The Reeces are back in town

Hey guys! Just came back from CA last night and wanted to get back into the swing of things here. This will be a short blog, as I'm still swamped at work. We had a great time on the trip, got to spend time with Jenna's family and some friends of ours out there, which was very cool. Got to play a new game called Wise and Otherwise, which we really enjoyed. We'll be picking that one up soon, for sure.

In other news, I lost my sunglasses at Disneyland. Lame! I freakin' loved those things.

Expect more details and whatnot tomorrow, hopefully.

Tailor and Shoe Repair?

Maybe it just shows how out of the loop I am, but am I the only one who is frankly astounded at how many tailor and shoe repair shops there are around? I think I've got no fewer than 5 of each within a 5-10 minute drive. Is that excessive? Do I just live in some kind of clothing/shoe hot zone?

In any case, we're having some of Jenna's pants hemmed. She's so small. I'm hoping this place does a good job for a good price, because I'm sort of in the market for a few tailoring projects, myself. I like fitted dress shirts, since I tend to wear them untucked, and I don't like to feel like a clipper ship under full sail when I go outdoors. Unfortunately, surprisingly few dress shirts in my price range (or more accurately, the range I am willing to pay for something as non-weaponlike as a shirt) are fitted. I'm also almost exclusively into solid-color shirts, monochromatic fellow that I am. So my options are not vast. However, if I have a tailor who can slim down the torso of my dress shirts for a reasonable price, I'm all for it. That, unfortunately, reminds me of the shirt that got away. I took it to the cleaner's and they sent it off somewhere and didn't have it back in time so I had to take one shirt without the other. Unfortunately, I totally forgot that it was there until very recently. I haven't stopped back in yet, but I left it there several months ago so I'm afraid they'll have gotten rid of it by now.

Wouldn't it be easier just to weave leaves into our body hair, like I did back in college?

Various Info

Did the steak-in-the-oven again last night with a 2:45 per side cook time and it came out significantly underdone, even after 10 minutes of resting under some foil. I think 3 minutes may be the magic number. I have two more steaks with which to attempt it, so we'll see if the 3-minute mark is the key. I'm also thinking that bringing the steak up to a bit higher temperature with a quick soak in warm water (inside a zip-loc, of course) may assist with getting it cooked through, beyond simply leaving it on the counter for a while. We'll see soon, here. I'm really hoping to have a very simple, consistent method I can follow without having to adjust every time. The steaks are quite consistent in size, shape and weight, so I don't they they even really count as a variable.

Also tried to run this morning in my old shoes. I stretched a bit beforehand, which I think will generally assist me, but I still had the problem. Greatly reduced, thankfully. It hurt, but not terribly. I warmed up for about 5 minutes and then stretched some more, which didn't seem to change the effect significantly. I'm thinking I may need to just slack entirely for a week or more to let everything settle down and heal completely before attempting this again. One thing I've noticed is that the shin splints are cumulative. If I run one day and end the run with a little pain, that's the starting point for the run the following day. If I rest for a few days, the pain still starts where it ended. I haven't determined my total recovery time yet, but I'm really hoping that I can get myself back to zero, strap on some new shoes, stretch before I run, and avoid the buildup. I'm still hoping cushy, neutral shoes will help the situation overall.

We're heading out of town this weekend to go visit Jenna's family. Calling them that seems odd, as I really think of them as my family, too. It's tough having them so far away, but we make an effort to get out to see them as often as possible. We'll be heading to Disneyland this trip, which will be really fun. The rest of our itinerary is up to the womenfolk, and I'll just be along for the ride. Definitely looking forward to some time off, though it'll be an absolute nightmare to get caught up at work when I get back (considering I'm already almost 2 weeks behind on the shiny new job they stacked on top of my old job). Whatever, right? Can't work all the time.

On Socks

Socks may not be worthy of much thought to the average person, but I have given them their due and have been rewarded in kind. This treatise may not apply to the women-folk, as their requirements are different from our own. However, I think the principles described herein will be of use to most people.

A man, in general, has no more than 6 colors of socks he will ever need. Most of us get by with 2 or 3. My own are black, khaki and white. The white are exclusively athletic socks, and the black and khaki work for all of my daily needs. Here's where we get fresh: why not pick a particular style of sock for each color and use that one exclusively? For me, the brand is Gold Toe and the style is Auro. Only available at Target, these socks are perfect for my needs and not too expensive to have a hefty load of them. They are available in khaki and black (probably others, but I don't worry about that) and in various heights and patterns. I picked one pattern, loaded up on it, and ditched all of my other socks.

