The Slog

Posted on by Jordan

It’s that time of year again… Christmas is over and the weather just keeps getting colder. It makes it hard to want to do anything except crawl under a blanket on the couch and eat warm carbs.

This isn’t the first winter I have seen though. Heather and I are, distressingly, starting to establish a pattern to deal with this time of year. The initial plan had been to put our wedding anniversary provide some diversion in the midst of the post-Christmas blues. While that helps, we find ourselves feeling way too lethargic by about January 5th.

So for the third year running, we have embarked on a fitness challenge! I shouldn’t take too much credit, Heather is the driving force behind our decision every year… Something I am incredibly grateful for, considering I still lack the drive to start one of these despite the demonstrable benefits they have provided in my life.

That being said, going to the gym when there is an inch of slush in the parking lot and the air temperature is one degree is no fun at all. Also, it seems we aren’t the only people to have decided now is the perfect time to hit the gym, so it’s five times as crowded now as it was a month ago.

All the same, we are working out once again! I never expect the incredible soreness that comes with these things… I guess that means we are making progress 🙂

On the topic of being more healthy, I saw a recipe for pumpkin sloppy joes (aka Sloppy Jacks)

I won’t re-post it here, as you can head over to Cheap Healthy Good for the recipe

I knew I had to try it though, because as a rule Heather loves anything that involves pumpkin!

We didn’t have ground turkey on hand, so I just used beef. The results were… remarkably sloppy-joe-like. I suppose you would be able to see the difference if you had my filling next to a ‘normal’ batch, but I was surprised how unremarkable it was. It was also shocking to find that we couldn’t really taste the pumpkin in the sandwiches.

In keeping with the aforementioned rule, Heather loved them. I think we may have another quick meal on her list of favorites.

(no picture included, because they looked just like sloppy-joes)

-Jordan

Chasing The Dragon — Book

Posted on by Jordan

So before I talk about the book, I have to admit that I remember posting here that I was going to try and do little summary / reviews of books once I finished reading them.

I failed at that plan. There have been a number of things I have read that never made it onto the blog.

Non the less, I finished reading Chasing The Dragon by Jackie Pullenger, and wanted to talk about it here.

I really enjoyed the book! It wasn’t always the most enjoyable read, because the situations she describes are horrifying in many cases. At the same time that was what made the book so exciting to read, was hearing her describe how God was working.

From a practical standpoint, it made it a lot harder to feel sorry for myself about having to sometimes cook food for a bunch of kids at church. I spent a lot of time reflecting on my worldview and relative situation while reading the book, something I don’t typically do… I don’t want to wander too far down that rabbit trail, except to say that it was kind of refreshing.

Going back to the book, it deals with drug addicts within the Walled-City of Hong Kong. It does not in any way sound like a place I would want to be… I find down town Des Moines far too crowded for my tastes. About the time I was finishing the book, a blog I follow had a few Walled-City related items that I found rather interesting.

The first is an old German TV documentary. I will let the linked details fill you in, except to say that most of the commentary that goes with the video is pretty sensationalized, at best, and often directly contradicts situations described in the book. Primarily the idea that “there is no law” because roughly 20% of the book was a Jackie dealing with police and the court system, as they related to people inside the Walled-City.

The Documentary (via io9)

The other item, also Via io9 is a few pictures, and then some sort of informational / layout drawings. They aren’t quite as interesting as the video, but worth linking I suppose.

The drawings

So to sum this up, if you haven’t read Chasing The Dragon, and are looking to pickup some nonfiction (something I always think I should be doing more) you should check it out! 🙂

-Jordan

Winter Camping

Posted on by Jordan

The past weekend saw Heather and I apart for a large amount of the time.

I went camping with the Boy Scouts, and Heather had a movie night with some girls from church.

In the days leading up to the weekend, Heather was making phone calls and sending e-mails to entice people to come over. I meanwhile, was rapidly eating through my Christmas gift money buying cold weather camping gear. The premiere purchase:

A sleeping bag rated down to ZERO degrees! The picture isn’t from the camping trip, but Heather thought she should record my testing the bag for proper fit.

