Cocktail Confessions

My wife and I have a deal when it comes to driving.

If we are required to attend one of my sparse family functions, I drive us in my car. If we are requested to attend one of her families numerous functions we take her car.

There are a couple of reasons for this: namely the cost of fuel and my lack of patience when it comes to sitting in traffic. I drive a V6 SUV which of course gets less fuel economy than my wife’s 4-cylinder Honda. The fact that most of her family functions take place either in the Inland Empire or Long Beach almost immediately mandates we will be stuck in traffic at one point, and my ire raises when we are only traveling 20 miles per hour for extended periods of time.

In so far as that goes, I’ve learned to combat that mind numbing time by bringing a book or magazine to help fill the time. However, even at lower speeds, books and written word tend to jostle around the page and it takes me twice as long to get through a sentence.

But my biggest pet peeve when it comes to my wife driving is her management of the in-dash stereo. In the close to eight years we have now been married, there are only two scenarios that take place within the confines of her unkempt silver death-box: 1) Hearing the same crappy “high school” mix CD over and over and over again, or, 2) her changing the channel every so often that nary one song (if she can even find one half the time) plays in its entirety.

So let me break each down:

1) We have a collection between the two of us of over 200 CD’s, and we both own computers that can burn/rip our own. That being said, she virtually has a plethora of genre’s she can choose from and make a multitude of CD’s. But nope, she made a handful of CD’s about 4-5 years ago, but I think only one ever made it out to her car, and I am subjected to the same B-side songs and artists every single time. It’s almost to the point I can tell how far we have traveled with my eyes closed just by what vomit inducing song is currently playing. Oh, Nelly Furtado….we must be near the Green River Exit. U2,…we’re on the 241 to 91 transition.

2) If it’s not the CD, then you can practically diagnose my wife with situational ADHD. She will change the channel every 30 seconds as her right hand basically hovers over the seek or pre-programmed buttons while she’s driving. I don’t think we’ve ever listened to a station broadcast song from start to finish in years. If a radio edit song clocks in at 2.5 minutes, rest assured, you’re only going to hear a 45 second snippet at best, so you better hope you got luck enough to hear the part you enjoy the most.

The whole thing is maddening and has caused some colorful discussions, in which since it is ‘her’ car, I end up losing.  This last time, I thought I’d outsmart us both. I ended up loading up my personal player with an Audibook, something I can listen to and enjoy by myself and not have to deal with her constant station fumbling. At least, that was my theory.

Instead, once I plugged my earbuds into my head, my wife must have taken this as a green light signal to now turn up the car stereo to the proverbial ‘11’ on the volume dial. Are you shitting me? Is this the “I’m still going to piss him off” mode and pretend I don’t know what’s going on? I couldn’t compete. Do you know how hard it is to concentrate on hearing and digesting one thing, when someone else now has to up the ante by intentionally blasting their repetitive crap at volume levels you weren’t even sure the little Honda could muster?

But even in my incredulous stewing and my eyes closed in despair once again, I knew we close to Antonio Parkway and thus close to home. Why? Because Stevie B was playing again.

I came across these recipe pages today and thought I’d share them with you.

These come from the aggregate recipe site called Kitchen Daily, a site that collects various simple recipes based upon daily themes.  In this outing I have included on on gourmet hot dogs and sausages, the other on kebabs, skewers, and satays.

Most of all the recipes here can be made on a grill, great for summertime outtings, and on a level of beginner to slightly intermediate levels, which is nice.  Of course, you don’t need to follow these recipe directions to their scripts; I think they are all pretty open to interpretation, so go ahead an experiment with various condiments, toppings, sauces, etc.

Food on a stick: 25 recipes for skewers, kebabs, and satays can be found here.

18 gourmet hot dogs and sausage sandwiches can be found here.

Well, it’s a nother year, another summer, and I’ll be fit to be damned tied if I don’t get to go on any type of vacation get-away.  It’s been at least 4 years…maybe even 5 now the last time my wife and I went anywhere exciting that was more than an hour from our house for any length of time. 

And that was the Grand Canyon, and we drove, and we were only gone a total of 5 days (maybe 6), but I think 5….maybe all the hours in the car have affected my memory on the matter.  Since then, the best we’ve done since is a 2 night stay out in Palm Springs, one overnight at the Queen Mary in Long Beach and nothing else since.

