Wedding Season Already?

Posted on by Jordan

I don’t know if there really is a wedding season per say… we certainly didn’t get married in season if there is one…

None the less, Heather and I attended the first wedding of several we are planning to attend this year.

The wedding was in Omaha, letting us revisit a few of our old haunts along the way. I am pressed for time as I write this or I would go into more detail. You will just have to take my word for it that it was a beautiful wedding, and we are really excited for our newlywed friends!

Another benefit of an Omaha wedding, from our prospective at least, was that we had the opportunity to stay with Heather’s grandmother at the farm in Blair. It is always nice to get to see Gigi! The wedding was Friday night, and we really hadn’t planned our Saturday, but we soon discovered we had plenty to do.

First thing, we drove with Gigi to one of Heather’s cousin’s trap shoot. Apparently trap is becoming more commonly sponsored by high schools in the area. I think it was a little funny after Heather got more than her fill of guns last weekend that we ended up spending a few hours on a firing line again! The atmosphere was a little less intense, and Heather had a handful of friends and family around, so I think she enjoyed it quite a bit more. She even went so far as to cede that it might be OK for our (someday) children to engage in the sport!

After the trap shoot, we headed to a Special Olympics event that Heather’s uncle was participating in. He is anything but young, but was still excited to run his race! It was actually Heather’s first time at a Special Olympics event. If you have ever been to one… They can be kind of intense in a way, it’s kind of hart wrenching, inspiring and uplifting all at the same time.

After the race, we dropped by another cousin’s brand new house to say hello, and get the tour. We also got an extensive injury report as her cousin had fallen off a latter a few nights before and was really bruised up! He was expecting a full recovery, although the doctors were telling him to expect to be sore for months.

After that, we headed back to Des Moines. Quite a bit for just a Saturday if you ask me!

-Jordan

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As a sort of tangent thought that just hit me, but I wanted to get down somewhere….

I try to avoid using names for nearly everyone we interact with unless I have a specific reason to do otherwise. It’s kind of standard practice with public blogs like this. I just realized though, my goal with the blog has been to have a written record I can go back to years later and see what we were doing. I am wondering if we will remember who’s wedding was in April of 2010, or what cousin would have been shooting trap that spring? I suppose we will be able to figure it out though! 🙂

NRA Basic Pistol

Posted on by Jordan

Our move to Des Moines had lead Heather and I to look for new things to do together. One of the ideas I put forward was target shooting. Heather was borderline skeptical of the idea, but thought maybe it could work. I was pushing for pistol shooting because we are basically constrained to shooting ranges, and in the distance you are limited to at most ranges rifles just aren’t that challenging. Somewhere along the line, I also realized that Heather did not have the safe firearm handling foundation that my childhood had provided. As a result of all those factors, I signed us up for an NRA basic pistol class.

The class was held this past weekend at the Charles Olofson Shooting Range, near Polk City Iowa. First Off I should point out that the drive out to the range was beautiful! It took us maybe 40 minutes from the apartment, but most of the time we were in open country and really got to soak up the spring weather we are finally seeing. The range has a nice indoor classroom, much larger than was needed considering we only ended up with four people in the class.

The small class size was nice, as there was a wide range in levels of experience, and I think everyone felt comfortable asking questions. The instructor, Larry Krug, did a really good job of covering the basics and keeping everyone interested. We spent a little over four hours in the classroom covering everything you would need to know if you had never seen a pistol before up to the point where you could hold and fire one properly. After a lunch-break we came back in to take a written test over the information we had been presented. I have to brag on Heather a little, and part of this goes to the instructor too I suppose, but with virtually no prior knowledge of firearms in any form, she managed to pass with flying colors!

After the test we headed out to the range for some hands-on instruction. I should mention that, as this was one of the first truly nice weekends so far this year, I think a large number of people were excited to get out and thought throwing a few rounds down range would be a good way to do that. During the test we really started to notice the increased noise outside, as gunfire has a way of getting your attention. Once outside it really got loud!

I think this is the point where we really started to loose Heather. I often forget that people don’t necessarily feel comfortable around guns, and less so around dozens of them being fired in close proximity. Heather is building a tolerance, but three separate range-areas, all running at full capacity was a little much. She stuck it out, and as you can see from the intro picture, she even tried out a few different pistols!

This was also the point where the whole “shooting pistols would be better because they are harder to be really accurate with” hit home. When it was my turn to shoot I quickly realized how much room I have for improvement. The instructor was able to help me with a few small things, but the final verdict was basically that I need to practice a lot more (oh darn).

We learned so much throughout the course of the day:

  • Heather learned a good foundation of gun safety and basic operation
  • I learned that a busy range isn’t the best place to help someone get comfortable with firearms
  • We learned that the local NRA instructor is really knowledgeable
  • I learned that thinking you should probably clean your pistol isn’t the same as actually doing it (kinda embarrassed by that one…)
  • The biggest thing we came away with was that shooting isn’t something we should pursue as a joint activity!

