Author: Josh

The weekend started early Friday evening with Jeff and Tejashri at The Clay Pit for dinner. The food was fantastic and hanging out with the parents-to-be is always fun. After dinner (almost 10 p.m.) we headed back south to pick Maly up from the Cain’s. It was a late night for us all.

We all got up early this morning. After breakfast Elise hit Kohl’s for an early bird sale. Maly and I headed to the HoPot for a(nother!) galvanized trash can for composting, water softener salt and a piece of trim so we can start marking Maly’s height (and take said piece of trim with us should we ever move). After a record setting quick trip to the HoPot, Maly and I went to Borders and then to Half Price Books where we finally found the book “Love You Forever” for Maly to give to Elise for Mother’s Day. I learned of this book at Maly’s school’s “Muffins for Mom” breakfast that was held this past Thursday. I volunteered to help that morning and witnessed all of the sniffles and falling tears as one of the teachers read “Love You Forever” to the classes and all of the moms.

So we finally found the book at Half Price Books. I told Maly that it was going to be a surprise for her mom. When Elise got back from shopping, Maly quickly ran to the closet, grabbed the book and came running out of her room, “MOMMY!!! WE GOT YOU A BOOK!!!”

It might have been a day early, but I got brownie points for engaging my, ahem, “sensitive side”. Before Thursday, I was thinking a new leaf blower would make for a pretty awesome Mother’s Day present.

So, after procuring the book, Maly and I headed over to Kohl’s to pick Elise up. We then headed over to the (512) Brewing Company to meet Jason and Matthew for a tour of the brewery.

It was Elise, Maly (3) and me; and Jason and Matthew (2) and Nate of (512). He gave us a full, intimate tour of the little brewery in south Austin and samples of all 5 drafts on tap. Ever since having (512)’s Wit lager at Segovia a couple weeks ago, Elise and I are true fans of the little brewery. And after meeting with Nate and spending the better part of the afternoon with, and imbibing in his, in my opinion, mastered craft, we’re die-hard fans.

I had a lot of technical questions about the entire brewing process and most of Nate’s answers went straight over my head. One of my most pressing questions was, “when are you guys going to start bottling?” (they currently only sell kegs to bars, restaurants and a select few retailers in Austin). He said that it would definitely happen at some point.

After the brewery tour, we were toasty and hungry. The five of us headed over to Might Fine Burgers for some might fine burgers!

Then after lunch, Jason and Matthew headed home, Maly and I dropped Elise off at Kohl’s to finish the second leg of her shopping marathon, then Maly and I ran a couple errands. We finally got home in time for Maly to take a nap. She was apparently exhausted because she slept until 6 p.m. When she finally woke up, we loaded up and headed over to Kiker Elementary where we voted in the Austin mayoral election. Since we were at the school, we kicked it on the playground for a while.

Today was a great day, just hanging out with my girls and keeping Austin weird.

[flv width=”400″ height=”300″]http://www.maly.tv/video/20090429_DrawingMommy.flv[/flv]

I cooked the recipe below for a Easter weekend dinner tonight for the Heisterman’s and us. And I was proudly reminded of how fun it is too cook!

* 4 pound pork butt, trimmed of fat
* 2 yellow onions, quartered
* cumin
* 2 bay leaves
* dried Mexican oregano
* Kosher salt
* green peppercorns
* cayenne pepper
* Chile Verde, recipe follows
* 4 tbsp butter
* 4 oz. heavy whipping cream
* Monterrey jack cheese, shredded
* flour tortillas (buttered and warmed)

Chile Verde:

* 1 1/2 pound fresh poblanos
* 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 1/2 cup chopped yellow onion
* minced garlic
* 1 seeded jalapeno pepper chopped
* dried Mexican oregano
* salt
* ground cumin
* 4 heaping tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 3 cups chicken stock, or canned low-sodium chicken broth
* 1/2 bundle chopped fresh cilantro

Directions for pork:

Season pork butt with salt and pepper. Brown pork butt in skillet with olive oil.

Place pork butt, yellow onions, cumin, bay leaves, Mexican oregano, salt, black peppercorns and cayenne in a large saucepan and cover with water by 1-inch. Bring to a boil.

Lower the heat to medium-low and simmer until tender, about 45 minutes, skimming the surface to remove any fat scum that forms.

Directions for chile verde:

Roast the peppers by placing them on an open gas flame, turning them frequently with tongs until all sides are charred black, about 7 to 10 minutes. (Alternately, the peppers can be roasted under a broiler, or on top of a gas or charcoal grill.) Place the blackened peppers in a plastic or paper bag, and let rest until cool enough to handle, about 15 minutes. Peel the peppers, and remove the seeds and the stems. Chop the peppers and set aside.