The benefits are much greater than you would probably imagine at first glance. First off, I don't sort socks. I put all my socks into one drawer, unsorted, except perhaps to be clumped by color. Also, I don't match socks when picking them out. When a sock gets a hole in it, I throw out the one bad sock instead of sending a perfectly good sock along with it. If a sock gets eaten by the dryer, I don't have to throw away its perfectly functional mate. There is no mate. There is some kind of polyamorous sock fusion going on, and that is why this system works so well.

In the morning, you pick two black socks and they always match. You pick two khaki socks? They match. If you wanted to be extremely organized, you could split your sock drawer into several sections, depending on your sock color selection, and then there would never even have to be any digging to find two of the same color. I do have a few alternate socks that I will wear from time to time, but they aren't my daily stuff. They end up tucked into the back of the drawer and are only brought out when I wear a gray suit or something.

The main thing is that this removes all thought from dealing with socks. Your laundry is about as easy as it can get, because matching socks always takes an inordinate amount of time. Now you just pile them and toss them in a drawer. Seriously, it's worth looking into.

Weekend of Awesome

Before I get too deep into the awesomeness of this weekend, I'd like to make note of an epiphany I had.

When I decided to start running again back in May of last year, I went to a running store and got myself some new shoes. They didn't fit perfectly, but they were much nicer shoes than the old New Balance monstrosities I'd been wearing since high school for every vaguely athletic activity I did. I tried to run on the new shoes (Asics Gel-2130) and immediately noted the return of shin splints I had thought long gone. I decided I could fix the issue with a lacing change or different insoles. I got some insoles and they fit much better. I started running again and noticed that I kept having the shin splints issue and stopped running for several months. Somehow, all of this was completely lost to me until this weekend. Suddenly, I remembered the whole thing, all the way from me being at the running store telling the guy I used to get shin splints but don't anymore, to me trying to convince myself that the new shoes were totally awesome I just needed to break them in. Weird, eh? Anyway, now I totally remember and I think I need to go back to the running store again and see if I can find some shoes similar to the old beaters I used to wear. I think I've gotten more miles out of them than my last car, but they're still super comfy. They're a neutral shoe with a good bit of padding, and I think that's the way I need to go. So anyway, that's my proposed solution to this problem. I'll keep everyone updated on how this works. I'm also planning to get up tomorrow and run in my old shoes and see if they still have the same cushy goodness that was helping before.

Okay, on to my awesome weekend. Friday night, the wife and I stayed in and worked on Valentines for our gaming group. Yes, we're that geeky. We made a little valentine for each player out of felt and puff paint, and made it in some design that related to his or her character. It was a ton of fun coming up with the designs, making the valentines and then giving them to everyone. We also made a cake, which was sort of horribly ugly, but it tasted good so that's okay. I'm going to have to try several more cakes to get a good handle on it, I think. In any case, here it is:
It's so ugly it's almost cute, isn't it? It looks like a blind kind with a learning disability decorated it, and that isn't far off the mark, skill-wise. So you know, "STPF" stands for "Super Teen Poverty Force" - our group's unofficial moniker. While half our group is fabulously wealthy, the other half is miserably poor. My character was actually homeless at the beginning of the campaign, and rooted through dumpsters for food. We're also pretty young, with half the group being teenagers. Anyhow, it's too perfect a name for us to discount it for being only half accurate, and the cake reflects the level of awesome we bring to the world of crime-fighting. Hooray!

So the cake turned out poorly, but the game was very fun and jenna was suitably surprised when we got there and she had flowers waiting for her. I'm a sneaky husband. She had no idea there would be flowers and then there were totally flowers there! They're in our bedroom now, making it smell all nice. That was Saturday and it was a good day.

Sunday, I woke up and played Fallout 3 for a few hours while Jenna slept in, then we sort of lounged around watching Quantum Leap and eating leftover pizza. In the afternoon, Jenna decided she wanted to learn to play racquetball so I ran to the store and bought her a racquet while she got ready. We went to my office and played for over an hour, mostly me teaching her the rules and then practicing serves and getting used to how the ball moves in the space and all. it was really fun, and she absolutely loved playing. Success! I've been wanting to find something she and I can do together that's physical and not just working out to be working out. I think this may be the one. So we're going to play again soon, and I may supplement with running if I can figure out my shoes.