By all accounts, Heather’s movie night went really well… and the camping was kind of cold 🙂

Actually, it wasn’t so bad. We had access to cabins, so weren’t out in the cold the entire time, nor did I really need the ultra cold weather bag when we were sleeping inside. I am prepared now though!

It was my first trip camping with the troop as an adult leader. The trip back in November was a training event and I didn’t camp with the troop.  I had fun, but it was challenging to know exactly how much guidance I should be giving.  Doubly hard when many of my meals were being cooked by 14 year-old boys. In the end though, I think the boys had fun, and hopefully learned a few things.

I had fun, and learned a lot, even if the boys didn’t! I don’t know if I can quantify it as easily as saying “I learned square-lashing” but I am sure I will be better at working with the troop next time we go out.

-Jordan

And We Are Back!

Posted on by Jordan

Hey there!

Heather and I survived the Christmas build-up, Christmas travel, and even the post-Christmas blah that seems to hit once you get back to your apartment after seeing all your family.

Of course, all that happened over a week ago… It seems my posting has been delayed. I think I have been feeling overwhelmed by the idea of trying to recap the holidays in a way that somehow does justice to them, and also isn’t too boring to read.

After procrastinating this task for some time now, I realized it would be best to just put out this token post and then get back to whatever I felt like writing. Feeling obligated to post doesn’t do much for my frequency of posts.

So Christmas was fun! Heather and I spent the time with my family, getting to see quite a few members of the extended family on both my mom and dad’s side.

I want to say a lot more about how much we enjoyed getting to spend time with everyone, and what we did, but this will have to suffice rather than writing up a 5000 word post.

-Jordan

Cleaning (Not Quite Spring?)

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I had planned to head over to Blair for a Gutschow pre-Christmas event. However our nephew picked up something novel at daycare and decided to share it with the family as a sort of holiday treat. Heather and I were sad to learn that the event was canceled. Then again, given the “up all night puking” stories we were hearing, we thought that a phone call was probably as close as we wanted to be associated with the majority of that group for a while.

We did manage a few Christmas themed events over the course of the weekend, despite the abrupt change in plans. First off we attended a performance of “A Christmas Carol” Friday night. The venue was probably the smallest possible for a semi-pro group to use, but it was a fun event to be at. The audience was seated on three sides of the “stage”.   The stage consisted of the open floor between the chars, and some backdrops on the fourth and final wall. I will say again that it was a really enjoyable show, although the venue probably should have a large sign reading “HIPSTERS WELCOME.” I didn’t quite feel cool enough to be there… but I guess it was fine.

So that was Friday night, Saturday started kind of early as we had planned to help clean the church before heading to Blair. We found out Saturday morning that Blair was off, but still had to meet our cleaning crew bright and early so we headed over. All that cleaning was just a warm-up though as it turned out. When we got home Heather was feeling inspired to really attack the apartment.

She also claims my (purely innocent) pointing out that the show “Horders” was on Netlflix streaming guilt-tripped her into the cleaning spirit. I suppose that may have a little validity, as I may have started an episode playing for her at one point a few weeks back. Whatever the reason, after some generic cleaning Heather dove into sorting through her clothes.

As anyone who was gracious enough to help us move (in ether of the two moves) may remember, there were a lot of boxes marked “Heather’s clothes”. The allocation of closet space here in Des Moines has, at times, been a point of contention as I suppose would be expected.

The process took quite a few hours, and I often heard things like “I didn’t even know I had this!” or (while holding up something I could charitably describe as scanty) “Could you ever imagine me wearing this?” In the end, I have to say, Heather was willing to hold a hard line and parted with quite a few things:

Yes, you are seeing that correctly… FIVE bags of clothes waiting to head out the door. To be fair, my clothes make up some of that total. All the same, there was a lot more there than I ever expected to see go out the door! Strangely enough, our closets in no way seem empty at this point… I guess everything just has room to breathe now. 🙂

-Jordan

Eclipse Monday!

Posted on by Jordan

I am sure this news will probably pop up in other places, but I am excited about it, so I will post something.

It is too bad that this is happening on a week night, and not a few days later when we would be off for Christmas break. Still, I could probably give up a little sleep to step outside and see the eclipse. There aren’t too many astronomical events visible to the naked eye from your back yard when you live next to a large mall!

