This is week 2 of the golf league but week 1 for me. Last week I had a funky feeling in my chest and decided it wasn't really worth it to try playing. Turns out I was OK but I don't like to push the issue. Today I woke with very little back pain and felt really good. Last night we were to go to dinner with Judy & Ed and others but as luck would have it, I become nauseous an hour and a 1/2 before we were to leave so we canceled out.
I shot a lousy 39 but not bad considering the lack of play I've had. Took 4 1/2 points. My opponent started slow but finished well. I had a 6 and a 4 the last two holes and lost the match by 1! I stopped at the 19th hole with Norm afterwords. I stayed only long enough to say hi and drink a beer with the guys. I must have left 6 - 7 beers that were bought for me. I guess the guys were happy when I left - more for them. LOL
Lots of things happened this week. I had SPRC issues to deal with, a discussion with Joey Sweat, our youth Pastor. I like Joey he just seems to have his head up his butt in the worse times. Computer work to transfer the sheets for the Golf league to Mike Giglio. Mike was funny, he thought I might want to keep doing the computer work and let him and Ed run the league. Gee I can do all the work if I want. Not.
Now I have the Church Profile to finish by Tuesday. A lot of detail that I don't have. I have to remember to schedule a an appointment with Pastor Mike on Monday. Probably will need Jan Everette too.
We spoke with Dennis Berg this afternoon. He is in Clyde, North Carolina now. I told him to send me his tax info. I have comped tax work for him for 9 - 10 years now - no sense stopping now that I can't use his home for a hurricane shelter. All that tax work and we used his house 1 night! What a deal......for Dennis. He is having a lot of problems with his health. His cancer seems to be stabilized but he's been having other difficulties. Poor guy! Poor Helen. She's had pure misery taking care of him for the past two years! She's buried a husband, her brother and a son. If we thought they were odd when we met them 27 years ago when Dennis was 32 and Helen was 54 imagine now when Dennis is 59 and Helen 82! I remember Dennis introducing him and Helen as "the odd couple".
We went to the Riverside Theatre this week to see the stage play - The Boyfriend. A musical that was a lot of fun. Judy's neighbors, Ron & Suzy went along. We went first to The Patio for dinner where I managed to score an end cut Prime Rib. I think Barb's inside cut was better. Oh well, once in a while I get a fabulous piece of meat sometimes not. The show made it worth while.
Today I spoke with Bev & Janet. They are in California visiting Lisa. I forgot to ask about Aunt Marge. Chances are they didn't contact her. Unfortunately, She can be difficult but Barb & I like her a lot and Bud too. Bev is having anxiety about her house here. She'll practically give it away to get out of the monthly costs. Unfortunately she has to have someone want it. It should sell. Today a lady called to see if she could rent it for $700 or 800 a month. What to do? Get a few bucks to help pay the bills or try to sell and get out from under. If someone wants it they may not take it with a renter in place.
I'll have to finish this tomorrow with another post. The Patriots and the Jaguars game is on. Go Jags!
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Saturday, December 29, 2007
David Fowler's Chili Recipe WPLP (or KPRC)
David Fowler was a talk show host at WPLP in Pinellas Park Florida back in the 1980's. One day, he had a discussion about home made chili and mentioned that he had won awards with his recipe. Of course all of his loyal listeners asked for it including yours truly. When I received it, I placed it in my recipe file and promptly forgot all about it. Recently, I decided to dump much of the things I had collected but never used and came across his recipe.
As luck would have it, Joey Sweat, our youth pastor has organized a chili cook off for 1/6/08 and so I thought hmmm let's give it a try. Barb being Barb said "no way are you bringing chili you haven't tried". So today I decide to give er a rip and followed the directions almost exactly. (sorry David) I say almost because I have only light beer and the recipe calls for a can of Budweiser. Oh well. The recipe also says to pull it off the stove and let it sit overnight so i did but prior to putting it into the refrigerator, I had to sample it. Wow! It is fabulous. I can't wait until 1/6!
On a sad note, I Googled David Fowler and learned that he had died back in 2004!
