Christmas in Review

As usual, I made my pilgrimage to Wichita for the Christmas holiday. It was definitely a nice and needed break filled with sweet treats and gifts.

Here's a clip of Megan (my sister) and I making Christmas cookies:

One of the low points of the trip was the crappy weather on Saturday. It was snowing and the wind was blowing so hard that you couldn't even see the street from my parent's house:

It pretty much did this all day until the afternoon. Since the weather had calmed down by the evening, I had planned on going out and seeing friends that I never get to. I didn't even make it a mile from my parents house when I ended up in the ditch on Webb road. I was traveling North bound when I gave the accelerator a tiny push. This whipped my back end 180 degrees and I ended up bumper deep in the snow on the other side of Webb. Luckily, within a few minutes, a Durango with 4WD stopped and helped pull me out. I was stuck really good and it took around 5 good tugs to get me out. The amazing thing was that my Pathfinder nor myself sustained any damage.

Christmas Eve we had a big dinner with smoked pork and all kinds of desserts with the grandparents. Needless to say, I put away at least two plates and 7-8 Christmas treats. On Christmas day, I think I ate an illegal amount of food. Seriously, if over-eating was against the law, I'd be serving 40 to life for the obnoxious amount of food I ate on Xmas. Starting in the morning, we ate breakfast casserole at my parents like we usually do. I headed down to Megan's parents around noon where we had a very tasty crab leg lunch served with baked potatoes, green beans, and jello salad. I then made it over to my aunt and uncle's house, Jean & Archie, around 3PM. They were serving authentic Mexican food of which I ate at least two plates full. The selection ranged from deep fried tacos to tamales to tostados, all of which were so good. I grazed on and off for the rest of the day and felt pretty crappy by the late evening.

I definitely made out well with the gifts this year too. Among many things, I received 3 new Wii games, several books, new tools, tailgating grill, and much much more. As always, I'm grateful for all the great stuff I get every year.

Yesterday, Megan and I took advantage of all the sales and got a crap ton of Christmas lights for next year at Target where all their Christmas stuff was 75% off. Megan had already bought us a tree and a few other things, but we picked up a bunch of icicle style lights and other lights to drape over the bushes.

Santa didn't get Ember the FURminator. I've been getting more and more frustrated with the amount of dog hair in the house, so yesterday I splurged and bought her the $45 medium size FURminator. I can't believe I spent this much on a damn dog brush, but it ended up being a worthwhile investment. The propaganda accompanied with the FURminator always has a picture of the dog next to all the hair extracted from the tool. So, I had to take my own FURminator picture the first time I used it on Ember last night. The one on the left is a picture of a Shiba from the FURminator website and the one on the right is my Shiba Ember:

I could have gotten more hair off of her, but after 30+ minutes she was starting to get pretty pissed and wouldn't let me do much more brushing. I put all my pictures from Christmas here. Here's to having less hair in the house in 2008!!

Merry Christmas!

Website Enhancements

I had some time to work on some improvements to the site:

• Blockbuster queue widget. I subscribe to Blockbuster Total Access to receive movies through the mail. The Blockbuster thing in the right side bar will show, in real time, the contents of my movie queue.
• Condensed the archive list. Now, instead of listing out all of the post archives in the right side bar, I've condensed this down to a drop down box to save space.
• Updated map. I've updated the map piece in the right side bar to now center on the location of my house instead of my old apartment address.
• List of Google Reader subscriptions. This is the "What I'm Tracking" piece on the right side bar. This is usually referred to as a blogroll. I recently started using Google Reader to keep track of what I'm interested in via RSS. I used to use a plugin for Outlook called RSS Popper that downloaded updates on the machine where I was running this plugin with Outlook. Now that I've switched over to Google Reader, no matter where I am, I can read "updates" to the Internet that I am interested in like I'm reading unread email. There are other subtle improvements to using Google Reader like being able to watch embedded videos without have to actually go to the site address for the post, organizing your subscriptions by "tags", and starring your favorite items.
• My recent starred items. This is right below "What I'm Tracking" and shows the most recent articles that I have "starred" in Google Reader. This is basically a way of saving the Google Reader items that you are most interested in or want to save for whatever reason.

