The London Symphony Orchestra published a great website that lets you have four concurrent HD views of their music and you can choose which view you want in each quadrant. There’s some extra stuff thrown in that lets you drill in for information about each instrument in each chair too. This type of thing has been promised since DVDs were first introduced but it has yet to see the mainstream.
We’re back to having a little diversity in the standings. Andy is currently sitting in the top spot at 4-2. The game of the week for me was Jim vs. Tim. Not only did it rhyme, but they were battling it out to see who could win with the least amount of points. Tim eventually won with a score that, if not for Jim, would have qualified for the lowest score of the season. On a side note, Tim is the only player in our league who hasn’t made a roster move yet. Wonder how long he can keep that up? On a side side note, the two top scorers in our league were free agents!
Austin and I have been doing the league pick ‘em each week and he turns out to be pretty good at it, or at least he’s slightly better than guessing with a 9-7 record. Somehow I’m doing worse than blind guessing.
Now on to the weekly awards:
Stats mostly via TMQ:
Tyla laughs whenever I start talking about light bulbs, but here we go again. Our living room, eating area and kitchen are now completely incandescent free. When we bought the house, that area contained 11 60-watt bulbs, 2 100-watt bulbs, and 5 40-watt bulbs. When all the lights were on, that was using over a killowatt every single hour! We spend most of our time in that area and if we left all those lights on for 5 hours a day, that’s $193/year in electricity bills. With the new combination of CFL and LED bulbs, that same usage would cost $32. Not too shabby. By my calculations, it will take us about 2-3 years to recoup the cost of the bulbs and then we’ll be saving money.
The tricky part of this was finding good 40 watt equivalent LED candelabra base bulbs. There aren’t a lot of them out there yet. I tried three different types:
Unfortunately those Sexy LED bulbs are also the most expensive. I chose to use them in that main light fixture above our eating area and then use the cheaper Costco bulbs in the other areas of the house like the stairwell and the upstairs hallway. Color and delay don’t make as big of a difference there.
This will all pay off as long as the bulbs are reliable since part of the savings is that you basically never have to replace them. We’ll have to wait a while to figure out if that holds true.
Tim and Chelsea have an amazing Mexican meal. They sent me the recipe, but they do it so well, I didn’t want to just copy them exactly. So instead I took pieces of their meal and changed it up a bit. The end result is something that makes my mouth water just typing this out. It’s a lot of work, but I think you’ll find that it’s worth it. And if you’re really pressed for time, there are plenty of places where you could take shortcuts.
Mexican Rice
You could make your own but I cheat and make this from a box/packet. Alternatively you could make some sticky rice with cilantro and lime juice.
Refried Beans
Ingredients
- 1 can pinto beans
- 1 can refried beans
- 2 pieces of cooked bacon
Directions
- Combine refried beans and drained pinto beans. Add two pieces cooked bacon and allow to simmer over low heat.
Pico de Gallo
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp diced, seeded jalapeno
- 1 tbsp diced onion
- 1 tbsp chopped cilantro
- 1/4 cup diced, seeded tomato
- 2 tsp fresh lime juice
- Salt & pepper
Directions
- Combine!
Guacamole
Ingredients
- 2 ripe avocados
- 2 tbsp diced, seeded jalapeno
- 2 tbsp diced onion
- 2 tbsp chopped cilantro
- 1/2 cup diced, seeded tomato
- 1 tbsp fresh lime juice
- Salt & pepper
Directions
- Put it all in a bowl and mix it up. I use a fork to smash the avocado.
Marinade
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup cumin seeds
- 5 jalapeno peppers, seeds and ribs removed, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 tablespoon cracked black pepper
- 1/3 cup fresh lime juice
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 1/2 cups olive oil
- 2 bunches cilantro (leaves and stems)
Directions
- Toast the cumin seeds in a medium saute pan over medium-low heat for 5 minutes, or until fragrant.
- In a blender, combine the cumin seeds, jalapenos, garlic, pepper, lime juice, and salt. Pulse the blender to finely chop ingredients. Add the oil and cilantro and puree until smooth.
Grilled Steak Burritos
Ingredients
- 4 burrito size flour tortillas
- 1 pound top sirloin
- 1 cup shredded cheese
- Sour cream
Directions
- Make the marinade. Lightly score both sides of the meat with a knife so that the marinade will penetrate. Place the meat in a large plastic bag or bowl, pour in the marinade, and coat well. Marinate in the refrigerator for 24 to 48 hours.
- Grill the steak.
- When it’s done, pull it off the grill and cut it into thin slices. You may want to cut the steak perpendicular to the slices too so they are smaller and easier to eat.
- Have each person prepare their burrito (no guac yet though!). Place the rolled burritos back on the grill. Grill until golden brown on both sides.
