So it has been about a month, a little more actually :), and it has just been a rough month.  Health and stress have been at all time lows and highs respectively.  I have not been gaming as much as I used to. I have three games from gamefly sitting here and haven't even opened 2 of the envelopes.  I wonder if gaming is finally passing me by.  I am a little sad if that is the case as it has been a part of my life for just under 30 years.

On a good note we have been riding more as a family and went to a local park that has a 7 mile bike trail and rode it and found out that it ends a mere 2 miles from the beach.  It was really cool. The kids loved it and we loved the family time.  We got Ricky a "new" bike.  We found that on his 12" bike he had to constantly work and never got to coast.  So our town had a town wide yard sale and we saw a 16" bike for 7 bucks and decided to give it a shot and he loves it he can go so much faster. On his old bike he was only able to peddle at 5 miles and hour, on his new bike he is able to go 9 miles an hour, huge difference. 

So it is confirmed that we are going to Myrtle beach on vacation this year for a 3 generation vacation. As it is Myrtle Beach I need to lose some of the 40 plus pounds I have put on in the past 2 years. I worked out for a bit last year and lost 5 pounds and put on more muscle so I am hoping to do some more of that.

I am doing the one hundred pushups, two hundred sit ups and two hundred squats programs. I am thinking that between the three doing them circuit training style should help. I also want to begin to go on a bike ride 3 days a week of at least 10-15 miles in the begining and then maybe 20-25 after 4-6 weeks.

I will keep an update on my status here. 

I went out for the second round of the year yesterday and man was it beautiful.  It was supposed to be raining yesterday afternoon so we held our excitement in check. All day it was overcast and cold. Then at about 1:00 the sun broke through and stayed out until 8:00pm. it was amazing.

We get to the course at 3:45 and were told it would be a twenty minute wait, no problem we head over to the chipping green and I help my youngest brother with his chipping and it clicked right away with him. He got it and it helped him cut 7 strokes off his best round.

I was hitting the ball pretty well and it was nice for the draw to come back. 2 years ago I lost my slice and a slight draw developed and it has gotten a little more in control. The first round it wasn't there but it came back on number 3 yesterday.

I love golf. 

We have a standing order for 6 cases of Ricky's yogurts every Friday night, that is our routine I finish work and then go pick up his yogurts, his lifeblood. We get there I find someone in Dairy and ask for the special order and they bring it out. Well tonight I ask and they don't have it.

I tell the kid it better be back there go look again.

He looks and it is not there he goes to find the dairy manager and they look together and it is not there.

They get the store manager and he is a prick and says there is nothing that I can do about it the buyer is gone for the day.

I have to lead him down the path to get this resolved that they will be there at least on Monday morning and I take whatever they have on the shelf (8 yogurts) He has 2 left at home so that makes 10

That will get him through lunchtime tomorrow. I have calls in the medford(5) jenkindstown (7) and Middletown(4) and the numbers in the parenthesis are the ones they have in the store set aside for me.

So my saturday will be driving all over NJ and PA getting yogurts.

The worst part about this is Ricky heard me talking and when he got home he had one yogurt and said "Daddy, I am full, I have had enough we can keep the other ones so I can eat tomorrow" I did everything I could not to cry right there. He is so amazing. I told him not to worry about it that Daddy would make sure we got them tomorrow you eat as many as you want.

Edit :  We called them on Saturday and they had his yogurts in and we spoke to Elian and promissed, again, that they would be there on fridays from now on. 

We are having our next Rock Band night at our house this Saturday and I am again making some wings and what goes with Wings?? Blue Cheese of course!!

However there is a very real problem with Blue Cheese, I hate it. I can't stand it, never liked it, never will.  I want to make my own, this will prove to be a challenge for someone that doesn't eat it. I hope I am up for the challenge.  

I am  thinking that I need Blue cheese, well duh right??

Either SourCream or Mayonnaise or both maybe for the creamy liquid.  - I know sounds disgusting, but whatever.

I think some kind of Garlic or Onion in there as well as a background flavor but who knows.

I'll report back with how it turns out. 

Reporting Back : The blue cheese dressing according to my guests came out great. Wohoo, the biggest issue for me and cooking is I don't measure anything so I have a hard time telling people how to cook what I  cook. I have to get better at it.

Sorry for the bad pun but sometimes you just have to right?

Last night the kids went to bed the masters was over and I finished watching Full Metal Jacket (awesome movie BTW) I decided that I would try my hand at the drums on Rock Band.  In our little gathering I do not play drums, My wife and 1 of our friends do. I play Bass and have been moving up the Guitar Difficuilty to the point where I can finish some songs on Expert. I am a decent Hard guitarist. That being said, I do want to be able to play the drums so I decided to set it up and create a new band and get to drumming.

I started it up and found out that I am not as bad as I thought I would be. I managed to finishe completely my first two venues with only have difficuilty with one song, Time We Had by The Mother Hips [will come back to insert link]. The wierd bass drum pattern and the change of the cymbal snare combo had me thrown all off.  I am finding that it is more fun then I initially had with the drums when I first started as well.

