colorado here we come

I may not be able to fix my swamp cooler but I was finally able to fix my upstairs shower head which was leaking. I did that because I'm going to have visitors! My Aunt Sarah and her husband are coming into town in July. She's a jock and just had knee replacement surgery (overall she's happy with the reduction of pain but not as excited about not being able to play volleyball and basketball anymore).

My Aunt Sarah wrote:

I am finally taking a vaca after 2 years of hard work. We are coming to your state, despite the fires, and will be near to Denver. We were wondering if you would like a visit from the clan ( Dave and me)? Our very good friends have a place in Walsenburg that DIDN'T burn-up, thank goodness, and we will spend most of our time thereabouts. We had planned on camping on their mountain property, that DID burn-up, but those plans have ,naturally ,changed. We are pretty flexible, if you want us. We leave Louisville on Friday, July 5 and don't return until the 15th. We could drive in to take you to dinner, or we could just stay for a day- whatever. Don't feel obligated- we just thought we'd like to see you, and the now famous kitchen renovation. We could talk string -theory, knee replacements, park development, Mars rover, the role of exercise in fighting addiction, etc.. Just let us know what you think.

 I wrote:

Yes, a visit sounds great! I just looked and Walsenburg is about 2 1/2 hours from Denver so if you guys want to stay here I have a guest bedroom. My cooking skills haven't really improved but there's plenty of places to eat within walking distance of my house.

I'm not traveling much these days and will be around for the time you're here so any time you guys want to come is great! If you're interested I live about 3 miles from the Denver Botanic Gardens which are fantastic if you like that sort of thing...

(I haven't been to the Denver Botanic Gardens with company since before christmas...I love the DBG so I try to get people to go with me when I have them captive - I mean, when they're visiting me)

She wrote:

Oh goodie! We will be consulting with our friends to see how they want to arrange things. I think we should head straight into Denver, then go to Walsenburg, but Dave thinks breaking things up in the middle of our stay with our buddies would be a smarter way to go...we don't want our friends to get too sick of us. We could make you sick instead!

I am approaching this whole trip with wide open arms and no expectations, just needing a change of scenery and getting out of Dodge...  I haven't been to Denver in 29 years! Some "gentle" mountain hiking would be welcome- NOT like you and your Dad are famous for. I would enjoy the Botantical Gardens or any other site-seeing that is within walking distance. After 22 hours in a car, I will be ready for walking, biking, swimming, hiking etc.

Psyched! Wonder if I can talk them into doing some climbing...

dear swamp cooler: you are an asshole

I keep doing things, like rubberizing the pan, to keep my swamp cooler from breaking. But the fucking thing keeps breaking.

There's no way it can leak anymore, like it used to, because the pan has 5 coats of rubber on it. I just replaced the belt and the water pump (in a thunder storm, which, in retrospect, wasn't very smart), so those can't break. The main pulley was welded and reinforced so it should last forever.

I think the problem is the belt replacement. The belt is obviously tighter than the old one (which was barely holding together). At first everything was fine and then last Monday I woke up at 5 am because my swamp cooler sounded like a 747 taking off on my roof. Someone with proper tools and a knack with engines came over and did some work on it and it was fine. Then I turned it off on Thursday. Friday it was fine but this morning it was making a racket again. I tried tightening shit and lubricating shit but nothing is working.

the asshole

So now I've decided to just hire someone to fix it. I give up. I think the pulley is out of alignment and it wasn't obvious with the old belt because the old belt was so loose. I have no idea how to realign a pulley. Of course, I've called a couple of places this morning and apparently a lot of people have broken swamp coolers and ACs. Hopefully someone will call me back before the summer is over.

Every time I think I'm done with projects in my house something always seems to break...

highs and lows

A friend of mine has a daughter who has just released her first album, called "highs and lows":

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/highs-lows/id628052295






He wrote:

"As a Dad it is wonderful to watch one of her dreams come true.  I recall her at home when her legs wouldn't touch the floor sitting on the piano bench and picking out melodies with one finger on the piano.  She's written 100s of songs over the years as this gift in her has grown.   Great to see it result in something of this quality that can be shared with others."

Nice to see kids doing something besides shooting up schools or bombing shit. Check it out!

chicago

I flew to Chicago on Tuesday to pretend to be a sales person so I could go to a conference and see Soldier Field.

I like going to baseball stadiums when no one is there.