- Top with guacamole and sour cream. Serve with rice and beans on the side or inside the burrito.
Grant Imahara is currently one of the hosts of Discovery’s Mythbusters. He’s fun to watch on the show, but that’s all I knew about him. He was recently interviewed on a Triangulation podcast, and wow, this is one interesting guy! I don’t want to spoil all the surprises for you but for example he worked on all 13 R2D2 units, he built the Energizer bunny, and he built Craig Ferguson’s robot on the Late Late Show. If you are at all intrigued by Grant, do yourself a favor and watch/listen to that episode of the podcast.
The massive 8-way tie for first place is over, but I think it’s going to be a long time before this season is decided. Andy, Austin, Logan and I were all winners. Logan could have topped 200 this week with a perfect roster. A big chunk of that was due to Tony Romo who had over 50 points… on his bench. He didn’t need the points to pull out a win though.
Now on to the weekly awards. I’m adding a new one that goes to our longest active streak, either winning or losing.
Stats mostly via TMQ:
I love a good burger. Up until now if you asked me for the absolute best burger I’ve ever had in an area restaurant, I would have to say it was the burger at Tavern Law in Seattle. That is no loner the case. Enter Lunchbox Laboratory!
Their first site was in Seattle, but even the draw of a delicious burger couldn’t convince me to venture across the lake to the city. Now they have a new location in Bellevue which is just a few exits down 405. Perfect! On the last Friday of my paternity leave, Logan, Tyla, Elijah and I headed there to see what the buzz was all about.
It’s a casual restaurant with a very fun menu. Pretty much every burger looked incredible. It was hard to pick one but I was sure that no matter what I picked, it would be delicious. More experimentation is needed to prove that hypothesis, but so far so good because I picked an AMAZING BURGER. It was the Sante Fe Slammer: "Super-beef, colby jack cheese, bacon, lunchbox onions, diced green chilies, and papa’s house-made bbq sauce. I got that with tots smothered in cheese and bacon. Tyla ordered the “Tribute to Dick’s Deluxe” (Dick’s is a famous burger place in the area) and Logan got a dork burger which is duck + pork.
The food was fantastic and I think we’re all eager to eat there again. The downside is that the location is kind of in the newer snooty area of Bellevue so parking is a pain. It’s also not cheap. Tyla drank water and I had a pop. Our total with tip was $48! This won’t be an every day spot for us, but if you’re in the mood for a wonderfully delicious burger, give us a call because we want to go back!
Do you look at this whole Kindle thing and think that you might be interested in it but you aren’t willing to pay for a new one? I’d love to sell you my second generation Kindle along with a case. Yep, it’s old but it still works great. It’s one of the 3g models so no matter where you are, you can download new books without trying to find a wifi connection. Plus you can even check your email and surf the web for free (though it’s pretty slow and I can’t imagine anyone doing that very much.)
Why am I trying to sell it? I use my Kindle A LOT and I’m really interested in getting one of the new Kindle Paperwhites. There are so many new features since I bought that second gen Kindle four years ago (for $300… used). I really want to upgrade but I’m having a hard time justifying it since the old one still works so well.
So if you are interested in stepping foot in the Kindle waters for a cheap price, let me know what you’re willing to pay. I know it’s not going to fetch $50 but if I could even get a little money for it, it would make the upgrade easier.
Birthdays around here usually involve dinner with Tyla’s parents, so when she said we’d go over there for my birthday, I didn’t think twice. Boy was I in for a surprise!
My first clue that was something was different was when we pulled up to the house and the front door had a sign that said “It’s a party Jack!” Walking in I discovered Don and Logan in camo, beards and bandanas. Then I spotted the food table and it was filled with all kinds of recipes from the show! Wow! Tyla put in a ton of work planning it all out and Don and Nancy spent all weekend cooking. It was quite a party! Thank you!
All of the food was great including some specialties like frog legs, but my favorite was Miss Kay’s Banana Pudding. I need to get the recipe for that from Tyla and try it to make it myself. It was so good!
Government Shutdown Still Doesn’t Balance The Budget
So the first question is how much is the government spending during the shutdown? The estimated answer is that we have stopped about 17% of our spending. 83% of it is still trucking along unaffected. And secondly, how much of a deficit did we write into the 2013 budget? For that budget, we planned to bring in enough money to cover 76.3% of our spending.
Put those two facts together and you can see that even during this government shutdown, we are STILL spending more money than we collect.
And one final, somewhat-related thing before I return you to normal blog posts, KenC pointed me to a video that does a good job of putting all of these enormous numbers into perspective.
I’m sure people can take these numbers and use them to argue on either side of the aisle. That’s the beauty (and confusion) of our political system. But it’s helpful if we all start with the facts and go from there instead of starting with other people’s opinions that are screamed at us from the televisions.