Just Plain Chips

Holy cow! Two posts in one day!

I just noticed that my title image looks horrible. I think the chips look fine but the blue is all pixelated as it goes from darker to lighter. Not to mention it goes from light to dark to light again. How did I never notice this?

*UPDATE*
On second glance (from my home computer) it looks fine and thus it must be because my monitor at work is set at 16 bit instead of 32? Unfortunately I have to have it like that or the software I use won’t really work. Nicely designed.

And here I thought after long enough away I could use this space to write about anything and not worry about offending anyone or giving away my secrets because my readership would finally really be down to zero.

I’ve actually been trying to gear myself up to start writing again and really expecting that no one would see it. This time I wouldn’t try to tell my friends that I was writing, or writing again. I’d just write for myself. Hopefully I will actually do that.

But then someone goes and ruins that plan by actually commenting on my blog after another two month hiatus.

We’ll just have to see what this means.

For starters, the most exciting thing about to happen in my life:
My girlfriend will be moving up from Austin, Texas to beautiful Minneapolis sometime in the next 4-8 weeks. I’m quite excited about it.

As one of my good female friends said: “Finally, Brenden, one of your girlfriends is moving *toward* you instead of away from you.”
Yep, that’s right. Thanks.

Hehe. Actually, I thought it was funny. I’m not as bitter at St. Louis (the current home of my last two girlfriends) as I once was.

So it has been two whole months since I’ve written in my “daily journal website” or “web log” or “blog”, if you will. That’s pretty pathetic even for me. To anyone who has tried to force themselves to keep up and check regularly, I apologize. I can’t promise I’m going to post tons now that I’ve posted once, but I’ll try.

Since my last post I’ve been to Texas three times; I bought a Nintendo DS Lite; my company has hired two new employees, one of which works under me; and my girlfriend has graduated from grad school and had a birthday. That’s a whole lot going on!

But instead of trying to recap everything I’m going to keep it simple with a little story from tonight.

My parents and I were out on the back porch having a delicious dinner of spinach ravioli and broccoli when we started to hear this popping noise in the woods behind us. We all looked up with confused looks on our faces wondering what it was. My mom thought that maybe it was some kids setting off some firecrackers. I thought that it sounded like something was happening to a tree.

The popping subsided and we resumed our dinner. But then the sound started up again. This time it kept on going and we got up to try and look for the source. Then we saw a big tree swaying a little. It was falling down! The thing was huge and with a number of giant heaves and pops it finally tumbled down back into the forest. And left in its place was a giant “hole” for more light to come in.

Our neighbor walked over into our yard to talk to us about it and we all headed down to see. Lo and behold was a giant oak tree, that could have been 100 or more years old. Broken off a ways up on its trunk and fallen to the ground. I had brought my camera along and here is what I saw, with my 5′ 9″ dad standing next to it for scale.

Pretty darn exciting and sad at the same time. The tree looked healthy and had tons of leaves on it. It didn’t look rotten where the trunk had split and there weren’t any bugs or termites pouring out of it. We thought that maybe it had been struck by lightning in one of the huge storms from last Friday, but there didn’t appear to be any burn marks. It may have just been it’s time to fall.

I’m heading to Austin today to see my wonderful girlfriend. I’ll be there through Monday, so it will be a nice long weekend in the Texas heat.

I went to see Franz Ferdinand and Death Cab for Cutie last night. I must say that it was a disappointment.

One of my coworker’s sisters just came by with a delivery. Their mom made a little Easter basket with “flowers” growing in it. They were cookies on sticks. Keeping in mind with my last post I had to take the one that looked most like a Peep. And thus I give you, cookie Peep on a stick:

It was dee-lish!

Sure, there are some things that are important to mention at Easter.

But let’s get to what we all enjoy about Easter…Peeps in surgery (from Peep Research) and burnt Bunnies (from the Bunny Survival Tests homepage).

It was a little spooky out in the back yard today.

…that’s the sound of a cold wind blowing.

There go some tumbleweeds through the ghost town that is the world of Just Plain Chips.

It’s not that my life has been uninteresting. It is just that my muse has left me for a while.

The most exciting of news over the last month or so is that I have a girlfriend. It’s true! I’m very excited. She’s awesome. The only thing wrong with her that I can think of is that she lives over 1000 miles away. We’ve been dealing with it pretty well though, at least I think so.

Well, I just wanted to say hello to all of my faithful readers out there. I’m glad you’re still around.

My favorite baseball player growing up, Kirby Puckett, died from a stroke yesterday. It is a sad day for Minnesota sports fans, and Twins fans in particular. We was a much loved figure for his entire career here. His image became a bit tarnished for a number of allegations of infidelity and abuse after his career was ended prematurely by glaucoma. But almost everyone remembers him fondly. Especially for one game in 1991.

