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April 16, 2020 – ‘non-Tacticool’ and Emotional Thursday

April 16, 2020 /

Sorry guys, I am not feeling it today. I can tell by stats that this is not my most popular subject heading as I get low views on Thursdays. But, this is a special one in many ways.

One year ago today, I walked away from a six figure and very stable job. This was my last day of work. I did this to find myself and maybe to save my life from potential self-destructive behavior. I have enjoyed my time so much and I have personally accomplished so many things this year. One of the commitments we made before I left my job was to host an exchange student for the year.

August 25, 2019 we welcomed Sergio at the airport an embarked on an adventure that you cant put a price on. It was supposed to be an academic year of sharing and nurture ending as these programs do with graduation, pomp and circumstance. But, the ending was not our destined path. This morning at 4AM PDT we said our final goodbyes to Sergio with a heavy heart.

We have had other exchange students, kids and guests in our lives. This adventure started as many others do. We did the whirlwind State Fair, trip to the beach, family meet and greets, etc. He was probably glad when school started a short two weeks after arrival to get some reprieve from our crushing tour of hospitality.

I would be remiss to not mention a super emotional beginning when our beloved Snowflake (English Retriever, ~7YO), suddenly died of heat exhaustion on a short stroll in the local woodland trail. We were bonded by trips to the veterinarian ER and euthanizing end. There was a lot of emotion from all of us, including someone that had only been with us a week. I think it galvanized this new unit from the beginning.

I can only imagine what life for him was like; a new country, a new school, a different language, no friends and the like. Life soon settled down into a routine of football games, school activities and new experiences. As we headed toward mid-year, Sergio found his stride and was very involved in the local theater production of ‘Modern Millie’. It was that event that he really found his direction.

As the play was wrapping up in late February, we started getting inklings that the situation would be turning in an un-anticipated direction. Washington was reporting the first cases of COVID-19. My sister is heavily embedded in the situation as she is a doctor in the public health department in Washington. I inquired about the severity of this because I knew that if it was happening there it would be here shortly.

It didn’t take long and the domino’s started falling. My wife’s office closed for six weeks and school was put on a two week hiatus. One of those weeks included Spring Break so not a huge deal. Toward the middle of Spring Break, April was removed from the school calendar. We started to see all of the other exchange students leaving and our program ended as well. We were urged to send Sergio home. We had the option to ride it out as long as school resumption was a possibility and had several conversations with his parents to make the right decision.

About one week ago, it was decided that school was done for the year. All seniors in good standing were dismissed and would receive a diploma for time spent. That meant that his visa was technically over and it was time to officially leave.

Sergio, Aaron and Elijah at Disneyland

He was such a good influence on my kids. He was a playmate and responsible role model. He reinforced our rules and pitched in whenever asked, many times not even asking but understanding the expectations. I think that we all appreciated a different dynamic that this relationship brought.

In many ways, we had something we would have never had if this had been a normal year. We had a solid month of quality family time. We played games, planted flowers, taught lessons in cooking, watch movies and TV series, made videos and laughed. I suppose that the regrets of what we wanted to do to finish the year crept in and certainly the premature ending was abrupt. This was a journey bookended by emotional events with a lot of good stuff in between.

It is time for new beginnings for all of us. I have kept a lid on job searches so as to make sure that Sergio would finish his year with the family that made a commitment to him in January 2019. Now school is out until next fall, it is really time to make some different life choices for me and I can consider relocation if need be.

I am going to miss having him around.

April 15, 2020 – Admitting your darkest secrets

April 15, 2020 /

I am a very private person. I like to share ‘edutainment’ or an editorial political piece, but I have put very little out about myself personally. Today, I want to write about addiction. I want to put it into an abstract way so as to be approachable to others. I also cannot claim that I know everything, just my brand of problem.

I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. It was a well established fact that tobacco caused health problems. That being said, every man I knew was well into his addiction of nicotine. Some later beat it and some did not. My generation was at the crossroads of medically wrong but socially acceptable.

In high school, I had a friend that I used to joke around with. It started with a ‘ha ha, look at me chewing this tobacco’ to lets get together and do it some more. This progressed to not a huge deal physically but mentally I started looking forward to this and associating tobacco to fun and reward. My first physical symptom that I was heading toward a problem was I was in math, the first class after lunch. I literally could not keep my eyes open. This went on for about a week and somehow I associated nicotine after eating as the solution to nearly falling asleep in class.

