Just Pleasure, No Guilt

I used to use the saying "guilty pleasure" all the time and then I realized, why should I feel guilt for something that brings my life pleasure? I think we should be proud of our hobbies, and "likes" in life. I for instance love the new Taylor Swift, Hunger Games, song... Eyes Open. Let me be clear, I HATE Taylor Swift, she is the epitome of what is wrong with the music industry, but whoever wrote and arrange that song should be kicked in to some of that TS money. Every time I hear that song I think of participating in some mortal combat with a bunch of teen "stars" in the woods, I would be really good at that. Not the murder part, but the woods part, all you would have to do is wait out the wussies and they would all kick from exposure and animal attacks. It would have made a boring movie though so I see why the plot line ran towards bloody death. I digress.

I don't know about any of you but I love when advertisements and signs miss the message and say something else. Kind of like the church sign that reads, "the best place to worship god is on your knees". I mean come on, how else can you take that, and that was an actual sign I saw. I heard a cherry this morning from the local radio station, the only station that comes in. It was for the local bank, Decorah Bank and Trust. There was a stupendously bad jingle going on but the line I remember best was... "we know how you like you business handled". HAHAHA. I laughed so hard I almost swerved off the road. Who proofs this stuff before it goes out? Beautiful.

One last bit of info today, this blog might take on a different feel in the next couple months. As you all know we are moving to a farm in Iowa. I am learning how much of a city boy I really am. All the people at work are now calling me city boy for that matter, and I can now understand why. On the property there is a shed about 20x30 that is called a grainery. If you can guess it is for storing grain in a dry place. The building is split into four "bunks" that can hold different grains and feed. Anyways, I was speaking to a co worker Aaron and he ask me what was in there right now. I tried to explain it was long rice like grain in there, and he asked... Oats? I then proceeded to ask, don't oats look like oatmeal? He slowly lowered his head, smiled, shook his head back and fourth, and proclaimed... ahhh, city boy. So now I know that.

We are planning on having a burn party when we get moved in. It is just like the painting parties of the 70's with less paint and more burning crap around the farm. I have all the experts from work coming to tell me what all those metal and wood torture like devices are I have currently laying around. More to come!

Ap

4 Set Power Hour

Continuation of previous post...

XXX, I haven’t watch this movie in a LONG time

Excited

Go

4              Quick

8              Smooth

12           Easy

16           Tighten

20           Ankle pop

24           Stomach grumble

28           Questionable

32           Tick tock

36           Knees hurt

40           Standing helps

44           Relax

48           Water good

52           Still good

56           Hungry

60           Timer

64           4 count

68           Biceps

72           Grumble

76           Confident

80           Nail split

84           4 is good

88           Breathe

92           Push

96           Scoop

100         Nibble

104         Sip

108         Spinach

112         Seconds, seconds, seconds

116         No more lasagna

120         Twinge

124         Half way

128         Pan

132         Heat

136         Pancake batter

140         Up downs

144         Flip

148         Too soon

152         Head rush

156         Can do

160         Smells good

164         Alternate legs

168         Time speed

172         Hot bite

176         Hesitate

180         5?

184         Slowing

188         Wassa

192         Clench

196         Smooth

200         Watch the clock

204         Spartan

208         Endurance

212         Storm coming

216         Chew

220         Light at the end of the tunnel

224         Warm

228         Wrapping up

232         More

236         Get some

240         Energized

                COMPLETE!

The Easy Road to Happiness

A song once stated, the best things in life are free, but I disagree. I think the best things in life are earned. There is nothing better than working at something and having it come out well. That being said, my engineering brain is always looking to make any anything easier. Following that logic I started thinking about all the quick and easy items in my life that make me sublimely happy.

How about meals that take only a few ingredients and an process.
Rice Krispy Treats... 3 ingredients, 10 minutes and probably the BEST texture/ taste combination on the planet.
Grilled Cheese... 3 ingredients, 10 minutes and a taste of childhood, or a burned roof of the mouth... blow on it first! BTW, use butter, it is way better.
Instant Pudding... 2 ingredients, ~20 minutes
Fried Eggs... 1 ingredient, 5 minutes... use a seasoned cast iron skillet, medium heat, crack 2 and cook until the white is opaque, flip and turn off the heat. 30 seconds later you have the best damn egg of your life. Come over Ill convert you to an egg lover, but im bringing my skillet.

