I love when I'm walking through town, minding my own business, when seemingly out of nowhere a vintage car is right in front of me. Even better when they are in super great condition, such as this 1960 'Square Bird' found on Mt. Vernon Street today on my lunch:
An idea of the smokiness from the wildfire mentioned earlier. Thumb Butte viewed from Acker Park. A distance of approximately 3.5 miles:
What started as a signal fire for lost hikers has turned into a wildfire spanning hundreds of acres burning near Crown King (news story here, and here). Which has blanketed Prescott with smoke, giving us a true fire-sky this morning:
Yep, Fire season is here.
*EDIT* - looks like it is up to 2400 acres.
Holy smokes work has been busy.
I did manage to make it out for a walk on my lunch though, and snapped a few of the old Senator Drive-In sign (also seen in better condition in the header of PrescottStyle):
Have a great weekend everybody!!
An Air Evac helicopter based in Prescott crashed outside of Ashfork this morning. All the crew members are ok.
Big news for our little town.
So, Internet Explorer recently put a beta out for IE8. I downloaded it and tried it, and all I can say is what a pointless 'upgrade'.
The look and feel of the site is exactly the same, they just added 'activities' when you right-click on certain things, and made it so that you can clutter up your favorites bar with 'web slices', that constantly update you of things.
I know this is an early release, beta 1 to be exact, which means that there will be tons (I hope) more features before it is released into the wild.
And one of the funniest parts of the experience was that I had no end of issues getting their demo video to play correctly (pausing caused the video to go out, going forward or backwards caused it to stop functioning all together). So a microsoft video, about a microsoft product, had issues playing in microsoft's media player? Yeah, that is pretty funny to me.
On a separate note - Firefox 3 is absolutely awesome! The added functionality of the smart bar makes me wonder how I lived without it for so long. Thanks Mozilla!!!
Another one from our tunnel explorations, this time in duo-tone! I like how it caught the rust on the sides of the tunnel here.
15 sec exposure, f/3.5, ISO 100, Gorillapod
Lit with one small red headlamp, and one small 'white' (more like blue) headlamp.
Tokyo Mango did an interview with the Dalai Lama's younger brother Tendzin Choegyal.
He sounds like a fairly down to earth guy. My favorite part of the interview?
TC: Celebrities? They’re all human beings, what’s the big deal? You sit down with them, you start talking, and it’s the same thing. Richard Gere is a wonderful person—very simple, modest, and natural with whomever he meets. He’s done a lot for the Tibetan community. And then, on the other side of the scale, there’s Steven Seagal. Oh my god. I met him when he came here. He was wearing a funny coat, a Chinese brocade, funny trousers, and funny shoes with that ponytail. I asked him, “Why do you dress in such a peculiar manner?” He didn’t say anything. He’s arrogant, and pretends to be a Tibetan reincarnate. But why? He’s a strange man.
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Well holy smokes, I totally spaced the pic of the day yesterday. So here is two to make up for it.
DaNece photographing the solstice moon:
Jet turbine intake:
I'll admit that after my first beef tongue experience I was left wanting more. I wanted something that exemplified the flavor of the tongue more. And last night, I got it.
It all started as a quick trip to the Farmer's Market with Chris, and a stop by the T.S. Ranch shop. Chris was in the market for some Ribeyes. I innocently asked if they sold the 'nasty bits' of the cow, and was told that if I emailed an order over they could provide me with just about anything I needed. I then proceeded to ask if they happened to have any beef tongue in their freezer, and was told that indeed they did! How could I not get it?
The young lady working the stand made lots of grimacing faces as she went to get the big (like 4 lbs!) tongue. Even Chris was a little disgusted by the thought. I smiled, knowing how much they were missing out on. I paid my $10 and begin to think of menu ideas.
I knew I would slow cook it again, since that really tenderized the meat well. I also knew I would marinade it for a while first in beer to further tenderize the meat. I decided to leave the rest to the fate of what was already in my refrigerator.