Here is the recipe as I received it back in the mid 80's:
David Fowler's Nine times First place Trophy award winning Chili recipe.
This is not chili, and I don't know how to write a recipe using the terms and such that one finds in the real thing. Read on. Change nothing. You'll note that quantities are vague. Use common sense and taste.
Stuff in this Mess:
1 0r 2 ponds ground beef, the best
1 standard can tomato paste and sauce and whole peeled tomatoes
1 large green pepper
1 large white onion
2 ribs celery
2 to 10 Jalapeno peppers, the canned in oil kind
½ a raw potato
1 can Bud beer
1 shot or two of olive oil – do not use cooking oil (I use Contadina brand)
1 standard envelope chili mix, such as McCormick’s or whatever, but not some weird, esoteric brand…just the plain stuff and a half envelope of taco mix
Some Oregano and Thyme and crushed red pepper and black pepper and a bay leaf or two and some grated parmesan cheese, such as in the green cardboard tube, and salt and, as to the spices, I use around a ½ a teaspoon or more – it’s up to you as are all the quantities and it’s also your problem or pleasure, don’t blame me.
Method of Preparation:
New simplified directions!!!
Brown the beef a little bit, not a lot…leave some pink. Dump everything into a pot and add water sufficient to keep it from burning while you simmer it for an hour or so.
Now, I must add, for the sake of decency that prior to the dumping you must have finely chopped, sliced and diced the vegetables.
Got that?
Do it.
Dump together as noted and so forth, and by now it’s simmering nicely and you’re keeping an eye on it and adding a bit of water here and there and the lid’s on the pot, slightly askew, a sprinkling of parmesan and always stirring and sampling and simmering and, three hours having passed, you let it cool and poke it into the fridge and wait until the next day and that’s that. It ain’t chili - its better!
You want beans? Fine. You also tell unfunny jokes, force your dog to wear rubber booties on rainy days, and are basically miserable. However, if you must….please use drained and rinsed kidney beans and their name is sufficiently disgusting to me or, even better, drained and rinsed black eyed peas, though I recommend neither and how do you spell recommmmmmend anyway?
I figure it may take a lifetime for you to get this right, so forget it. You go on and read that junk in the papers on Thursdays and clip coupons and buy cookbooks.
I don’t care.
You really must mess with this thing a few times to get it to your taste and if you’re the type who follows recipes exactly, I’m already thanking you for not inviting me to your table even though I said change nothing in this recipe. If that intimidated you, don’t cook this chili that isn’t chili.
Typing and mailing this thing’s been tough on me.
Be kind when you call.
Think kindly when listening.
Thank you,
DF (David signed this with his initials)
I have a scan of the original recipe if anyone wants it.
As luck would have it, Joey Sweat, our youth pastor has organized a chili cook off for 1/6/08 and so I thought hmmm let's give it a try. Barb being Barb said "no way are you bringing chili you haven't tried". So today I decide to give er a rip and followed the directions almost exactly. (sorry David) I say almost because I have only light beer and the recipe calls for a can of Budweiser. Oh well. The recipe also says to pull it off the stove and let it sit overnight so i did but prior to putting it into the refrigerator, I had to sample it. Wow! It is fabulous. I can't wait until 1/6!
On a sad note, I Googled David Fowler and learned that he had died back in 2004!
Here is the recipe as I received it back in the mid 80's:
David Fowler's Nine times First place Trophy award winning Chili recipe.
This is not chili, and I don't know how to write a recipe using the terms and such that one finds in the real thing. Read on. Change nothing. You'll note that quantities are vague. Use common sense and taste.
Stuff in this Mess:
1 0r 2 ponds ground beef, the best
1 standard can tomato paste and sauce and whole peeled tomatoes
1 large green pepper
1 large white onion
2 ribs celery
2 to 10 Jalapeno peppers, the canned in oil kind
½ a raw potato
1 can Bud beer
1 shot or two of olive oil – do not use cooking oil (I use Contadina brand)
1 standard envelope chili mix, such as McCormick’s or whatever, but not some weird, esoteric brand…just the plain stuff and a half envelope of taco mix
Some Oregano and Thyme and crushed red pepper and black pepper and a bay leaf or two and some grated parmesan cheese, such as in the green cardboard tube, and salt and, as to the spices, I use around a ½ a teaspoon or more – it’s up to you as are all the quantities and it’s also your problem or pleasure, don’t blame me.
