Cocktail Confessions

Casey faces eviction in week 3

 In this Podcast recap I run down episodes 7, 8 & 9 from Big Brother season 11 on CBS.

I played a litte bit with the settings on Audacity (recording software) and how I did my recording.  Seeing that this is just a recap and nothing fancy, I recorded this in mono (single channel), and tried to cut to the chase in many instances of what was going down in the house.  This made for a leaner and overall shorter podcast both in size and length.

But long story short: Ronnie is an idiot, Jessie loves Jessie but not as dumb as he looks, Russell is a snake, Casey is getting the short end of the stick, Kevin is smarter than he lets on, Chima is starting to chill out (for now at least), Lydia is a whiner, Michelle is a cautious kiss-ass, Jeff is sane, Jordan is not, Natalie likes to stir up trouble.

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Holy Sweet Baby Jesus!!

If this isn’t the mother of all Ghetto advertising, I don’t know what is.  I mean with a ringing endorsement of  “Bitches will be all up on your dick when you walk in a room sporting this ass raping poncho!” , how could any Old English swilling, crack smoking, tin-plated grill wearing, old skool pimp go wrong?

And for you ladies, “Pretend you ain’t fat!” is rock solid marketing that any toothless, carney-going, Boonsefarm drinking, extension wearing, bubble booty ho would love to be wearing in style with her man.

This is pure gold.  I’d love to see their marketing campaign for shoes and pants while they’re at it.  What in Sam Hill tar-nation was going through their minds?  In what exact magazine or trade would you find this in?

I swear the lady poncho looks like a picture you’d find in your parents J.C. Penny catalog from the Angie Disckenson collection ro something.

It’s not just a name for a recent Simon Pegg comedy flick, it’s how I feel lately.

I realize that people are different, have different lifestyles, different habits, and unique metabolisms and maybe ever perhaps a specific gene inherited from their parents that will dictate how skinny or husky one naturally is. 

Some people are prone to be more athletic than others always striving to shave a second off their personal best times, or jump a little higher, lift a bit more.  Then there are plenty of people who enjoy life, enjoy a nice meal not worrying whether the saturated fat count is 5g or 6g, but they enjoy the taste and experience of a meal with family and friends.  There’s another segment of society out there that eats out of some type of internal manifestation “issue” such as stress, boredom, low self-image, anxiety, and even depression.

I think personally I am subject to a mix of all of these factors above.  From a genetic standpoint, I’m a bit huskier than average.  I’ve always been slightly larger than ‘average’, but would never consider myself obese.  As a young child I recall struggling a bit with weight gain and no matter how much I played outside, I have always had a difficult time shedding weight.  A couple of weight milestones stick out in my mind for whatever reason:.  When I was 16 year old I remember weighing about 167lbs and pretty much weighed that most of my high school tenure until I took gymnastics and became a male cheerleader my senior year.  I’m pretty sure I graduated high school at 178lbs. 

As I entered college I took up two new hobbies: weight lifting and beer drinking.  While the weight lifting transformed my muscularity into something my friends soon began to notice, I’m sure the beer drinking didn’t help matters in other areas of my body that weren’t getting defined by muscle.  By the end of my freshman year in college, I not only had gained the ’freshmen 15′, I also had the beginnings of arms and a chest and recall weighing 197lbs.  When I got married I was able to shed a few pounds and at the age of 33, I weight 216lbs but I could also bench press 300+ lbs.  By the way, I’m 5′10″.

Fast forward a few years and here I am welcoming more and more gray hair into my temples and goatee, have had rotator cuff surgery twice on the same shoulder, and thus my involvement at the gym has gone down considerably.  I still go to the gym, but not as regularly as I once did.  While I still eat relatively healthy, I do have some bad eating habits, such as skipping breakfast most of the time, and eating dinner too late in the day (often 7pm or later), where I then just sit on the couch until I go to bed.  And let’s not even talk about dairy…I love my cheese (as most Italians do).  It doesn’t matter that I walk a lot at work, or walk my dog daily when I get home, or even only go to the gym on weekends now…..I’ve noticed my weight ballooning to a current 234lbs! 

I recently saw some pictures of myself  that my friend had snapped when I was shirtless afew weeks back in Palm Springs, I was a little disappointed with myself.  While my chest has shrunk a bit from the inability to lift heavily any longer, it appears that my once established pecs have somewhat migrated around my gut.  I’ve even noticed that my 36″ pants are starting to feel snug, and I’d really like to get down to a 34″ or better yet a 32″ waist again.