Skinning the tongue was the hardest part of the meal. And I'm still not very good at it. It wasn't pretty when I was done, but I got all the leathery tastebuds off and that's all that matters.
I cut it into a few pieces so it would fit into the slow-cooker, and tossed it in a ziploc bag with some potent spices. A few solid shakes of the cumin, some dashes of both regular and smoked paprika, a few pinches of cayenne, LOTS of black pepper, and a large pinch of salt. Joining the spices was a bottle of Coors Banquet.
A few hours in the fridge, and I dumped it all into the slow cooker (on low), adding about 2 cups of water, along with some caramelized onions. And there it sat for five long hours.
As it cooked I dug through the fridge to see what else I could scrounge up. Tortillas, corn on the cob, some already-cooked bell pepper, and some Zataran's rice! Sounds like a meal to me!!
After coming out of the slow cooker (and allowing the meat to cool) it doesn't look like much:
Once it cooled it got cut into smallish piece and added to a sizzling pan with a bit of oil, and lots more spices.
Meanwhile the corn was boiling, the rice was simmering, the peppers and onions were sauteing, and the tortillas were warming.
Once everything was cooked I cut the corn off the cob, and threw everything into a tortilla:
The verdict: FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!
Between my roomate and I, there wasn't anything left. Which sucks, because I was looking forward to leftovers.
The taste was much more pronounced than the first tongue I had, as was the texture. Cooking the meat in the pan after slow-cooking made it nice and crispy, and complimented the other ingredients very well.
Hopefully they will have another tongue the next time I am over there. :)
~Tom
That's what my friend Chris tells people when they ask what the plan is for the weekend. I look at him at remind him once again that spelunking is not what we are doing. There are no caves involved in our plan for Saturday. What is involved is drainage tunnels.
I am on a mission to find some new and interesting tunnels, and Chris is excited to join. We start the day out going through the tunnel underneath Rush St. I've been here before, but Chris hasn't, so I figured I would show him the awesome graffiti that is in this tunnel.
After tunnel 1, we head over to a tube that I remember playing in as a kid. We always got scared (no flashlights, duh!) and never went very far in. As it turns out, the tunnel becomes too small to traverse after only a few hundred feet, so this one was a bust.
Next we tried hunting down some culverts that friends had mentioned, but found them to be too small for us to enter. Feeling slightly defeated we headed to New Frontiers to grab a bite to eat. They were having a big BBQ with live music, so we stayed for a bit to listen to the band Sweet Nasty, who were surprisingly good (going to pickup their CD when it gets released at the end of the month).
Renewed, we opted to go across town to continue our quest for coolness.
We ended up finding a tunnel that leads from the Coca-Cola distributor, underneath Lowe's, and lets out directly behind the crumbling retaining wall. It was tall and wide, and was quickly traversed.
Lastly, we went looking for a tunnel that I heard about from a fellow Flickr user, who mentioned that there was some graffiti to be found inside.
We went looking for the entrance, driving slowly around the walmart parking lot until we found what we were looking for. We parked the car, gave the keys to Wally-World for an oil change (hey, a little multi-tasking never killed anybody) and headed in.
At first I was a little disappointed by the lack of graffiti, so started taking pictures of other randomness:
As we neared the end of the tunnel though, we hit the good (though slightly disturbing) stuff.
And we saw light at the end of the tunnel:
Which lets out to this spillway, between the old highway 69 roads, and makes you wonder how somebody actually got a shopping cart this far down the spillway:
All in all, a pretty good day of 'spelunking.'
Sixth Finger's remix of Paint It Black (Rolling Stones):
Michael Buble cover of Sway (My favorite Dean Martin song for sure):
Meat Beat Manifesto - Prime Audio Soup:
Prime Audio Soup - Various Artists
And in other musical news, I'm finally starting to learn how to play that keyboard that I got for christmas. Hooray me!