My other problem was that this behavior wasn’t legal. It drove that activity underground so to speak. Pretty early on I learned that if I spit my first mouthful out, I could swallow the juice the rest of the day. I even learned that I can swallow the tobacco. So, now this became like a candy. In my twenty some years of tobacco, there have been very few people that I have ever visibly used around, even though it has been constant for that entire time.

I tried smoking for a little while, but I couldn’t deal with the smell. The buzz was more intense, but it was also shorter. That led to smoking more but it was harder to hide and required more effort. Eventually, I moved exclusively to smokeless tobacco.

You tell yourself that you can quit if you want to. To a degree that is the absolute truth. You will only quit if you want to, and some days you really have to want it. You of course try half-hearted efforts to quit. Ironically, I think that it is harder to quit when no one knows that you are doing it in the first place. But, every time you fail it is some excuse you tell yourself that is the reason that cant do it. I made it thirty days once and to celebrate I bought some tobacco. A lot of the time, it was something to focus your energy.

What is the psychology of addiction look like? A coping mechanism – What I realized is that this is how I have been functioning for the last twenty some years.

  • Don’t know what to do…
  • When I am done with this…
  • I am glad that is over…
  • This is going to be very hard/stressful…

I believe that this why quitting is so hard, you cant undue all those years of training overnight. I have felt mental fog, a shaking like being cold and a sudden urge to use the toilet. The consistency of the symptoms fade and I have observed acute triggers like stressors. There has been some cases where I have told myself, ‘I don’t have time to quit’ because I didn’t want to attempt with withdrawal symptoms for a particular day.

I have tried patches, gum and cold turkey. After trying to calculate how much nicotine I consumed, I tried the 1st step patch (21mg) and supplemented with 4mg gum. After the patches ran out, I went to straight gum and was using 32mg daily. That lasted three weeks, during Christmas and New Years.

Recently, I went straight gum for nine days (24-40mg) and went cold turkey. This morning is day six. I am definitely not out of the woods on this. I am having strong urges still at times but I know that giving in today means going through this again. So, I am inclined to make this one stick. I suppose that this is one thing about quarantine has been a positive.

April 13, 2020 – Valuing the software to run the hardware

April 13, 2020 /

This comparison is probably a stretch, but I feel like it will work so I am going for it. I suppose that there are a couple of inputs that make this opinion come alive. In the old days, say pre-Windows XP, hardware was upgraded more often. When hardware was changed, there was a driver that also needed to be installed. That driver may or may not have actually worked. Sometimes it required re-installing service packs and rolling back to move forward. There also wasn’t a video for everything or a forum or ideas to help you get started.

Today, unless you are upgrading your video card or something for a specific reason, you don’t need to add another hard drive or faster DVD drive or more RAM. If you are one of those people, you probably know more about this than I do. However when it didn’t work, which was frequent, what would you have paid to make it work? My point being that without software to run that device, it was worthless. But it wasn’t like you had a choice for vendors, nor could you really pay to have a better or different experience.

I can remember whole Christmas presents not working; never could figure out how to make that game load or that modem work, etc. For those that cant relate to this experience, this is precisely where I am going. Our value of the software is free, because that is our perspective and experience. Yet without it, it doesn’t work at all.

Ker-chunk, Shifting gears. I recently picked up a set of Bora 1100 mobile work bases. Until my recent pantry project, some of the nicety features or accessorizing like dust collection and mobile bases were not in the plan. It was true that my machines could be moved without that mobile base. I really didn’t like to do it and hassle has been some of the issue with previous projects.

Quickly, the pluses on the product are 1) relatively inexpensive at $45 per pair 2) flexible and customizable size accommodating 400 lbs of weight. The minuses were 1) the assembly was time consuming 2) supplying your own frame.

So, unlike the driver situation my tools will work without mobile base. What I will say about it is that I am hoping that I will have much less hesitation to get started when they are easier to move. My shop is small, so having the ability to utilize the space effectively is important. Completing the task is more important than owning the hardware.

April 11, 2020 – Holy week is ending

April 11, 2020 /

We have wrapped up another Christian year with Easter tomorrow. This has been what is called holy week starting with Palm Sunday. The holy week timeline goes as follows.

Palm Sunday represents the day that Jesus arrived in Jerusalem. Thursday is supposed to be the last supper. Friday is the day of the crucifixion. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead, which is Easter. That is a lot of things crammed into one week. I suspect that the actual timeline was a bit longer, particularly between arrest, conviction and death.

