Two Firsts Today

Number One:

My first time getting seriously "wined and dined" by a customer.  In retrospect, the nasty email I sent them followed by an immediate unannounced site visit may have had something to do with it...anyway, it started with a high-dollar seafood lunch on Redondo Beach followed by dinner at a Korean BBQ and then a trip to the Korean supermarket in which I was gifted with:

- a case of "cinnamon punch" Korean soda

- a case of "Yo Cool" dairy beverage

- a box of Lotte Kancho (some sort of chocolate filled cookie

- a bag of SunCrunch wafers (some sort of wheat flour rice cake cookie thingy)

In fact, the wining and dining even included offers to find a nice girlfriend for me to going to some sort of Korean bar where (and I'm not sure I have the whole story here, but I think I got the gist of it) a couple of "young ladies" bring out shots of various alcoholic beverages.....and I'm not really sure where it goes from there.  These latest were declined of course.

Number Two:

My first time with Korean food (including two types of Kimchee) and I have to say I loved it.  From the spicy cucumbers, the various ginger-fied radish dishes, seaweed, Korean jello stuff, spicy spinach,to the Korean BBQ (highly recommended) it was a real treat.  

How much do I love em?

Well, let's just say this.  I love them kids more than I thought I would.

Sterling lost his first tooth today.  Apparently he noticed it was gone after gulping down a bite during lunch (at school.)  He was a bit disappointed and I told him that we could still get it if we really wanted it (which turned out to be a big mistake.)  Long story short, I found myself this evening donning a pair of rubber gloves and sifting through feces in a vain search for the missing tooth.  

Angora Buckling

Per Josh's Request, here is Sunday's delivery:

Obama Hits a Homerun

I've not hid my disdain for the spendulus package, but I have to hand it to Obama today for a few things that I think have gone far too long unsaid from the folks who supposedly lead this country.  Homerun on getting to the roots of the problem by laying it on every american to increase our education and get ourselves out of debt and whatnot.  I'm glad to hear someone lay it on us and to appeal to our own sense of patirotism to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps like a good American ought to.

Even if he creates (or permits to be created) a bunch of legislation I disagree with, at least we finally have a leader in the whitehouse.   You know, the folks on conservative talkshow rail against americans for voting for Obama because he is and says things that are "pretty," but tonight is a good reason for why so many Americans were willing to take a chance on a guy with severe left-leaning tendencies and put him in the whitehouse...we need someone who can look at our problems from the bottom up and have the guts (like Cosby did when he called out young black men) to tell us what we need to hear.

I hope that folks nationwide will heed the call and reconglomerate.  

Spring is Here!

As evidenced by the first birth of the year - a little billy goat from a first-time mom angora goat.  It looks like he was born yesterday.  His mom is having a hard time with him and the two don't seem to be getting together for good feeding so we went ahead and restrained the mom so he could get a good drink today - hopefully that won't be required in the future.

Also, Josh's cow's testicles fell off (I had hit him a few weeks ago with a "green cheerio") sometime since the last time I was out there and it looks like the site is infected, so I dosed him up with Vitamin B12 (to stimulate appetite and thirst and as a general immune system booster) and a shot of penicilin.  Hopefully with a few more shots of that, he will kick the infection.

On The Menu Tonight

Tonight's menu consisted of fresh bass stuffed with wild onion, seasoned and baked.  On the side were white rice, crawdad and freezer taquitos.

That's the way we roll around here.   The bass and crawdad came from the lake (we had 3 crawdads, but the kids let two of them walk off the dock and back into the water, so Winter was the sole beneficiary of crawdad vittles) and the bass bit a crankbait about an hour before sundown.  The wild onion grows in our lawn in the spring and the taquitos were a freezer present from Jessica's couponing program.  

The bass turned out nice, and Jessica even commented that it didn't taste too bad.  She normally is not a big fan of the way I cook our bass.

Economic Crap-ulus Package

Pork-ulus, Scam-ulus, Politcs-ulus - it's all ridiculous to me.

I have to break the political silence established on this blog to complain.  The politicians are asking for $800 BILLION to spend at their (corrupt) leisure?  Are you joking me?  Have they shown that they can responsibly spend for us?  Arrgghhh!

Here's the breakdown in a couple of ways I find to be enlightening along with some suggestions (that I might not be seen merely as a complainer with no solutions:)

$800 Billion divided by the 1.3 to 3.9 million jobs that will supposedly be created by 2010 by the stimulus equals $205,128 to $615,384 per job created.