Testing the publish scheduling feature. This post shouldn't be seen until Friday.
A sunset on the way home from Phoenix. Mile marker 263:
David Hasselhoff - "Go ahead and be emotional. It's great to be emotional."
A picture of the solstice moon rising out in Chino yesterday;
Falling on one of the fatal shortcomings of the G9 - the lack of optical zoom. 6x only takes you so far
One Sentence is all you get to tell a story. Kind of like reading a (sometimes) funny post secret.
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At least a few mornings a week I find myself sitting in my favorite little coffeehouse, scribbling away in a little black notebook, sipping a coffee.
The scribbling is more for peace of mind than anything else. A release of anything that gets stored and kept but needs to be released.
The music that comes out of the small tinny speakers may not be the highest fidelity, but it catches my attention more than any other time because of the few distractions around me. I sit and simply appreciate my surroundings.
A quick look at my watch reminds me that the work day is starting soon, and I best arrive early. I head out the door with a quick farewell to the employees.
This is the time that I keep for myself; the time that leaves me refreshed and ready to face the day ahead.
The song that caught my attention today:
Some decorative oriental umbrellas setup to catch the light at Tsunami on the Square:
Joby tripod, 15 sec. exposure at f/5.6
You know, the sunscreen song....
I always really dug this song. Upbeat, good message, relevant to everybody. So I was super stoked to find it out on the interwebz.
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Okay, so I don't get out to Prescott Valley to eat a meal very often, and when I do it is often with others who would rather go to a big chain restaurant (Chili's, Garcias, Buffolo Wild Wings) than a local place. As such, I am sure that I am missing some of the happening spots out there (especially with how fast the city is growing). So here is a rundown of some of the local joints that I DO know about (all names link to map location of restaurant):
Rusty's Gourmet Subs - A surprising little place. Almost always staffed by early 20s guys, I expected a pretty half-ass sandwich the first time I went in. The menu consists of (mostly italian style) 'gourmet' subs and pizza, nothing else. After trying the subs though, and being blown away, this is our new stand-by place in PV for a quick bite to eat. Prices are good for the amount of food you get (medium pepperoni pie and 2 drinks for under $13? Hell yeah!). Pretty fast service, but don't hold your breath for big smiles and friendliness from the staff.
Poor Red's - located on the back side of PV, Catalyst turned me onto this place. Been there once, and I thoroughly enjoyed both the atmosphere and the food. I was diggin on the seafood (best in the area so far), but DaNece wasn't getting down with the prime rib. I'm thinking she just wasn't used to the way prime rib is generally cooked, but she doesn't appear to be interested in going back.
Price was a touch steep for what you get, but it's not breaking the bank. Service was a little slow, but friendly which made up for it.
Augie's Place - right next to the movie theatres, this is a restaurant of convenience. As with so many restaurants, when they opened they were awesome. The last 3 or 4 times though, we have been very disappointed. The food is often either bland or over seasoned, and the help staff is decent but not exactly friendly. The prices aren't great (expect at least $40 for 2), and on the whole leaves you walking away without a smile on your face.
Oh well, at least it is close to the theatre.
Giovanni's Pizzeria - A little hole in the wall Italian restaurant at the end of PV, and one of my favorite places out there. They recently changed hands twice, once to some schmuck who though it would be a high-end dining destination, and then back to the original owner. The pizza here is pretty good, but they have a full Italian (Sicilian style I believe) menu, almost all of which kicks some serious arse! The calzones are huge (easily feed two) and rock the house. The spumoni is also definitely recommended for desert.
Price is good for the amount of food that you get. Service is generally pretty good.
Tara Thai 2 - The only thai place that I know in PV. Only been there a few times, but the food was great (even better than the Thai House Cafe in Prescott). The atmosphere is pretty cool, and staff is very friendly. I definitely plan on going back here again.