Sunday evening was also awesome. AJ came over at 6:30 and we headed out to the Movie Tavern on Hampden and Tower. We were going to see "Taken" at 8:00 and I wanted to get there with plenty of time to explore, order food, etc. Some friends from up north came down as well and it was really good to see them again. So we're all at this theatre about an hour before the show starts and when we go in, they're still cleaning it. We head out to wait in the hallway. While we're there, we are greeted by almost every member of the staff, several of whom made food suggestions and one of whom helped us figure out how big a 10" pizza is by use of the second knuckle on his pinkie (he had measured it and it was exactly one inch). Once they cleaned the place out we went inside and got to see how this joint works. Instead of having rows of seats pretty much jam-packed together in the theatre, there was a lot of space between them (to allow waitstaff, I'm thinking). The rows aternated between regular movie chairs with small tables between them and nice leather office chairs lined up at a counter. Every pair of seats has a little red switch that lights up when you flip it to let the waitstaff know you need something. The food was really tasty and everything was very reasonably priced. Tickets were $7.50 for adults and the cheeseburgers we got were like $8 each. Drinks are reasonable and you get refills, and you can get a bucket of popcorn for like $5 with free refills, too. Regular theatres will refill your popcorn, but you have to go out of the theatre and wait in line ot get it. Here, the waitstaff will come pick up your bucket and bring it back to you in your seats so you don't miss anything. Brilliant!

I need to take a fresh paragraph to rave about the service here. Everyone in this place is friendly and happy. They are helpful and attentive without being disruptive. It's a big danger when eating dinner in the theatre that you'll have your waiter coming and bugging you during important parts and everything. These folks are great, though. You have your light and they don't bug you unless it's on. And when it is, they get what you need quickly and quietly without bothering you any more than necessary. It was something I was very concerned about heading in, but honestly it was awesome. We had a few people just saying hello in the hallways, too. That's something you rarely get in most restaurants or movie theatres. Normally the staff is brusque at best, and can flat-out ignore you the rest of the time. Everyone working here liked each other and they really seemed to like their jobs, too. It's a huge deal for me, which is why I keep going on about it. The vibe of a venue has a lot to do with my enjoyment of it. Normally the vibe of a theatre is so neutral that you don't even notice it, but having a decidedly positive atmosphere makes a big difference.

So anyhow, that was the weekend. Extremely fun, vaguely productive, and successful on all counts.

Stupid shins!

I thought a day of rest would be enough for my poor, beleaguered shins, but apparently this is not the case. I'm going to let them rest fully until Monday, and then I'll start again. I did stretch today, which should have helped but I went from no pain to serious pain in less than a minute on the treadmill. I may also just need to go invest in some new shoes. I really want to keep running, but I don't think it's a good idea to continue on without solving the problem. I did end up riding the recumbent bike for a bit, so I'm thinking I can still do something, even if it isn't actual running.

In other news, we saw a really cool movie theatre when we went to Comedy Works. The tickets are more expensive ($12 for regular, $15 for VIP) but they include free soft drinks and popcorn. Awesome, eh? It also sounds like the seats are super comfy and all. it's a small theatre, but I want to try it. I've also been curious about a place called the Movie Tavern for a long time. We have tried to go once and failed. We're going to try again on Sunday and anyone who is interested should contact me and let me know times and movies you're interested in. The link to the particular theatre is below so you can see what our options are. I'm thinking Taken, Inkheart, Coraline, or Underworld 3.

Movie Tavern - Aurora, CO

Burgers!

Many of you have had these, and I have rarely gotten anything but compliments on them. I even had one lady at my company picnic tell me they were the best burgers she'd ever had, which was cool. They're kind of complicated (more like tiny flat meatloaf than a regular burger, I guess), but they turn out very well, so it's worth it in the end.

You need beef, first off. I like 93/7 ground beef, but I've made these with everything from 80/20 to 97/3 and they don't seem to care much. I have noticed that the higher the fat ratio of the burgers, the more likely they are to shrink on the grill. I tend to work with a pound of this stuff and the ratios of everything else are based on that.

You'll need one egg, lightly beaten. Not whipped or anything, just homogenized more or less. You want it to mix into the rest of the stuff smoothly without great honking chunks of yolk anywhere.

