24 Hours of Good Fortune

A few weeks ago as I was sitting in the bleachers watching my oldest son's basketball game, the Director of Development for the school joined the rest of the crowd and sat directly in front of me.  He had a stack of raffle tickets in his hand for an Apple iPod touch. I asked him how much ($3 each or 4 for $10); I bought $10 worth. To be very specific, I bought the first ten tickets. I don't know how it happened, but I told him, if I won, I'd give him the prize.

On Friday night, I received a phone call. The call came in kind of late, so it surprised me a bit. The voice on the other end of the phone informed me that I was the winner of a raffle for an . It was late, I was tired, but I thought to myself, and maybe even out loud, "That's cool!" The next morning I recalled my promise. I sure hope he refuses my gift.

On Saturday afternoon, after many weeks of delay and procrastination, I took the boys down to the box office at the American Airlines Center to redeem a voucher for 2 upper level tickets to a Dallas Mavericks game. We arrive at the box office to discover that there are no more tickets available through the voucher, but the ticket agent says to me, "Hold on.  Let me check on something."  She types on her computer for a few minutes. She waits. She types some more. She waits.

Then she turns to me, "We're completely out of the upper deck tickets for this voucher, but they are allowing me to substitute some lower level tickets. Would that be okay with you?"

Like a deer in the headlights I reply, "Excuse me? Would you say that again?"

Repeating herself, "We're completely out of the upper deck tickets for this voucher, but they are allowing me to substitute some lower level tickets. They're $79 seats. Would that be okay with you?"

"Uh. Yes?"

I told my son as we walked away from the box office window, "Sometimes it does pay to procrastinate." And after a long pause, "But you still have to do your homework when we get home."

The Ant Wars: A Winter Campaign

A few weeks ago, we discovered one of the curses of a bitterly cold winter night.  A hot water pipe cracked. I can live with the burden of repairing a busted pipe, but this pipe was burst at some point within our concrete slab. The water was leaking into a space underneath the hot water heater. This space is probably close to 18 cubic feet of space, perhaps a bit more. Needless to say, the repair was expensive.

When the plumber cut away the sheet rock to expose the space under the hot water heater, I was at once amazed and mortified at the discovery.  The sight was, for my struggle, the equivalent of finding WMDs in Iraq. Like the Hebrews at Mossad, or the Rohirrim at Helms Deep, or even the Viennese anticipating the advancing Ottoman armies; there at the gates, laying siege to my fortress, was the siege-works of a mighty colony of ants. This colony of mighty ant warriors consumed nearly half the space in the chamber below our hot water heater with their mound. Only ten feet from the heart of our home, from the room we hold most dear - the kitchen.

But God does work in mysterious ways. For you see, the cold weather that caused the leak in our hot water pipe was the end of that ant colony stealthily positioned at our gates. The hot water scalded and killed the furtive formicidae. This further proves my thesis that God is constantly mocking us. Since I had prayed that He would rid our home of ants and He chose a busted pipe as the answer. I am constantly amazed at His creativity in answering prayers.

I must commend my enemy, though; he took great risk to life and limb, staked out a position that I would be most unlikely to discover, and raided our stores unmercifully. But for a busted pipe, his stealth would have remained beyond my gaze and beyond the targeting of my weapons.

The war has just intensified, however, as I have learned more of my enemy's methods. The challenge for the spring offensive will be to find new methods and new weapons to infiltrate their hidden habitat.

Enough already!

I hate snow. Alright, not the snow so much, but what the snow leaves behind.

Late last week we received about 12 inches of snow. By my measurement, at least 9 inches of that snow accumulated. The snow made for great fun for the whole family in the form of snowball fights, building snowmen, making snow ice cream, etc.

But that was four days ago. Today we have the remnants. The accumulated snow has left us with a sodden legacy. Where we once had a beautiful blanket of snow, the likes of which have not been seen in these parts in over 30 years, we now have a muddy marsh for a lawn.

The dogs track in mud, the kids track in mud, I track in mud, and somehow the mud has found its way onto the paved parts of our property. Even when we remove our shoes before entering, we manage to still track in mud because our socks have somehow become contaminated with the stuff.

I became aware of the problem of the mud when, as my inner Hazel came out, I was mopping the floor, I saw doggie mud prints everywhere. The doggie mud prints were on the hardwoods, on the area rugs, under the area rugs, on the coffee table (I don't even want to know how), and of course, on the couch.

Just to make sure I really hate the residual effects of snow, God has decided to taunt us with the possibility of more snow tonight. Oh, joy!

It could be worse, though. I could be one of those people that bases their environmentalism on the premise of global warming. I wonder what kind of internal conflict must those folks be going through?

