat eventless flight.

SLC #4

As I was acting like I enjoy dancing last night at Tropicana I longingly looked into the liquor cabinet during a Cyndi Lauper song and noticed a bottle of Knob Creek Bourbon. That reminded me of the pleasant evenings the last several nights in SLC. Crushed ice and some Knob goes down really well... let the double entrendres begin.

Saturday of Skiing consisted of some limit pushing for me. Since we were skiing with Jeff and several of his friends who ski at this mountain a couple times a week they would take us to the spots where no one else goes... including getting off the lift, taking off our skis and hiking up higher. The morning on Saturday consisted of a pretty long and difficult hike up to a bowl. Although nervous, I wasn't really worried because I had enough peeps to rescue me if there was a problem. At one point we put our skis back on to traverse along the backside of the bowl... signs indicating the boundary of the ski area were just a few feet away, and vertical, rocky, cliffs were just below. Obviously care was taken to not lose a ski or a person. Fortunately/unfortunately the wind was blowing so hard across the top of the mountain that it actually pushed us against and up the mountain. I can't really estimate wind speeds very well but I'm guessint the gusts were 40+MPH.

Once we hit the bowl of course I clipped out almost immediately but once I got going again my skills from my lesson kicked in and I at least handled the black run. I don't feel bad for doing poorly at first because Jeff somersaulted down the first part of the run.

Merph on

SLC Post #3

Wow, got some decent responses from the last post. I definitely had not forgotten about the infamous Paoli incident of twogeeOone, and especially the infamous goat incident of eight nine (not nine two). Don't really have enough time to expound further but let's just say that snowboarding is difficult, and aPaoli Peaks is a dangerous place to learn to ski or snowboard.

Friday of the SLC trip consisted of us looking for a place to ski a half day and then deciding just to play Catan the whole day. Tony and Jared showed up in the afternoon and Cheryl showed up later that night. The gang was all together at that point and the fun really began.

I have to talk about Cheryl a bit because her life is cool. She works for a record company and his buds with Bon Jovi (one of the two things good to come out of New Jersey) and Kanye West to name a few... literally, she pictures of her and Bahn Yavi on her camera. Probably the coolest thing about Cheryl beyond that, is that she is the first person I have met that is actually a degree closer to Kevin Bacon that I am... she's 2, I am 3. I know Meryl Streep's Nephew, and she was in "The River Wild" which makes me 3 degrees away... and by the way, makes all of you 4 degrees which makes the 6 degree thing true for you and anyone you ever meet.

Buff on,

SLC Post #2 (Day 2)

I started my first day in SLC somewhat intensely. "Powder Rules" were in effect which meant there was greater than 4 inches of new snow at the mountain and the truck left at 8am to make the first lift... if you weren't ready, you were left. We arrived at Snowbasin and I got my lift ticket. My plan was to take a group lesson as my skiing skills have plataeued for the last several years so I wanted to get better. As I began walking over to the ski school I was beckoned by my buddy to "GET ON THE LIFT!!! REGISTER AFTER THE FIRST RUN." I'm pretty easily persuaded so I hopped on the gondola, slightly worried that I had never clicked into my skis but nonetheless happy to be skiing soon.

http://www.snowbasin.com/winter/trail_maps.html

We arrived at the top (Needles Lift on the map) and started down the mountain. Doing most of my skiing in Indiana, I am not too familiar with powder skiing but that didn't stop Jeff from forcing down runs that were way over my head. I actually did pretty well though. I can't even remember if I fell.... at leat not until I got near the bottom on the nice easy run, caught an edge and hit face first on a nicely groomed green slope. It was sorta stunning, first from the initial pain, then the realization that my goggles were cracked pretty good, then from the blood dripping onto the fresh snow.

I got myself back together and finished the run since there was no one around to help me out. At the bottom we were able to assess that I didn't need stitches so I went to the marble clad bathrooms of this Olympic Resort and washed the blood off my face.