I remember reading the sports section of the Star Tribune every morning before going to school. Checking Kirby’s box score. Recomputing his batting average and comparing it to some of the other players in the league to see where he stood. I collected baseball cards and coveted his most of all, I probably have 20 or 30 of just him.

I’m zo zleepy right now. Robert Randolph was zzzpectacular. I’ll write more when I can later. Good night. zzz…

My left elbow and forearm are killing me. I had a hockey game last night but I don’t think I got hit in the arm or anything. But I had played a bunch of Guitar Hero on Saturday and then again last night after hockey. Maybe hockey and Guitar Hero don’t mix. I certainly have been known to tense my muscles up while jamming. And this weekend I managed to pass a number of the more difficult songs on the “Hard” difficulty level.

Anyway. Hockey went much better last night than it did three weeks ago. I have been a little sick over the last couple weeks. But I was able to get lots of Dance Dance Revolution in. While DDR may not be the most strenuous workout, it keeps the body moving and it’s fun, so I don’t have a problem doing it almost every day. So being in a little better shape last night helped a lot. We won the game 8-3 and I was +2 on the night with an assist. Not too shabby.

I’m sorry. Was I supposed to be blogging here?

The week started out pretty fun. What with movie-oke on Sunday night. Then getting my butt kicked at an aerobics class on Monday night. Then watching my friend almost make it on to the St. Paul Bouncing Team on Tuesday night.

But all was not right with the world. I bought a Gatorade on my way home from aerobics and I think the convenience store clerk coughed on his hand before handling my goods. So starting Tuesday I didn’t feel to well. I battled through on Wednesday because I had a lot of work to do, but then I went to bed way early. Then yesterday I went home from work early and slept the afternoon through. I woke up in time to eat, watch Smallville, My Name is Earl, and The Office, before heading to bed once again. I woke up pretty iffy this morning and decided a little more medicine and some more sleep might do me good. They did, I’m back at work. Not 100%, but better than this morning.

Who knows what kind of fun my weekend will bring?

Some of you may know me as a slightly picky eater. I mean, my blog’s name is “Just Plain Chips”. I like to eat the same kinds of things and not branch out too often. But I’ve had an adventuresome bug in me lately. I’ve tried some things I wouldn’t have even thought about not too long ago.

When I was in Austin, Allison took me to one of her favorite Mexican restaurants on my first night there. I’m not the biggest Mexican fan in the world, but I was definitely willing to go where she wanted to bring me and at least try it. I poured over the menu for a while, not knowing what to get. For some reason I chose the mole (moe-lay) enchiladas. Mole is a Mexican sauce that I am unable to describe. But it was pretty good. And so were the enchiladas. And so was the avocado margarita I drank! How many of you have had one of those? How many of you can believe that I actually enjoyed it? Allison admitted that she was a little worried about my eating habits while there. But after the fact she said that she was very happy and relieved that I didn’t act as picky as I make myself out to be. (Of course, I’ve been known to act a little out of the ordinary to impress cute girls before. Shhhh.)

While in Los Angeles, Brian, Natalie, and I headed down to Kincaids in Redondo Beach. I had a gift card to use and I felt that a nice fancy dinner would be fun. It did turn out to be a little more expensive than I thought, but it was well worth it. I was probably one the few best meals I’ve ever had.

We started off with a glass of wine and the teriyaki tenderloin appetizer. I love chicken fingers and mozzarella sticks as appetizers. But what happened when I put that first marinated piece of filet mignon in my mouth I won’t soon forget. (I know it’s cliche, but…) The flavors exploded in my mouth and my eyes bulged in surprise. I couldn’t believe what I was tasting. It was so delicious and so tender. Not many meals start out this good. And just like the immortal Eric Cartman said, appetizers are “what we eat before we eat, to get more hungry.” This appetizer just left me wanting more.

Next came the main course, which I branched *way* out of the norm for. I had the grilled mahi-mahi encrusted with macadamia nuts and stuffed with crab with scalloped potatoes. Is your mouth watering? Mine was as soon as I heard it, and I don’t like seafood or fish! I had to try it though. I was out at a fancy restuarant and if it had been light out I would have been able to see the ocean (the restaurant was on the pier), time to try something new and see why people are willing to pay $20 for a plate of food. I was not let down. I enjoyed every bite. What a surprise to be eating fish (and crab) and really liking it. After dinner we all three shared a piece of cheesecake. Mmmm, I love cheesecake. I didn’t love it as a kid. I think I probably refused to eat it because of the name. The only complaint that I have with the night is how our server kept ignoring my need for a full glass of water. It was as though he was more concerned with getting his other tables more glasses of $10 wine (not to be confused with boxes of $10 wine) or bottles of $100 wine. Funny, that.