Stay tuned for a complete redesign one of these days...

Engaged!

I'm pleased to announce that as of yesterday, Megan and I are engaged to be married!

Because Megan loves Christmas so much, she has been on my case to open presents early (like she does every year). So, last Friday, I told her that she could open one present on Sunday and she agreed that I open one as well. I hosted a poker game at my house on Saturday night, so I was less than ready when Megan wakes me up after 6 hours of sleep on Sunday morning to make breakfast and open that one promised present. I should also mention that she stole my pillow and I was forced to sleep straight on the mattress all night.

I finally managed to get out of bed as the smell of bacon brought me down to the kitchen. She was working on our traditional Sunday morning biscuits and gravy. While we were waiting for the biscuits to bake, Megan convinced me to go ahead and open the one present each that was agreed upon. I opened my first which turned out to be a new Wii game: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

It was her turn to open the huge box that she had been eyeing and periodically shaking throughout the weekend. She unwrapped it and saw that it was a large printer box with another wrapped box in it. She opened this box to find another wrapped box. She opened this box to find yet another box while I am nervously laughing the whole time. She looks and me and says "I've seen this in a movie". She unwrapped this box to find an even smaller box and than another even smaller box. Now, this part takes a little background explanation. A couple of weekends ago, I went to the Chiefs vs. Raiders game and won an iPod nano. I already have an iPod nano so Megan has been dropping subtle hints that she wanted the one that I won. So, with that said, the last wrapped box turned out to be an iPod nano box. She gives me a nasty look which I later found out why. She was think that I had just totally cheated and gave her the free gift that I got as her first present. She opens the iPod nano box and starts digging through the red tissue paper to retrieve a small little white box. I'm getting on my knee during this time and snatch the box from her, open it, and ask her if she will make me the happiest man alive and marry me.

Megan claims that she had no idea what I said, but was pretty overwhelmed by the whole situation and managed to utter out a response of "Yes". She grabbed the box and the rest is a little hazy for both of use. I later had to explain to her what I actually said, but she knew enough to say "Yes". I think she might have blacked out :) Megan is sometimes hard to surprise, but I think I definitely surprised her this time.

Needless to say, Megan called absolutely everyone in her cellphone and never actually ate the breakfast we made. I, of course, enjoyed the biscuits and gravy and the overwhelming sense of relief. I have known Megan for about 10 years but that was still the most nervous I have ever been in my entire life.

Here are some pics of the rock:

First Attempt at Recreating "The" Cinnamon Rolls

My Dad has always made these delicious homemade cinnamon rolls. I copied the recipe down the last time I was in Wichita and took a crack at making them. Basically, I made a huge mess in the kitchen, but the end results were some pretty damn good cinnamon rolls. They didn't turn up as fluffy and big as Dad's, but they were good nevertheless.

I'd also like to mention that I probably would have never been able to make the rolls without Megan's help. I was somewhat of a retard when it came to kneeding and making the mixture into dough. She came into the kitchen with me trying to make the dough by mixing it with a little fork. She just laughed, took over, and used her hands to do the mixing.

In true nerd fashion, I took pictures along the way to document the process. This shows them right after the dough was rolled up and cut into individual rolls:

Here they are after letting them raise for almost 3 hours:

After baking for 20 minutes:

Making the final touch with white cake frosting:

Hungry now, aren't you?

Silver Lining

Megan and I went to Arrowhead stadium to see the KU vs. MU game. Here's Megan doing some food prep out the back of my Pathfinder:

We ended up meeting up with my sister Megan and her friends before the game:

Here's some more pics from the game.

Yeah, yeah, I know, KU lost. But guess what? Mizzou isn't going to any bowl games and Kansas is in the Orange Bowl!!!!