What about tasks that are quick and easy to do but leave you with a sense of accomplishment.
The 20 minute clean... set the timer and pick up, organize, wash, or clean anything in your house, car, or yard. It is amazing how much you can get done in 20 minutes. You will feel a lot better about your surroundings if you try it. Dump the Saturday cleaning day routine, you won’t need it if you do this 3 times a week. Trust me.
The lunchtime workout... 20 minutes of walking, stretching, hiking, biking, etc. A little bit of exercise in the middle of the has reduced my stress and my blood pressure to a near catatonic state.
Park and walk... park on one end of town or shopping area walk to the opposite end and shop your way back. The walk and carry routine is good for you, you get to enjoy some of the natural surroundings, and I bet it takes you less time than jumping in your car 3 times and finding parking . The variation of this would be to park on the opposite side of the mall and walk across it to the store you wanted to be at. Not all stores/ entrances at the mall are created equal. More people are going into Van Maur than JC Penny, so you can get better parking and the couple minutes of extra walking if always good.

Going along with this idea of small action make the difference; tonight I am going to take the "Power Hour" challenge that was on my "workout of the day" email I get from my Spartan Race signup. Do between 2-10 pushups every minute, on the minute, for an hour. Let’s see if I can walk the walk, or move my arms tomorrow. My goal is 4 a minute for an hour = 240 pushups! Yikes, math sucks.

Stay Tuned!

Stay Awake You Idiot!

Over the course of the last 10 years I have done a lot of late night driving, but in the last 6 months I have done roughly 30,000 miles of it going back and fourth between my new job and my home in IL. As I walked through the following list last night I thought I would share with all my peeps (bad Easter joke, sorry).

Tips for staying awake while driving…

1.       Drink as much water as you pack into your body over the course of 30 minutes and then don’t stop to go to the bathroom. I wouldn’t recommend this for people with weak bladders, like preggos, but that uncomfortable feeling is bound to keep you awake. Stay away from high caffeene drinks, they make you have to pee way quicker and give me eye twitches and then I crash like a 2 year old that ate too much sugar on Easter. At least she had fun!

2.       Listen to music you can sing and dance along to, and do both at a volume just above annoying. Dont listen to books on tape/ cd, we are trained from an early age to fall asleep when someone reads to us. 5 minutes of a professional voice over artist and I am in a comma if the sun aint shining.

3.       Make yourself as cold as you can without shivering. Shivering is a natural reaction that the body uses to stimulate muscles and warm you up. You are looking for that camping outside with the wrong equipment cold, just enough so you can’t sleep all night. God I love camping.

4.       Keep your heart rate up and your muscles loose. This might get you some looks if anyone happens to roll up on you late at night, but I like to do pushups at all the stop sign crossroads I hit. However if you are not planning on driving from Dekalb, IL to Decorah, IA twice a week I would recommend some form of calisthenics every 30-45 minutes. Snap out 20 pushups, jumping jacks, Chinese fire drill, ding dong ditch car addition, tip a cow, whatever you want.

5.       Chew on something. I like almonds and sunflower seeds, because I think gum is too repetitive. I realized repetitive gum chewing is slightly redundant but my drummer like mind instantly goes to chewing at 120 beats per minute and I don’t stop until I spit it out… damn marching band.

6.       I have tried with little success to physically injure myself in order to stay awake. I have learned that I can slap myself pretty hard across the face, but all I end up with is a red mark and instant drowsiness. Plus if you are easy to bruise you might have some splainin to due to your friends and family.

Try these out the next time you sit up quick and realize you don’t know what happened to the last five minutes of driving. Be Safe!

Summer Reading

Wow, I am super behind on this. It is just like summer reading all over again. I even got the cold sweats thinking I had to make up 30 journal entries in the next 12 hours or I was toast. BTW teachers, what the hell were you thinking about making a 16 year old boy read during the summer. I barely read during the school year, when all the girls were bundled up in sweaters and pants! I digress…

I ran my fastest 5K today at lunch; I was super shocked because I really felt like I was plodding along. 24:36 total, which is about 7:52 minute miles! Wow, I am super happy; I was a 10 minute mile guy not too long ago. My goal for the year is 10 miles without dying, and I am hoping to complete that 10 miles at about 8:30 per mile pace or under an hour and a half. I seem to be on track for speed but now I need to work on endurance, which I consider to be the real measure of fitness. Forget body builders and muscle heads, take a look at the professional tri-athletes, those men and woman are the fittest people in the world.