I thought that song was hard and had told my wife about it because I had never heard the song.  So I fired it up for her and wow I was impressed, she got a 98% on Medium and had to go at it on hard. I was not just going to sit there so I powered on the guitar and played it on hard with her. She got 84% and I got  92% and I decided I could do the song on expert so we went at it again and and She got 86% on hard again and I got 96% on expert.

I will be back at it again this evening to continue the world domination. 

Me and the wife have been playing much more rockband recently and we are starting to get better, We challenged both our first co-op Hard song and Expert song last night and while the expert song was not pretty it was finished without anyone dying.

I have also come to the conclusion that Rock Band in part has strengthened our Marriage, with all the money, health and job issues we have been fighting a lot more recently and it was begining to take it's on our relationship. We don't have the money to go out as a simple dinner costs almost 100 bucks when combined with the cost of a babysitter so we have to get our entertainment with the kids. While I love my kids sometimes it is nice to just be me and not be Dad.  So we started having friends over on Saturdays and doing dinner and then putting the kids to bed and then enjoying our friends and some rock band, along with a few adult beverages ;). 

The past few weeks we have started playing a couple nights a week, just her and I and have been truly having fun. It has allowed us to have fun with each other again and allow us to find parts of each other that we had forgotten about. Looking forward to more. 

So I was watching Good Eats on the food network the other day, best show on that channel by the way, and he was doing a pepper special. The second recipe of the showw as a pepper pot pork chop. 

• Start by brining the pork chops in vegetable stock, salt, brown sugar and pepper. Let it sit overnight.
  
• Next day put a bit of oil in a skillet and brown the pork chops on both sides (5 minuteseach) on medium high heat.
  
• Remove from heat and place on a cooling rack, put a little more oil in the pan andthen put 2 medium onions in the pan to sauté.
  
• Now in the slow cooker, place down a handful of dried apples, then place porkchops on top.
  
• Once the onions are done pour in a little over a cup of chicken broth over the onions and de-glaze the pan. Once it reaches a simmer remove from the heat and pour in the crock pot.
  
• Cook for 1:30on high, stirring occasionally
  
• Then turn the heat down to low and cook for 4:30 more.
  

Serve with rice and enjoy a great meal. 

This morning we had to go to my son's pre-school to pick up a piece of playground equipment that they had given us, on the way home I wanted to stop at a local bagel shop and grab a porkroll and cheese sandwich on a roll.  We called and they ran out of rolls. So we decided we would go out for a cheep family breakfast at Denny's. Quick, Cheap and kid friendly.

Well we get there and shockingly there is no wait, Yeah! We sit down and it takes 10 minutes before out waitress comes over to take our drink order. Normally a delay is not a big deal but we have to bring Ricky's food so the longer we wait the colder his food gets and I feel bad for him having to eat cold food, that's why we don't go out to eat to much.   So she takes our full order and we wait another 10 minutes for the coffee to come out and as soon as she drops off the coffee she comes back out with our food. Alright so a long wait for the coffee but now the food is here 20 minutes since we sat down, not too bad.  She had forgotten my wife's toast, My daughters fruit and my hashbrows were cold and the pancakes were not cooked. Well we don't see the waitress again for 10 minutes, by this time Ricky is done eating, Aeris has finished and I have finished everything else so I don't want the packakes or the hasbrowns now.

We get the check and I have been telling my wife that I am going to leave her a penny tip, it shows that you didn't forget as no tip could just mean you forgot the leave one.  My wife was arguing with me that she deserved more.  Well it was crap service  and she should know that.  bill 26.68 total charged to the card 26.69. 

Wings and College basketball well, this saturday anyway.

I want to try some new flavors of wings, Garlic Parmesan, Onion Pepper(with Cayanne, Chipotle and Black Peppers) and of course my standard sauce.  I am thinking I can have 5-6 different flavors and then be content, have a wing tasting party or something.  As I type this I think I want to try a buffalo BBQ sauce. We will see how that one works out.

Well off to our weekly whole foods 100.00 yogurt trip. Going to stop at the Buffallo farm as well and get Ricky's 2 week supply of Buffalo meat. 

So the wings went well I made 5 varieties tonight.

Basic Buffalo wings - good as usual

Garlic Parmesan - These came out surprisingly well, Very impressed and were had by everyone.

Onion Pepper - Too much onion flavor not enough pepper, need to adjust the formula onto something here maybe.

Hawt - Had three kinds of peppers, chipotle, cayanne and Black Pepper - this was a dissapointment as I was expecting this to be a very interesting flavor and it was just there. It will not be coming back.

Buffalo BBQ "Sweet Heat" -  Now this was to me the victor of the evening, Take my home made BBQ sauce and some of the Buffalo Sauce and mix together, I was expecting a buffalo flavor with a hint of BBQ sauce and what I got was a BBQ wing with the Buffalo goodness. It was awesome. These are now my new favorite wing.

All in all good effort and I am pleased as I now have 2 new wing flavors added to the mix and will have to come up with some others. My ultimate goal is to have 10 different flavors, we shall see how that goes.