They were doing a tour of Soldier Field but that sounded boring so instead I met my friend Trina (the creepy foot doctor) for drinks.

I'm hunching weirdly because I'm almost 6 feet tall in my sandals.

Trin's husband Todd is going to make me biscuits and gravy next time I come here since this was a very short trip.

climbing the catslab and the floating shit show

On Saturday I went climbing in clear creek canyon. Fun!

I'll wake up early for overhangs.

Point where I realized I was off route and had to move left a few feet. Fuuuuuck.

Then later in the day the fun hog and I went out on his boat, which, it turns out, was tied up to two other boats, forming what the fun hog called "the floating shit show".

Drunk cops + dog + "there's fucking kids on the boat???" + teenage girl in a bikini + other boats with girls in bikinis sailing by + boat drinks (3 olives grape vodka and diet soda - too disgusting to drink unless you're the popo) + cooler filled with beers and tzatziki + T'Pain "I'm on a boat" = the floating shit show

annie oakley

This weekend the "fun hog" (so called because no matter how much fun you're having, he's having more fun - some how he's made a career out of always being on vacation somewhere cool doing something fun like a hut trip or dirt biking in Moab). We were checking out a new mountain biking / dirt biking / climbing area.

The climbing area was closed. The mountain biking was epic, but fun. Even more fun was being on relatively deserted BLM land where we could shoot guns.

It looks like an elephant gun, but it's not. I'm just small compared to the gun.

I accidentally screwed up the scope by knocking it around with my armpit while I was trying to cock the gun so we took it off.

I managed to hit this bottle cap from 30 feet away first try. Then I drank more beer and couldn't hit small stuff anymore. I don't think it was the beer. It's my bad jew eyes.

Text to my dad:
"Drinking beer and shooting shit. Target practice with dinner plates!"

His reply:
"Beats having to clean up the plates!"

Safety and efficiency are my motto.

more mazatlan pics

I will be writing more about my trip, but in the mean time I've had some requests for pictures...

Crashing through the white water to get out to the break at Olas Altos...

Most of the time you don't want to be surfing the white water.

Gross. These jelly fish showed up in the afternoon almost every day. Miraculously I did not get stung.

Part of the historic district of Mazatlan, as seen from Olas Altos.

This is sort of what it looks like while paddling out to the surf break. But scarier. I almost drowned just trying to get out to the break.

This isn't even the big gun. Imagine me trying to get this thing out through the break.

"Hey, I think there's someone with a hat who might want to buy another hat!"

P discovered my kryptonite. I am a total neat freak but for some reason I always ended up a sandy mess. No matter how often I rinsed my feet or shook out my clothes I ended up covered in sand. The nickname for the Mazaloans is "pata salada", sandy feet. So I guess I must have some Mazaloan blood in me somewhere...

I LOVE mangos!!!! These awesome mangos were carved out by the mango man at Playa Bruia and they're covered in chili sauce. SO GOOD.

Mangos post consumption. Those cookies are from the Playa Bruia restaurant. They were presented to P and I with a flourish which implied they were tasty. They actually tasted like sand and sugar. I'm imagining the mango pit on the left saying to the mango pit to the right "hm, I wonder where these cookies came from." Kind of like my room service art.

Best happy hour is on top of the best western. Beautiful balcony, amazing view, but the elevator doesn't go up there so it's not overly crowded.

Cotton candy, yum!!!! And some idiotic german kids. The girl in the pic above kept striking poses on the beach. Did she think she looked cool?

My birthday dinner was here. The inside of this restaurant is a huge courtyard. Very beautiful. The food was fucking great.

Mexican divorce? This guy is burying his wife in the sand.

My mom was asking about my pink hat. I got it at REI and it's for children 4 - 7 years old. I have a really small head.

Stone Island

The first day in Mazatlan P and I went to Stone Island to watch a surfing comp. We were accompanied by Willy, a local Mazatloan. Since it's late in the season, and beach conditions were not conducive to swimming, there were few tourists. We only saw some from the shore, on a booze cruise boat.

Beach at Stone Island. It was the calmest beach, but not exactly conducive to wading and swimming.

None of the restaurants were open so Willy found a guy with a cooler and bought beer. We had pacificos, which have more alcohol in them there than in the US. They also taste better.

As we were walking to a restaurant to have some ceviche I hesitated by the side of the road and asked Willy "Is it legal for us to walk down the road drinking beer?"