The only concern I see right now is that it may be snowing Monday night / Tuesday morning… so hopefully there isn’t cloud cover.

A Few Numbers

Posted on by Jordan

Today is December 16th. The current outside temperature is 19 degrees F. I say that because we turned our heat on yesterday!

To be fair, we often ran the fireplace for a few more hours while we were hanging out in the living room in the evenings, but still… This little apartment has amazing insulation we have discovered!

The other significant number is kind of sad… but well I will post it anyway. The new expansion to World of Warcraft came out a few weeks ago. It sold 3 million copies on the first day, and has approximately 12 million players worldwide. That isn’t the sad part though, I also bought the game. Not on day one, but I bought it. One of the many features the game provides is a report of how long you have spent playing. Not calendar days your account has been active, but actual time you have been playing. I am just over 100 days played! It’s kind of a horrifying number. I try to justify it with the fact that I basically quit watching TV about 4 years ago. I don’t know if that quite covers it though.

and…. I really thought I had a 3rd item to talk about here, but somehow it has slipped my mind. I guess that will be another post for another time… when it comes to me!

-Jordan

Getting Ready For Christmas

Posted on by Jordan

Featured in this picture:

  • A few of the cookies we made
  • Our little tree
  • Heather’s newly shortened hair

Well… what to say about the past week.

Starting back on the first noteworthy thing, Wednesday we made Tuna Casserole for the kids at church. The first kid in line took one look at the pan, scrunched up his face like he was about to cry his eyes out, and nearly shouted “Tuna? But I don’t want to eat tuna!” Let me tell you, it didn’t make the chef feel real great about the meal. On the whole though, the kids managed to put away nearly all the food we prepared.

Friday we had our first Christmas event, my work team arranged to meet for dinner after work. It was fun to introduce Heather to so many of the people I work with, and to meet their spouses and significant others. I hate to stereotype, but many of the software developers are firmly on the introvert side of the fence. The majority of their wives and girlfriends are extroverted. It makes for an interesting time when you get that group together. I think Heather had about 15 conversations and I said about that many sentences, but everybody had fun!

Saturday, we had planned to run a few errands, and then have friends over for dinner and decorating Christmas cookies. The weather had other plans. Those plans not only included the first snow of the year, but an 18 hour blizzard warning from the national weather service.

When it was all said and done, I think we only got four to five inches of snow, but the wind made them into a major problem! That wend by the way, produced windchill down to a breath-taking negative 22! Our friends decided not to risk the cold, and we ended up staying home and not even making the cookies. The errands did get run though, including Heather getting eight inches trimmed from her hair!

Sunday, we tried several times at church to recruit people to help with the cookies, but the December “way too much going on” bug has already arrived, and nobody had the afternoon free! Heather and I ended up doing the cookies by ourselves, but we had quite a bit of fun doing it!

I looked at the calendar for the next two weeks and… well I won’t be bored. Hope everyone else is staying warm and not too crazy busy yet! 🙂

-Jordan

Topic-O-Rama

Posted on by Jordan

And now, a handful of news I have been meaning to post.

First up, the week before thanksgiving, Heather and I went to Kansas City. The event was a birthday party for her grandma’s 85th birthday. The majority of Heather’s extended family was there, and we had a really good time. We also witnessed one of the best “we are going to have a baby” announcements ever. Heather’s cousin played a video, featuring his son singing happy birthday to Gigi, and then ended it with “and what are you going to be?” …. “a DINOSAUR!” “no, what are you going to be?” “A big brother!” and at that point the room went wild. I suppose it didn’t hurt that there were so many friends and family members packed into the room, but it really seemed like a great way to break that news.

Heather and I may have to wait a year or two, just so we can come up with a creative way to announce something like that… I mean the bar is pretty high at this point 🙂

Then of course there was Thanksgiving. Strangely, Heather and I did not even pack our camera… so I don’t have any pictures to post. The traditional meal and family time was spent with Heather’s family in Blair. We really enjoyed it! After dinner though, is when things got more interesting, somehow the women came up with a few copies of the sale fliers from all the stores doing Black Friday deals. The living room was total chaos as they passed around adds and debated plans for the big day. Next thing I know, it’s 2:30AM and I am sleepily saying goodbye and goodluck to my wife as she slips out of bed to trek to the mall. They got eight hours of shopping in before even stopping for breakfast!