Earlier this year I tried to rally some friends together for a camping trip.  One in which I’d rent a 27′-30′ RV with a slide out and go to Mojave Narrows near Apple Valley, CA.  There seemed to be a lot of buzz and excitement at first with everybody showing an initial glimmer of interest, but as I tried to spearhead this experience….I soon came to realize that maybe my friends were ‘all-talk’ and ‘no-action’.  I love my friends and I wouldn’t trade any of them, but the whole outing seemed to come a part at the seems when no one could commit to a date.  Mind you, I was planning on an outing with 2, almost 3, months advance notice.  Plenty of time to request time off from work, maybe find a sitter or two, put aside a little cash, and have plenty of weekends available.

I went through the whole process of finding the campsite, lining up the camper, breaking it all down to some more than affordable based on the amount of people that expressed interest, and the closer I got to signing a contract on the dotted line, none of my friends were now able to commit. 

Ugh…failed attempt.

Well, here we are again, a few months later and I’m trying to regroup…..re-circle the wagons… and try again. 

In an effort to make it a simple and cost effective as possible, I found some very nice cabins up in Big Bear, CA.  For those that feared about a home on wheels, cramped conditions, single sardine like toilet/shower combination, and an unproven campsite….I went the cabin route.  We’ll have bedrooms, a full size kitchen and living room, 2 full sized showers/bathrooms, plenty of parking, an outside porch and backyard deck.  We’ll be close to town (2-3 miles) and plenty of tourist attractions.  Big Bear is also pretty close to everyone…within or less than 2 hours away from all of us.  And the price is not bad at all!!!  At $199 a night, if you break that down between 4-5 people and we go for 4 days, we’re looking at $100 a person!!

So the initial email went out today, and I’m targeting a late July or early to mid August date.  Now perhaps I’m getting myself too pysched up, but I’m hoping I (we) can pull this off.  It would be great to do, and it’d be a shame if another summer year went by and we didn’t do anything or go anywhere.

(iGrill Probe)

With Father’s Day almost here, I’d like to think there are plenty of wives, daughters, and girlfriends putting some serious thought into their man’s gift.  But if you have any semblance of the life and relationships I do, that’s wishful thinking.  I’m sure my step-daughter will forget me on father’s day as she did on my birthday, and my wife will probably get me the standard bottle of Maker’s Mark…if I’m lucky (she didn’t get me anything for my birthday either). 

Yeah, that little bit of information may seem bitter and trite coming from me, but in all honesty (since this is Cocktail Confessions), I AM STILL bitter about that.  Lord knows I try my hardest to put some thought into their gifts for their special days, but hey, I still believe in family and traditional roles…so call me stupid.

ANYWAY…..it’s been a while since I talked about gadgets around here as well, so I got something that may be right up your mans alley, especially if he’s a techie as well.  It’s called iGrill, the progeny of taking an iOS App (read: iPad, iTouch, iPhone) and mating it with our favorite backyard sport of grilling. (*Android users will have to be patient…it was supposedly going to hit 2nd quarter 2011 and so far it hasn’t).

Starting at $99 (which includes a thermometer, probe and the ‘app’ itself), and coming in either white or black options, iGrill works via long range (200+ ft) Bluetooth technology. In a nutshell you stick your probe into your meat which is connected to the Bluetooh thermometer, and wirelessly monitor your BBQ or Grill via your iPad, iPhone, or iTouch.

Now via your electonic device you can monitor upwards of two seperate probes, review recipes and tips, use it as a kitchen timer, monitor by temperature (upwards of 400 degrees), and more.  Thier website even has a section called iGrill University which has some cool tricks of the trade that are applicable year round.

(My wireless probe - $35)

All in all, it’s a pretty cool idea if you don’t already own a traditional wireless temp probe (I actually do) and like cool techie animations and detail to wow your friends, but the price is a bit steep in my opinion. 

My own remote basically does the same thing but only cost me about $35.  The only really new thing they introduce here is a slick front end GUI and the ability to monitor two probes at once, (but if you’re an Apple fan…you’re already used to paying top dollar for stuff you can buy at half price anyway).  Still, I won’t deny, when it come sout for Android….I may take a second look.