Ever since last weekend, I've been unable to drag my body into bed any sooner than 1:30/2 am. Although it was fine over this past six day "weekend", it really does not help the 8-5 working part of me. Oddly though, I seem to have gotten used to running on 5 1/2 - 6 hours of sleep. It does, however, make me dread the idea of starting up my workout routine again...I'm unsure how much it will take out of me during the evenings. Given that I've been a bit on the busy side during evenings, I'm not sure that the combination of the two would be the most prudent of things.

The funny thing about this situation is that I lived through high school and college on just such a schedule, albeit heavily caffeinated. It's almost as if my body's trying to remember it's old bio-rhythm...

Just before I started getting ready to crash for the evening, curiosity gets the better of me, and I decided to find out what that buzzing sound in the kitchen was. After a horror movie-esque eerily quiet few minutes, I notice the buzzing sound had returned. It turned out that a bee decided that knocking itself silly against my lights was a good idea. I think it came from the bee hive next doors and snuck in when I got home. On top of it, it had the sheer brilliancy/stupidity/luck of stopping on surfaces that I couldn't hit: ex. the "much taller than me" ceiling and a chandelier.

Thankfully, after turning out the lights in the living room, the bee became remarkably sedate and just sat on my couch. It was a relatively easy task to capture and neutralize the bee.

Needless to say, I'm glad I'm not sleeping in terror of getting stung.

This Memorial Day Weekend was BoboBASH.

After a 15 hour road trip [begun Thursday, ending Friday], three other intrepid individuals and I finally arrived at the final destination in Texas at 4 am. It turned out that we were the second group to arrive: The Dragon and Angie had made their appearance well before we did. Needless to say, immediate crashing soon followed.

Friday proper a.k.a afternoon marked the official commencement of activities. Da FET and the Brooks were chauffeured to the home base. A few hours later, we finally groped our way out to lunch ("Oh...it's Chick FILLET not Chick FILL AH"), grabbed ice cream at Braum's, traversed the terraquarium and visited the sewer grate @ Dealey Plaza.

Saturday was grilling day. Terri + her S.O arrived bearing gifts of side-dishes and cookies. After all the cooking and gorging was done and accounted for, we had stuffed ourselves silly with various meats, veggies, sides and beverages. Bobo's cast iron grill charcoal grill worked masterfully, taking everything we threw at it and returning tasty foods. The rest of the day was rounded out with watching disturbing amounts of Style, tonnes of Wipeout Fusion, EXTREME RISK playing and post-midnight ice cream runs.

Sadly, Sunday was Leave-Taking Day. Breakfast Tacos were consumed (thanks Terri!), goodbyes were said and photos taken for posterity's sake before the Group of Four took off for the northern lands.

Random points of interest -

• Bobo's house is quite nice. It really did feel like a home.


• Meichi(sp?) née Aurelia, the littlest Brook, is the cutest thing. She makes adorable noises, terrorizes kitties and plays a mean game of football.


• The General called to inform us that his prowess in "making it on time to the airport, but not in time to be on the plane when it departs" has not decayed in the slightest over the past few years.


• It has been *way* too long since I've seen/talked with a lot of the people I was able to meet in the flesh this sadly too short weekend. I really should make a concerted effort to keep in touch with people outside of my local + daily interactions.


• We should do this more often.

A few weeks ago, my Tivo died. It started some what innocuously - a freeze here, a stop there - until finally the box decided to die on me and refused to start up. After digging up some info on the probably cause(s) of death, I concluded that it was probably a dead hard drive...unsurprising considering the hard drive in a Tivo is always in use.

Thankfully, I was able to purchase a preloaded replacement drive. The actual installation process was *rilly* easy: remove case, remove IDE + power wires, remove HD mount from bracket, replace HD on mount and then reverse the process. Total time to rebooting: 15 minutes.

As an added bonus, I now have 4x the space I used to have (120 GB vs. 30 GB). Mmm...Best Quality for everything.

Ruthlessly stolen from Ars Technica...

Attorney General Ashcroft is visiting an elementary school. After the typical civics presentation, he announces, "All right, boys and girls, you can all ask me questions now."

