Hot and Spicy

I thought it would be appropriate to share something warm on this COLD, COLD day (it was 5 degrees when I woke up this morning!!). My office is on the ‘cooler’ side of the building and it was 66 degrees when I checked it at lunch (with the temperature set at 80!). The depressing thing is that the Conference room right next door is nice and warm. It really stinks when your fingers and feet are cold…..
But back to the Hot and Spicy topic….. my new favorite potato chip flavor is now Lays Barbecue Hot and Spicy:



Why the post on potato chips?? Background information - when I was in China, I got hooked on my hotel’s mini-bar offering of Pringles Hot and Spicy Potato Crisps:


Since vending machines haven’t made their debut in Nanchang, I would take the can with me to the Plant (along with a Diet Coke)to have as a mid morning snack. When I got back to the States, I searched for the same Hot and Spicy Pringles in the local supermarket. I get my hopes up when I see these Fiery Hot Crisps:


I think, Hey, the packaging looks very comparable......So, you would expect some really hot chips with a package like that - all of those flames - but no, they were incredibly disappointing! They just didn’t have the same kick as the Hot and Spicy ones. I do some searching on the Web and find out that the Hot and Spicy Pringles are only available overseas.

Then I discover the Lays potato chips and I will have to say that they are pretty good. Not so spicy that it is uncomfortable to eat them, but just enough heat to need some water (or Diet Coke) to cool the palette.

So warm your taste buds up this freezing day with some Lays KC Masterpiece Hot and Spicy Chips!

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First Snow of the Season

You know the drill - the weather forecasters predict severe weather and the media goes into a tizzy with their winter weather programs. Predictions of copious amounts of snow are stated every 15 minutes on the radio, and everyone heads out to the grocery store to stock up on milk and eggs. The kids start watching the Weather Channel and start asking “Have they canceled school tomorrow?”. We pull out last season’s snow boots, only to find that they are too small for Erica and try to console her (fortunately, her feet are almost as big as mine, so she can wear my snow boots). Their heads are now filled with visions of 12" of the white fluffy stuff and anxiously look outside for the first snowflakes.

Ah, but as I awoke at 6am on Thursday morning, the ground was a bit icy, and nothing was falling from the sky - not even rain. The kids don’t get up until 7am, and that was a good thing, because at 6am their hopes would have been dashed. But by 7am, there was almost an inch of white stuff on the ground and there was a veritable blizzard raging outside.

As expected, school was not canceled (I have been told that they haven’t canceled school in our town for snow in over 30 years), and we braved the elements. The kids did manage to play out in the snowstorm before we left for school.

The forecasters predicted 8-12", we received MAYBE 3". That’s about right proportion of hype to reality. Still, the kids enjoy any amount of snow and spent some time playing in it this morning:

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Log Cabin Outing - Nov 4

On November 4, we drove out to Indiana and spent the weekend with old friends at New Harmony State Park. Now, a weekend at a state park normally conjures up visions of camping, roughing it and communing with nature. However, in addition to the traditional campsites, the park has Family Cabins available, and that is what we and the two other families rented out. We were in Cabin 8 (or Cabin ‘ocho’ as Scott started calling it), with our friends in Cabins 3 and 4.

This “camping trip” has been an annual event for the past three years, but this was our first time participating. During the weekend, each family is responsible for hosting one of the meals, and the rest of the time is spent playing games, fishing, hiking, making campfires and generally hanging out (sounds like normal camping activities, eh).

Since this was our first time going to the State Park, we weren’t sure what to expect with respect to the Family Cabin accommodations. We had told Erica and Brian that we were going to a “cabin in the woods” and Brian automatically assumed that “Cabin” meant “Log Cabin”. In the days leading up to the trip, Brian hyped up our impending “Log Cabin Adventure” to all of his friends and teachers. We really didn’t expect authentic log cabins, so we continued to say to Brian “You know, it may not be a LOG cabin”, hoping not to disappoint him. So, imagine our surprise when we pull up to our cabin, and discover that it was indeed an authentic log cabin . Brian was so excited - he kept on touching the log walls.


The cabins has two bedrooms, a full bath, kitchen, great room and screened in porch - really not roughing it by any stretch of the imagination. In the kids’ bedroom, the immediate attraction are the two sets of bunk beds - each claimed the top portion of the beds and set up their sleeping bags (thank goodness there were two sets of beds - would hate to have to mediate the “who gets to sleep on top” argument).

Our first night was spent unpacking, having dinner with the W’s and enjoying the campfire Mr. Jeff built outside. The fire kept us nice and warm against the cold November night air. The mostly clear skies allowed the almost full moon to cast its cool glow on the campground.