I doubt unless I get very sick or embrace some radical new diet and have the willpower to control myself everyday, I don’t think I’ll ever get under 200lbs again.  I think a nice comfortable weight for me would be 210-215.  I feel that is realistic and attainable, and I know when I am very stressed out about things I can easily drop 5-7 lbs in a matter of days….but that’s the unhealthy way.

So despite the fact that I talk about different libations (I’m not quitting that outright), I’ll have to be much more mindful of the amount of libations I consume, eat earlier in the day, exercise a bit of portion control, and try and step up my aerobic activity a bit more.

Perhaps I will start my own personal weight challenge and update it weekly here for the time being and track my progress.  Seeing that this past Saturday (July 18th) I weighed 234 lbs at the gym, that’s a good place to start.  By making some simple changes, I’m going to try and drop 5lbs in the next 2 weeks.  I’m setting a target of 229 by August 3rd.  I’ll keep you posted.

Da Comrade!

I’m very excited to present this episode to you all.  I was finally able to get my childhood friend Brian Liles over for my first guest podcast, and hopefully we’ll do plenty more together in the future.  It was actually pretty easy to accomplish with just one microphone and turned out better than I anticipated.

So, here’s the setup…A few of my neighbors (Chip Beef & Ryan) and Brian went out earlier in the day to have a mess of hot wings and beer over at Wingstop.  Between the four of us we ate approx. 100 buffalo wings of various degrees of hotness (including the habenero induced ‘Atomic’) and went through at least five pitchers of beer.  Afterwards, Brian came over to my place, we cracked us some 22oz russian beers called ‘Baltika #3 ‘(4.8%), and sat down for this very podcast.

Brian has his own site dedicated to his love for offroading and his FJ Cruiser.  Go visit him at Brians4×4adventrues.com or click on the link in the right margin under my favorite links.  As I post this episode, Brian is actually on another roadtrip in Canada and he’s been updating his pages as well (finally).  You can see some gorgeous photos over there, but anyway, on to my show:

Oh, and the bumper music today is ‘Back in the Saddle Again’ by Gene Autry, so dig it!!

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A 50-year-old California man says he ordered French onion soup and bit into a condom instead of melted cheese.

Zdenek Philip Hodousek of Mission Viejo, CA sued a local Claim Jumper restaurant Tuesday (7/21/09)in Orange County Superior Court. He is seeking unspecified damages.

Hodousek’s attorney, Eric Traut, says his client wants restaurant employees’ DNA tested to find a match to female DNA allegedly found on the condom.

A public relations firm representing Claim Jumper says an internal probe (heh, they said ‘probe’) revealed no employee wrongdoing.

The firm says Hodousek took the so-called “foreign object” found in his soup with him, and there is no proof it is the same item later submitted to a lab for testing.

CC:  This sounds fishy (no pun intended), but why does the guy know that ‘female’ DNA was allegedly found on the condom?  One owuld think thiswould be eitehr cooked off in teh heating prcoess, or if anything, you’d want to teset for the male DNA inside the condom.  Anyway, well yeah…um…anyway.  No - I got nothing.

The following enhancements and/or general changes were made over the last few days to the site as I continue to learn and make minor adjustments.

• Link added: Chris Richardson is the developer of the Map Press plugin and was very kind to help me out directly and very quickly when I sent him an email regarding some technical issues I was having in getting maps to display when ‘published’.  Added a link to his plug-in site in the Blogroll section entitled Map Press.  Go check him out if you have Wordpress.
• Plugin update: Map Press v1.5.8.8 was updated 7/23/09.
• Plugin update: Sociable v3.4.3 was updated 7/23/09.
• Plugin update: Askimet v2.2.6 anti-spam was updated 7/21/09.
• Plugin update: Power Press v0.9.2 was updated 7/23/09.  However, I noticed when I did the upgrade some (not all) of my settings were lost.  I need to go back and ‘re-validate’ two of the feed settings so when I eventually try and post these to Zune or iTunes, these services will recognize new podcasts when posted.  Speaking of Zune and iTunes, I’m going to try and get at least one of these (probably Zune first) submitted over the weekend.  Crossing my fingers.
• Zoom H2 portable mic: Was supposed to be delivered today, however, most recent tracking update has now extended the window upwards of 7/29, which sucks, because its apparently at the FedEx facility in Aliso Viejo as of 6:30am this morning which is 10 miles from my house.
• Plugin deleted: Deleted visitor IP mapper running in background (my eyes only).  It didn’t seem to be capturing ‘all’ the data and therefor not doing it’s job correctly or accurately and thus just taking up space at this point.  No big loss.
• Plugin added: Added Next Gen gallery plugin that allows for slideshows and picture gallery enhancments.

