doodledee

Here's a list of my personal highlights from the first 10 days of the games in Turin. Note that all these highlights are taken from stuff I've watched on tivolympics and I haven't been taping everything so there very well may be cool stuff that I've missed.

• The 'team motivator' for the US men's ski team. He's the guy you hear yelling like Randy Macho Man Savage before each US skier busts out of the start house. HAMMER DOWN, BODE MILLER, HAMMER DOWN!! Stuff like that. It makes me laugh every time. Think how mint it'd be to have one of those guys in my cube at work. CURLY BRACE AND A SEMICOLON, DAVE, CURLY BRACE!! I bet it'd do wonders for my productivity.
• The team NBC assigned to skeleton and bobsled and luge and whatnot is amazing. Every trip down the track is the like biggest event in the history of the sport. The one analyst dude gets so excited I swear he interrupts himself sometimes. Fun stuff.
• Shaun White going all misty-eyed after winning the half pipe would probably be my sappy highlight from the first week. Especially after he acknowledged how much bigger of a deal it was to win the gold than he thought it would be. In follow-up interviews all he did was smile and smile. He's such a good kid.
• Ice dancing. Ha. Just kidding. It sucks.
• If I could go meta for a minute, the coverage of the coverage has also been a personal highlight for me as well. How many stories have you seen talking about how there "isn't a story" in Turin? More than one, that's for sure. And in reality, all that really means is that there isn't an American Star they can market the crap out of. So instead we sit around and talk about there's nothing to talk about while we watch a bunch of foreigners win medals. For the record, I'd take that over 25 Michelle Kwan updates any day of the week.

The lowlight of the first week would have to be that idiot NBC has in the studio doing the nightly 'spotlight' features. More specifically, after that Jacobellis chick fell after showboating off the last jump in snowboardsupercross, he did a whole feature that labeled her move "the biggest gaffe in the history of sports". Gimmie a break. Ass.

I think that's everything. Bring on the figure skating saturation coverage.

For those of you still waiting on the edge of your radio to hear if me and Huna landed the gig as The Greatest New Radio Show On Earth, you should probably take off your headphones and find somewhere to sit down, because I have some disturbing news to deliver.

We didn't win.

I know, I wasn't surprised, either.

As you more loyal readers may remember, our show somehow managed to squeak into the final 4 runoff spectacular that took place in January. I think we both felt like the last show we did was probably our best. I say that because a) we focused on topics that interested both us and the demographic we were arguing would listen to our show and b) we gave up pretending we could be serious for more than 5 minutes and cracked a few jokes. That translated to two hours of radio that was fun for me, but apparently wasn't any good for anyone else. Funny how that works. Short story shorter: we didn't make the cut.

The 'finals' took place on superbowl Sunday in the form of a pseudo-head-to-head face-off between the two remaining shows, back-to-back, one hour each. For the first time ever, I tuned in to listen to what our 'competition' sounded like. Go figure, it was all the cliché talk radio stuff: class warfare, race baiting, and – obviously – lots of talk about “the left". And man, did they get calls. We never got calls with our 20-minute segments about my trip to the pond hockey championships or stories from Huna about the Girl Scout square dance he went to the night before, but apparently if you ask listeners if "those people" get too much free daycare, the phones will light right up. Again, I say, funny how that works.

Anyway, kudos to the winners. And I'm honestly not bitter or anything. I'm not even sure I would have wanted to do it if we had won. Spending every Sunday afternoon in a radio booth after working my 'regular' job all week? Let's just say I'm glad I didn't have to make that decision.

all those watts could probably be put to better use [doodledee]
please return to your regularly scheduled programming [doodledee]

Team Yep wrapped up our broomball season tonight. I don't know exactly what our record ended up being, but it was something like 2-5. I'm also pretty sure we lost like 4 of our last 5. So much for for all that 'finishing strong' crap. Highlight of the year was easily the time that KC full-on hurdled a girl while running at full speed. Hands down the single most athletic broomball play in the history of Team Yep. That's mostly because none of us can really jump, though.

We're all getting old and we don't play our positions very well, so I'm not expecting real improvement anytime soon. Or ever, actually. Good thing we're in it more for the 'fun' than we are for the 'winning'. At least I am.

On a good note, I think JoePa got his first ever goal this season. Kudos to him.

This morning junior and I went down to Lake Harriet to have a look around. I threw my skates in the trunk before we left, thinking that the recent cold[er] snap may have stabilized the ice enough that the park department would have finally opened the skating pond in front of the bandshell. I was wrong. There was no skating. My hunch is that they've just written the whole winter off. Can't say that I blame them.

Rather than skate, we walked out on the ice and talked with some of the people ice fishing. We looked down the holes and we stopped and watched one kid reel up a 5-inch perch. He was pretty jazzed about his catch and when he held up his fish to show us a bunch of other kids came running over to discuss bait selection and how deep his line was going and all the other nuances of the hunt. Then they went back to scouting new hole locations. There was lots of auguring going on.

Later we were tooling around by the boat ramp when this dude on bicycle rode up. It wasn't a crazy mountain bike or anything, just a regular hybrid bike with thin little road tires. He slowed down a little bit, rode down the ramp onto the ice, and started pedaling his way across the frozen lake. I looked around to see if I was the only one who thought this was weird. Based on the fact that nobody else was reaching for their camera, I'll assume it was just me. I find that hard to believe, but I'm certainly no expert in winter ice cycling.

The dude made it maybe 1/4 of the way across before he gave up and started walking his bike. I knew it was crazy.

Winter on.

It was exactly 6:20 this morning when the fuzzy radio of my alarm clock clicked on and, unfortunately for me, it wasn't an accident. I had set it that early because today was the official registration day for next fall's Early Childhood Family Education classes and, if you want to get into the class you want to get into, you gotsta get your ass outta bed and go get in line. So that's what I did.