As much as it may be disappointing to find that shooting isn’t something we are going to do together, I am still glad we tried it. We still created some memories, and spent a day together doing something different!

-Jordan

Three Weeks Down!

Posted on by Jordan

Today marks the end of three weeks in the Goals In Motion ‘Challenge’.

That leaves six to go, and I am counting 🙂

The interesting thing is that I rather enjoy the workouts, I just don’t like getting up that early, or what getting up that early does to my evenings. In case I haven’t mentioned it, we get up at 4:20 in order to make the 5:15 workout.

Beyond the changes to our sleep schedule, our eating changes have been more significant than expected. Heather and I did another challenge a while back that included an eating program, although it was self moderated. With the current program we have an assigned coach / mentor. She has been incredibly helpful! We already had the basic principals from before, but she has really helped us fine-tune it. One of the tools we have been using is a website called “The Daily Plate,” that provides a nice nutritional tracking tool.  To be honest, the site is clunky and less than user friendly, but it’s free and gives us and our coaches access to the information we want.

Because of our nutritional goals, I have been really looking for new things to cook. I tried a few noteworthy things over the past few weeks.

First up was “Stickless Shish-Kabab“only I cut back the oil in the marinade, and made it with chicken.

I discovered a number of things that were somewhat exciting in the process. First up is the fact that our oven, although lacking the traditional gas oven broiler pan, has broiler settings to ether turn the top or bottom heating element on constantly. This gave me a lot more control when broiling than I have ever had with an oven before. The option to just turn on the bottom element will come in to play once pizza is back on the menu. The second thing I discovered is that the stores have yellow squash in stock, and that Heather and I both rather like them grilled. We have grilled them a few times already, after ‘discovering’ them in this recipe.

The second thing I tried was “Whole Wheat Pasta with Asparagus.” I don’t really think I set out to modify this recipe, I just didn’t quite have the right stuff on hand. I don’t know if the kind of sausage called for was what I used, but it was really hard to skin, so I just chopped it up and did slices instead. Beyond that change I think it was basically what the recipe called for. The results were really good, and I think I may have converted Heather to liking Asparagus.

The final new item we tried was a notable strikeout. After our success with grilled squash, we were eager to try to expand our arsenal of grilling options, so we thought eggplant might be a good thing to try. Normally I would have avoided eggplant, but i figured we were on such a role with new things that it might be really good. (pictured here, hot off the grill)

It wasn’t terrible… but it wasn’t great ether. I know there are recipes that dress eggplant up a lot more, and I think we may need to look into those. Heather mentioned having really liked eggplant in Spain, but that it was breaded, fried, and drizzled with honey. Hopefully we won’t have to go to those lengths, but as it stands now eggplant isn’t on our veggie good-list.

-Jordan

An Education In Aerospace

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I finished watching the last episode of “From The Earth To The Moon” this week.

It concludes a small tangent we took, exploring the glory days of the space program, that has been really interesting.

It all started when I found out that “The Right Stuff” was on Netflix streaming. It was a movie I have heard reference from time to time, and always wanted to see. The movie is *over three hours* long, so Heather didn’t stand a chance, and I had to break it into more than one session, but I found it really, really interesting. Heather enjoyed what she saw, and I think she caught a big chunk of it. The movie stars with test pilots in the early jet aircraft prototypes after WWII, and progresses to the end of the Gemini program. As long as it was, I feel like they had to skim over so much.

I happen to have mentioned something about the movie at work, and a co-worker brought my attention to “From The Earth To The Moon.” It, like “Band Of Brothers” (a favorite of Heather and mine) was made after Tom Hanks did a movie about the subject, got interested in the larger story, and partnered with HBO to make a multi-part TV series.  The Moon-race set being inspired by “Apollo – 13”  and the WWII set being inspired by “Saving Private Ryan.” Band of Brothers was done second, and I would consider it to be a somewhat better product, although the subject matter is far more intense… not for everyone I suppose.

Going back to “From The Earth To The Moon,”  They briefly cover most of “The Right Stuff” in the first few minutes, and then lay the context for the Apollo program, then follow it through to the last mission. All I can really say is that I am still in awe of what they managed to pull off in such a short time. If you have Netflix, or a local rental place that had a good collection of older classic movies and TV (I can’t imagine many having a TV mini-series from 1998… but Netflix does!)  I highly recommend you check both the movie and the TV show out!

I think it is fair to say I had more interest in the subject than Heather did, but it was still really fun to get to share learning new things about the space program with her. Although we hadn’t actually finished all the episodes when we were in Chicago, the trip provided a sort of climax when we got to see the Gemini capsule from Jim Lovell!

Jim Lovell was also the commander on Apollo – 13, and had donated a few items from that mission… gloves, helmet, flight manuals, etc. Getting to actually see the hardware, in the middle of reviewing the history was a fun treat!

Now that we have finished “From The Earth To The Moon” I am pushing to wrap things up with “Apollo – 13,” but after 15 hours of space oriented viewing, I think Heather may be ready for a break!

-Jordan