Method of Preparation:
New simplified directions!!!
Brown the beef a little bit, not a lot…leave some pink. Dump everything into a pot and add water sufficient to keep it from burning while you simmer it for an hour or so.
Now, I must add, for the sake of decency that prior to the dumping you must have finely chopped, sliced and diced the vegetables.
Got that?
Do it.
Dump together as noted and so forth, and by now it’s simmering nicely and you’re keeping an eye on it and adding a bit of water here and there and the lid’s on the pot, slightly askew, a sprinkling of parmesan and always stirring and sampling and simmering and, three hours having passed, you let it cool and poke it into the fridge and wait until the next day and that’s that. It ain’t chili - its better!
You want beans? Fine. You also tell unfunny jokes, force your dog to wear rubber booties on rainy days, and are basically miserable. However, if you must….please use drained and rinsed kidney beans and their name is sufficiently disgusting to me or, even better, drained and rinsed black eyed peas, though I recommend neither and how do you spell recommmmmmend anyway?
I figure it may take a lifetime for you to get this right, so forget it. You go on and read that junk in the papers on Thursdays and clip coupons and buy cookbooks.
I don’t care.
You really must mess with this thing a few times to get it to your taste and if you’re the type who follows recipes exactly, I’m already thanking you for not inviting me to your table even though I said change nothing in this recipe. If that intimidated you, don’t cook this chili that isn’t chili.
Typing and mailing this thing’s been tough on me.
Be kind when you call.
Think kindly when listening.
Thank you,
DF (David signed this with his initials)
I have a scan of the original recipe if anyone wants it.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Boycott Savage Nation?
Michael Savage is an announcer who operates out of San Francisco which is surprising since the San Francisco city legislature has condemned his opinions. San Francisco is one of the U.S.'s more liberal cities as you might know.
Well, apparently he is continuing to pick on the Muslims in this country, enough so he has been targeted by CAIR (Council on American Islam Relations) or rather his advertisers. The latest to drop the Savage Nation? Officemax. They join Wal*Mart in pulling ads away from the Savage Nation. Well, in a twist, Michael Savage is suing CAIR for "encouraging advertisors to go else where's". Now ACT for America, another conservative action group is asking their members to call Officemax and tell them that they will boycott Officemax until they change their policies. Interesting. CAIR, a Savage Nation and ACT for America fighting each other.
I've often thought that far right Conservatives are just as bad for America as is far left liberals.
Well, apparently he is continuing to pick on the Muslims in this country, enough so he has been targeted by CAIR (Council on American Islam Relations) or rather his advertisers. The latest to drop the Savage Nation? Officemax. They join Wal*Mart in pulling ads away from the Savage Nation. Well, in a twist, Michael Savage is suing CAIR for "encouraging advertisors to go else where's". Now ACT for America, another conservative action group is asking their members to call Officemax and tell them that they will boycott Officemax until they change their policies. Interesting. CAIR, a Savage Nation and ACT for America fighting each other.
I've often thought that far right Conservatives are just as bad for America as is far left liberals.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
CNN's Most admired people
Tonight CNN said that President Bush and former President Clinton were the most admired people in the U.S.. Hillary and Oprah Winfrey were the most admired women. Good Lord is this possible? The President with his problems? Bill Clinton? Gees what a sad state this country is in. There used to be a problem deciding from many and now we have these two? Hillary or Oprah? Egad. I would venture that there's not a politician to be found that would garner any support for being admirable. They're all crooks.
It would seem that we could go out into the sports world and find someone. Used to be that we admired our sports leaders. Barry Bonds? I don't think so. I do admire Tiger Woods and Brett Favre but Peyton Manning has too many stupid commercials that seem to run continuous at times.