A young boy named Bobby raises his hand and says, "I have three questions: 1. How did Bush win the election with fewer votes than Gore? Why are you using the USA Patriot Act to limit Americans' civil liberties? Why hasn't the U.S. caught Osama Bin Laden yet?"

Just then the bell sounds and all the kids run out to the playground. Fifteen minutes later, the kids come back in class and again. Ashcroft says, "I'm sorry we were interrupted by the bell. Now, you can all ask me questions."

A young girl raises her hand and says, "I have five questions: 1. How did Bush win the election with fewer votes than Gore? 2. Why are you using the USA Patriot Act to limit Americans' civil liberties? 3. Why hasn't the U.S. caught Osama Bin Laden yet?" 4. Why did the bell go off 20 minutes early? 5. Where's Bobby?"

You'll have to excuse my "high-brow" friend, Master of Spice and Heat.

Just because he knows a few things about cooking, he thinks he merits being called Master. Bleh. He just happened to get up to the ingredient stand quicker than I did on our special 90 minute Iron Cook battle (direct from Kitchen Colliseum).

For the immediate forseeable future, "Master" will be handling the culinary aspects of the blog until I can finish him off with my own special ingredient: ordinary water...laced with LSD. I hope his boorish attitude doesn't turn you off.

Anyway, in other news -

• I happened to acquire a PS2 network adapter and a copy of QCast. Now I can watch movies and play mp3's stored on my computer through my home theater (stop laughing).
• The Kirkwood Oberweis is open! The ice cream is as good as ever.
• I've been trying to get back into my usual routine (working out, side projects), but it looks like it'll be a little difficult to do so before June...there's just too much going on during May
• Matrix Reloaded tickets have been acquired. PHEAR THE BULLET TIME.

And that's pretty much it in a nutshell for now.

Let me introduce myself.

I am the Master of Spice and Heat. Having rightfully wrestled control of culinary affairs away from that utterly hopeless cooking knave who writes the other dreck on this blog, I shall do hope to do some level of justice to art of food creation and presentation. In any case, my musings cannot *possibly* be any worse than *his* inane babblings that pass for "art".

Without further ado, let me begin today's treatise...

Iron, without a doubt, is the type of metal that rewards its owner for its dedication.

As a material for cookware, iron is indeed the most attention craved one of them all. It requies immediate maintenance after cooking lest its form begin to corrode away from oxidation. When compared to corresponding pieces made from modern materials, iron cookware weighs inordately more; the user must be careful not to underestimate the amount of effort required to move iron cookware from one place to another. Finally, the user must exercise caution and use a pot holder or another similar implement when moving a heated piece of cookware to prevent burns.

However, the rewards of using iron cookware far outweigh those drawbacks. Once properly seasoned, iron cookware will require little oil to prevent food from sticking to it. In addtion, it is also very sturdy, requiring little thought as to what type of utensil is being used in it and taking years of abuse. Most importantly, metal keeps a constant temperature for a very long time, perfect for controlled temperate cooking techinques such as braising.

So I ask you, the reader, to try using iron cookware whenever and wherever appropriate. Your food and stomach will thank you.

What does it mean when you dream that you're in Cuba? Does it mean anything more if you and your sister are hunting for mushrooms that look suspiciously like truffles? Should you be confused when you found these mushrooms next to large cap mushrooms under a layer of sod between fruit-bearing vines growing on trellis? Would you be perplexed if you then had to run and hide from Castro's police force and were forced to buy those mushrooms from the local market? Regardless of the fact that everyone else is applying gratuitous amounts of pressure, is it wrong to hook-up with the dark haired young native woman who is your hostess during your stay in Cuba?

Did you miss me?

In case you were wondering what happened to this blog (and others in the circle of blogs), L33T D00D5 decided that h4xx0r1ng the hosting box was a grand and marvelous idea.

"Yes, yes...a wonderful idea...FOR ME TO POOP ON!"

Honestly, thank you soo much. You can install a root kit and do DOS attacks. Whoop de doo. I'm soooo super impressed. Thank *you* for being considerate enough to be an asshole and make our lives that little bit worse over the past few weeks.