Olivas Mexican - Pretty standard mexican fare. Nothing that blew me away, but I'm kind of picky when it comes to my mexican food. Chimichanga wasn't very crispy, flautas were bland. Prices were on par for what you get. I did take out so can't comment on the wait staff.
Taqueria Guadalajara - Where the mexicans eat! Or at least that is the way it seamed as me and my friend were the only white faces in the crowd. Great food, if slightly greasy. Definitely more authentic than Olivas. The wait staff wasn't the friendliest (maybe due to our gringo-ness), but the prices were good for what you get. Flautas here were great!
So you locals; have any other local joints that you love or hate?
In case you didn't know. I have a sister. A twin sister to be more precise. Her name is Nikki. She is one minute older than me, but is smaller in stature so I get to call her my little sister. We are the types of siblings that get along very well (now anyway).
Nikki modeling her helmet/hat combo unit that she uses for biking:
Nikki is what I lovingly call a 'social butterfly'. She seems to have a problem with staying in any one place for too long. So she will randomly go off to Costa Rica, or Bolivia for a few months. She once decided to live out of her truck and hang out in Utah for a few weeks checking out the national parks.
She rarely has a 'permanent' residence, instead staying with friends or family wherever she happens to find herself. Since she picks up friends like hookers pick up johns, there is always a place to stay.
Last December she graduated from Prescott College and promptly moved off to Madison Wisconsin, where she has been living ever since.
So when she told me she was coming home I figured it would be a temporary stop. We had dinner with her over at mom's house, and talked about her lack of plans for the time-being. These include such things as living in Jerome for a few weeks renovating a house, possibly going to work for Native Seeds afterwards, and maybe even picking up a steady boyfriend along the way....
From the sound of things she intends to stay local for a while, and I couldn't be happier about it! Welcome back Nikki B!!!
A family portrait, with us modeling hats:
Mom-in-Law's puppy 'Star' hanging out by the pool. A very cute, and VERY energetic little pitbull:
The Writer's Bag is a great site for people interested in writing either professionally, or recreationally.
Well, vacation is over and I now sit back at me desk working the day away.
Nothing too exciting other than camping. We took the dogs down to phoenix to the mom-in-law's house for a few days of swimming in the pool, lounging in the sun.
Then some yard work (nothing like 4 hours of weed-eating to make you feel like you are on vacation!), and replacing some parts on the cooler to keep it from vibrating itself off of the roof. Glad we got it done, because it appears that summer has finally hit, and with temps in the 90s, a cool DaNece is a happy DaNece. :)
Friday night was date-night, we went to dinner at Augie's (which sucked) and went to see Kung-Fu Panda. The movie was awesome enough that we went to see it again on Sunday.
Saturday found us eating dinner at the Firehouse Kitchen (great, as usual), and checking out Tsunami on the Square. We were quickly reminded that people in general are rude, seating was limited, and the lighting setup was bad. After looking for (and failing to find) a seat where we could actually see the stage we packed it up and headed home.
All in all it was a great mellow vacation, and a much needed relaxation break. Now I can get back to the endless joys of work. Hooray!
Vacation started with a trip out to the woods. We decided to drive the back road from Prescott to Crown King. The plan was to drag the trip out over 3 days.
Day one we made it to Palace Station and started looking for a camp site. 1/2 hour down a dirt track found us a suitable, if small, site next to a small creekbed.
We setup camp and started getting the necessities squared away. The existing fire-pit was changed a bit to allow for cooking, some logs were broken down with a hatchet for firewood. The tent was pitched, and the hammock was strung.
Once everything was good to go, I got the fire going, setup my cooking grate (a bit of chicken-wire strung over part of the fire-pit), and got to cooking the hamburgers that we prepped before leaving the house:
As I putzed about taking pictures, DaNece and Lola kept a watchful eye over the meal:
Mere minutes later and we were chowing down:
The dogs chase sticks until the light fades away, as we roast s'mores. Finally darkness hits and we retreat into the tent, to play a few games of pentago by lamplight.