For those weaker on their doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus is God fulfilling his promise that the death of Jesus begins a new relationship between man and God. That is often referred to as the ‘New Covenant’. The old covenant was actually the Jewish religion. The difference between the two being that humans had relationship with God through a priest in the Jewish faith versus each person having relationship in the Christian faith. And with that, there is a shift between a fear, anger and punishment oriented God to a love and forgiveness God. At least this is my Protestant view of all that.

That makes tomorrow Easter, and traditionally a day of celebration. With the quarantine underway, we will be having a family oriented dinner, easter egg hunt, church on YouTube. It wont be the same, but it will be in line with tradition.

We are in the midst of our own new covenant. The state has decided not to reconvene school this year. With that, seniors are considered complete in their academic year. Our own exchange student who is a senior is now done with school. And with that, it is time to go home.

So the family dynamic which has grown so nicely over the year is about to change. We always knew that this day would come, it is a lot earlier than we expected and it certainly didn’t go the way that we expected. In a way we were lucky because we got a little more time with Sergio than a lot of host families did. Most programs recalled their students the week of spring break. He is the only exchange student that I am aware of that is still here.

Thursday morning, he will be on his way back home and we will be officially relieved of our duties take care of another child. We are all feeling a little sad about it. With that ending, another new beginning can occur. We will see what that is.

April 9, 2020 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

April 9, 2020 /

I am not feeling super ‘tacticool’ today. I am getting buried in my remodeling project, school will no longer be in session this year and our exchange student’s year is done. He is making plans to leave within the next couple of weeks. This leaves a huge hole in our family dynamics. We knew the day would come, but we had planned on things going very differently.

Spring is a great time to get out the shotgun in a lot of southern and mid-western states in this country. It is, or will be the spring turkey season for hunting. Here in Oregon, we do have a spring season but it is a lottery draw. I would be inclined to try but truthfully we have a very sparse population in this area. I very rarely ever see a turkey.

Optics and shotguns… in areas where turkey hunting is popular, it has become common to use a red dot type sight. Choke patterns are very tight with turkey loads and you are looking for a head shot (precision) to kill a turkey so as not to spoil the meat like breast. Other reasons to add an optic to your shotgun are shotgun only deer hunting zones and the home defense setup.

But, lest you permanently add a scope to your only shotgun because federal law does not allow any sort of optic for migratory bird hunting. Those would be ducks, geese or any upland bird like grouse. Turkeys are not federally managed and are treated more or less like big game. Additionally, optics are prohibited in most shotgun games like trap, skeet and sporting clays. If you only have one shotgun and specifically if it is a pump or semi-auto, consider the saddle mount.

The saddle mount attaches by removing two pins that hold the trigger group into the shotgun. The mount is slid over the receiver and two new bolts are put in place of the pin.

I take mine on and off for various reasons that I will discuss in the future. I have not noticed a point of impact change but that has also been tested for typical shotgun payloads like buckshot. It very well might be more subtle for slugs, that is one of the things I plan on testing at the range this year.

There you have it, an inexpensive and tool-less way to add a scope to a shotgun that is flexible so that you can use one tool in different applications.

April 8, 2020 – Don’t pull that thread…

April 8, 2020 /

My wife and I were talking about all of the ‘Improvements’ that were considering for the cottage. On one of the walk-throughs we were looking at some mildew along the wall.

That got to looking around at a potential source of the problem. I found a problem with the siding.

Katy bar the door… I have a huge problem.

That is the corner post and sill of the room in the first picture. So, guess what I am doing… that’s right, rebuilding this place.

For a discerning slum lord, there is always the question of where to stop. If I was intellectually honest with myself, the entire sill shows evidence of being punky (that is code for almost rotten). There are literally studs that are rotten and sistered to new wood. I had no idea the building was in this bad of shape.

As of this point, I am optimistic that all of that can be repaired. Time, money and effort are all that is required. Believe it or not, I like to consider the future and how to prevent this again. Certainly, there are some better building materials but there are some worse ones as well. Today’s lumber does not hold a candle to the durability of the old growth used in 1979 (when this house was redone).

The sources of water must be considered. There was a bush up against the house, that was removed last fall. There are cherry trees hanging over the house, those were trimmed last fall. The gutter was plugged, I scooped it out, but the cherry trees still exist so that will be a maintenance activity.

