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climbing class

potty training

fall break summation

mexico preparation

James throws a massive tailgating party every year for his beloved Sooners vs. Longhorns game. The one and only upside of Beckie traveling 3-4 days a week for work is that I can cut out guilt-free. The game started at 9am on Saturday, the brisket had been baking since the day before, so I rode out 30 miles to East Mesa at 9pm Friday, arriving in time to partay mostly non-stop til the next afternoon when Beckie and the kids picked me up. and ate, and swam, and tailgated themselves.

Long night rides across the Valley are deep and dark and mind-opening, stealthy spins across the grid and the grain of your angst and issues. When I finally landed at James’ I looked like Tron and felt peaceful.

On McDowell road near Val Vista in Mesa (a decent neighborhood),i got tagged by a couple dooshbags in a lifted light-colored pickup. I heard a loud rumble and realized i was not hurt and watched cups roll off my shoulder and into the street. Good shot fellas, you nailed my helmet.  Seriously, thank you for hitting my best-protected spot. My next reaction after  was ‘cool a car actually saw me!’

I never thought about catching them cause it was pointless, and other than a little wet i wasn’t hurt. I laughed, i suffer so much on a long ride and have so many injuries from falls…90 minutes in and a little ice didn’t even make me lose cadence. As i spun on i thought what if i caught up to them or i was packing, and then realized in AZ its just as likely the other guy is packing too.  If I’d been hurt I probably would feel differently, but all I wanted was to get off the road, cause i started thinking now they’re emboldened and might come back. Fighting a car-full of dudes was equally stupid.  I passed a Mesa cop 3 miles later and told him what happened, thinking maybe they will still be in the area. What else was i gonna do?  jic the jerks picked up their pace as the night went on…maybe he’d see the truck and be aware of them. Mostly i’m glad that in all my years riding this is the worst I’ve had yet.

I arrived to a beer and a shot and The Man in full swing. Apparently the Meat needs towel service.

I woke up 8am, i have no idea when we slept, i was so disoriented and drunk i grabbed a bloody mary and jumped on the bike for a 45 min sanity spin around Las Sendas. I repeated later when the game became a blowout and my rhythm got antsy. Mid-day golf-course tresspassery, the Valley in the background, James’ absconded bike in the fore, Security chasing me on riders’ left. They’re hard to see in the pic, but they are there . dumb slow fockers .

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Finally, The Meat was ready.

Sunday i was very weary. Beckie schemastizized, and it was brilliant. All of us with Kila on bikes to the Library, Horizon Park, Cold Stone, then home.

Kila enjoying Tuc Fxs Leftovers.

Cybrothavan Cat left us 2 dead scorpions on the kitchen floor this week.  I felt compelled to get in the game.

The timing of the invite was truly regrettable.  There is no going back with fish, and i really need to share this.

Drawing on my expertise as a Master Salsatian, i attempted ceviche. Results: DELICIOUS!

Recipe:

• 2 lbs mexican red snapper (aka, rockfish, ~$2.6/lb) that’s been frozen in a tupperware for a month
• 2 red bell peppers
• 1 very hot yellow paper, who’s name i do not know. Hispanic grocers assume the names are known to you. It is right next to the jalapenos and cayennes.
• 1 large red onion. definitely red is better than white, and never do yellow in something not cooked
• half a bunch of cilantro
• 3 med tomatos
• some salt
• some sweet’n'low
• juice from 3 lemons, and 1.5 bags of Mexican limes

1. Leave fish out overnight. This avoids having to quick thaw it using hot water and a tupperware. Don’t worry, the cooking process is to immerse the meat in citric acid and sear the flesh into an edible pate. Chop into 3/8th inch cubes, an ideal size for flesh-immolation and chemical burning

2. Buy a juicer. Squeezing fruit by hand is an eye-risk and leaves seeds randomly in a 20 foot radius. Unless you are looking to build hand-strength, or finger strength squeezing 50 half tinyLimes.

