~jg3

Waffle Recipe (dot com)

September 1st, 2008

I was craving waffles.  I asked around until I found a waffle maker.  Next I needed some waffle batter so, I searched google for “waffle recipe.”   And wouldn’t ya know it, the first hit was waffle-recipe.com.  (who does this?)

The recipe provided on the front page is quite good but

1. Add a teaspoon or so of vanilla extract to up the yumminess factor
2. It does NOT make “eight or nine” waffles.  Four?  maybe.

You’ve got to love the banner, too…

So the idea for a waffle party went off rather well.  Everybody had an idea for what to bring that would improve things.  Strawberries, orange juice, whipped cream, pomegranite juice, vegetarian sausage, bacon, and champagne (hey, mimosa!).

But really, today was a day to be outside.  Well, it was here in the nation’s capital.  Things are a little different down in Louisiana.

So while thinking about this, I realized that all that was really keeping me inside was the ability to plug the waffle iron in. It seemed that a waffle party in a park was really feasible with just a little thought and planning.  And especially on sunny summer off-days, when everyone has plans, an outdoor brunch would be a great way to start things off before people disperse to go do their thing.  But where can I find a publicly accessible power outlet in a park?  (side note:  plugging “dc park public power outlet access” returns a crazy set of results, none of them having relevance to my quest).  Or how about I just use a power inverter to plug it into my car?  I may have to alternate between the coffee maker and the waffle maker, but that’s a minor inconvenience compared with having hot waffles in warm sunshine with cold OJ and chill friends.

The outdoor waffle party is doable, folks.  Today was just a warm up. It’s coming.  Be prepared.  Be very prepared.

Filed under: adventures, food

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SECORE update

August 23rd, 2008

It seems that things are going well for Mike and the team down in the Puerto Rico. The tropical storm largely missed them, just gave them some overcasty days.  They are reporting 1.5 million coral babies and that the spawning and diving part of the trip is over for this year.

Check out the SECORE weblog for more information and photos and even a little quicktime movie of what spawning elkhorn look like.  As an aside, I’d just like you to ponder what the egg collectors are doing: SCUBA diving is quite an adventure.  Doing it at night you can lose spatial perception easily.  Diving near coral, especially in the shallows, requires care that you don’t get scraped against the reef.  Now, while doing all that, hold the camera still and take video.  Nice.

Now that they’ve collected all this, the real fun work begins.

Filed under: adventures, enviro, Real Life

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Backcountry Exploration

February 4th, 2008

Backcountry explorers, today. LB and I set off in search of the deep powdry stuff and found it at the far right edge of the map.

ski boundry area,

LB killing it down the trails under the gondola (we rode it back up the mtn three times!),

and me spraying through a little drift on a ridge.

Filed under: adventures, snowboard

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Jackson Hole, WY

February 3rd, 2008

The number of my flight from ORD to JAC is prime: 557

25″ of new snow has fallen on the mountain there in the last 72 hours. dee-licious.  Or, as Lil Bro likes to say,  FRESHIES!!

Filed under: adventures, snowboard

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Protected: Seattle Sweep

May 26th, 2007

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Metros I’ve been on.

August 15th, 2006

Good idea 99 (or whomever you got the idea from).

Now I need to add pics of my (small) collection of subway tokens..

Update: How cool is this?

Filed under: adventures

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Vacation Guidelines

August 5th, 2006

Wouldn’t you know it, the title of the magazine is Outside. In this article from the June edition Mark Jenkins does a good job of applying some perspective to our crazy, crazy workaholic lifestyle.

As a nation, we Americans are among the hardest-working people on earth. A 2001 United Nations report found that we work 49.5 weeks a year—3.5 weeks more than the Japanese, a people who even have a word for working yourself to death: karoshi.

He goes on to illustrate something that I’m only just starting to really learn, that getting away is really as important to being productive as getting to work in the first place. I didn’t realize that there is no legal requirement for paid vacation in this country. I just had no idea. I know that I sometimes meet people from other countries on multi-month excursions and I can only dream about ever taking a six-week vacation. But even in a short span like a week or ten days, perhaps especially on such a short trip, Jenkins’ eight rules of vacating are excellent guidelines:

1. Take every single day you’re given.
2. Go big. Plan vacations of at least one full week.
3. Cut out clean. Put out-of-office messages on your voice mail and e-mail.
4. Leave your gadgets at home; never check in to the office while away.
5. Take a break from all news.
6. Forget a raise—ask for more paid vacation time instead.
7. Vote for politicians who support a federal vacation law.
8. Really vacate: Ban all work talk on vacation.

Update: There is a piece today on NPR’s Morning Edition that talks about vacations and says that just doing nothing, completely vegging on vacation is counterproductive. Listen here … what do you think?

Filed under: about me, adventures, work

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The Legwarmers

June 16th, 2006

Last week the Falls Church News-Press went in-depth on The Legearmers. Tonight the band again takes the stage at the State Theater in front of a sold-out crowd dressed in, well…

For the uninitiated, The Legwarmers are the local leaders of a recent wave through pop culture of 80’s nostalgia. A cover band who faithfully reproduces an impressively wide array of pop music from that era Their every show is a throw-back costume party. For some large part of the participants, however, the music is only vaguely familiar and the styles are about as much modern-hot ironic as they are oh-my-god-i-can-not-believe-we-ever-wore-that. To prove that point, the last time I attended one of their shows some of the outfits in my crew were assembled entirely from a trip to a mall and a TJ Maxx. Nothing from the attic, thrift shop, or grandma’s house. Just some retro-looking stuff and heavy blue eye makeup.

To be fair, this seems to always happen. About mid-decade, especially in decades without a revolution to explicitly define themselves in terms of style and music, a brief but powerful reemergence of styles from 25 years ago comes out to inform and temper the styles of the present day. Remember in the mid 90s how bell-bottom pants made a brief (and thankfully, unsuccessful) play for center-stage? The damage was done, however as for the next ten years or so, even the jeans I am wearing right now, have a slight flare in the lower leg. I imagine that in aboout ten years those hugely baggy raver pants will briefly reappear and be quickly folded into the trends of that future day.

Fortunately, in my experience, the only thought of that 80’s glam drug cocaine at a Legwarmers show has been in the band’s perfect rendition of Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar On Me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go see if I can find a sock tie.

Filed under: adventures, music

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For whom the flowers grow

June 10th, 2006

I saw this sign in a garden recently: “We grow these beautiful flowers for our friends. And we grow these beautiful flowers for those who aren’t.

What you do on this earth impacts everyone.

Filed under: adventures, Musings

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