Saturday arrived with sunny skies and fairly moderate temperatures. No, it wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t cold either. Our family (ie - yours truly) was responsible for the lunch meal. I prepared BBQ Beef brisket and Chinese Homestyle BBQ Pork. The Chinese pork is really easy to prepare - just combine cubes of pork (not to lean - it has to have fat in it to taste good!) with equal parts of Sugar, Ketchup, Soy Sauce (I use Kikkoman), Red Vinegar and a half part of cheap white wine in a stock pot and cook it for 3 hours or so, until the meat is nice and tender and the liquids have reduced to a medium thick sauce. We served it with rice and steamed broccoli

While lunch was cooking, the kids decided to explore the park grounds. They came across a lakes set down in the woods and decided to try there hand at fishing. As ususal, Brian was enthralled with the worms.




The heavy tree cover posed line casting challenges - several of the kids’ casts became tangled in the tree branches or got stuck in the floating branches in the water. They didn’t catch anything, but had fun while enjoying the fall scenery.

After lunch we took a hike on the number 2 trail which winds through the woods, along the banks of the Wabash and back through the woods.



We took time out at the playground to play on the swings and jump in big piles of leaves.




Dinner Saturday night was hosted by Mr. And Mrs. Jeff and followed by an evening of entertainment, games and general silliness while hanging out by the fire. For entertainment, Sarah first wowed us with ballet as she demonstrated her advanced pointe technique on her new pointe shoes. Then Meredith and Erica played several violin pieces from the Suzuki program. Finally, the extreme silliness set in as the kids created several cheerleading “cheers”, led by the sole male child (yes, that would be Brian - and he really hammed it up).

But the excitement didn’t stop there - it continued as we returned to Cabin “ocho” where we were greeted by an unexpected visitor - a MOUSE! The mouse ran from the kitchen into our bedroom, amidst some yells and squeals. Then it scurried into the kids’ room, around the beds and proceeded to climb the walls. The screaming started to crescendo until the mouse disappeared into the wallboards and seemingly up into the attic area of the cabin. Then the reality of a mouse in the cabin set in along with the normal feelings of the heebie-jeebies and elicited some funny comments, the being:

“I can’t go to sleep in this cabin! The mouse might come back and bite my head off!”

. We finally convinced ourselves and the kids that the mouse was not coming back into our sight and settled down to sleep.

The next morning, we all gathered at Mr. And Mrs. Jeff’s cabin again for a great breakfast:




The last activity before we all parted ways - we went on a letterbox search and found this cool letterbox that the kids signed -


Looking forward to attending in future years, and hopefully, we won’t get a mouse in our cabin the next time!!

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Traveling Man......

I took one of those Blog Quizzes to answer the question "How Well Travelled" I am, and here are the results:

Your Travel Profile:

You Are Extremely Well Traveled in the Northeastern United States (100%) You Are Very Well Traveled in the Midwestern United States (75%) You Are Very Well Traveled in the Southern United States (62%) You Are Well Traveled in Western Europe (57%) You Are Well Traveled in the Western United States (53%) You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in Southern Europe (27%) You Are Somewhat Well Traveled in the United Kingdom (25%) You Are Mostly Untraveled in Canada (20%) You Are Mostly Untraveled in Eastern Europe (20%) You Are Mostly Untraveled in Asia (13%) You Are Untraveled in Africa (0%) You Are Untraveled in Australia (0%) You Are Untraveled in Latin America (0%) You Are Untraveled in New Zealand (0%) You Are Untraveled in Scandinavia (0%) You Are Untraveled in the Middle East (0%)

How Well Traveled Are You?

Not surprisingly, I am well travelled in the North East where I grew up and very well travelled in the Mid West, where I currently live.

And of course, this points out all of my travel deficiencies, but I guess I can add these places to my "places to visit at one point or another in my life".

Now, my parents are very well travelled - I wonder how they would do on the quiz??

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Halloween with the Girls

Whew - what an action packed night.....
First, the kids had Fall Parties at school (named as such to ensure no one is offended - except those who don't "do" Fall - OK, that was a little sarcastic and really the topic of another post). Then they had a Halloween party (and even named as such!) at their after school day care. Because of the Halloween party, the kids didn't want me to pick them up until an hour after their normal time - they wanted plenty of time to enjoy the party (ie - eat stuff).

Our church held a Fall Fun Fest from 5:30 to 7:30, and it is always a really good time with inflatables, games and food. Erica and Brian wanted K and M to attend the Fun Fest, so I picked them up as well and brought them to the house for a little between party snack (like they need any more food!).

We separated the girls from the boys at this point. Brian didn't want to go trick or treating with the girls and had made plans to go with his friends. This was the first year Erica and Brian didn't Trick or Treat together! Scott and Brian headed to the Church Fun Fest while the girls gathered all of their "stuff" - costumes, backpacks, shoes, missing headbands, treat bags, etc. It is a good thing that Erica has become slightly responsible because it is just too much to keep track of.