Ronnie - Not a Jedi.

This podcast episode is indeed published out of order  as I haven’t finsihed editing episode 5 yet (w/ guest Brian Liles & the Grand Canyon), so don’t fret.

After a few false starts, I did this one again in one take, so it may sound a little rough around the edges.  I still feel I need to cut this down in length as even I was surprised it was close to another 1/2 hour.  But it was trying to condense the highlights of three hour long televised epsiodes into a sub 30 minute podcast.  It was a tad bit scripted (5 pages….ugh) as I had to write notes for each episode that aired so I could remember the sequence of events.  Maybe next time I can cut it down to three pages or so and get it closer to 20 minutes.

As always, feel free to leave comments below, or write me at cocktails1@hotmail.com.

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 WTF? 

#1 I’m sorry, but if I were of the same sex persuasion I’d be insulted by this as.  “Gaynines?”  Really?  That’s the best Washington City can come up with is a play of sexual orienation and tie it into the pets you care for?  “Come on OUT!”?  Groan.

“Is your dog straight?”  Really?  Do you really ponder what sexual orientation your male pooch assuming he/she has been spayed/nuetered?  Most male dogs will mount anything.  Hell, throw a roll of paper towels out on the floor or a stuffed teddy bear rubbed in bacon fat and Rover will be all over it.

But “Undecided?”  Not sure how having an animal of any sort precludes you from figuring out your own sexual orienation, but still in the end….Gaynines?  Ugh.

#2 No wonder this store sells so much seafood in its asian neighborhood.

Husband:  “Mama-san, this robster bisque soup where having tonight is dericious.”

Daughter: “Has anyron seen Fruffy?”

Here it is, Cocktail Confessions podcast episode #4, our recent trip to a sweltering 113 degree Fahrenheit Palm Springs run.

In listening back, I have to say I’m a bit embarrassed with the many  “Um’s” that spill out of my mouth.  I’ll have to work on that.  Anyway, this episode clocks in just shy of 35 minutes and I discuss a detailed day by day account of some of the sigths we saw and places we ate at.  Unfortunately we did not make it to the aerial tram and ride to the top of San Jacinto, but we all agreed that perhaps we’d like to go back later in the year when it’s a bit cooler.

<<Additional pictures to be added here later from Webshots gallery>>

Show Notes

01:50 - Shocktop Belgian Ale is the drink for this epsiode.  Spiced Belgian White Ale with hints of corriander and orange citrus.

04:30 - Our road trip begins and we have our first set back when we get to Redlands, CA and discover Slim Piggins BBQ has recently closed down.

07:44 - Pull into Palm Spring and have a nice lunch and drinks at the famous Las Casuelas on the main drag.

08:56 - Arrive at the retro and swanky Orbit Inn.  We enjoy the pool, modernism design, free sake Orbitini’s at happy hour, and gourment continetal breakfast.

13:32 - Dinner at the Kaiser Grille is mediocre at best.  You live and learn.

14:40 - Monica plays the one arm bandits at Spa Resort Casino while Jayson, Albert & Lisa hang out in the lounge and listen to coverized funk.

17:05 - Visit to the Living Desert Zoo where it was 113+ and some of the exhibits were closed like the LGB G scale train I was so looking forward to seeing.  The train exhibit reopens Oct. 1, 2009.  We take plenty of pictures of wild cats, reptiles, birds and more (to be posted later).

25:35 - Very delicious goat cheese tamales and excellent bbq lunch over at Babe’s BBQ in Rancho Mirage.

26:53 - 1/2 priced Sunday dinner at Oceans 111, where the drinks are large and the taste is just as big.

29:00 - Last night stargazing under a clear sky and a motel to ourselves.  Looking forward to coming back later in the year when it’s a tad cooler

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (32.0MB)

Added ”MapPress” plug-in, v1.5.8.4 to the Cocktail Confessions site. 

In some instances, future posts may have maps showing landmarks and/or locations.  Still working out the bugs here for display.