Once the water gets to the ground, it needs to get away from the house. I am considering digging a drainage ditch. We will see.

I dont even have the full scope of the problem yet. So, I wont be able to present it until I know. What I can say is that I will be busy until this project is done.

April 7, 2020 – Review: Save Me the Plums

April 7, 2020 /

‘Save Me the Plumbs’ by Ruth Reichl was the March selection for the Left Coast Winery Culinary Book Club. It is a short book detailing the time that Ruth spent as Editor in Chief at the magazine Gourmet.

This is the second book of hers that we have read as part of the book club. The first one ‘Garlic and Sapphires’ was a great introduction to Ruth as an author and a fascinating look at a food critic in an highly competitive environment. In many ways, this book is a continuation of that story because when she left the New York Times, it was for this job at Gourmet.

Ruth is a great writer. Her books are short with quick chapters and she pulls the highlights into each one. Even though this is a good book and a quick read, I have had a hard time making time and prioritizing this given the current circumstances. It has been hard to concentrate and be normal with quarantine as the norm and ‘Family Time’ as the expectation.

The focus of luxury and high cuisine from a magazine such as Gourmet feels a bit before my time. As someone in my forties, I am just beginning to appreciate (or be able to participate) in such things. I didn’t grow up around the magazine and am not really familiar with it since it went out of business in 2009. It does seem like the kind of magazine that that I would be the editor of where the story of the food was told, not just the recipes.

I finished the book last night and the ending made me wish that I had read it faster. I will spare the complete spoiler, but I can totally relate to the situation. This is an enterprise where everything seemed like it was going great only to have extenuating circumstances ruin a good thing. In the end, a person is grateful to have the opportunity to prove success but bittersweet that it isn’t more appreciated and recognized and at least allowed to continue.

Opportunities open doors when others are closed. I suppose Ruth may still be Editor of Gourmet rather than writing books and we still wouldn’t have these great stories. I enjoyed reading this book and there are a few recipes in it, some of which I have made. I think more than food, this is a book that is about a person’s self doubt, will to succeed and humanism. I liked this book because I liked ‘Garlic and Sapphires’ first.

April 6, 2020 – Enchiladas Michoacán Style

April 6, 2020 /

Sunday is a sacred cooking day. I often save the best or most complicated meals for Sunday. It goes back to my days in the 9-5 grind where preparing and eating a really nice meal was a distraction from the rapidly upcoming Monday.

My journey into Mexican food started when we lived in South Carolina. We were far removed from the familiar tastes and flavors of family and Mexican food, even though there were several Mexican markets in our small town. Sunday was dedicated to cooking out of Rick Bayless’s “Mexican Kitchen“. I would spend as much as six hours preparing Sunday dinner. My book is literally falling apart from use.

My wife recently started getting connected with different online sources of Mexican cooking, I think to stave off quarantine madness. She has started working on mastering some of the basics. We were watching this old woman cooking classic recipes in this rustic kitchen, so that is what I decided to make yesterday.

Part 1: Making the broth

I take a whole chicken, one onion, carrot bits, celery stalk, a couple bay leaves, three garlic cloves, peppercorns and some salt an put it into a pot. then I fill the pot up with water. I boiled the chicken about an hour and a half (on low). Another note on stock, you don’t need to peel or trim any of the vegetables, just make sure they are clean.

I took the chicken out and let the broth cool about two hours to make working with the parts a little easier.

Part 2: Making the Salsa

In this recipe, I used Guajillo and a few Arbol chiles. I really didn’t count the Guajillos, but I would say about thirty, but the pile next to the skillet in the picture was what I used. I used five Arbols, they are spicy, very near the cayenne range, so go easy on them.

To make the salsa, destem and remove the seeds in the chiles. Fry the chiles in oil and soak them in about four cups of broth for about thirty minutes. When done with the chiles, blacken some tomatoes for depth. Put the chiles, tomatoes, 1/4 of an onion, 3 tablespoons of oregano and salt into the blender. Add the soaking broth into the blender for liquid and blend the mixture. Put the salsa back onto the stove to reduce the liquid.

Part 3: The Filling

To make the filling, I diced carrots and potatoes. Those were fried in oil and seasoned to taste. In a separate preparation I roughly chopped one onion and combined with queso fresco (I would guess 1/2 pound?). Those were set aside when I started working on assembly.