We found out that a 2 man tent is not big enough for 2 humans and 2 canines. Constant reshuffling of furry bodies counterbalanced the respite found in super comfy sleeping bags. Next time it will be the 4 man tent.
Morning rolled around and the dogs wanted out to play, which meant that we finally had space to stretch out for a few minutes before getting up and at 'em.
Another fire built, and breakfast cooked. This time around it was pancakes, scrambled eggs, some beef tamales, and pine-needle tea:
After packing up camp we rolled out a little earlier than expected (8:00). Along the way to Crown King we explored a bunch of side trails, enjoyed a little picnic lunch, and helped another driver get his truck off of a steep hill.
It turned out that the drive to Crown King wasn't as long as I had thought, and we ended up arriving at 12:00. After some quick discussion we decided to head home a day early, since one and all were exhausted.
All told it was about 7 hours of driving for the loop, and we had a great time. The dogs (who had never been camping) had an absolute blast, and we got to enjoy the peace and quiet of a few days in the forest.
The camera sat idle for most of the trip, as I was entirely too wrapped up in the sound of wind rustling through the trees.
Well, we got back from camping yesterday. A whole post coming on that.
Today was an errands day, and I started doing some maintenance on our swamp cooler. Having never done any real work on them before, I'm kind of shooting in the dark on it. Bad vibrations are making the house rattle, and I'm thinking my bearings are shot... Will replace those and see.
Tomorrow we are going down to Phoenix for some more swimming in the sun after a stop at the gym in the morning (yeah we joined the gym, promising to beat the crap out of ourselves for a while). Hopefully after that I will get a little more time to get photos sorted and posted.
I love this whole vacation thing. :)
Sometimes, when I get bored, I look through other people's favorites on flickr. I think it is really interesting to see what kinds of photos a person sees and wants to remember for another day. What draws them in? What makes THOSE photos so memorable?
It's like getting a little window into who they are. Some people may take or post pictures that they aren't all the fond of, but rarely will they mark a photo they don't like as a favorite.
Do they favorite a lot, or a little? Some people have thousands of favorites, others (like me) have less than a hundred. Some are very artsy, and some are very mundane.
From the obscure
To the contrasty:
To the just plain weird (to me)
one and all, somebody liked them enough to hit the 'Add to Favs' button and keep a little recollection of it on their account.
Then I have to wonder... what do my favorites say about me?
Somebody remixed Radiohead's Nude song (see bottom video) using obsolete hardware. A spectrum for the guitar track, old printer for the drums, a scanner for bass, and a bunch of hard drives complete the vocals.
Talk about creativity! The remix:
Big Ideas (Don't get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.
The real version:
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modofly.com has some awesome artsied up moleskines. Like this sweet robot:
or Clint Eastwood:
Totally want one of these once I fill up the current model. :)
Picking up ingredients on Monday for dinner, and found purple potatoes!!! Other than the color, which comes from the same antioxidants that give blueberries their color, there really isn't anything too terribly special about them.
Surprisingly, they taste just like..... potatoes. :) But they sure look pretty.
Used in a baked chicken dish that turned out very mediocre, and not deserving a post all its own.
I haven't been cooking an awful lot lately (hence the lacking of food posts) due to a busy schedule. This doesn't look like it will be letting up any time soon either, as we just joined the gym with the intention of going 3 times a week after work.
Hopefully I will get to do some cooking next week though. We are taking the whole week off of work to get away from the office place. Scheduled activities include camping for two nights, with the intent of trying MREs (for those backpacking trips where you don't want to haul lots o' food around) and cooking hamburgers (maybe?) the second night.
Also planning on going down to Phoenix for some more sun and swimming at the mom-in-law's house, hopefully without the nose-breaking fun of last weekend.