We spent about 40 minutes at the Fun Fest. The kids mainly played on the large inflatables and here is the one classic picture I got of all three of the girls going down the Megga Slide:


Isn't that just classic? If you look carefully, there are three sets of feet there......

Just as we were about to leave, the girls discovered that their other good friend, J was there! We arranged to meet at K&M's house for Trick or Treating. There, we were met by K&M's dad who was dressed as R2D2, and we all lined up for a group picture:



The girls spent the next hour or so running from house to house, gathering candy. Running was the only way to keep warm - I personally nearly froze and had to head back to K&M's house early.


At the end of the night, Erica had gathered almost 200 pieces of candy! That certainly was the mother load of all Halloween's and certainly far more enjoyable than last year's Halloween in the rain.

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Just a Quick Trip to the Sonic for Ice Cream......

After dinner, Scott suggested that we go out to the Sonic for ice cream. It has been a perfect autumn day - crisp, sunny, wear your jeans and a long sleeve T-shirt kind of day (and VERY comfortable riding in the convertible type of day to boot). So it sound like a very nice, relaxing family outing and a very nice way to start off the evening.

We took the Tahoe (Scott wanted enough room to spread out) and listened to 80s tunes on the CD player in the truck while we enjoyed our ice cream. We were there for maybe 30 minutes when Scott started to power up the car and (insert sound of a motor winding down). Hmm..... sounds like ...... (trying to start car again - insert dead silence) ...... dead battery!

We start through our options - well, there are plenty of other cars around, maybe we could ask one of them if they have jumper cables and wouldn’t mind helping us jump the truck? Scott’s not so keen on that option. OK, so we call one of our co-worker friends who lives just a mile or two from the Sonic. We haven’t seen Geary for probably 3 months, as he has been in Germany on a work assignment and he has been back in town for maybe one day now, but hey - he’s a sport and comes out to help us.

Erica and Brian just LOVE ‘Mr Geary’ - they think he is the coolest because he is a complete Star Wars geek and he has helped them win the Star Wars trivia game. They are completely wound up with ice cream, the situation with the car and now the prospect of seeing Mr. Geary, so they get busy by bouncing up and down in the back of the truck, screaming and being generally noisy. Fortunately, you can’t really hear screaming kids when the windows are closed!

Long story short, the jump start doesn’t work, so we leave the Tahoe in the Sonic employee lot (a couple of guys from the Sonic helped us push it out of the customer bay). Scott thinks that the battery could be so dead that the jump start didn’t work. Geary thinks it could be a dead starter. So we’ll try again tomorrow with a new battery and go from there.

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No Consequences (but plenty of conscience)

I have been very delinquent in my participation of the ScrapShare Blog Challenge, but I am hoping to get back on track with this week’s entry. Here is this week’s Challenge:

Q: If you could live one day without consequences, what would you do? Would you get a tattoo just to see what it was like? Would you skip work or school and sleep all day? Would you have a one-night-stand, or would you buy a yacht, or would you tell your parents what you REALLY think of them? If you could live one day without consequences, what would you do?

Hmmm....interesting question...my initial thoughts were centered around the purchase of physical items - stuff I have been coveting, for example. Then I thought about it some more and realized that I can go out and buy “stuff” any day, and the question doesn’t indicate that you have other magical means at your disposal (like unlimited money)..... so I decided to limit my answer with the assumption that at the end of the magical day, items purchased would disappear......I also decided that money spent on the day’s activities and food don’t count though (gotta make this a little fun!).

First of all, I would definitely bag work (heck, on a normal day, there are very little consequences with not showing up to work for one day) and charter a flight to California’s Wine Country for a nice breakfast. I would rent out the Nikon lens I have been eyeing, and use it to take fabulous pictures (these I would be able to keep - they are just digital files, after all).

Without physical consequences to hinder my activities, I would partake in what I would normally consider to be ‘high risk’ - these are activities very much outside my current comfort zone. This would include sky diving and bungee jumping (really, anything involving heights!). I would also arrange to go horseback riding at full gallop along some scenic setting and maybe even try a bit of surfing. Then I would step the activity level down a little and experience some pampering at a pricey spa - minimum of a massage, facial, manicure and pedicure, along with a gourmet meal.

I would wind up my day with my family in a fun-oriented activity. Maybe a group horseback ride or some rock climbing. Oh, and a group bungee jump off of some high cliff! We would all enjoy dinner and everyone would get plenty of dessert....

As much as I’ve thought about what I would do, I have also considered what I wouldn’t do, even under the magic of the no consequences rule. For example, I wouldn’t consider extorting or stealing large amounts of money for future use. And while a steamy tryst with a hot Hollywood star might sound tempting, I doubt I could really choose to engage in such an activity. I bet when I look at others’ responses to this week’s question, I won’t find a truly ‘bad’ action. I guess that even in the absence of consequences, we are all still guided by our consciences and the concept of right / wrong and of personal commitments and priorities......

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