February 24, 2006

Perfect Angel

Last weekend I had a chance to meet the incredibly entertaining Oddybobo. Today I read long list of places sheÂ’s been kicked out of. IÂ’m sorry, but I have a hard time believing the two are the same person. Then again, people do mature as they get older and lose their wild ways.

I would take some time to share stories with all of you, but I was the perfect child growing up. Not once did I get in trouble. Never did I get into a fight. I was never suspended from school, kicked off the bus or even sent to detention. My parents could trust me alone and not worry about anything bad happening. My only run-ins with the law, other then traffic violations, happened while I was in college and I was a victim of circumstances.

Well, there was that one thing when I was younger. IÂ’ve never admitted this before, but I feel now is the time to share. When I was 12 I once drank milk directly from the carton. There, I admitted it. IÂ’m so ashamed of myself. You can see why I never told anyone.

IÂ’m sorry, I have to go call my parents and admit to what I did. Hopefully they will forgive me.

Posted by: Contagion at 04:47 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 215 words, total size 1 kb.

February 13, 2006

Making meat sticks.

Over the weekend I ended up making two batches of jerky. The first was just your regular style of jerky, which turned out decently. IÂ’ve had better, but itÂ’s not bad. For the second batch, it was time to change things up a little. I decided to make pepperoni sticks. I figured it couldnÂ’t be that much different from making regular jerky. For once I was right.

The hardest part was controlling the gun. After loading the jerky gun with the cured ground meat, I started making the sticks. I had a strong grip on the shaft as I squeezed the handle. All of a sudden, the meat was squirting everywhere. Apparently, I pulled harder then I thought. After wiping down the tray, I reloaded the gun for another round. The second time is the charm, right?

This time I was very gentle, and was able to lay long lines of the meat. After 20 minutes, I had all the trays fully loaded with the soon to be dried pepperoni snacks. Just like the last time it took about 6 hours for the soon to be snacks to finish. Again, I had to pat down the meat to get the excess grease off. This was using the leanest ground beef I could find, IÂ’d hate to see what it would be like with a fattier meat.

After the drying process, I put the pepperoni snacks on paper towels to dry for a couple of hours. Again, I wanted to remove the excess grease from the sticks. When they where finished “drying” I decided to sample one to see how it was. To be honest with you, these turned out pretty damn good. They actually taste like pepperoni flavored snack sticks. (This is not the same as actual pepperoni.) Since I made these after the “contagious” period, I let my wife and boys try some.

Clone, who is an avid pepperoni fan, couldnÂ’t get enough of them. If I had left the bag where he could reach them, he would have eaten all of them by himself. When Ktreva slipped one of my meat sticks into her mouth, the look of surprise on her face told me all I needed to know. The moaning and MMmmmmMMMmmming told me she liked it. She kept trying to gobble up my meat the entire weekend.

I will have to say that my first experiments with making jerky and jerky like products have resulted in a success. Now I need to start pricing meat so that I can find the best deal for low-fat meats to make jerky.

I thinking of making a second batch to take with to the Wolf park. For the us, not the wolves.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:37 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 459 words, total size 2 kb.

February 10, 2006

Eye can do it!

I know that all of you are itching to hear about the status of my eye. So, lets get todayÂ’s update out of the way.

The pain hasnÂ’t increased any; itÂ’s about the same as yesterday. There has been a shift in it, now it feels as if someone is pushing their finger in my eye along the corner next to the nose. ItÂ’s an uncomfortable pressure, and is rather quite distracting.

The swelling and puffiness is about the same. Nothing of any real consequence to cause any noticeable difference. My eye doesnÂ’t want to stay open, but I donÂ’t know if that has anything to do with the swelling or if itÂ’s because it is more comfortable when it is closed.

I am still producing some mighty eye boogers. Just before I started typing this, I wiped one away that was crunchy and gooey at the same time. The coloring is still yellowish; I think that is a good sign.

There is no discoloration or sign of pox again this morning. Since IÂ’m going on five days of this, I think IÂ’m going to rock the boat and declare I do NOT have shingles. IÂ’m pretty sure that by now it should have started manifesting itself. What ever I have must be something else. Which can be good or bad.

I was going to post some pretty nasty pictures of what shingles of the face/eye looks like, but I decided not to. Some of you might be curious, but I think the rest would prefer not to see it.

Posted by: Contagion at 11:52 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 268 words, total size 1 kb.

February 09, 2006

Aye Booger.

I have just enough time to give you an update on the olÂ’ eye. IÂ’m supposed to keep track of these things, per the doctor, and I thought, hey I can use my blog to do that!