You'll also need some bread crumbs. I'm a bread crumbs in a can guy, and I like the Italian seasoned kind.

For taste, I like some teriyaki (sometimes, I use the purple-capped garlic teriyaki instead of regular, but it can be hard to find), some garlic powder (if using regular teriyaki), some hickory flavoring, a couple big pinches of kosher salt, some more of those generalized Italian flakes in a can, and a little tiny bit of extra virgin olive oil to get everything nice and squishy.

Throw all of this into a big bowl. As far as amounts go, I start with the meat and the egg, add the seasonings and the olive oil and get it mixed up. I use my hands with smaller amounts, and I try not to really beat it up if I can help it. Then I throw in breadcrumbs until I get to the right consistency. You're looking for something wet enough to hang together, but also dry enough to hang together. The bread crumbs are sort of a stabilizer. They add some structure to the whole mix, and keep it from being a goopy mess. They also give the burgers a better texture. Don't ask me how any of this works, I just made burgers like this one time and it worked so I stuck with it. There was no science involved.

Now that you've got this all set, you can start forming patties. Keep your hands cool while you do this, and don't beat your meat. Be gentle. If you rough it up, the burgers get defensive and scrunch up into little balls on the grill. You want nice flat burgers, right? Rinse your hands with cold water periodically to keep the heat from getting into your burgers and use light patting and squishing to flatten them out. Once they're flat, you can lay them out on a plate with some waxed paper between layers and head to your grill.

That's about as far as I go here, because your grill is your own business. If you don't know how to cook burgers on it, you should take it back to the store and get a McDonald's gift card or something. I will tell you not to squish the burgers on the grill, at least. They make an incredibly satisfying sizzle, but that sizzle is all the juiciness of your burger burning away. Resist the urge.

Enjoy and, as always, feel free to ask any questions you have.

Comedy Works: Experiencing a Ketchup Shortage of Epic Proportions

Last night I went to Comedy Works with my wife and our friends AJ and Bonnie. It was pretty good. It was a free night, which means the people on stage were kind of hit or miss. Some were very good, some were really painful, and the rest fell somewhere in the middle. the headliner was worthwhile, too. In any case, this is not why I've brought you here. I have brought you here to warn you about a plague that started at Comedy Works and may well be spreading to other venues near you.

This plague is a subtle, insidious demon. You wouldn't even notice it, maybe, unless you ordered a food item that is generally best served with a particular condiment. I really walked right into it by ordering french fries, I guess. Still, when my basket came, I didn't realize that I had been struck until I dipped a fry into...1/4" of ketchup in the bottom of a 1" diameter tiny bowl. For those of you playing at home, that's like a quarter of a cubic inch of ketchup. That's roughly .14 fl oz. For a basket of fries. It is approximately enough ketchup to properly dip three fries, assuming you dip once after each bite. It is enough to spread very very thinly over like 10 fries, if you dip each fry only one time and don't swirl it around to get better coverage. There is no possible way to get that much ketchup onto a whole basket of fries. There weren't enough ketchup molecules available, for each fry to have its own. I may seem to be going on and on about this, but that's only for this reason: when we asked for more, she brought us precisely one more tiny bowl with the same amount of ketchup in it, and charged us a quarter for it.

Let that sink in.

I am okay with paying $9 for a basket of fries at a show where I didn't have to buy tickets. That I understand. They need to make money, and overcharging for food is a way to do that. But charging for absolutely pitiful amounts of condiments to go with overpriced food? That's over the line. If we go back, I'm satisfying their two-item minimum by buying the two cheapest things on the menu. It'll still be $8, but it's the principle of the thing.

Also, this morning I decided to give my legs a rest and they're feeling much better. I may try to continue with a two days on, one day off schedule for the foreseeable future and see if that gets me where I want to be.

Recipe from this very blog!

*Updated*

Just in case some of you aren't reading all the comments on each of these posts, I figured I'd re-post this one for your enjoyment. I used it last night for the first time and was absolutely overjoyed with the results. My wife can confirm that I wouldn't stop talking about the steak for hours after I was done. Thanks, Kristie!