In reality 6:20 was my compromise time. On one hand I knew plenty of other parents would be there by 5 - and in fact stories of "people who know people who have slept out all night" are common - but I also knew that last year the line was enormous and we still got one of our top 3 choices fairly easily even tho we were near the back. Furthermore, I knew that they start handing out numbers to people in line at like 7, so I figured that if I got there a little before that I'd be fine. By 6:20 the paper would be here, so I'd just pull on my pants, grab the newspaper, and drive over to the school.

The parking lot was already 2/3 full when I pulled in. I walked in through one of the main doors and followed the signs (and a couple of other dazed parents) to the third floor where the registration stuff was going down. This particular school - the old high school - is apparently undergoing some pretty significant remodeling. Lots of walls and ceilings are down, lots of pipes are showing, and much of the hallway lighting is provided by long extension cords full of light bulbs with those plastic 'construction' cages around them. It's all very industrial and urban.

As I open the door to the 3rd floor a familiar looking volunteer lady immediately greets me and asks if I'm a resident or not. I say I am and she hands me some forms and points me down the 'resident' hallway and says to take a seat at the end of the line. I can immediately tell this whole thing is going to be logistically flawless. Turns out I'm right.

I turn and look down the hallway. Again with the torn down ceiling and the exposed pipes. Again with the eerily dark single bulb construction lighting. I seriously think I can hear water dripping. And as far as you can see, the whole hallway is lined the parents. Many sit in those comfy folding camp chairs, but others are in the regular hard folding chairs that the school had provided. People had blankets and laptops and iPods and newspapers and magazines and coffee and they all looked greasy and exhausted and yet somehow kind of freakishly punchy all at the same time. It was like half Mad Max and half Lord of the Flies. And it was totally surreal.

I found the end of the line and sat on the floor. A little after 7 a volunteer lady came around handing out numbers. I got 102. I filled out my forms. I read the paper. I enjoyed the free coffee. I ran into neighborhood.mom.Karen and we chatted it up for 45 minutes while we crawled along in the special 'update your data in our NEW AWESOME database' line. She's a hoot. At one point she realized needed to run back to get something from her place in the 'main' line, and she *literally* ran. It almost set of a panic. People see someone running, they think they should be running, too. Nobody really knows why, they just assume something is up. I'm sure there's a term for that, but for now I'm just going to call it 'amusing'.

Eventually Libby came by and we switched out. She was home by like 10, and that included some time spent browsing in the 'boutique' they had set up. I'm pretty sure we got our first choice of class time. I also got 2 bagels. All in all, not a bad morning.

Here's the recipe for my Super Bowl food of choice. This year they turned out like they do every other time I make them: totally effing mint. Unfortunately, it's not really possible to take a good picture of red bean and rice, so you'll just have to imagine what they look like. (Hint: they look delicious.)

1 pound dried red beans
vegetable oil
1 large onion
1 green pepper
3 stalks of celery
3 large cloves of garlic
6 oz tasso ham, diced
2 big links of andouille sausage, sliced
1 smoked ham hock, sliced into a couple of big chunks
4 c chicken stock (one ‘box')
6 c water
3 bay leaves
thyme
salt
pepper
rice

1. Soak the beans overnight in a bunch of water, drain them and put them aside.
2. Heat a big pot up on the stove with a couple tablespoons of oil in it.
3. Open a beer.
4. Add the tasso and andouille to the pan, cook for a couple minutes, then take them out.
5. Add the ham hock to the pan, cook for a couple minutes, then take it out.
6. Add the onions, celery and pepper to the pan and season with a little salt and pepper. Cook until they're soft, it'll take a few minutes.
7. Add the garlic, cook for a minute or two.
8. Add the tasso and andouille and ham hock back to the pot. Dump in stock and water. Dump in the beans. Season with some thyme and a few bay leaves. If your andouille isn't super hot, maybe add a bit of cayenne.
9. Simmer for 2 hours, uncovered. Stir them a few times during cooking and talk about how good they're looking.
10. Open another beer.
11. Reach down in the pot with a big wooden spoon and smash a bunch of the beans against the side of the pot. I try to get like ¼ of the beans smashed, but I don't really count.
12. Cook maybe another 20 minutes or so, which, coincidentally, is exactly enough time to make some rice. Genius.
13. Serve over rice (with another beer) and maybe some crusty bread.

Notes: Tasso ham is available at Forster's Meats in Plymouth, but call before you go to make sure they'll have some the day you get there (they don't make it very often). They also have good ham hocks and andouille. Wherever you end up getting your hocks, ask the butcher to cut them into thirds for you, they're hard to cut at home unless you have a chainsaw.

I've been spending the weekend painting the bathroom. We only have one bathroom, and it's right next to the kid's room, so Libby took junior to Rochester so that I could work as late - and as loudly - as I needed to in order to get it done. After spending last night priming and today priming and painting, I've come to the conclusion that I don't really like painting all that much. Funny how that works.

So far my favorite part has been going to Home Depot to get the paint and having the paint lady tell me they were out of the 'base' for the paint I wanted. (wtf?) When I told her to use her fancy color matching machine to match my color to another brand, she said her fancy color matching machine was broken. Then I said "oh come on" and she laughed and said "yeah, we're like a third world country today". I laughed back, but I'm still not sure what she meant.

With luck I'll be done tomorrow. After that I'm pretty sure all that's left to do before The Bathroom Remodel is behind us is hanging the new mirror and towel bars and whatnot. I just looked back at the calendar and realized that this project has been going for like months now. Holy cow, that one got away from me.