First let me note that the pain/discomfort has increased. It mildly hurts when I blink now, and if I keep my eye closed it just is downright painful. This has caused for an interesting twitching sensation in my right eye, which by the way annoys me. When I get annoyed, my eye twitches. ItÂ’s a vicious cycle, so now I need to calm down to get the twitching to stop. The twitching is very uncomfortable.

There is still only a slight swelling/puffiness to the eye. Which is good, because I’d rather it not look like my wife was beating me. What would I tell the guys at the range? “No really Jimmy John, I have an eye infection. My old lady did not haul off an’ backslap me because I came home 2 hours late smelling of whisky and strippers.”

Other then a slight blurring, my vision seems to be fine. This is a good thing as that means that the eyeball itself is A-ok. If it gets worse, then what ever it is may have spread to my eyeball and that would be bad.

At this time there is a slight discoloration to the skin under the eye. Is it the pox? I donÂ’t know yet. Only time will tell. There is no itching. The only drainage IÂ’m getting is a slight watering of the eyes. There is no puss. However, this morning when I woke up the eye booger that I had was massive and has reformed twice.

Since Machelle brought it up, I will address the issue of my going to the Blogmeet next weekend. If I have something contagious I will NOT be going. Ktreva may go by herself, but I wonÂ’t be coming with. IÂ’m sure none of you want this and I donÂ’t know if the wolves would be susceptible to it, but IÂ’m sure Laughing Wolf doesnÂ’t want to find out. Before someone smarts off, I know, you're all praying for something contagious!

Posted by: Contagion at 08:54 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 371 words, total size 2 kb.

February 08, 2006

A pox I tell you!

I just got home from the doctor. He tells me that my eyeball itself is okay. However, the facial nerves that control the eyelid appear to be infected. HeÂ’s not exactly sure what it is, but one of his theories is that I haveÂ… Are you ready? Do you really want to know? Maybe I shouldnÂ’t say. Ah, what the heck.

He thinks I may have Shingles. ItÂ’s a variation of the Chickenpox virus. Either that or I have some infection that is focusing on that area. Either way IÂ’m not too thrilled with it. IÂ’m supposed to watch it for the next week and if it spreads, I develop some kind of rash or if it persists, IÂ’m to call him back.

The funny thing is that he came to that conclusion AFTER turning my eye orange checking to make sure it wasnÂ’t damaged. Luckily the color should fade in 2-3 hours. Personally, I think it would be kind of cool to walk around with one eye normal and the conjunctiva of the other eye orange.

Posted by: Contagion at 01:53 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 187 words, total size 1 kb.

February 07, 2006

Aye, my eye!

As you may know, I hate doctors. Yet, IÂ’m thinking I might need to make an appointment to see one. This morning I woke up with my right eye kind of sore. It felt like I had a black eye. I figured I slept funny on it, nothing to worry about. As the day has progressed it has gotten worse. It now hurts when I blink. Not a painful hurt, more like an annoying hurt. I guess thatÂ’s called sore.

I just went into the bathroom to take a look at it, and sure enough itÂ’s starting to get puffy and swollen. ThereÂ’s no bruising, but I donÂ’t bruise easily. Normally I would just blow it off and not think twice about it, but after reading TammiÂ’s story here, IÂ’m thinking a three-day vacation might be nice.

Then again I may go to the doctor and just discover that IÂ’m a battered spouse. I always thought Ktreva beat me in my sleep!

Posted by: Contagion at 06:27 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 168 words, total size 1 kb.

Memories of the Past.

When I was growing up, my parents used to take the family to a local campground, The Oaks in Clinton, WI. My grandparents had a permanent sight and weÂ’d pull in with the old 1977 Mobile Traveler RV my parents owned. Sometimes IÂ’d just go to the campground with my grandparents and spend the weekend there. When I was older, IÂ’d go alone and tent camp.

This was not like most of the campgrounds you see today. No, there was no running water at the sites, no electricity and no pavement. A main shelter house had plumbing and electric. Unless you had a site near the Shelter House (as it was called) you had to use the out houses that where all over. These where the old-fashioned outhouses, a big hole in the ground covered by a wooden box youÂ’d go in to do your business. If they filled up, they would just fill it in, dig a new hole and move the box. Later on, about the time I was High School, they started running electric to the various sites, and when I was in college, they ran water. However, you still had to use the out houses or the Shelter House to go to the bathroom. They never ran plumbing to each site.

There was no concession stand or video games originally. Nope, if you didnÂ’t have anything you had to run into town. You amused yourself the old-fashioned way, hiking, swimming, and fishing. It was probably around 1983 when the first pop machine arrived. This was a big deal. Kids would bug their parents for money to buy a pop out of the machine. Even if the parents had the exact same pop in a cooler, all the kids wanted it out of the machine; it just tasted better. When I was in High School they brought out video games, other vending machines and in college, they built a small office convenience store.