He gave me a quizzical look, then said "Franki, everything is legal in Mexico".

Isla de Chivos

On Wednesday, my birthday, P and I went to Stone Island for my second day of surfing. I managed to get up on the board and ride a wave in which was awesome. As I was exiting the water a woman stopped me and congratulated me on my ride. And an older Mexican grandmother gave me a nod and a huge smile. Pretty cool.

epic surfing - olas altos

Note to self: surfing during hurricane conditions is challenging

More updates on my vacation to follow. Here's a vid of the surfing conditions at Olas Altos:

And here's surfing conditions at Playa Bruia:

Mazatlan (can't make the thing over the last "a")

Ever wake up and think to yourself  "I'm fucking tired and burned out and need a vacation and I'm turning 43 next week and still don't know how to fucking surf"?

Me too.

That's why I decided on Thursday to go to Mazatlan to learn to surf. I'm leaving tomorrow. Luckily my manager and projects I'm supporting took the news well - normally I have to schedule vacation 6 months in advance. One project manager sent me an email that said "Look out sharks! Franki + surfboard = shark injury".

Ha. Ha. Ha. It's not easy being an uncoordinated jew.

I realized talking to my friend Cam last night that the last vacation I took where I didn't do any work related stuff was December 2000. But, I was on crutches and had just had knee surgery so it wasn't a super great vacation.

In other news I decided to buy a bathing suit since I don't have one and they're kind of critical to laying on the beach and looking good. I let Kristin at swim n sport talk me into buying a bikini (Cherry Creek mall, she is so awesome - figured out first try what size I needed and I bought the first thing I tried on). I have never, ever, worn a bikini. Chaos may ensue. But it's cute, hot pink with little ruffly flowers on it (I didn't buy this bottom though, I got this one).

I look like a fucking birthday cake, fuck yeah!!!!

My manager from two companies ago died unexpectedly of a heart attack on Tuesday. He was just a few years older than me, in great shape, and the day before he died we were exchanging emails about doing a century bike ride together in California (I'd like to think I was somewhat of an influence on his daughter, who is studying engineering).

Life is short. Fuck it. Take a vacation.

oops, got my aspie score wrong

This is the result of an aspie test a doctor had me take after a woman in my writing group, who's writing a book about asperger's, suggested I might have it:

I should never tell my friends I'm an aspie

Asperger's. Yeah. Great for engineering work. Not so great when you have friends and you read their emails really fast.

Friend:
Don't read the text, just quickly look at the picture and answer the question if which chocolate bar you would give the kid.

 

Me:
I picked the milky way. Don't know why. I think they're gross. Actually, the midnight ones aren't bad. But that puffy crap freaks me the fuck out. What is that puffy crap? It's in snickers too.

Friend: 
You're not too far on the spectrum of Asp., they don't know which one the kid wants... From a book on decision making I"m reading.

Me:
So which one did the fucking kid want? If he wanted something else why is he looking at the milky way (weirdly, after you said I was wrong I looked at the pic again to see why I might have picked the milky way - I realized I hadn't looked at the kids face and was picking more due to the placement of the candy bars - but I must have subconsciously noticed him eying the milky way that he apparently doesn't want - fucking kids)? See, that's what's wrong with people. I would look at the candy bar I wanted. Doing anything else is illogical. Anyway, all those candy bars suck. I like gummi bears.

For the record, I'm a 220 out of 225 on the aspie scale and 25 out of 225 on the neuro normative scale. The doctor didn't believe me when I told him I was a consultant.

(note that I interpreted my friend's response as me picking the wrong candy bar for some reason - was distracted)

Friend:
You're good at hiding the differences.... That's from a cool book about decision making and how our heuristic processes work, cool.

Me:
But which candy bar was the right answer?????

You're killing me!

Friend:
You got it "right," the kids eyes were pointing toward it as you note!

(for some reason I interpreted the "" as not as right as I could have been) 

Me:

But it wasn't the right answer? What's the right answer?

Aaaaahhhh!!!

My friend has not responded. Maybe I drive my friends crazy.

flowers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ever since I moved into my place I've wanted to do a flower garden on the upstairs deck.

Done.

That only took 7 years. Sheesh.

I texted my dad because the line at home depot was insane. He told me that mother's day is the busiest day at home depot. Nice. Take your mom/wife to a hardware store on her big day.

