Happy (belated) Birthday to Me!

A bit over 3 weeks ago, I celebrated my birthday.  It has been the tradition for the last several years that Lindz and I would go out for sushi.  This birthday had an added bonus, it was my last official day doing construction.  And as an extra special bonus, we hit the happy hour pricing at Osaka!

Spiraling in from the top and going clockwise, I got tuna, red snapper, surf clam, flying fish roe, smoked eel, smoked salmon, and mackerel.  Most of these I’ve had before, but I did find a couple of new things to try.  I never the flying fish roe sashimi before.  It is served in a cucumber cup.  It wasn’t bad, but I prefer the sushi version that is served in a nori cup.  The cucumber muted the flavor of the roe IMHO.  The stand out was the smoked salmon.  It had a nice but not over powering smoked flavor.

As a thank you / going away present, my boss gave me a really beautiful smoker.

It was a good day!

The Day Job

Haven’t been posting a lot here because the day job has me insanely busy during the summer months.  Also been working on a project that should (hopefully) be done by the end of summer.  Unfortunately, that is all the teaser you’re going to get until it’s done.  But in the mean time, here’s a pic from a day in the life of Terry.

 

My cut-man decided to go fishing for a week, so I get to play with the partner saw.

Memorial Day

Just want to give a quick shout out to all the Veterans who have served and sacrificed everything for the things that we all too often take for granted.

For everyone else, here’s a couple of cartoons from the legendary WWII cartoon Willie & Joe, written by Bill Mauldin.

Decorah Trip No. 2a57fd

Yup.  Just made up a hexadecimal number because I have no idea how many times I’ve written about trips to Decorah and I’m too lazy to figure it out.  Besides, who really reads hexdec anyway?

Anyway, Lindz and I made one of our regular trips to our old stomping grounds.  We stopped by the StoryPeople studio to pick something up and I ran across what I can only assume is one of the limited edition wood paintings.

A bit more subdued than Brian’s usual work, but I like it.

For those that are curious, the story printed on here is Living Memory.  Speaking of my old workplace, I just found a new sculpture that I got quite a kick out of:

You can find it here on the StoryPeople website.

What would a trip to Decorah be without eating at La Rana?

The smoked salmon salad. All local produce. All awesomeness.

Really not a lot to say.  It’s a fun little bar with a great atmosphere and great food all at a small town price.

With Love, Minnesota

This was taken about an hour and a half ago. And it’s still going strong.

The Golden Age of Sci-Fi

Okay, this one’s not food related, but I think it’s really fun.

One of my favorite genres of literature is science fiction.  There is a special place in my heart for the 1950’s Sci-Fi writing (commonly referred to as the Golden Age of Science Fiction) and the artwork that goes along with it.  Both the writing and the artwork were based on science, but at that time, we knew so little about space travel, a lot of imagination had to be thrown in.  It ended up being a wonderful, if not campy at times, blend of easy and entertaining reading.  The fondness for this style of Sci-Fi has stuck with me since I read my first Asimov book (The Naked Sun, if I remember correctly).  In fact, I’m only 1 of 2 people that I know that actually enjoyed the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.  The terrible acting and bad CG just made it that much more enjoyable because it fit in with my notion of the pulp Sci-Fi that the story comes from.

So, you can imagine that I was giddy as a school girl when I found the Pulp-O-Mizer!  It allows you to create your own cover of a Sci-Fi pulp rag.  So I naturally had to make my own.

So There Was A Wind Chill Advisory Today . . .

Snot-cicles.