In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring, until tender, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic, jalapenos, oregano, salt, and cumin, and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the flour and cook, stirring, without allowing to color, for 2 minutes. Add the chopped peppers, and stir well to combine. Add the chicken stock, stir well, and bring to a boil. Stir in whipping cream and butter. Lower the heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes.

The happy marriage:

Cube/shred the drained pork. Use boat motor to puree chile verde. Add pork to the chile verde pot. Use boat motor to puree remaining stock from the pot that was used to cook pork. Add ~1/4 of stock to thin chile verde. Bring to a simmer over medium heat to reduce for 1 hour.

Remove the chile verde from the heat, add the cilantro, and adjust seasoning to taste. Top stew with shredded Monterrey jack cheese. Serve with warm, buttered flour tortillas.

Last night I launched an ad campaign for HartzVictims.org on Facebook. If you’re not on Facebook, you should be. It’s today’s tight-rolled pant leg; the new slap bracelet. As of April 1, Facebook officially replaced mimeograph AND microfiche.

Since launching my own ad campaign, which is money out of my pocket (albeit for a great cause to raise awareness about over-the-counter flea & tick products for pets), I’ve really started focusing on ads that are served on Facebook. There are lots of great ads on Facebook. One that I see frequently is for OtherInBox. OIB is a fantastic email service that I use and that I recommend you use, too. How’s that for an unsolicited ad?! But really, I use OIB a lot and it’s helped almost eliminate spam that I receive to my personal inbox.

However, there are also a lot of bad ads that Facebook approves. There are a ton of “Get Rich Fast” ads…

Take this one for example:

That ad takes you to JasonGetsRich.com. Cool! Jason will show you how to get rich fast for “posting links on Google”. What does that mean? How do you post links on Google? I don’t know how to “post links on Google” and I’ve been a “Web guy” for 15 years. I know how to get my websites to show up on Google, but couldn’t tell you how to post links on Google. So, for $2.95 to cover shipping (of what?), you can get your “Google Kit” and start earning $5,000 per month! If 1,000 people per month send Jason $2.95, that would probably make him very happy. Hell, I’d be very happy. And that’s a conservative number. In one day, my very-targeted ad for HartzVictims.org hit 20,000 people today, and only 19 people clicked my ad.

The majority of the ads you see on social networking sites and in email are Bullshit.

Jason tells us that he was an account manager for a pipe manufacturing company. He’s recently married. He and his wife are beautiful – and now they’re rich, granted they were planning on postponing their wedding until Jason found out how to get rich online. They now have a Range Rover!

Check out ‘his’ site. Read it carefully. Would you buy into it? Think hard about it. Be scrutinizing. It’s tempting. Times are tough. Lots of people make a ton of money via the Web.

Take a look at how ‘Jason’ wants to make his site strike a personal chord:

The code basically says, “This is Jason from [insert city based on your computer’s IP address]” Makes you think you can trust him, right? He’s in the same city as you.

Be scrutinizing, folks. If you ever have a question about what’s online, exercise your right to be humble and unknowing. Ask me or your resident geek.

Mom and I were hanging out by the driveway at her house this past weekend when Mom decided to walk to the mailbox. Shortly after embarking, she called for me. I ran over to see that she was looking at a 3′ snake in the grass to her right. I ran back to the house and grabbed a couple cameras to shoot some video and take some photos.

Fast forward to tonight… Elise had her monthly church meeting tonight, so it was just me and the Zombie Eater. When Daddy is on nighttime duty, Maly usually requests that we watch videos on my computer. Said videos usually require that Maly be the star. Tonight I opened iPhoto and showed her the video of the snake that her grandma and I found on Saturday. She was very intrigued and asked, “can snakes bite you?”

Being the protective father that I am, I made sure that she was fully aware that, “YES! SNAKES WILL BITE YOU AND KILL YOU DEAD!” I said this only because we have rubber snakes that we keep in the backyard to ward off grackles and ninjas. Ninjas are afraid of snakes, just in case you weren’t aware.

Maly likes to play with her friend snakes by pretending to put lipstick on them and pet them.

To add emphasis, I did a quick YouTube search for snake bites to find this video:

12 seconds into the video and I successfully made my daughter deathly afraid of snakes. She hunkered next to me while clutching onto my arm.

I made sure to tell her that snakes are beautiful animals and deserve much respect (as indicated in the text at the end of the video). I then told her to be very careful around snakes and never to touch a real snake unless with her mom or dad.

Otherwise I could totally see her walking up to a rattlesnake in Cat Spring saying, “Ooooh, Daddy, he’s cute. Can I hold him?”

In order to travel to Mexico this summer, we are now required to have passports. Elise has been diligent in expediting this process for us. She called me at work at 4:45 this afternoon and said she and Maly were close to the downtown post office, and I was to be front and present to have my photo taken and fill out the passport application. I was at the post office 15 minutes later only to find that we were too late.

