Spring Cleaning

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It is still spring right?

Because we just got around to the first major cleaning this apartment has ever had.

We weren’t exactly living squalor, but somehow being on the run most of the time had gradually let us get farther and farther behind in general upkeep. Much of the past weekend was spent cleaning, with the additional touch here and there after work, things are starting to look darn good around here!

We have a second bedroom. As much as we tried to avoid it, that room became the “everything room” catching odds and ends from the first day we moved in. It has a bed in it, and I think in prior post I may have implied that it was just minutes from being ready to host a guest. Well, it may have taken a little more than just minutes, and it might not be 100% ready yet….

One of the things we discovered while attacking the remaining tasks in said room: Not only were things un-dealt with since the move in there, the prickly disagreement that contributed to them being dropped in there instead of being dealt with properly somehow was still attached! That isn’t to say we had a horrible weekend full of not getting along, it just means we discovered that many of the tasks were far more complicated than we could have ever imagined. Heather and I can both be rather… insistent when we know how something should be done. Sad to think we can discover that much when just cleaning a room, I am sure we will get to put everything we learn now to use a few times throughout the coming years.

In a less personal note, I cleaned out the freezer and found some frozen shrimp. The first half of the bag I had used to make this salad: Asparagus and Shrimp Salad. I forgot to take any pictures, but mine ended up looking about the same. Sadly neither Heather nor I were particularly taken with it, so I wanted to try something else with the remaining shrimp. We also had a number or cups of Greek Yogurt pushing their expiration date, so I pulled together a remarkably convincing Shrimp Alfredo that was at least close to healthy enough to be eating on our last week of this workout challenge! 🙂

Check back soon for my chance to work through the backlog of recipes that weren’t healthy enough for the challenge 😉

Also, I have no idea how this is turning into a 40/60 split between things we do and things I cook… but I guess it gives me something to talk about.

-Jordan

New Addition… Of Sorts

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Meet aunt Heather! She is giving detailed descriptions of our new nephew to his dad in the picture, so the phone isn’t her somehow being less than attentive 🙂

Over the course of the weekend, Heather and I attended a couples shower for Casey and Carson (as seen in the website I worked up a few months back), and got to spend quite a bit of time with our new, and currently only nephew. (is there a gender neutral term for that? siblings offspring…)

I almost made a post back when Holden was first born, it was kind of exciting news… but I didn’t want to steal anyone’s thunder, and believe me, there are people who are really excited about this! One of them is Heather. She about lost it on the ride to Kansas City, it was just taking too long, and she wanted to meet Holden!

When the actual meeting took place, he wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about the meeting as Heather had been… I really wish I would have had our video camera out and read for it. His face seemed to perfectly express the mental transition from “hmm this seems ok” to “something isn’t quite right” and on to “noooooooo something is very wrong” and then the crying… The funny thing is when your six months old, even crying ends up being kind of cute. I suppose his mom is over that, but we only got part of a weekend, so everything seemed cute! 🙂

The couples shower was probably as painless as I could have hoped for. I don’t want to sound negative… I just don’t know about my participating in wedding showers. Also I didn’t bring our camera, so I can’t just throw up some pictures and avoid having to type much. On a somewhat related note, I thought I should share a color name chart that in a way I think expresses the disconnect: Color Wheel. Actually if you want to get really picky I really only consider there to be five colors… so less than what is expressed on the right hand side of the diagram.

-Jordan

Things From The Internet

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I had a sort of backlog of links I had been meaning to post…

First off, a clever add for a mini-van I don’t know if it will sell a lot of Sinnas, but I thought it was pretty slick.

The second link is actually a collection of links, all galleries from the volcano. I am just amazed at the pictures people were able to get. Just looking at the pictures is enough to be somewhat terifying, never mind the havoc that it caused for most of Europe.

In no particular order:

Enjoy!

-Jordan

Lincoln Half-Marathon

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So there is a missing weekend, but I realize the longer I put off posing the more I feel obligated to do some sort of super-post that I don’t have time for right now. That train of though leads to no updates for two weeks!

Starting off the weekend, Friday night Heather and I had the rare opportunity to see one of my cousins compete in a gymnastics event! She qualified for the Western Nationals, an even that was held this year in Des Moines. My grandparents, sister, and an aunt all came into town as well, so we had a pretty good crew in the stands.

Saturday night we hit the road for Lincoln, planning just enough time to arrive at my sisters house and go straight to sleep. The sleep was important though, as we had to start rather early Sunday morning for the marathon.

Heather’s sister, and a cousin were both planning to run the half marathon! I had toyed with the idea of trying to at least run part of the time. My knee has actually held up pretty well during the cardio-kickboxing program we are wrapping up, but I can’t say as it’s 100% these days. I decided my goal would be to just keep up with Heather!

A few points:

  • Thirteen miles is a long ways!
  • We were not the last people to finish
  • At one point we even broke a sweat… kind of
  • My feet and calves are still sore

Although at the time, I may have felt that we were just out for a rather long and guided stroll… by the time we wrapped up the last few miles I was really feeling it. To put it mildly Heather and I have HUGE respect for anybody able to finish one of these!

-Jordan

Wedding Season Already?

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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

—-

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

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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!

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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

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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

Chicago, The Video

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Our “get out of Des Moines because we are tired of the snow” Chicago trip was the first trip Heather and I have taken with a video camera. I don’t know if the results are really amazing, but we had fun shooting it at least.

For the most part it is video of us… and I guess if you want to see Chicago, I am sure there are plenty of pictures and videos done with more professional equipment you could look at. This video should at the very least provide something fun to look back on.

I wonder if youtube will be around, with a full archive by the time we have grand kids running around? I did save a local copy, but I am sure there will be challenges in keeping that playable over time.

One final note, there is footage of a bridge being lowered… you can also hear Heather laughing at me in the background… suffice to say I was fascinated, all the bridges are suppose to be able to raise and lower, but I get the impression that they don’t do so all that often. I was really excited to see one moving!

post production notes:

Virtual Dub proved to be a fairly painless way to trim out the garbage on the beginning and end of each of the videos. The only challenge was getting the video into a format it liked, but I figured that out when I did the cooking video a few weeks back.

I may need to come up with a more aggressive means of compression for these videos, the Chicago clip is eating 500 megs on disk! If only MPG4 was a more open and free standard /sigh.

-Jordan