Then tonight after work my dad decided that he, my mom, and I would go out to dinner. We went to this really nice local restaurant called Woody’s. For some reason I felt like branching out again. I didn’t go for the steak, or the chicken parmesan, or the meat loaf. I had ahi tuna. Served seered rare with teriyaki sauce, wasabi, szechuan vegetables, and sticky rice. The huge slab of fish came way more pink than I expected, but I was undaunted. I took my first bite with a bit of rice and a dip in the teriyaki. Delicious! I had a few more bites before deciding to tempt fate by going for my old nemesis: spicy. I spread a little wasabi on a piece, dipped it in the sauce, and popped it in my mouth. It definitely had some spice, but it wasn’t like a hot salsa kick. It was much more subtle. Subtle enough to make me wonder why my nose was running not five minutes later. I didn’t have wasabi on every bite, but I went back for more on a number of them.

I’ve been very proud of my branching out lately. Especially considering how much I enjoyed each new meal. I can’t wait to see what I feel like trying next time.

I’ve been in one of those non-blogging moods. I hate those. I’ve had some interesting stuff going on in life, and probably even an insightful and humorous observation or two as well. But there’s been nothing here. It’s a lame excuse but living at my godparents’ place just gets me out of my online routine too.

Alright, that’s it for now. Work is busy.

Okay, you wanted some pictures from the party. Unfortunately, due to the effects of alcohol and my wish to try and keep all of my guests entertained my pictures are concentrated towards the earlier portions of the night and thus on my first few guests. I had meant to at least take a picture of everyone as they came in but that didn’t happen either.

So I’ll just show you a few.

Here was the spread on the kitchen island. Almost anything you’d want to make pizzas.

Katie took some time out of the busy party to get some important work done at her leather topped desk in the leather ceiling-ed study.

Jim and Suzanne were looking quite swanky and just adorable, as always.

Did I say that this was a swanky party, or what? (thanks for classing the joint up Suzanne)

The shower in the master suite is larger than most of those ladies’ (Katie, Rachel, and Suzanne) bathrooms.

Like I said, it was a fun night. I wish I had more pictures from it. Steve posted a few, so go check them out.

I used to like Garfield the comic strip. Back before I was a teenager. Somehow, somewhere along the line though, it started getting less and less funny. Today I found a link to a Garfield comic strip randomizer. It takes 3 cels from Garfield strips and puts them together as one. I find most of the results funnier than normal Garfield comics and some of them seem to have some sort of zen-like quality. Go have some mindless fun.

Well, I had a pretty good time this weekend. After all of the activity here Saturday night and Sunday morning I’m feeling a bit lonely in the big house tonight.

The big party started about 6:30 or 7pm on Saturday night when Katie and Abby showed up. Katie had offered to help me with the shopping and setting up for the party but had had kind of a wild night the night before and was confined to her bed all day. But that’s okay. Somehow I managed to get all the shopping done and I think the only thing I forgot was Coke, which my brother got later. But Katie and Abby showed up a little early and helped me with some of the preparations. And they also helped me start eating the crackers and cheese. Mmmm.

Before too long people started showing up. I can’t remember the order that people came so I’m just going to list them all in no particular order. My brother Matt and his wife Jenny, Steve and Linzy, Suzanne and Jim, Rachel and Shawn, Thad and Rebecca, Kenneth, Kaari, Chey, Kelly, Lauralee, Vasilia, and Magnus.

Read whole post…

Holy cow do I need to get off of my lazy butt and do some posting. I had a great trip and now I had an awesome party at my temporary abode this weekend. So much to talk about. So many pictures to show you. Soon. No really, soon.

Okay, I really want to write about all the fun adventures I had on my trip. And I really want to post a few cool pictures from where I went. But I’m feeling miserable today. I think I caught a cold or something from my brother in LA. Plus, instead of resting and staying warm today I had a delivery to make this afternoon. Lots of hard work lifting cabinets out in the cold and the wind. Just what the doctor ordered!

Oh, and the national championship game is on right now. I gotta go.

I had an awesome trip.

I’m back in Minnesota now. I’m pretty beat. There was just so much fun stuff to do over the last week that I didn’t get much sleep. Plus, I got up at 4am this morning to catch a cab to LAX. Of course, it’s really only about 7pm for my body right now.

Austin was really great. The weather was perfect the whole time I was there: highs in the 70s and low 80s. Allison and I got along great and somehow didn’t get sick of one another. We packed a lot of different things into a few short days. I have a bunch of pictures and a bunch of stories to tell. But you know me and blogging, it will probably be a little before I get them all written down.

LA was a little disappointing. The weather was just really bad. It rained nearly the entire time I was in California and the New Year’s Eve block party we were going to got cancelled! What a bummer. But I had fun with my brother and I got to meet his girlfriend Natalie who is just a bundle of fun.

I hope everyone had a great New Year’s themselves. I’ll get back to you with stuff when I can.