Part 4: Assembly

Things were starting to happen fast, so I didn’t get as many pictures in this phase. Heat up a skillet of oil and the oven to 350 degF. Take a corn tortilla, dip it into the salsa. Immediately move it to the skillet and fry about 20 seconds a side. I prepare about six at a time because that is what my tray holds.

Add the carrot/potato filling and add about half of that in cheese/onion mix. Roll the enchiladas and repeat until you run out of ingredient or tray space or time or tortillas or whatever is your limitation. I dumped probably one cup of salsa over the top of the rolled enchiladas and put the tray into the oven while I finished the dish.

Part 5: Finishing

I broke down the chicken into the eight basic parts, wings, breast, drumsticks and thighs. Then I put those into the skillet to heat up and crisp. On top of chicken I added about half a cup of salsa while cooking. Once that was done, I took the enchiladas out of the oven and plated.

Three enchiladas, some shredded lettuce, topped with sour crème and pickled serranos is the basic plating. The chicken is served to the side.

This was a bit of work, but excellent flavor. I hope that you will try this as well.

April 3, 2020 – Bonding with Grandpa, at the dump

April 3, 2020 /

When I was seventeen, I landed a super gig. I got to work for my grandfather for the summer. He was no slave driver, he paid us for eight hours and we usually only worked for six. He bought lunch and the experience was invaluable. At the time, this was a man that I barely knew. We were not nearly as close as my other grandparents so I was a little nervous at first.

I had worked for his son (my uncle Ed) before and it seemed like I was always too slow for him. I wasn’t working hard enough, constantly enough, he said that I was a slug. Looking back now, I feel like I wasn’t unusually slow, just a week, early teenager with no experience. I see it in my kids today. They don’t know their limits and don’t know how to push themselves physically.

At the time my grandfather told me that what he was going to teach me was going to be more valuable than what I got paid. The beauty of that experiance is that money is what I needed at the time, but I am still getting paid today. I learned so much that I cant really put a value on that summer. In one short summer, we painted several houses, built an addition, fixed plumbing problems, built a masonry wall, we did metal roofing and three tab roofing. I learned how to research properties at the county court house, get a loan from a bank, file an eviction (FED in legalese) and how to back a trailer.

One thing that was always constant was going to the dump. My grandfather told me that years ago, he got into a dispute with the garbage company over a multi-unit that he owned. From that day on, we were responsible for the weekly pick-up and disposal. Don’t get me wrong, it was a disgusting job. Summertime trash comes with smells and sights that are burned into my memory bank.

But, going to the dump was fun. We didn’t have a dump per se, it was a transfer station because the county ran an incinerator. The transfer station was a big, covered concrete pit. I would pick up a half jar of mayonnaise and throw it into the pit to watch it shatter and splotch all over the place. It was a game to anticipate the destruction of a console TV as it hit the concrete twenty feet below.

Today, I wrestle with the wastefulness of people. I really try to separate electronics from typical waste. I try to recycle as much as possible and ‘recycle’ wood to the fire pit for secondary usage rather than throw stuff away. That unfortunately takes a lot of time. I am in a situation now, where I need to get my little house cleaned out so I can get to work on rehab.

My load to the dump

It seems like in today’s culture clothes, food and even furniture is disposable. Some of that stuff that I threw out were things that were like new when I put them into the house, but they didn’t fit into my wife’s newest décor. When I looked at them two years later, they looked like it came from a homeless camp, dirty and broken down. Watching the parade of vehicles come into the dump, I saw either furniture or construction debris as the primary payload.

I hope that when I get older, I can have the patience and respect to teach my kids or grandkids the way that I learned. Believe you me that a lot of my work was substandard, but from the ability to make mistakes came the ability to do much better work. I respect that my grandfather also saw the value in his methods. He knew how to do things properly, but he let me struggle to learn to get it right. He was there to fix things if they went too far off of the rails.

My other uncle (Tyko) turned out to be a great builder. He took some of the great characteristics of my grandfather like thriftiness and thinking beyond the box and put them into unique and attractive houses. Some of his early work looked a lot like mine. It takes time and practice.

One of the many noteworthy phrases my grandfather had was ‘putty close’. Meaning that the job was good enough that we can smooth out the gaps. I am forever grateful that I got that summer to build a relationship that I probably never would have without doing that work. The money was spent thirty years ago but I am still using that knowledge today.