I keep hearing that Hunger Games is going to be the next Harry Potter, which I am all about, because I love me some Hogwarts. Those last few HP movies were done really well, like real action movies. I am planning to super nerd out and attend the 12:01am Hunger Games showing Friday morning. The only difference is when I was younger I could stay up that late, catch the movie, grab a few hours sleep and be fine. No longer ladies and gentleman! I still see the midnight movies, but now I turn in at 8, sleep in my clothes, and set the alarm for like 10 minutes before the movie starts. Then I roll in enjoy the show, hopefully, and when that is over I head home and go back to sleep. O sweet sleep how I love you so. Hopefully this show will be good and I can write my second glowing review on this well read blog. Snicker*snicker*

Speaking of movies, I redbox’ed The Guard yesterday. What an amazing movie. A really good cops and robber’s movie, set in Ireland, with Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheedle! Crazy cast right? It was funny, quick witted, well filmed and the character development was excellent. I highly recommend it, and it is going on my “to buy” list for sure. It goes under the quirky comedy list with Zero Effect, Grosse Point Blank, Wasabi, and Whip It (watch and return Mom!)

Whew! I totally faked most of this, just like my summer reading journal so I hope you all bought it. BTW, congrats to Ashley and Adam, and now baby Preston, who is now an official part of the family! The court date was yesterday and the birth parents signed away custody of baby Preston after a very stressful 6 months plus. There won’t be more deserving or better parents around, congrats again!

Later

Dude Food 1

I have always thought it funny that guys will eat anything. Some of the combinations of food I have put together of the years would make Megan queezy just by discription alone. I consider many foods universal like crepes, peanut butter, and cheese but my favorite universal food is eggs. You can add an egg to pretty much anything savory and make it better. However as iI grow older and wiser, my palate has improved, who knew I would ever like mushrooms? I have now started really venturing into creating recipies of my own. You should never be afraid to trying something new, the worst that can happen is you throw it out and go grab a burger. Below is the first installation of my new current favorites... Andy's Dude Food. Try them out, they are very simple, healthy,  and Im still alive to tell the tale.

Andy’s Mushroom Soup

1 wax box of chicken broth, low sodium works well

1 can of cream of mushroom or low fat cream of chicken

1 container of baby portabella mushrooms, sliced

Dump it all into a pot, bring it to a boil, cover and simmer for an hour-ish. Delicious!

Andy’s Chick Peas

1 can of chick peas, drained and rinsed once

Garlic powder

Chili powder

Black pepper

Touch of salt

Combine all that together in a bowl and mix to taste. I like them cold on salads, heated up in a skillet with eggs, or as a side. Can substitute the above spices for taco seasoning as well, very good.

Andy’s Fish and Veg

Pollack Fillets or other white fish

Leeks

Portabella Mushrooms

Olive oil

Your choice or seasoning (Taco, Old World, Lemon Pepper)

Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 375. Defrost fillets by sealing them in a ziplock bag and then submerging them in warm water. Grease a baking sheet with olive oil. Rinse the thawed fillets under cold water and pat dry. Chop up the mushrooms and leeks. Toss in a bowl and sprinkle with oil and seasoning. Place fillet on the prepared baking sheet and season. Cover the fillet with the veggies and bake for 15-20 minutes, until flakey.

The Grey

I think you all know I am a self titled movie fanatic. I love the movie theatre experience most; the sticky floors, the broken seats, and the escape from the average day into a land of make believe (Thanks Mr. Rogers). Even though I have been the go to guy for oral based movie reviews for years I thought this would be a good forum to try my hand at putting my thoughts down on paper… digital paper. My rating system is a little different than most “real” reviewers, who mostly suck.

Awesome Scale

0 - reserved for the worst of the worst, a movie that actually makes me angry or I leave (only done it twice before!)

1 – Really!? You got financial backing for this? I want my money back.

2 – Overall the movie entertained me for 90 minutes, I wouldn’t see it again, I nothing it.

3 – Pretty good movie, I might buy it if I saw it in the bargain bin at Wal-Mart, would recommend for a good night out.