I'd bet that Mark twain could write a really good blog concerning the most admirable man or woman in the U.S. this year. I only know I can't come up with any.
It would seem that we could go out into the sports world and find someone. Used to be that we admired our sports leaders. Barry Bonds? I don't think so. I do admire Tiger Woods and Brett Favre but Peyton Manning has too many stupid commercials that seem to run continuous at times.
I'd bet that Mark twain could write a really good blog concerning the most admirable man or woman in the U.S. this year. I only know I can't come up with any.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Jesus was born for you (and me)
Today we received a great Christmas card from Barb's niece Shelly in Michigan. The sentiment from the card struck me so i decided to write it down before i forget it!
Jesus was born for you
If you have ever laughed,
if you have ever cried,
if you have ever believed,
if you have ever doubted,
if you have ever been loved,
if you have ever been lonely,
if you have ever been burdened with trouble,
if you have ever felt blessed by joy,
if you have ever drawn
one breathupon this earth -
then Jesus was born for you.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
A Night in Bethlehem
Tonight we had a special thing go on at church. As the title suggests, we had a Roman Sentry at our entrance to the Family Life Center armed with candy canes and directing people to register. Barb & Kay Olsen were "Census takers" who registered people. The addresses collected are to be used to mail photos taken by yours truly next to the Christmas tree. I took like 50 photos of people and another dozen or so on the events itself.
Next to me was a nativity scene with a young family with their baby boy. The boy was like 6 months old and extremely cooperative. Next was a station where the people could personalize a frame that we will be sending their photos with. I believe the next station was used to teach folks to mold a statue. There were stations for making jewelry and sachets for your dresser drawers. Pastor Mike had a synagogue and occasionally blew on a horn called a shofar. Whenever he blew it, we all kind of jumped. It was loud.
We had probably twice as many folks attend than I figured since we really didn't have a lot of advertising. A surprising number of "new" people for which the name and addresses were collected from. We will send their photos to them but I imagine some church propaganda as well. It was a good night and I believe all attending had a good time. Judy Cloyd said that next year we should hold it earlier in the month and earlier than 6:00 P.M. and have some food of some sort. Since Judy will be retiring along with Pastor Mike, I guess it's up to her sucessor.
Next to me was a nativity scene with a young family with their baby boy. The boy was like 6 months old and extremely cooperative. Next was a station where the people could personalize a frame that we will be sending their photos with. I believe the next station was used to teach folks to mold a statue. There were stations for making jewelry and sachets for your dresser drawers. Pastor Mike had a synagogue and occasionally blew on a horn called a shofar. Whenever he blew it, we all kind of jumped. It was loud.
We had probably twice as many folks attend than I figured since we really didn't have a lot of advertising. A surprising number of "new" people for which the name and addresses were collected from. We will send their photos to them but I imagine some church propaganda as well. It was a good night and I believe all attending had a good time. Judy Cloyd said that next year we should hold it earlier in the month and earlier than 6:00 P.M. and have some food of some sort. Since Judy will be retiring along with Pastor Mike, I guess it's up to her sucessor.
Friday, December 21, 2007
The Joy of working with Microsoft Windows XP
My sister Judy, wanted to video phone with her Granddaughter Emily the way I video phone with my daughter, Patti anne. It's a neat thing really. Set up a web cam, connect through Windows Messenger and have an unlimited, free talk with your loved one. The neat part is seeing them live on screen.
Now when I first installed it at home, I installed the Logitech software, connected the camera and logged into Windows messenger. Boom on line and on screen. No problems. Maybe 10 minutes. Hooray for Windows Vista! I try to do the same with Judy and unfortunately ran into the first error message. Windows XP must be upgraded to Service Pack 2. Ok, we go to Microsoft's upgrade and try to upgrade. Now the fun begins. First of all they said she needed 74 different upgrades. Ok so we say go ahead. An hour later we're finished installing all 74 upgrades and try to install the web cam. Nope, still need to upgrade Windows XP to Service Pack 2. So back we go and the first thing I notice is that the computer has slowed considerably. Hmmm what to do? I started checking various things out and realize that there's all kinds of different problems. Well, previously I noted that the fan to her power supply tends to whine at times and a bad fan can do really bad things to a mother board so i decided that she should have it checked out and since she had virtually no personal stuff in her computer, lets do a reinstall of the operating system and start fresh.
