Cinematographically speaking

I just re-opened my Blockbuster online account, and upon looking through the various titles that are available, have come up with a very small queue. I need suggestions and I need them quick.

I do not appreciate when the first day of fall is also in the mid 90s. That's not supposed to happen, I was just getting in a Christmas mood yesterday for goodness sake! Come on!

In one of the most unfortunate moments of my young fantasy football life, I had Kevin Curtis and Donovan McNabb sitting on my bench today while they went and outscored my entire starting team by themselves. I think I might still win though, so not a total loss.

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Adventures in creation

I have just added a new application to Firefox that allows me to blog from my browser anytime I want without signing in to Blogger. Needless to say, if this thing actually works, I think I'll be keeping this thing a bit more current than every two weeks (or more). I guess we shall see.

This week went by extremely quickly, even with it being a relatively boring work week. I enjoyed the week on the whole, though, so I'm completely ok with it.

I have started hosting a community group through Rolling Hills on Monday evenings. We have met twice, and both times have been great. Everyone seems to really want to be there, want to invest in everyone else there, want to create a community. I'm excited to see how this goes in the coming months.

I went to my first quasi-official Big Loud Bucks company event on Tuesday, as Craig Wiseman was hosting his annual "Stars for Second Harvest" show at the Ryman. In the past this show has included the likes of Ronnie Dunn (of Brooks and Dunn fame), Keith Urban, and Bon Jovi, but Craig was having a hard time getting his friends signed up, so the whole show was performed by the Hit Men of Music Row, four songwriters that have written a combined 38 #1 country songs. The guys were extremely entertaining, the music was awesome, and it was at the freaking Ryman Auditorium; you can't go wrong with that.

As for the title of my post, it refers to my two adventures in the kitchen this week. The first was Sunday afternoon's effort to create a gluten-free Mark Wad, in celebration of Rachel's birthday. It was pretty easy to make, the only real difference was Rice Krispies instead of oatmeal, but the result was drastically different, with a lightly dense consistency. I personally prefer the original, but these kind of grew on me over time.

On a related note, I've decided to host a Christmas Ball party in December where everyone will get to create their own Wad. I'll have snickers, peanut butter cups, cereal, fudge, caramel, and everything else anyone would want to put in a Wad, and everyone will be able to leave with a recipe for their Wad. I'm weird, I know.

My second creation of the week grew out of my trip to the grocery store this morning, where I spontaneously decided to make soup today. Not having any sort of recipe and only a slight reference as to what you need in a soup, I got some chicken broth, potatoes, ham, ground beef, cheese soup, pork jowl bacon, cheese, and half and half. I pretty much threw the first six ingredients together in a crock pot for 4 hours and added the cheese and cream 15 minutes before eating. The result was an incredibly filling soup that I think, with some tweaking, could be much better; the pork jowl bacon needs to be switched to something a bit less fatty, and I might work on quantities of ingredients. I also now have seriously a tub full of soup to eat for the next week. No joke, I don't think I'll have to eat anything else until next Saturday.

Be on the lookout in the near future for more rants like my last post and hopefully some fun news (no idea what that would be, but I'd like to think fun news comes along once in a while, and I don't think I've had any for a bit).

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It's Rant-eriffic

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the infrequency is lame, I know.

I've decided one of my least favorite things in the world is when other people have their "That could have been me" near-death experience, or at least what they perceive as "near-death."

This was never more apparent to me than last month when the I-35 bridge collapsed. I would hear all of these accounts from people who would say, "I was on that bridge last Tuesday, it could just have easily been me on there!" and I would just want to smack the person on the TV or leave a bitter comment on their facebook wall. Because, really, it could have been anyone. They could have interviewed a 37 year-old woman from Nashville and heard her say, "I thought about going back to school one time last summer, and the University of Minnesota was on my radar. It could have been me on there." How ridiculous does that sound?

Maybe it's that I get annoyed by some of the things that cause people to re-examine their lives. Or things they claim cause them to re-examine their lives. Like it being a wake-up call for a girl who has never had sex to take a pregnancy test on her doctor's orders: what did she really think was going to be the result? If the test comes out positive, then obviously there are some serious questions that are raised. But the girl who takes that five minutes of what should best be described as curiosity and makes it a turning point in her life is living in denial. She's in denial of the importance of her life: she doesn't think the rest of her existence is exciting, so she has to take these brief brushes with danger and tragedy and make them more than they are.

And I think that this finally gets to the root of my annoyance: selfishness. Maybe more self-centeredness, although I believe they are interconnected. This annoyance manifests itself in those moments when someone asks you how you are only so they can tell you how they are, when someone makes their momentary trials the latest in a string of close calls. People like this seem to have a Struggle of the Month that, even once resolved, will remain in the forefront of their mind until the next SOTM comes along. Wake up call: Not everything is about you! Not even everything that happens to you is about you! Thinking that it is keeps you from recognizing the things that actually matter. Things like friends in trouble, family in pain, strangers in need. You will fit in each of these categories at some point in your life, and it's at that point it might be about you. Until then, make it about everyone else and you'll be surprised how much easier and more fulfilling life can be.