J and Highway Driving

For the past couple of months I have been teaching J how to drive. She has come a long way and gotten really good at driving on city roads.

Originally I got J started learning how to drive with my old PS2, a steering and pedal controller and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. This actually worked amazingly well. The steering with the controller was quite realistic which got her up to speed really quickly. Although I am not sure I should of had her train on a game where the whole point is to speed and out run the cops. I guess I will count any other extra skills J picked up as a bonus :p.

Today I let J drive on the highway for the first time. She did pretty good. She wasn't used to going that fast and was white knuckling it the entire time which was kind of to be expected.

I think the more I let her drive on the highway the more I think she will get used to the speed.

I'm pretty proud of how J has progressed in her driving in such a short period of time :).

Fajita Sunday :)

Today is Fajita Sunday. J and I were inspired by J's birthday dinner at Escalante's and decided to see if we could hack the sizzling fajita recipe.

Hacking recipe's is one of our favorite past times. We'll go to a restaurant, have a bunch of dishes and invariably either J or I will say "I bet we could hack this". About 90% of the time we are able to completely hack the recipe (and a lot of the time we can make it even more awesome). The internet does help a lot though, there are lots of recipe hackers online.

So yesterday J and I went out and got the ingredients that we needed to make sizzling fajitas. When we got back we marinated the beef and made our own guacamole (mmmmmmhhhhhhhh yummy). We let the beef marinate over night.

Anyways enough about the details here is the finished product :).

Oh boy that was so good. Not quite Escalante's good but getting there. I think in about two or three more iterations we should have it perfected :D.

Hurricane Beef Jerky

J and I have been working on getting ready for hurricane season here in southern Texas. Everyone we know has been saying "This will be the worst hurricane season ever". I'm not sure if I believe them so far the weather has been great, but its still early in the season.

Anyways J and I have picked up a bunch of bottled water. We still need to get candles though we've been a bit lazy on that front. We thought we would be creative about non perishable foods to get us through power outages. I came up with the idea of making beef jerky in our oven. We don't need no stinking dehydrator :p.

We got 6.11 pounds of beef shank, cut them up into thin strips and marinated them overnight last Saturday. On Sunday we placed the beef on cookie trays using cookie racks and put them in the oven.

In the end we got about three pounds of beef jerky.

Unfortunately we made the hurricane beef jerky sooooo good that between the two of us it didn't even last one week :(. But that's okay because it just means that we have to make some more :D.

Sherlock Holmes and Following Your Dreams

I finished reading the first Sherlock Holmes book A Study in Scarlet. I didn't think I would relate to Sherlock Holmes' character, but I really did. All the movies I've seen have really mangled his character. Generally I expect movies to mangle any character that came from a novel or comic book. This happens to movies based on Marvel comics all the time :(.

The story was exciting and intriguing. I found that I couldn't put the book down. There were several places where I was thinking to myself, "How could Holmes know that?". Of course it was all logically explained and made perfect sense in the end.

The things that struck me about his character which I could relate to was that he was a scientist and that he literally created his own profession despite his colleges thinking that he was mad. Which is pretty cool.

I fancy myself to be a scientist. I find myself most in my element when I am researching something that interests me. Sometimes the funnest thing to do is to find a paper on a cool topic, reproducing the results, and then tinkering with it (hopefully expand on it and make it better). Or coming up with an idea and trying it out. The journey is the biggest reward in both of the above cases and when you are successful at it nothing beats that feeling of satisfaction.

When Watson first met Holmes at the hospital chemist lab, Holmes had just succeeded in one of his experiments and was overjoyed and that is when I started to relate to the character.

A good portion of the first few chapters of the book are about Watson trying to figure out what Holmes does for a living. Watson during these parts describes Holmes as having a wealth of knowledge in several different fields and without having a complete set of skills for any particular profession that he could think of. Later in the book Holmes reveals to Watson that he is a consulting detective. He claims that he is the only one in the world and that he made up the profession.

I really like the idea of people following their dreams and trying to make a living at what they like to do. I think nowadays too many people do things simply for money, which isn't wrong in itself, but I really think you should have joy in what you do.

My field is computer science and I really enjoy programming and certain areas of computer science are exceptionally fun. CS is a field that you have to enjoy working in. If you get into it solely for money you will want to get out of it really quick. It is hard but that is what makes it rewarding.

Like Holmes I am aspiring to create my own niche. I have my own set of goals that want to fullfil. You only live once and if you never try things when opportunities present themselves you'll end up regretting it. Right now I am aiming to live my life well and without regrets :D. Right now like Holmes, I am following my dreams :D.

My Mom's an Awesome Scrapbooker

This week J and I celebrated our 5th year anniversary :). We've been together for a total of 7 wonderful years now.

Every special occasion it seems my Mom will make a card for it. I believe she started scrap booking just over 4 years ago. She started out like I think most scrapbookers do with special papers and stamps. Since then she has really worked her way up. This is the card that she sent J and I for our anniversary.

Pretty cool, huh?

Quick Updates

Finally got a family doctor. He seems like a nice guy though a little eccentric. Asked me what I thought about Canada patrolling the Arctic. I have a policy to not get involved in politics of pretty much any sort mostly because I could honestly care less. Anyways my doc is all shook up about it (shrug).

Saturday was busy with grocery shopping and miscellaneous errands. Sunday J's friend N came over. I drove them to the biggest mall in town and dropped them off. They had a girls shopping thing. While they did that I spent time hacking away on the computer.

Picked them up a couple of hours later. N bought J and I some hot chocolate at the Barnes & Noble. Browsed around there for a bit. J bought me the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes (volumes 1 & 2) which was pretty rocking.

We got back home and invited N for dinner. We all had wontons and had a fun evening :D.

J's Birthday Celebration

During the week J and I celebrated her birthday. In the morning I walked J out the bus stop and waited with her until her bus arrived. After she was gone I got busy getting everything ready for the celebration.

J got me this really cool card for my birthday so I was determined not be out done. Man, there seems to be very limited selection for wife's BDay cards. There was what seemed to be an almost limitless section for mothers though. I was there for nearly half an hour before I found a Mickey and Mini birthday card that was just right.

I also got some roses then picked up some Coke in a bottle (imported from Mexico), some chips, birthday candles and some matches :). I then went to the bakery across the street and got J a triple fudge birthday cupcake. J said she didn't want a cake because she is on a diet, but she said nothing about a cupcake :p.

I went to pick J up from work and we headed to a Tex-Mex restaurant called Escalante's. They served freshly made tortilla chips with salsa that was soooo good. We ordered sizzling fajitas and shrimp/beef kabobs. We ate the chips while waiting for the meal and they replaced the half-full ones with fresh ones. When the meal came we just devoured it. When we were done we were both slumped back in our booth sipping the Coke that they kept refilling feeling wow. We were so stuffed. If you have ever seen Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle you know the ending where Harold and Kumar totally felt satisfied with their meal. That's the exact same feeling J and I had after leaving Escalante's.

I had planned on giving the cupcake to J right after we got back, but being as stuffed as we were I decided it best to wait. My sis M and our friend S called us to wish J a happy birthday. A half an hour later I had M and S sing happy birthday to J as I brought out the birthday cupcake with a candle for J.

I will never forget the beaming smile J had. It was all worth the effort. Happy Birthday my sweetums!