Breakfast with my son

It's basketball season and both my boys are playing basketball. One practices on Monday and Wednesday mornings, the other practices on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I've drawn the short straw and bring them to practice every morning. On Tuesday and Wednesday, they both have to get up early because Mom has to go into work. So the one without a basketball practice has lunch with me. :-)

This morning was Tommy's turn to have lunch with his dad. We went to Another Broken Egg Cafe. Nick and I had been last week, so I knew what to expect, but this was Tommy's first trip.

While you can't see it in the picture, Another Broken Egg Cafe has double-thick bacon. His eyes nearly bulged out of his head when he saw them. The pancake he ordered was as big as his plate. Add a side of fruit, and we ended the morning with a very satiated young man. My teenager met his match, unable to finish his one pancake.

I just hope, with his overfull belly, he will be able to stay awake for his midterm exams today.

Crock Pot, meet Venison Roast

Sue asked me to clear the freezer of some of our "old meat" because she used some freezer-burned ground turkey for chili and it just tasted wrong.

Now this is a challenge I can deal with. We have a freezer full of venison from last year's hunt. The boys killed three deer in a matter of minutes.  I gave one deer to my father-in-law, and put two of them in my freezer.

On Sunday I took two small roasts out of the freezer and placed them in the refrigerator to defrost. Venison pot roast was officially on the schedule for Tuesday's dinner.

The first step is critical, so pay attention.

1. Tuesday morning I had bacon for breakfast.  
2. Also on Tuesday morning I rubbed the roasts down with a spice rub.  I used pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, a touch of salt and some Italian herbs like thyme, oregano and basil.
3. In the leftover bacon grease I seared the meat in the pan with the bacon grease.
4. I put two cans of french onion soup in the crock pot. I like to set my slow cooker to cook for 10 hours, because it makes the meat more tender. I placed the seared roasts in the slow cooker.  [Make sure the liquid covers the roast. You may need to add water to make that happen.]
5. With about 3 hours left to cook, I added some potatoes and some baby carrots along with more seasoning like black and red pepper.
6. With about 2 hours left, I added one can of cream of mushroom soup and mixed it in really well. You can also add some whole or sliced mushrooms at this time.
7. When you have about 30 minutes left consider adding some peas. You need your greens after all. Unfortunately, I didn't have any.
   

The meat just fell apart at the prodding of a fork. I may need to use just a little more salt, though, so the meat accepts more of the other seasoning through the process of osmosis.

Nevertheless, we had some happy boys Tuesday night.

Under the Weather Dinner or No More Turkey

I have not been feeling well for the past week.  A nasty cough with some congestion really slowed me down for the long Thanksgiving weekend. I am so ready for this illness thing to be over!

So yesterday, while surfing the net between plays during the Colts-Texans game, I discovered this article, "Study: Antibacterial spices explain why some like it hot." About 5 paragraphs in, the author identified the spices most effective in fighting bacteria. They included garlic, onions, and chilies. Sounds like Cajun cuisine to me!

I wanted something fairly easy, fairly quick, and VERY spicy. My first thought: Shrimp Creole.

1. I chopped some onion, celery, garlic and mushrooms:

2. Then I cooked these down in butter

3. When it looked like this:

     I added a can of these:

4. Added these spices:

5. I cooked this mixture for about 20 minutes til it looked like this:

5. Added a pound of shrimp:

6. Served it up over some rice.

Jealous?

Happy Thankgsgiving Day

I had to go to Walmart today to get a couple of things for our Thanksgiving dinner today.  One of the things I had to get was all the way in the back of the store, so I had the pleasure of walking all the way through the Super Walmart. I was struck by something I saw in the store; and by what I did not see.

Super Walmart on Thanksgiving Day was very busy, but nearly all the shoppers had something in common: they were people of color. Everywhere I looked I saw brown and black faces. Even the people working at Walmart were mostly people of color.

Then it occurred to me, that the Latinos in the store (especially those first generation immigrants) don't celebrate Thanksgiving. Why would they? Thanksgiving is an almost exclusively American holiday. For all those in this country from Mexico and points south, they have no frame of reference for Thanksgiving Day.

The folks in the store of African descent, Thanksgiving Day must represent something quite the opposite of what Americans of European descent. It was the first Thanksgiving that eventually led to the slave trade. Like our Latino neighbors, those of African descent do not have the same frame of reference for Thanksgiving as white Americans, and, in fact, it could be that Thanksgiving Day has a negative association with their ancestral memory.

I give thanks that we are blessed to be in a country with such a diverse collection of cultural traditions and memories.