Flowers in their planters. Not sure what's going on with flower number five from the end. It looks like it's retching. Too much to drink last night or maybe doesn't approve of my color scheme. I was in mad "just buy some shit and get the fuck out of here!!!!" mode so it wasn't until I got home that I really looked at what I bought.

There are some cool annuals. Can't believe I have to replant all this shit next year.

the BEST designer in the WORLD

I've teamed up with my kitchen designer Christine for my upstairs remodel. How awesome is she?

She's fucking awesome.

I wanted a vetrazzo slab for my upstairs bathroom to match the one in the downstairs bathroom. Of course I asked Christine to help me since she can do anything. At first she said I probably wouldn't be able to find a vetrazzo remnant. Then I got an email from her:

I saw these today and snapped a picture, thought of you.  They are remnants, one is Vetrazzo, the other is the sister to the smiley face one that was discontinued.  

Not only did she find me a vetrazzo remnant, she found the EXACT one I wanted.

 THANK YOU CHRISTINE!!!!!!! BEST DESIGNER EVER!!!!!

it's all my fault

Tonight I was in a restaurant with my nephew and he drew the following cartoon (based in part on drama because my sister put her dog in the car while we ate and my niece was worried about him - I tried to assure her that the dog would be fine and was probably driving around looking for a gas station). It's hard to read so I added captions (he drew it on the table in the restaurant):

"One day Aunt Franki let Max (the dog) drive"

Max: I'm going to a gas station, Me (off panel): OK

"He hot wires the car and drives to Washington State" (we're in Virginia, this is a map with the dotted line showing Max's trip cross country)

"Crash!" (obviously, because dogs can't drive)

I'm to the right of the panel saying "I thought you said you were going to a gas station!" Max is to the left saying "In Washington".

My sister is depicted to the left freaking out that Max has wrecked the car. She pointed out that she is drawn with abnormally long arms when in fact I'm the one with abnormally long arms. Max is in the middle saying "Aunt Franki did it!" I'm that potato shaped character to the right (for the record, I am NOT potato shaped) saying "Hey!"

me: How come you drew me in the shape of a potato?
my nephew: I like french fries.

Oh.

I ended the evening by climbing into the trunk of my dad's car because I was pretending to be a dead body in the trunk. My niece and nephew were very amused, the people in the parking lot were confused, and I ended up feeling car sick because I rode the whole way home in the trunk because I couldn't get it open to get out after I climbed in.

chocolate cheese cake

I made a chocolate cheese cake that was awesome. And I made it by hand with a mixer that will probably give me carpal tunnel.

Looks like dog shit. Tastes good.

And my dad really IS trying to learn how to cook. Or is pretending to so I will watch these vids on learning how to cook:

Learning to cook. Right after I finish my course on meteorology.

I remade the cheesecake at my rents' house today. Too bad we couldn't figure out how to reduce the power in the microwave to melt the chocolate properly. There were lumps of it in the cheesecake where it hadn't melted properly. Fuck. My dad tasted it and was like "Hm. It tastes like chocolate."

Perhaps he doesn't trust me after I bought him an overly large cart for his birthday. The cart he bought is to the right. The one I bought is to the left. Yeah, it's big.

can I babysit your dog?????

No beers were harmed in the taking of this picture.

"I'll just have a tiny piece of cheesecake"

Everyone's afraid to eat anything I cook now after my last batch of egg rolls disintegrated in the refrigerator and after I accidentally cooked a steak in my slow cooker for 2 days thinking that would make it even more tender.

When I removed the springform the cheese cake poofed out like a fat woman taking off a girdle. I think it's supposed to do that but perhaps it seemed unsettling to people who were offered a piece. That's the raspberry sauce with chambord in the back...

Smallest. Piece. Ever.

For the record, it was good. And my dad has been watching the food network because he thinks if I can learn to cook he can too.

I may have died and gone to hell this weekend (and by hell I mean IKEA)

That's my belief, anyway, if for no other reason than I had to put together an IKEA bookshelf. You know, the one with the weird instructions where the thing that looks like a tear drop with eyes is calling the IKEA hot line and where you have to line up like 12 screws to put on the side of the book shelf and they don't line up and then you drop the bookshelf on your toe which really hurts because the fucking thing weighs 75 lbs. Which you know because the guy in the IKEA loading zone told you as he was watching you struggle to lift it and put it into your car and then he goes "I could have helped you with that" and you don't even respond to him because you're pissed that the most important part of the bookshelf, the casters, were sold out and you watched a couple take the last set from the far end of the IKEA furniture pickup warehouse. When you checked on line the hour before there were 8 sets left.