3. Cover fish in citrus juice, refrigerate for about 8 hours, stir often. Fish should turn deathly-white and exude a fine bouillabaisse  of lime-juice and sushi.

4. Chop up everything else, very small. Except the things that should be chopped super-duper tiny. Size matters. Anything fresh will be great in salsa, but a dip requires an upper boundary of corn-kernelesque, and a lower boundary of pasty but not watery.

5. Throw it in and chill for another hour or 2.

its hard to go wrong that way, though. Its like sherry cream sauce. Have you ever had anything with sherry cream sauce that didn’t turn you into a ravenous zombie?

I took everything left in the fridge that would sustain the grill: an eggplant, a head of cauliflower, 2 turnips that lasted nearly 2 months, 2 hearty-sized grey squash, a big fat onion, and 2 batch green onions. sprinkle in the chorizo. A full-boar 10 min start on the grill, followed by about 45 min of low heat with 1 cup water poured into the pan 2x. Add green onions and cheese for 5 min on no-heat at the end.

OMFG!

Let me preface by thanking and praising both Monsters for a 0 Meltdown Day. In fact, a 0 Meltdown Weekend, even with all the goings-ons. Such temptation, such fortitude — you make me love you so much more when you are not high-maintenance prima donna J-los  I will further extol their virtues on having no epic cleaning catastrophes.  Alana set that bar high last week with some nail polish.

Hooray! The Easter Bunny!

What, no chocolate bunnies?
no joke – i’m aghast at her sense of entitlement

Most eggs miraculously survived Alanazilla’s clutches, and ended up only mildly brutalized in a vat of dye. Hangover-rattling bouts of smacking her paws away saved the bulk of the dye from disaster. When she complained that her eye was stinging and her hands were dirty, Beckie and I laughed and laughed.

there were some rides and some bouncy-houses and time on the porch.

dinner worked out well too. acorn squash stuffed with apples, raisins, onions and syrup. butternut squash, onions, peppers, and chorizo. artichoke.

chorizo when used judiciously, is the Rosetta Stone. As omnipotent as mayonnaise or peanut butter or alfredo sauce.

i saved a bunch of stuff for donations to charities that I had already given to in 2010. Does that make me a bad person? another pillar of capitalist exploitative society?  Perhaps, but Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity got some decent chandeliers. Gifts of baby toys, computer parts and a pack’n'play to Boys&Girls Club and AZStrut could not get out of my trunk fast enough. I sold the Burley, and gave a nice marble slab to a buddy who promised to do something creative with it. its like the Israelis turning swampland into fields. There is finally no visible evidence of a move! the vast purging coincided with putting away Xmas. I love xmas, but it takes up a lot of space. My house has gained a room, a patio, a garage bay and a closet. and i got paid for it. Thank you Santa.

Hindsight would show this could have been avoided, especially with better foresight. But some things you can only learn from experience, like the sound of a tire shredding off your rim.

Apparently when the can of Fix-A-Flat says take your tire for professional repair, they mean it. However, it had been holding for a week, and showed no ill-effects driving around town the night before. When we first heard a rumble, Beckie pulled off the 101 and I checked the pressure, inspected the tire — all seemed good. 3 miles later the rumble got much much worse, and just as we entered the merge ramp from the 101 to the 202 it felt like we were rolling on a cinder block and Kenga ground to a halt.

Stuck at the apex of the turn of the merge lane form the 101 to the 202. Changing a tire on a truck is non-trivial, but not significant. In a parking lot. All I thought about were the stories every few months of someone creamed on the side of the highway, and unloading my children and my parents next to the jersey barrier while cars flew by at 75. Not. We shit bricks in the car with our seatbelts on waiting for help. 911 was barely worth my taxes, but after almost an hour AAA came through. Private enterprise trumps public services once again .

The tow-driver’s experience and a pneumatic jack had us off in about 10 min, I gave the guy a $20 for gratitude, and we still made it to Zoolights before 8. After about 30 minutes I got real tired and finally got a hit from the flask full of kahlua.

G was in awe of the mechanical giraffe talking with her, funnies thing since Zombieland