4 – I can’t wait until it comes out on DVD! I might see it again at the cheap theatre and bring others

5 – Reserved for the best of the best. If you don’t see this movie we can’t be friends and I might disown you as a family member if you disagree with my opinion

The Grey (4 out of 5 on the awesome scale)

It’s a story about plane crash survivors fighting for their lives against a pack of man eating wolves… or is it? I am a shallow movie go-er, admittedly, and that story line is what got me to lay my money down. But as the movie progressed I slowly realized it was subtlety about so much more. I salute the director (Joe Carnahan) for bringing this short story to life on the big screen. I also doff the proverbial for progressing as a director; you can really tell his artistic talent is growing with each of the movies he makes (Smoking Aces, A-Team, The Grey). He must have as big a man crush on Liam Neeson as I do, casting him in his last two films. Did you know Liam is 61!!! Crazy.

The movie opens with some visually beautiful shots of a frozen Alaskan wilderness, really B.C., and a voice over by the movies main character, John Ottway (Neeson). I sometimes find voice over’s in the beginning of a movie a cheap director’s/ writers trick to convey a lot of information quickly to a seemingly stupid audience. It is easier to say a few words than to develop the story and the characters but in this case it laid the ground work for the feeling of the movie more than the back story. It gave you just a sense of who these men where, and why someone would be attracted to this environment.

The casting in this movie was excellent. You may not be able to name each actor by name other than Neeson and Dermot Mulrony but they have all be in strong supporting roles before, which I think really makes this movie great. The sum of the group is better than the individual. Slowly throughout the movie you realize how the other characters start to, each on their own, make up a great group dynamic. It is also an interesting choice in the way and order the group is killed off.

Ottway’s character is somewhat of an Irish great white hunter type, hired to protect the oil pipeline workers from the man eating wolves. The Irish background is great for more reasons than I can type, or you want to read. I believe it allows Neeson to act more naturally and relaxed and really separates his character from the rest of the group. It is a movie based around pack style animals as the main antagonists and right from the start Carnahan sets up Ottway as the Alpha. Fantastic, and very subtle.

Ottway is a very flawed alpha male, unsure, afraid, and carries deep remorse over the loss of his wife. You are made to believe that the absence of his wife from his life is actually do to his character faults, but the end brings about a fantastic twist, and everything becomes clear about why he acts the way he does. After the crash Ottway explains to the group that wolves have a 300 sq/mi territory but only about a 30 sq/mi hunting radius from their den. If they can put some distance between themselves and the den they have a chance to survive. However, none of them know where the den is, so they pick a direction that will offer them shelter and protection from both the wolves and the weather of the open plains they landed in, and head out.

The movie sets a good pace and Carnahan does a good job of building suspense with a few long scenes that never tip over the edge into violence or a chase. I found myself letting out a deep breath a few times. The group starts to gel and friendships are made. Tears are shed and they forge on. I like the fact that no characters death was dwelled over for too long, it was basic survival, you can’t stop to mourn and you can’t take the body with you. Wallet collection of the body was the norm, which helps set up the final scene.

SPOILER!!!  (Don’t read it unless you aren’t going to see the movie, or just don’t care)

If you didn’t guess already, Ottway becomes the last survivor. Wet from a frozen river rescue attempt, hungry, and scared he knows his time is up. He stumbles into small clearing surrounded by thick forest and high rock walls. He pulls out all the wallets and begins to stack them up, apparently to start a fire with them. Ottway has a moment of pause and begins to leaf though pictures stashed inside and remembers all the guys that died in their ordeal. He is now surrounded with wolves coming in slowly from all sides, and sinks back, a beaten man, and will no longer fight. Just then the Alpha wolf lets out a massive growl and all the others back off and sit, waiting for the ensuing carnage. Ottway looks around and realizes he is in the wolf’s den; the entire time he was trying to flee he was heading right towards it! The characters interpersonal fight comes to a head. His memory flashes to his wife, but you now see that she has a needle in her arm, hooked up to a drip, and her constant reminder throughout the movie telling him, “don’t be afraid”, was really about her dying from cancer. It wasn’t his fault no matter how much he blamed himself.

He opens his eyes, stares down the massive wolf, and arms himself with broken bottles from the planes drink cart and a knife he has been carrying.  Cut to the wolf’s killer eyes. Cut to the sorrowful eyes of Ottway. He thinks of his wife and his expression slowly changes from sadness to menace. He is no longer unsure, afraid, or carrying remorse for his wife death. He is resolved. Fade to black.

Hell…Yes.

Go see it. It’s has just enough violence to do the job, its quick paced, the cinematography is great, there are only one or two phony lines and the actors all do a great job. This movie is a classic example of man vs. man, man vs. elements, man vs. himself.