Oko...let that sink in for a second.  Their worst-case estimate equates to $205,128 to create a job?  And that is supposed to stimulate the economy?  How about giving that $205,128 per person to the 1.3 million people who would have gotten the jobs?  The logic here is that if all those people had a couple hundred thousand in cash in their bank accounts, a couple of things would happen:

    1.  They would be able to do some serious spending

    2.  The economic picture for those 1.3 million people would be effectively "stimulated."

Not fair you say for them to get all that $$ while others (perhaps more deserving from a financial perspective) get nothing?  Sure, but the current plan spends that same amount creating the jobs (while simultaneously lining the pockets of all the politicians friends) that willl likely pay far less, so what is the better value?

Scenario two, we go all robin hood on it and decide that rather than looking at it in terms of jobs created, we look at it in terms of the general populace for fairness' sake:

$800 Billion divided by the 303,824,640 people estimated to be citizens of this great country equals $2,633.10 for every man, woman and child in the country.

Wow, so my family of 5 would receive a check in the amount of $13,165.50!  How much would your family receive?  My immediate extended family (ma, pa, sistas and bruddas with their husbands, wives and children) would rake in $63,194.40.  A quick check with the census burea indicates that the average household in USA would receive over $7,500.  Tell me that wouldn't stimulate this economy?  Everyone who is losing a house?  Shazaam, here's $5 or $10 grand.  Everybody who has a job and is just looking to make the next payment on their boat?  Shazaam, here's $5 or $10 grand.   Lost some $$ in the stock market?  Shazaam, here's $5 or $10 grand.  Doing just fine, but could use some spending cash? Shazaam, here's $5 or $10 grand.   Tell me that won't stimulate this economy better than giving a huge chunk of money to known corruption (our government pork program.)

You don't like either of the above plans?  Not fair enough?  Not "robin hood" enough?  Let me postulate another option you can't disagree with:

$800 Billion divided by the 75,956,160 households estimated to receive the bottom 1/4 household incomes in this great country equals $10,532.39 for every "poor" household.

The bottom 1/4 of US households in the US bring in less than $22,500 per year according to: Wikipedia 

Ok, yes, I probably just excluded myself in this latest pie-slicing, and yes, this does mean that Mississippi would receive a hugely disproportionate amount of the moeny while places around D.C. would receive proportionately less (ironic?) but hey, it is hard to argue that this wouldn't be a more fair way to slice it.  The real question is, would it stimulate the economy?  You bet your bottom dollar it would!  The poor are spread throughout the nation and while they are certainly those who "need" it the most, it could also be argued that they will be those most likely to immediately spend the money on "day to day" types of items that are those same types of items that our economy runs on - thereby pumping much needed funds directly into the channels that most need it to get the economy running again.

Don't like my ideas?  What you got?  There has to be any number of ways to blow $800 billion that will stimulate the economny better than feeding it to a corrupt politician (or a whole congress/house of them) and letting him channel it to all his rich benefactors.

A body built for biking

My old HS buddy texted me that he was spending the night in Erwin Park in Mckinney.  I brought  Winter down to hang out with his daughter and afteer an hour or so, Granma & grampa came to pick her up for a weekend of hanging out with them.  I figured the opportunity would be great for a quick bike ride.  Originally I was going to do it in the dark (with a headlamp) but I totally wussed out on that and decided instead to just sleep there and ride this morning. 

Now I haven't really ridden my bike in months and I haven't really been "riding" with any sort of seriousness in what must be over a year.  In fact, just recently I have started to feel the winded-ness of old age and a lack of aerobic activity setting in.  I was a bit worried about totally bonking out on the trail and truly embarassing myself.  I can barely run to the end of the driveway without feeling like my lungs will explode.

I started out on the trail this morning and soon met up with two other bikers going the other way.  They mentioned that the trail is sort of a oneway type trail, so I turned around and started following them.  I was surprised to be able to keep up and actually followed them the entire way (something like 8 miles?)  I was really surprised.  It felt good and like I just got off the bike yesterday.  Anyway, it's crazy that I can't run really at all, but I can hop on a bike after forever and just jump right back into it.

Me & JD

We saw a photo similar to this in last month's Smithsonian - one of the kids asked if it was me and Jessica totally thinks I am a spitting image of him...I dunno, is that me?

For bonus points, anyone know which JD this is?  Hint - he is like, totally famous.