Hey

What are you up to? It's cold outside. No reason to go out there. Just stay right in here where it's warm. I'll keep you company.

Yes, it is that cold

In case you were wondering, that is a brass monkey. A few weeks ago he looked like this:

Friday Random Ten, with wintry mix

So, no work today. I can sit here and drink some coffee and contemplate going outside to clear the snow. Here's what's on the jukebox this morning:

Beat on the Brat—The Ramones

Walk This Way—Aerosmith

Psycho Killer—Talking Heads

Baby Please Don’t Go—Ted Nugent

Gimme Some Good Times—Lou Reed

Sweet Child O’ Mine—Guns N Roses

Lawyers, Guns and Money—Warren Zevon

Little Red Corvette—Prince

Looking For a Kiss—New York Dolls

Consoler of the Lonely—The Raconteurs

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And now, a public service announcement from Sprawling Ramshackle Compound:

Vodka and polar bear swim dares don't mix.

We need to get away

It's only the fifth day of the new year and I'm already struck with a bad case of cabin fever. We were successful in clearing out all the Christmas decorations right away, and the tree is out at the curb as I type this. I'm eager for 2009 to be a more active year than 2008, but it's hard to warm the body up to run when it's 8 degrees outside.

One of the things we've been doing to pass the time is think about how to use an airline voucher that we have. It's the result of canceling our Las Vegas trip in December since I was too fat, achy and under-trained to run in the Las Vegas Half Marathon like I did the year before. We have to book something by April.

Book what? We both want to go somewhere warmer than Chicago, that's for sure. Well, one thing led to another and I started looking at last-minute deals for all-inclusive resorts in Mexico. The idea of flying in and living in a hermetically sealed tourist bubble for 4 or 5 nights, lying on the beach and soaking in rum, sounds pretty good right now. We've never done anything like that before.

Then I saw a video teaser for the new season of No Reservations. My celebrity lookalike and travel hero Anthony Bourdain visits Mexico in the first episode, and here he is eating fresh tacos from a street vendor:



Dang. I can't have adventures among the street vendors if I'm shacked up at some resort, now, can I? I do know that I want beach if I go to Mexico, and I won't be visiting any place like Mexico City. So I started looking around at smaller places near Playa del Carmen and Tulum, and found a bunch of places that look like perfect tropical hideaways, complete with thatched roofs, white sand beaches, mosquito netting over the beds and food cooked from the local catch.

MizBubs has a birthday coming up at the end of February, and I wanted to time a trip around that. Now I'm learning all I can about Mexican tourism. Right now my choice is this:

1) Be a typical American tourist and stay in an all-inclusive resort, eating, lounging in the sun and boozing it up for one pre-paid price, or

2) Be a slightly less typical American tourist and stay somewhere a little less developed, ignore my total lack of Spanish language skills, and rely on my innate ability to find good food and booze in local shacks and dives.

In the meantime I'm going to stretch some more, ice up my lower back again, and try a short run before I go to work this afternoon.

Fun with widgets random ten

I've always really admired folks like Beth, Dale and Splotchy who do cool things with their blogs, letting us hear their favorite music (and even, sometimes, the dulcet tones of their voices) when we visit.

I'm going to try something like that this morning. I've loaded my Friday Random Ten into the little widget you see to the right, so listen away. Here's what's playing:

'Deed I Do—Blossom Dearie

Eat My Words—Marti Brom

Across the Universe—The Beatles

Excitable Boy—Warren Zevon

Die, All Right—The Hives

Tombstone Blues—Bob Dylan

Raunchy—Bill Justis

Goin' Back to the Bridge—Asie Payton

Man Ray—The Futureheads

Honky Tonkin—Hank Williams

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As an added weekend bonus I'm going to throw in a recipe. This makes an excellent side dish or savory brunch item. What I did was take the basic bread pudding recipe from the Gumbo Shop in New Orleans, add an extra egg and some goat cheese, and substitute a couple of ingredients.