Elise and Maly had come from Walgreens after having Maly’s passport photo taken. While at the post office, we learned that Maly’s photo would be rejected because she had a barrette in her hair. So, we left the post office and headed back to towards the house with a stop at Walgreens.

It took Elise, me and Rodney, the kid running the photo desk, to get Maly to pose properly (sans barrette) for her “correct” passport photo. That process proved to be painstaking. At one point, Rodney had customers waiting for him at the counter, so he handed me the Kodak Easyshare point-and-shoot camera and told me I could take the photo.

So there I am, my child is standing on a chair with a projector screen behind her, which blocks the employee break room, and I’m in charge of the Official Walgreens Passport Photo Taking Camera, which wrote to a floppy disk and was powered by vacuum tubes.

So I took the passport photos of my daughter in a makeshift passport photo studio at Walgreens that resembled my 6th grade social studies classroom.

And I had to pay $8.66 for the service that was rendered.

If you and I ever find ourselves in a sticky situation where an emergency exit is necessary and the only vehicle available is a helicopter, I’ll probably look to you to drive.

Elise has been purging. She’s purging us of excessive red meat, processed foods and, for the most part, clutter and wasteful spending.

Earlier this week Elise threw away one of Maly’s yellow hair scrunchies. This scrunchie had seen it’s day, all tattered and frayed. It was tossed into the wicker waste basket in Maly’s bathroom.

On Wednesday night, Elise and I were standing and talking in the kitchen after dinner. Maly had gone into her bathroom, probably to blow her nose or wash her hands. After a few minutes of the house being quiet, Maly presented herself in the kitchen. Elise and I were standing before the sink. Maly stood firm next to the pantry, across the kitchen from us. Her presence was immediately felt by us both.

She made sure to look us both in the eyes individually. First her mom, then me.

“Mom. Dad. This does not go in the trash.”

That’s all she said. And then she walked off. I snickered under my breath, quiet enough so my daughter wouldn’t hear me and come back to discipline us again.

“Holy shit! We just got in trouble.”

“Wow!”

“Yeah…”

“…”

“…”

We totally got in trouble by our toddler.

As I’m typing this I’m supposed to be en route to Bastrop for the “Ride through the Pines” bicycle ride tomorrow. I was also supposed to sleep in a tent tonight.

Elise signed us up for a camping trip tonight and a bicycle ride tomorrow morning. I’d been kind of dreading both when I was reminded of it on Wednesday evening (this week has been hell at work so I really just wanted to come home and get stuff done around the house and relax). We got into somewhat of a debate last night as to who was going to ride in the bike ride on Saturday morning. There was some debate about helmet safety and my bike riding shoes-of-choice being flip flops. If it’s a race, sure, I get it, gear up. If it’s a ride, I’m plugging in the iPod and just cruising. I’m a laid back kind of guy and if I have to go camping and ride in a bike ride that has rules, I’d rather just stay at home and live and ride on my own terms.

However, I dutifully sucked it up and went to work this morning, fully intent on leaving at 3:30 so I could get home and head back out with the family for our camping adventure. As it turned out, I couldn’t get out of the office until 6. Elise called and she asked if she and should wait on me or head out to Bastrop. Seeing how we’d have to take two cars anyway, I told her to head on out.

I got home at 6:30, ran into the house, loaded the iPhone with a couple gigs of new music and packed. Then I had to hook up the bike rack on the Jeep. Then I had to load up and strap down both bikes. Then I got hungry, so I had to make myself dinner. It was quarter to eight before I was finally heading out, somewhat excited because of the preparation I had to endure. Elise called as I was backing out of the driveway, asking where I was. I told her I was just heading out. She said to call her whenever I got to Bastrop and she’d tell me how to get to the park.

Five minutes later as I was getting on 71, Elise called again. Maly was apparently doubled over, complaining that her stomach was hurting. I held the phone to my ear, on standby, as Elise switched between assessing Maly’s condition and talking to our friends, who we’re supposed to be camping with this weekend. A couple minutes pass and Elise decides that Maly’s not in a condition to be camping tonight. I ask her if I should turn the Jeep around before I get too far from the house. A little more assessing while I’m on the phone. Elise decides that she and Maly are coming back home. I exit Monterrey Ranch Rd., hit MoPac south an head back to the house where I quickly unloaded the Jeep and the bikes.

I feel bad because I know Elise was excited about me getting to do this bike ride and go camping in Bastrop for a night. And I feel bad because Maly was excited about sleeping in a tent tonight. I need to figure out a way to make it up to them both.