Okay, here's what you need: A steak. I'm a recent Costco member and their inch-thick, USDA choice ribeyes for under $6/lb make me do a little dance in my head every time I think about them. You will need some of those. Or some of another, far inferior, woefully-overpriced meat-slab. You will also need some seasonings. I used some kosher salt, some Lowry's seasoned salt and some hickory seasoning. You will need some high-heat oil (not Extra Virgin Olive, for example. Safflower worked well for me)and a cast iron skillet. If you don't have a cast iron skillet, you're wrong. Go get one so you can be right. You'll need to "season" this skillet, but I still haven't gotten mine right so ask someone else about it.

This is precisely all you need, disregarding a kitchen timer, tongs, some crazy-insulated oven mitts and so on. If we want to get crazy, I can also specify teeth, fingers, steak-knives, arms, elbows, etc. Basically, you need a kitchen, some cast iron, some flavor and some meat. Rock on?

Let your steak sit out for a while. You want it to warm up almost to room temperature before you get started. You can sprinkle both sides with your seasonings at this point. Once your steaks are up around 60 degrees or so, spread a little oil around the bottom of your skillet with a paper towel, pop it into your oven and turn it to broil. Leave it be for like 10 minutes. Pull out the rack using your mitt (you can touch the skillet but only if you're damned sure it can take that kind of heat) and drop your steak on there. It'll sizzle like the dickens, but you just slide the rack back in and set your timer for 2-3 minutes. Kristie suggested 2 minutes on the first side, with another few on the other. That got me a good crust on the outside, but the inside wasn't as done as I like. I'm planning to stick with 3 minutes next time, and see what that gets me. Once the timer goes off, pull out the rack, turn your steak with the tongs (be careful not to touch the skillet as it is currently hot enough to burn your soul) and slide it back in. Set your timer for another set of minutes (2-3, depending on various factors) and let the steak sit. When the timer goes off, take the steak out of the pan and put it on a plate to sit for 10 minutes or so. I cover mine with a sheet of foil to help keep the heat in a bit more. If you want a rarer steak, you can leave this off and I think the heat will dissipate more easily, leaving your steak less cooked.


*Begin Update* Having tried this again, I have determined several things: one, putting your steaks in a zip-loc bag and letting them hang out in warm water for a bit works really well to get them to room temp, and two, cooking for 2:45 to 3:00 on each side is perfect, as long as you let them sit on a plate under a sheet of foil for about 10 minutes. That carryover heat will finish the job very nicely. *End Update*

Shouldn't a splint make you feel better?

To start, I did run my 20 minutes this morning, so this isn't a justification of a cop-out on my part. I even ran at a very slightly faster pace than my standard 6.0 mph. However, my shins hurt like the freakin' dickens before, during and after the run. To understand this, we should probably go back to the beginning.

In high school, specifically my sophomore year, I played football and joined the wrestling team. This was probably just a prime example of my poor decision-making skills at the time, but whatever, right? Anyway, those are activities that require running and quite a bit of it. At this point, I started to develop shin splints. If you haven't had them, you're lucky. They hurt quite a bit, and make it difficult to run without looking like Quasimodo. I don't know if this is the primary reason for my miserable failure in sports at the time (it may have something to do with size 15 feet on a 5'8" frame) but it was a contributing factor, for sure. I hated running. I wasn't good at it and it hurt. So I stopped. I joined theatre and debate and went on through high school without missing sports (except martial arts, which I continued to do) at all.

This cessation of physical activity lasted a long time. I didn't really do much extended running in college. I played a few intramural sports, went to the gym maybe 3 times, and then got myself into the SCA. That involved physical activity (fencing, fighting, archery) but not running, and certainly not running more than 50 yards at a time. So the shin splints weren't a factor. I honestly thought they were gone. I thought I'd grown out of them. Then college was over without my having run for any extended period for the duration. I ended up in an apartment with a friend who was big into working out, so we went and did that quite a bit. Mostly lifting, though. Still no extended running. At least, no extended running for days in a row. I would use the recumbent bike quite a bit, but that hasn't ever had the same effect on me.

Honestly, the past 3-4 months is the first time I've done much running for more than a few minutes, more than a few days in a row, and I think it's starting to wear on me. My shins hurt like hell more or less all day after a run. It's tough to walk without limping like a big freak, and they don't heal overnight so the next morning's run is tough, too. I keep thinking that it's just muscle soreness that will go away if I work the appropriate muscles, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe I need to head back to the running store and see if anyone can help me there. Maybe different shoes would be helpful? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.