Hey Mikey!

Mike Begley was in town for work for a few days and we caught up at Molly's yesterday afternoon. All's well in Denver land, aka a place with seasons. Mike is overworked and underpaid as a big shot Lockheed GNC guy for the new moonship, but at least he can still make some time to say hello to the common folk like myself once in awhile. As for the photo, this is me giving Mike the stinkeye for getting to go skiing so much, and hiking, and biking. Whatever Mike, at least I live where... um... yea...

 

Speaking of Wii...

Aaron showed me this site awhile back and I still find it hilarious and must further share the amusement. For updated statistics on the Wii damage toll go here to www.wiihaveaproblem.com. My absolute personal favorite is this lovely gem of an Wiinjury, but the story that goes with it is just as awesome.

Mario Kart Wii!!

It was a nice 3 day weekend even though I don't have many pictures to add here. Sunday night I hung out at the Halligan's and had some Mario Kart Wii fun. I really do enjoy the Wii because with what else do you actually have to do the motions we all do anyway with a standard controller when playing video games. I typically jerk the controllers around for driving games, so when I actually have a wheel to turn the "car" with, so much the better.

The more I play games like that the more tempting a Wii becomes, but I just can't pull the trigger since I haven't been able to guage how much I would really play it. The sports were fun previously, but the Mario Kart sure is tempting...

Cash in the Attire

Who doesn't love when you put on a pair of pants and find money in the pocket? Okay, it was only 3 dollars, but all the same its just one of those little things that makes your day. So I stopped and got my Friday morning four-bucks coffee and it feels almost free.

Good start to the day, let's see how the rest turns out...

Relative Merits of Cooking Based Reality Shows

A Thesis on How to Stab Food and People

As a cook and pretend foodie (I say pretend because I don't actually spend copious amounts of money on obscure forms of salt or parsley to add to my food), I enjoy watching several of the reality shows on TV revolving on the general theme of "I can cook better than you." Case in point, I am currently watching Hell's Kitchen with my laptop handy which is resulting in this blog post. The other show I watch is Top Chef on Bravo.

As for Top Chef, I truly love this show. The people actually know what they are doing and are expected to be creative. Also, the ridiculous human drama is kept to a relative low as far as reality shows are concerned except for the fiasco of head shaving drunks on season 3. I actually get good ideas for food on this show and feel somewhat smarter after watching it.

Hell's Kitchen on the other hand, I feel dumber for watching but still do for no real reason it seems. Perhaps it is the fact that the contestants are all "former electrician" or "former recptionist". Maybe its because you just have to watch and see how many times Ramsey can drop the F-bomb in 44 minutes of showtime. But maybe, its just because I like the cooking in the end... naaa... definately the f-bombs.

So end the end, one is quality television and the other is guilty pleasure. But I like them both and you should be glad since you just may get to come over for dinner at my place sometime.

WWE Mini-Book Report

I finished reading World Without End tonight, the Ken Follett sequel to Pillars of the Earth. I'll give this book a 90% as good as the first sort of rating. I thouroughly enjoyed the book and I definately recommend it. I thought the story was pretty much as intriguing as the first and had some very interesting elements to it. Ceratinly, the amount of research he does adds a very good quality to the read. The 10% loss is because the book really borrows so much of its feel from the first. That isn't necessarily bad, but it just means my only complaint is that the first one seemed fresh and creative where this one kind of treads the same plot elements.

All the same, if you liked the first, you will still enjoy this one.

The Strings have been CUT!

This morning, the weather cooperated juuusssttt enough and I did my FAA Private Chaeckride.... and I PASSSED! P-A-S-S-E-D! PASSED!

So I'm a little stoked. Daryl Stewart was my tester and he does a different kind of oral exam. Instead of asking me straight up questions and getting the answer, I got a lot of application questions. So instead of needing to know cloud clearance requirements, I basically got asked what I coulf leagally fly out with on a cross country and why. So there was a lot of well technically this, but I woulod be safe doing it this way type of answers. Anywho, this was easy enough.

As for the flying, I used to be better at all the maneuvers, but since the school I'm in I did those a lot early on and then spent most of my time doing cross-country and solo stuff in the second half. I still feel rusty on the maneuvers (steep turns) but I did then well enough on all of them and good on probably half of them. Plus Daryl, is a good one for the checkride. He could have probably failed me if he wanted to but I'm a safe pilot and made no serious errors and that's what really counts with him.

In any case, I am officially a license private pilot now and I can actually go ENJOY flying. YEA!!! For all the other pilot's reading this, I'm glad to join the club and, for Jen and Josh, keep up the training and join me! ... and let's hope the weather clears for you two soon.

BOOO Weather Guesser!!

I am not a fan of weather forecasters. They are always wrong. The only sure indication of what the weather will be is that it will be the exact opposite of what I planned for regarding flights. I was supposed to take my checkride on Wed morning when the weather still should have been okay, but it was not. We didn't reschedule for the afternoon because the weather guessers said it would be "worse". Only low and behold, there were some scattered clouds but otherwise it was a really nice evening.

Then we chose to reschedule for tomorrow (Friday) morning because today was supposed to be horrid thunderstorms all day right? WRONG!! The thunderstorms rolled through at 4am and I am sitting here looking at a marvelous blue sky this afternoon with only a few clouds and no flight scheduled.

So I just hope that this weather holds through tomorrow morning so I can do my checkride and actually get my license. But you never know... I do have a flight scheduled after all.

Doggie Park

Saturday night I found out about a new dog park on this side of Pearland in Independence Park from Charlie and on Sunday afternoon I ran my two critters out there to check it out. First, while it's still not conveniently close, it sure beats the heck out of all previous options which involved day long treks all over Houston just to let the dogs play. The park is on the small side but still plenty big enough for them to enjoy (couple acres) and has some agility equipment. Too bad the closest thing my dogs will come to using the agility stuff is lifting a leg to it.

But the kiddos had a good time with all the other pups and we'll probably be repeats at this park since its reasonably close. Now if only clear lake could get a dog park in some form or another...

Gray-ve Mistake

When I was up in the NW a couple weeks ago, I ribbed Mona about being out of shape. She complains about it and I was just helping her with the complaining as any good sister would do. So yesterday in the mail, a package from Mona arrived containing a "gift" of hair color to wash out my gray. It is funny and I think Shaun probably had something to do with it. But... game on.

Made of Honor...eh

Went and saw Made of Honor this weekend with Jen H. I'd say entertaining but nothing special. Its kinda My Best Friends Wedding with the roles reversed. The movie actually would have been better if they decided what kind of movie they were making. It was mostly straight-laced drama, but then in a few places they threw in some really dorky sight-gag humor (guy playing basketball with really short shorts). I guess that was the "comedy" part of the romantic comedy. ha ha.

Pic from Oly

I got a couple pics from the speaking engagement in Olympia a couple weeks ago. Here is the one of me with the college president and his wife. We are on the deck of the resturant with Puget Sound behind us. Nice day, too bad Houston doesn't have many like this.