It really wasn't that bad, just the fact that the goggles broke and cut me up between my eyes. My head hurt pretty good but I wear a helmet, for very obvious reasons, so that absorbed most of it. I then proceeded to register for my lesson.

Awesomely enough, I paid for a group lesson, but no one else showed so I got and individual lesson for the price of a group. Rock on!!!

Basically, I'm a self taught skier and as I expected, I taught myself wrong. I really frustrated the dude that was instructing me because he had to pretty much unteach me and reteach the correct ways. It proved to be worth the money though and my skills improved dramatically the rest of the day.

That night, more Catan.

SLC Trip Post #1

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I was on vacation to Salt Lake City to ski and hang out with some friends. I figure I'll recap the trip here over the next few days so check back in.

I left Wednesday the 11th after working a half day. My friend Scott and I were on the same flight out of Indy so we left just after lunchtime to make our 4pm flight. We were running a little late after I dropped a 12 pack of Wiedemann that I planned to take out with me to SLC, which leaked all over the floor. I almost teared up when I saw the precious nectar being wasted but at least it isn't very expensive.

Scott drove fast so we made it in plenty of time. Arrived in SLC early in the evening and the fun began. I was staying with a friend, Jeff, who moved out there a few years ago. There were several of us coming out at various times. Burgdorf showed earlier in the week but when Scott and I arrived the real fun began. We played a new game Jeff had bought, " Settlers of Catan." It's sorta like Risk meets Lewis and Clark and Warren Buffett.



It took us about 3 hours but it was very fun.

The next morning.... well, I'll leave that post until tomorrow.

PS - How the merph to you post a picture in the middle of your text?

Pet Peeve

I have many peeves but I'll just mention one for now since it's appropriate for a blog. You folks that have more than yourself in your picture on your profile picture need to just have yourself, or have a big circle or something around your picture. What's weird is that I would have thought people like Jared or Wilcoxon who would need to prove to others that they actually have friends and hot wives would have multiple people in their picture, but it seems the cooler, more attractive people do it. If you have figured out how to post your picture for your profile, you certainly know how to crop out your Aunt Lodi.

Why is the sky blue?

(From Left to right, Cerby (formerly our dog, now my mo-in-law's) Jenn, and Frank.)



Since no one seemed to be able to handle even a slightly deep thought I figured I'd throw something out there that is easier. "Why is the sky blue?" This isn't a deep question, I actually did a science fair project on it back in eight-five but I can't remember... I did really bad on it. Should have done a volcano or something.

I was also just about to send my blog link out to a few people (Phantom Regiment buddies) so I wanted to post something else so I could add a slightly better picture than the one from the last post....

Deep thoughts... at least for me.

For those of you that know me... you know that I am pretty transparent. What you see is typically what you get. I'm reminded of a time in Drum Corps, I was laying on the floor of a gym in Illinois on my air mattress gazing up at the ceiling. Someone came up to me and said "Pennie for your thoughts"... I assume expecting some monumental comment from a young adult grasping with the meaning of life. Instead I told her my thoughts which were "I was wondering how they tied those ceiling joists into the columns during construction." Yeah, I'm pretty surface.... If I'm looking off into the distance and say I'm not thinking about anything.... I really am not thinking about anything. Seriously, I can completely not think about anything. I think it's a talent.

So, some slightly deep thoughts or realizations I've had lately. I just finished my MBA which really wasn't all that much of an accomplishment other than putting some time in. However, I realized that my MBA, and school in general has always been a means for an excuse to procrastinate on things you want to accomplish. For instance, "I'm going to start that business when I get out of school".... "I'll volunteer with church when I get out of school"... my personal favorite, "I'll help around the house more when I get out of school."

It was a little bit of an eerie feeling as I realized that when you are a student or in school you are actively trying to improve yourself and there is no question that you are doing something to make yourself better. Now that I'm not a student anymore, nor do I have any aspirations to be an official student again I'm stuck with the realization that I actually have to make myself better instead of relying on professors or classmates to propel me along.

I guess I'm all grown up now.


(Hey look, I learned how to add a picture!!)