For real. They sold out in 45 minutes?

I should have known better. I haven't been to IKEA since I was almost killed by one of their closets in NYC.

BTW, the IKEA here doesn't have cookies. What's up with that?

As I was struggling with my bookshelf I started thinking it would be really funny if that 70 virgins waiting in heaven for matyrs was a typo and when they die and get to where ever they're going they instead have to put together 70 pieces of IKEA furniture. For the record, the arabic word (one of them) for virgin is "baakira". I could see how someone not paying attention could translate "virgin" instead of "IKEA".

lemon curd cheesecake, engineer style

Today I decided to make a "healthy cheesecake" recipe (cheesecake with lemon curd) because I feel I'm neglecting my new kitchen and the dinners I've made so far have been, for the most part, inedible.

Anyway, who doesn't love dessert.

For the record I've never had cheesecake because I'm allergic to it.

Ready to start cooking! That red thing in the back is my new mixer. I was going to buy a mixer with the bowl and shit attached but the italian, who went shopping with me because he knows I can't really cook, said "why don't you buy the $20 mixer, and it you find you really like mixing shit, you can buy the $300 mixer." He also made sure I got a spring form pan. I thought "spring form" was a brand name, so if he hadn't been with me I would have screwed that up. He also showed me how to work it.

So far so good. Crust.

They left the part out in the directions about moving your wine glass away from the mixer when mixing the heavy cream. Splatters. I drank it anyway because I read somewhere the best chefs drink while cooking.

The "cheese" part of the cheesecake. It's just cream cheese and heavy whipping cream and some other shit. How hard can that be? I tasted it and it tasted pretty good.

Broke my lemon squeezer thing making lemon juice for the lemon curd. Guess I'm working out too much.

To make the lemon curd that goes on top of the cheesecake required a double boiler, which I don't have. So I rigged this up - a glass bowl in a pot that has some boiling water in it. Recipe for disaster? Maybe. No. Probably.

 Also, the directions said to cook the curd until it was the consistency of Hollandaise sauce. Since I've never had Hollandaise sauce I had no idea what that meant. I mean, who orders eggs with egg sauce on them? Meta egg sauce... Anyway, I texted the italian, and then called him when he didn't respond to my text. Surprisingly he answered even after the prank fart gone wrong. He was drinking with a cop friend of his in a bar so the conversation went something like this:

me: Hey, how thick is Hollandaise sauce?
Italian: You mean Hollandaise sauce?
me: Fucking however you say it. How thick is it?
Italian: It's definitely sticky.
me: Not STICK, THICK.
Italian: Why? What are you up to now?
me: I'm making a lemon curd and it has to be as thick as Hollandaise sauce and I don't know how thick that is.
Italian: A lemon TURD?
me: CURD!
Italian: Jesus! A lemon curd? WHY are you doing THAT?
me: For the cheesecake. With lemon curd sauce on top.
Italian: I'm not eating any of that.
me: Fine. But how thick is it?
Italian: It should pour off the spoon at the consistency of a millimeter* (obscured due to bar noises) and the spoon will (obscured due to bar noises).
me: What?
Italian: Pour it off a spoon and when (obscured due to bar noises) the spoon will have (obscured due to bar noises).
me: MY CURD MAY BE BEING RUINED! IT'S ON THE STOVE! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! HOW THICK IS HOLLANDAISE SAUCE????
Italian: Like syrup.

Feh.

So the lemon curd eventually gelled or what ever the fuck it's supposed to do (I hope). Then I realized, reading the directions (should not do real time cooking) that I needed a fine mesh screen to pour the curd through. Fuck. I briefly considered cleaning the screens of one of my windows and then remembered I had a flour sifter.

Problem solved? Maybe. At least some shit collected at the bottom of the sifter. Think that's a good sign.

The cheesecake is currently in my refrigerator "setting". I might be able to get someone to eat it. I've decided to make a raspberry sauce to go over the top of it. With lots of alcohol in it.

Bet the italian will have a piece if I offer it to him after he's been drinking. And who doesn't like sauce with alcohol in it?

Stay tuned...


*the italian is an engineer