The next day we're back, everything is running fine and really quick so we figure it was a good step. Perhaps we had managed to download a corrupted file? maybe there was a glitch while downloading? Who knows. So let's install this web cam and get on with our life. No way, the tech didn't give us SP 2! Ok, let's do it, nope there's 74 files to be downloaded again. Damn I didn't put put SP 2 on the list for the tech. Dummy me. So we download it all and go on to SP 2. Try to find it. Ha! After a bit I allowed the Windows upgrade to search for required upgrades and eventually it found SP 2. So now we download it and no problem. Success at last.
Wait, after we successfully install the web cam and start Microsoft Messenger , it says they require an upgraded version of Windows Messenger. Ok, so we find the Messenger upgrade and wait for it to download and install. We start the new Messenger and get an error message that we need the current upgrade. Click here. Hmmm so we click on the here and downloading it comes. After another 20 minutes we finish and try it out - wow everything works. Now to test it. Judy calls Chris, her daughter and her son-in-law, Joe answers and says Chris is not home AND their computer is down. Tee hee what next?
So I go home and use my system to call Judy and another problem arises. Unfortunately Judy isn't computer literate enough to help so back I go. Just a bit of tweaking the web cam software. I now try "calling" myself. It rings but of course there's no one to answer so back home I go.
Voila after what seemed to be 6 - 8 hours we succeed! No one better ask me to help install a web cam again! I'm done unless they use Vista.
Now when I first installed it at home, I installed the Logitech software, connected the camera and logged into Windows messenger. Boom on line and on screen. No problems. Maybe 10 minutes. Hooray for Windows Vista! I try to do the same with Judy and unfortunately ran into the first error message. Windows XP must be upgraded to Service Pack 2. Ok, we go to Microsoft's upgrade and try to upgrade. Now the fun begins. First of all they said she needed 74 different upgrades. Ok so we say go ahead. An hour later we're finished installing all 74 upgrades and try to install the web cam. Nope, still need to upgrade Windows XP to Service Pack 2. So back we go and the first thing I notice is that the computer has slowed considerably. Hmmm what to do? I started checking various things out and realize that there's all kinds of different problems. Well, previously I noted that the fan to her power supply tends to whine at times and a bad fan can do really bad things to a mother board so i decided that she should have it checked out and since she had virtually no personal stuff in her computer, lets do a reinstall of the operating system and start fresh.
The next day we're back, everything is running fine and really quick so we figure it was a good step. Perhaps we had managed to download a corrupted file? maybe there was a glitch while downloading? Who knows. So let's install this web cam and get on with our life. No way, the tech didn't give us SP 2! Ok, let's do it, nope there's 74 files to be downloaded again. Damn I didn't put put SP 2 on the list for the tech. Dummy me. So we download it all and go on to SP 2. Try to find it. Ha! After a bit I allowed the Windows upgrade to search for required upgrades and eventually it found SP 2. So now we download it and no problem. Success at last.
Wait, after we successfully install the web cam and start Microsoft Messenger , it says they require an upgraded version of Windows Messenger. Ok, so we find the Messenger upgrade and wait for it to download and install. We start the new Messenger and get an error message that we need the current upgrade. Click here. Hmmm so we click on the here and downloading it comes. After another 20 minutes we finish and try it out - wow everything works. Now to test it. Judy calls Chris, her daughter and her son-in-law, Joe answers and says Chris is not home AND their computer is down. Tee hee what next?
So I go home and use my system to call Judy and another problem arises. Unfortunately Judy isn't computer literate enough to help so back I go. Just a bit of tweaking the web cam software. I now try "calling" myself. It rings but of course there's no one to answer so back home I go.
Voila after what seemed to be 6 - 8 hours we succeed! No one better ask me to help install a web cam again! I'm done unless they use Vista.
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