We borrowed Rob and Julie’s tent for this trip and, since their out of town this weekend, I’m thinking I might setup the tent in our backyard tomorrow and we can camp out tomorrow night. That’ll probably get Maly excited. And in the morning, I might put on my Harley-Davidson boots, some bike shorts, a full-face motorcycle helmet and ride my bicycle up to HEB and buy some breakfast tacos.

Travis, Michele, Taylor and I went to BD Riley’s for lunch this afternoon. Somehow, Taylor’s penchant for Jesus candles was rolled into the conversation…

Travis: “You mean like the Pancho Villa candles you can get at Fiesta?”

Taylor: “Yeah!”

(Note: Fiesta is a Houston-based grocery store that I remember as a kid as being the place where you would go to buy fancy/international items. It has since changed to be a lot more like flea market. At least the Austin location has.)

Josh: “I remember shortly after moving to Austin, I would drive all the way to the Fiesta on 35 to get lobsters”

Taylor: “Yeah, they had an awesome selection of fish”

Travis: “And Tupac beach towels!”

My retelling of the story doesn’t do it justice. You just had to have been there. I almost spit out my corned beef sandwich across the table because I was laughing so hard.

So an interesting thing happened last Friday morning. I was in the shower while Elise was drying her hair and putting on makeup. Maly casually strolled into the bathroom with a little green spray bottle filled with water. After approximately a minute, the TV turned itself on with the volume full blast. Curious George was the cartoon that was playing at the time, and it sounded like the man in the yellow hat was right there in the shower with me.

After a few seconds, Elise put down the hair drier to see what was going on with the TV.

“Uhhhmmm… there’s water dripping down the entire front side of the TV.”

“…”

“I think the TV is broken.”

“Awesome.”

“I THINK THE TV IS BROKEN!”

“Okay. Bring it to me here in the shower and I’ll take a look at it.”

“…”

So after my shower I dried off, got dressed and assessed the bedroom TV situation. Sure enough, Maly had taken her little green spray bottle and decided to clean the TV. In doing so, she sent water into the TV by means of the power and channel buttons and got the logic board wet, causing the TV to turn itself on at full volume and shrink the picture to half size, portraying the picture in only black and white. It was actually quite an interesting scene.

While I was pulling the armoire out from the wall, Elise and I, while fighting back laughter, were trying to decide how were going to punish this crime.

“Maly, you broke the TV. This means you can no longer watch TV. Do you understand?”

“Yep!”

“This means that when you get up in the morning and come crawl into Mommy and Daddy’s bed, there will be no more Elmo, no more Curious George, no more Super Why!”

“Okay!”

“You do realize what this means, RIGHT? No more TV!”

“Sure do.”

“Really?”

“Yep!”

And sure enough, tomorrow marks a week and Maly has not watched a single second of TV. And she hasn’t asked to watch TV.

Maly’s old ritual was to get up and come crawl into bed with us and watch PBS. She’s not the slightest bit phased by not doing this any more.

In the meantime, I took the back off of the TV last Friday morning and propped a fan up against its innards. By the time I got home that evening and put the TV back together, it works just like it did before the spray bottle incident!

This past weekend consisted of a lot of eating out. On Saturday we got a late start and didn’t get out of the house until lunch time. We decided to try the new Mighty Fine Burgers in Sunset Valley. And they were might fine burgers (of course, that would be expected from the same folks who brought us Rudy’s BBQ).

The highlight of the weekend, however, was the Father & Daughter dance Saturday night. My good friend, Matt invited Maly and me to the dance at his church. I was looking forward to my date with Maly all week. After we got home from running errands on Saturday afternoon, Elise gave Maly a bath, got her dressed in her pretty dress and did her hair. I put on some slacks and played Guitar Hero.

6 p.m. rolled around and Matt and Ryan showed up with their daughters, Susan Margaret and Emma. And off we went for a pre-dance dinner date at Flores. Maly was a spaz throughout dinner because she was excited to be with her friends. We all scarfed dinner, then loaded the kids up in our respective vehicles and drove over to the church around 7:15.

I was excited because I know Maly loves to dance. I think she was a little disappointed because it wasn’t the same kind of dance as Jeff & Heather’s wedding where she could dance with a bunch of girls. Maly and I did “dance”, which was more like holding hands and she flailed around and threw her feet out from underneath herself. And of course the chicken dance made for mild amusement.

I think Maly was just really tired and overstimulated by the lights, loud music and people. We collectively decided that the night was over at 8:30 and left the dance. Maly and I chatted on the short ride back home.

It wasn’t really the night that I had expected, but then again, I really didn’t know what to expect. I think it may have been a little early for a Daddy/Daughter dance with a 2.5-year-old. But I’m glad I did it. And I will dutifully do it as many times as she wants me to.

Photos can be seen here.