While they were shopping, I went with Heather’s dad to the Nebraska game in Lincoln. We left at a much more reasonable hour than the shopping crew had, but still got to Lincoln with plenty of time to do a little tailgating before needing to find our seats. Being at the game was really enjoyable. It wasn’t a nail-biting game like the Nebraska vs. Iowa State game that Jim and I had gone to earlier in the year, but I can live with a less-exciting win!

I forget exactly where this falls in the chronology, but at some point Heather and I attended a “lighting of the Christmas tree” event at the mall next door. (For those of you who haven’t been to our hose… we really are next-door to a mall). I was a little skeptical of the event, but they had a live band and free cookies, so we decided to check it out anyway. Maybe you wouldn’t have been surprised at the number of people there, I know I was… At any rate they easily had a few thousand people all standing outside around the little courtyard lake area listening to the band and waiting for the lights. It was cold, but not unbearable, all the same I was happy when Santa finally arrived with his wand to light the tree. You didn’t know Santa had a wand did you? Apparently when Santa lights a tree with his wand, there are fireworks involved! I am a little sad to say the mall Christmas  tree lighting fireworks are going to go down as the best firework show I got to see in 2010. I am happy to say I really enjoyed them!

Speaking of Christmas events, Heather and I attended the Waukee Iowa Christmas festival. Waukee is just outside of Des Moines, and actually closer to us than downtown. We again got a free cookie, and got to watch ice sculpting. Probably the most enjoyable part of that little trip was meeting up whit a few friends from Church. It was wonderful to feel like we actually know people here in town. Some days it doesn’t feel like we have made much progress in that department.

The last, and most recent event I should record before bringing this to a close is photography related. Heather and I just returned from taking family pictures for another of Heather’s coworkers. We learned quite a lot on that trip. A good thing for sure, as Heather books these things to give us chances to practice. One thing we learned is that, although we got a beautiful sunny afternoon, 25 degrees with a 15mph wind is too cold to do outdoor pictures! We also learned that although our camera has a tiny integrated flash, it really can’t do indoor photography. Despite the challenges we encountered, Heather has some rather impressive results! As I write this she is behind me wrapping up the sorting and editing process. It appears we will need to buy an external flash if we want to do more pictures indoors.

And finally, a bonus future event! We are going to a Court of Honor for my Scout Troop! It will be the first event Heather has attended related to scouts in Des Moines, and the first Court of Honor I have been to. I don’t think it is going to be significant enough to justify its’ own blog post, but we will get to see the boys get recognition for merit badges and rank advancement.

I am still hoping that December is less exciting going forward 🙂

-Jordan

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I are in the process of heading out to see family for the holiday, but I wanted to take a minute and put together a post.

We haven’t done all that much in the past week… oh yeah so I saw a recipe for Pumpkin Biscuits and found it really interesting. It was seasonally appropriate, and Heather tends to like anything with pumpkin in it.

The only problem is the quantities seemed overly large, and I didn’t want to experiment with such a huge batch.

My solution was to take the normal recipe I use for biscuits and add pumpkin to that. In the process, I thought it would be a good time to finally try making biscuits in the food processor. That may end up being the best discovery I made in this endeavor! Cutting in the shortening is always kind of a slow process, but with the food processor it’s done in about 30 seconds. I ended up being so fascinated by the success I was having I forgot to add the pumpkin until I already had the dough finished.

I don’t know when the ideal time to add the pumpkin would have been, but I guess adding it as the last ingredient worked ok. Well, I say ok, but this is when things started to go off the rails for the biscuits. I added 3/4ths of a cup of pumpkin to a recipe that only had two cups of flour. That was more pumpkin than I probably should have added. The results were a sticky mess. I could tell there was no way I was going to get them rolled out, the dough wasn’t thick enough to roll, even if it hadn’t been so sticky.

Initially I thought I could try adding some more flour, but then I worried that the biscuit-ness of the resulting paste might not be there anymore. Looking at what I had in the bowl a little more, I decided it was thick enough I could probably just scoop it onto the baking stone and see what happened.

The didn’t end up being the most attractive baked good ever, but Heather gave them high marks for taste! 🙂

-Jordan