Can't wait to get out of the office!! :)
How the internet was created. From the men who did the creating.
My favorite line?
"... (he) took a million dollars away from one of his other offices and gave it to me to get started. It took about 20 minutes."
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A rose that was spotted while walking on Sheldon St:
tweaked in lightroom a bit to lower the color saturation. :)
I don't think I have mentioned one of my favorite photo blogs yet. Well techinically, it is more of a lighting blog, and in particular an off-camera lighting blog, but still one of my favorites:
And from this blog today I found Confessions of a Photographer, with some great videos showing how the photographer gets his shots. Very cool stuff.
Between the two, I am totally jonesing for a flash to play with on the G9. Who knows? A new toy may be in my future. :)
This funny comic about internet dating TOTALLY made me think of my high school years. Funny and sad, all at the same time.
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"I just thought it would make for a great title and never could come up with a post to go with it." - read the comments.
*Edit* - In retrospect, adding Pic of the Day to the end of the title makes it rediculously more scary.*
Pic of the day is the showers at Pacific Beach:
A tree in Balboa Park (yes there are surprisingly more vacation photos, should be done in a few more days)
Sometimes things just don't go right. Sometimes things go downright wrong. This weekend was one of those times.
It started on Saturday, with some work on the truck that took longer than expected. Replacing a clutch pedal bracket should have taken two hours.
It should have, but it didn't. It took five hours of taking out every screw within a five foot radius of the clutch. So many screws in fact, that my magnetic bowl for holding screws overfloweth.
Small plastic things were breaking off, flying in all directions never to be seen again.
In the end I had to remove my steering column in order to get the old bracket out, and managed to drop this heavy son of a gun squarely on my shoulder.
Ouch.
I would like to say that Sunday was a better day. I would like to, but I can't.
We headed down to Phoenix, to swim in the mother-in-law's (MIL) pool. We had the dogs in tow, figuring that we could teach Lola the finer points of flailing around in water (as seen before, Scrappy is already an accomplished water-flailer)
We figured that while we were at it we would teach MIL's new puppy, Star, to swim as well.
If you ever have the opportunity to drag puppies who are perfectly happy playing with each other OUTSIDE of the pool, into a blue watery death bowl (as they seemed to perceive it), you should politely decline.
See, the problem is puppy claws. These little things were god's original version of razor blades. As I would drag them into the water (kicking and whining of course) they would begin the aforementioned flailing in earnest. I have to keep at least some hold on them so that I can get them turned in the right direction to get back to the stairs (and relative safety). Keeping this hold proved a very painful endeavor, and resulted in scratches which were both numerous and deep.
If there had been sharks in that water, the blood would have gotten them circling in no time.
The highlight of the idiocy though, was when I decided to dive off of the diving board. There should be a sign warning Polish people not to do anything so seemingly-simple as this.
As I floated back to the surface I contemplated the newfound pain in my face. There had been an instant when I saw a bright light taking me home, and then it had resolved into nothing more than the concrete bottom of the pool.
Being the total idiot that I am, I decided to keep the fact that I had dove 10 feet down into a 9 ft deep pool to myself. About twenty minutes later DaNece finally noticed, and I had to relate my shameful tale to her.
She laughed of course.
As I sit here writing this I look like somebody beat me with the ugly stick, and am fairly certain that my nose is in actuality broken. Hooray me!
Definitely one of the few times when I have been happy to just get back to the relative safety of work.
You've all heard of DejaVu, but what about Capgras Delusion?
Capgras delusion is the phenomenon in which a person believes that a close friend or family member has been replaced by an identical looking impostor. This could be tied in to the old belief that babies were stolen and replaced by changelings in medieval folklore, as well as the modern idea of aliens taking over the bodies of people on earth to live amongst us for reasons unknown. This delusion is most common in people with schizophrenia but it can occur in other disorders.
This and 9 other odd tricks you mind can play on you.
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