Savory Bread Pudding


1/4 cup of butter
3 cups of milk
1 loaf of french bread, a day or two old, cut into 1 inch cubes
4 large eggs, beaten
1 pound fresh spinach
1 tablespoon minced garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup of sun-dried tomatoes, chopped (Costco has them in a nice 18 oz bag)
4-6 oz of crumbled goat cheese

• Saute the spinach with garlic, season with salt and pepper. Drain well, getting rid of as much excess liquid as possible
  
• Combine the milk and butter, heat in a microwave until the butter melts
• Pour milk/butter mixture over the bread crumbs in a large mixing bowl, let stand about 10 minutes so the bread soaks up plenty of milk
  
• Stir in the sun-dried tomatoes
• Stir in the spinach
• Stir in the beaten eggs
• Pour this mess into a greased baking dish or casserole and bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

I hope everyone enjoys the weekend. For me, this is like my Wednesday--I'm in my third day of my six-day work week. At least I can sense a delicious cocktail in my future this weekend...

IT'S TIKI TIME

Snow...freezing cold...salt stained footwear...misery. It's TIKI TIME!

MizBubs and I can't take it any more. We need to get out and have couple a drinks. It's f*cking cold and awful, and we can't afford airfare to Las Vegas, New Orleans or Key West right now, so we gotta come up with a plan B. Nothing beats the winter blues and cabin fever like a few Mai Tai's, Zombies, Apu-Apu's or Suffering Bastards in the company of friends. Here's the deal:

MizBubs and I will be at the Tiki Terrace in Prospect Heights on Friday, February 23, from 6:30pm on. Here's the address:

1 S. Wolf Road, Prospect Heights

They have good drinks, and some live music starting around 7pm. And they got snacks! (awesome fresh taro chips) Come on, let's hang out for a while. We deserve it.

Hope we see a few of you there.

No blog is an island

I am not (yet) a reclusive, booze-addled, gun-happy crank. I love socializing and talking, so I felt more than a little embarrassed that it took me this long to link to some of my favorite sites. Please accept my apology for not doing so sooner. I'm still figuring this out, and going through my bookmarks to find more stuff to link to. I imagine that within a week or two there will be quite a few more blogs up there, and a whole bunch more pop culture and political bullshit.

The snow's been shoveled two and a half times so far, and I'm sure there's more to come. I'm not beefing--you'd have to be a real whiner to complain about this snow after seeing what got dumped on NY state last week. I've been on the phone with work about a half dozen times today because some high-ranking clown is upset that I left my car parked in the department lot. We went to my niece's birthday party Saturday, and MizBubs suggested that she pick me up at work rather than wait for me to drive home and leave from there. I would've picked up the car sooner, but I didn't need it. Anyway, rather than just call me directly, bozo, undoubtedly cranked up by a couple of scheming cronies, spent the entire day pestering my friend who's working today and is the acting commander while our boss is on vacation. My friend, under orders, has had to call me every time and report back to bozo--yes, Joe is going to move his car, some time later today after his daughter gets home from school. Honest to God, if we spent half the effort on real police work that we do on peripheral chickenshit like cleaning the parking lot, or replacing the hat shields and bands on the uniform hats, there'd be no crime. I'll go in later tonight, after all the day shift hall monitors have gone home, and get my car. I want them to see it as they leave work and go home upset.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and I hope everyone has someone special to spend some time with. If you don't, I hope one's on the way.

I want to sign off on an up note, so here's a little Bettie Page, looking like she's wearing her Valentine's Day bustier and shoes. Dig that hep mid-century furniture in the background.

I need a party

Something with some strong booze, and some stimulating conversation. Well, the conversation should at least start out stimulating. How it ends up, I don't really care. This time last year we were planning a tiki poker night; this year we just can't get it together to throw a good party.

I'm thinking of organizing an outing to some local gin mill for an evening of hanging around, some place that isn't home. Drinking at home when it's -5 outside just seems insular and desperate.