The campground had a small man made lake, which was fed by two small creeks. By the shelter house, they had a beach for swimming and a raft for diving off. When I say raft, think of The Raft from Creepshow 2, it looked just like that. The lake was filled with bullheads, bluegill and some bass. Occasionally someone would pull a carp out of there. The other aquatic creature they had where snapping turtles. As a kid, I loved catching snapping turtles. I probably caught a good couple dozen over the years. My grandmother would clean and cook them up for my friends and me.

IÂ’d spend hours in the woods making forts, or exploring. IÂ’d play in the creeks, damming them up so the water would back up making a small pond. ThatÂ’s how I caught my first snapping turtle. As I got older, I would take my younger cousins out with me and show them all the things I had found, like the hollow tree you could hide in and the secret place that had the wild black berry bushes.

I would always invite friends to come with when I went. While my parents would sleep in the RV, we would be in a tent. Sometimes even on our own site. My parents finally bought a permanent spot and replaced the RV with a good-sized camper. My friends and I would spend entire weekends up there horsing around, fishing, drinking (in the later years) and building fires that would rival the sun.

The first crush I ever had was for a girl whose parents camped there. I still remember watching her swimming and marveling at the female form in a bikini. My first sexual experience was also at this campground; unfortunately, it didnÂ’t involve my crush. It wasnÂ’t anything scandalous, just your normal pre-teen kid stuff.

Over the years we camped there, it went through six different owners. For two of the owners my grandparents managed the campground on the weekends. About 4 years ago, the campground closed. The last owner had some big plan in mind. The rumor was that he was going to turn it into a KOA style campground to help cater to the Casino that was supposed to come to Beloit, Wisconsin. I donÂ’t know if that is true or not, because that casino never came. I helped my parents clean up their site, take apart all the decking they had built and remove the shed. That last day still lingers clear in my memory.

Some of you may be wondering why IÂ’m telling you this. Over the weekend, I heard from my blogless buddy Jay that what remained of the campground had been tore down. Some developer had bought the property. When he told me that, a flood of memories came back to me. My entire childhood and part of my adulthood was intertwined with that campground. I even took Ktreva and Boopie camping there. Clone wasnÂ’t born by the time they closed it or he would have gone too.

Part of me always hoped someone would buy it and reopen it. I guess that is never going to happen. For some reason I feel much older today.

Posted by: Contagion at 12:51 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 870 words, total size 5 kb.

February 06, 2006

All dogs go to heaven?

I wasnÂ’t going to post this, but I figure by now there is not much more psychological damage I could do to my readers. The people that IÂ’ve told this to react in different ways. What story is it? ItÂ’s the end result of the dog dilemma.

If you are an animal lover, especially dogs, you may not want to read any further. In fact, just skip this post and never, ever, ever click on a link to it. If you want to see how badly something simple can go wrong, the post is in the extended entry
more...

Posted by: Contagion at 06:18 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
Post contains 993 words, total size 5 kb.

<< Page 1 of 1 >>
55kb generated in CPU 0.0221, elapsed 0.0704 seconds.
68 queries taking 0.0547 seconds, 227 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.

Search Thingy



Recent Comments

  • furqan Embroidery Digitizing is the method of converting artwork into digital data. We can see significant ... entry
  • aksesoris motor Pretty! This has been a really wonderful post. Many thanks for providing this information. entry
  • Markus from Poland So in fact! Really glad to see you here with us! I was waiting for long!=) entry
  • BloodSpite You hang in there mano! Glad to see your getting back up and at'em! entry
  • og So how was the first day? entry
  • red If you can go back to work, I would think it would be okay for attending Ft. Obie. Also Wil said you... entry
  • red Ketchup on eggs Yuk! but on the fried potatoes ,that would work. Actually I prefer cheese or sausage... entry
  • og I like a dab of franks original red hot sauce. Sometimes I scramble it right in entry
  • DE644 I use only Salsa, ketchup would be to sweet. Though my grandfather put ketchup on everything. entry
  • Matt B I always use ketchup on my scrambled eggs and a shot of Tabasco. Also on omelets. entry

Categories

Archives

Blogroll

Sample link

Monthly Traffic

  • Pages: 12246
  • Files: 44
  • Bytes: 74.7M
  • CPU Time: 11:07
  • Queries: 607389

Content

  • Posts: 1833
  • Comments: 6801

Feeds


RSS 2.0 Atom 1.0