To-Do List

I have a to-do list. I've had one for the past two years, so I've gotten really good at putting things off. That's worked really well until I started having a deadline. I've also figured out why they call them deadlines: your wife will kill you if you don't finish the backyard before your family comes into town for Thanksgiving. Incidentally, that is part of the reason you've been reading about George on this blog for the past month: blogging wasn't on the to-do list. Here is what was on the list last weekend.


This is supposed to be in the bottom of my oven. It's also supposed to heat up when the oven is turned on. Unfortunately, it fails on both counts.


Here is the new one. My wife and I are back on speaking terms. (Note the clean oven; she thought it was a nice touch too)


Here are three of the fruit trees now beautifying my backyard. I actually put them in three weeks ago, but pretend that I was actually that productive last weekend. See the path wending its way around the yard in the background? We'll come to that later.


I also hung this mirror up. It may not be much, but that's one more thing to cross off the list.


And now, the path. Looks pretty good so far, no? See how all the stones fit together like a jigsaw puzzle? Try doing a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces weigh 30 lbs each and you're not actually sure that they all go to the same picture. (read, it's not as easy as it looks) Props here to my wife, who is actually very good at fitting rocks together. The manly thing would have been to insist that I could do it all myself; truth is, I appreciated the help.


What happens when you run out of pieces for your puzzle? You go buy more! Thanks for letting me borrow the truck, Nick.


And finally, it is finished. Here we make a gentle turn around the orange tree.


Ok, I said the path was done. I didn't say I'd cleaned up yet.

Mouse Moves House

Meet George. A few weeks ago, I left the garage door open for an extended period of time. George decided to move in and make a home among the bikes and pool toys.

As you can see, George isn't too big on cleanliness. He leaves his food scraps and poop all over the floor.

This is me, George's landlord. I got a bit tired of the mess and decided that George really needed to move out and find his own place.

So George and I went for a bike ride. I enjoyed it. Riding in a glass jar in my pocket on a leg constantly moving up and down probably made the journey less fun for George, but he was a real trooper - no poop or pee anywhere in the jar. We found a nice spot in a grove of pecan trees next to a puddle of water - everything the little guy could want and very far from my garage.

Here he is, waiting for his heart rate to go down after being let go. Look at those yummy pecans on the ground for him to eat.

Farewell, George. We wish you a long and happy life - albeit, one shortened by the terror of being trapped in a glass jar and jostled in the pocket of a bike rider.

Moral of the story: Pooping all over the place and leaving food scraps on the floor is a very bad idea, especially if you aren't going to pay rent. Wait a minute, that sounds like my kids...

When I Was a Kid, Agency Was Still Free.

If you get that, you're a church nerd.

And for your viewing pleasure, I give you - the child of an engineer.

Cheers for Chopsticks!

I made stir-fried noodles on Sunday. I wanted to eat mine with chopsticks. Of course, once I had chopsticks, poofus wanted them too, followed closely by chubs. I figured, what the heck, they'll have to learn someday.

After a quick orientation on the proper method of holding chopsticks, it was apparent that at least one of my children isn't mature enough for this.

Hey! That's cheating!

Well, I suppose it is a bit difficult to get them both in the same hand.

No, bud. They don't work for water.

Hey! Now we're getting somewhere!

Touchdown!

Whoops!

Success at last!

Maybe we'll give it a bit before we move on to steak knives.

You can eat me, but I don't have to like it...

Nobody ever said the meat had to be happy about being eaten.

Siopao - Sio Good!

A friend of mine and another former missionary from the Philippines invited me to a Filipino cultural night, to take place this Friday evening. We're going to do what is done at every good Filipino party - eat lots of food and sing karaoke. All the easy Filipino dishes, like rice and Tang, were already taken, so I picked four dishes I'd never made before and asked my wife what she'd like best. Siopao won. (The other options were sinigang, tinola, and kaldereta)

Siopao (pronounced show-pow) is a steamed bun filled with shredded meat cooked in a sweet sauce. It is of Chinese origin, but much beloved by the people of the Philippines, where I was introduced to it. In the Philippines, it is often sold out of hamburger carts parked on busy streets in the center of town. There is an urban myth in the Philippines that siopao is made with cat meat. I can tell you that that is categorically false based on my own experience trying to shred a cat - it ran at the first sight of the fork. Instead, siopao cooks usually resign themselves to chicken or pork.

The most complicated part about cooking siopao is getting your hands on a steamer. If you've got one, or can jury rig one, the rest is really quite easy. I used this recipe from Spice Of Life. The meat filling is fairly simple. Once the meat is shredded, just throw in onions, garlic, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, Yoshida's sauce, rice vinegar, soy sauce, honey, pepper, or whatever else you want in any quantities and combinations that sound good to you.


The dough is a pretty standard yeast recipe - similar to the one we use for pizza. Once it's good and kneaded and risen, you divide your dough and roll a piece into a ball...


...press it flat...

...and spoon some of the good stuff into the middle. Don't skimp - you don't want dry siopao.

Now, we wrap it up.

I used a kind of tri-fold - like so.

Then sealed it up and pinched it closed.

Tada! Siopao! All lined up on wax paper (so they don't stick to stuff).

Now for the steamer. I don't have one. I do have a deep pressure cooker pot and a metal plate with holes in it. I used a stainless steel sieve to hold the holey plate several inches above the water and presto! A steamer! Arrange the siopao like so and let 'em steam for 15 minutes.

They were way better than I remembered them. It's really hard to describe the texture of the bun - fluffy just doesn't do it justice. You gotta try one, but make sure it's fresh out of the steamer. I promise they're good. I even have witnesses.

What A Great Day For, Um, Flying!

I got an RC airplane for Christmas. As of 8 days ago, it had never been flown. I took it out of the box on Christmas morning to drool over and it hadn't been removed since. It's not that I haven't wanted to fly it, it's just difficult to find time to do so. "Even so," you say, "surely you have had a spare moment in the past 8 months to fly your airplane." I will admit that that is true. The problem during those moments was not my willingness or desire, but the weather. You see, by necessity, RC airplanes are very light, in order to get off the ground. This makes them very succeptible to wind. This means that any plans to fly my airplane must be accompanied by an "if the wind isn't too bad."

Last Saturday, I'd made tentative plans to fly my plane. I checked the wind in the afternoon and it was blowing a bit, but it didn't seem too bad. Then we drove to a park that had plenty of open space to fly my plane in. The problem with open spaces is that there is nothing to block the wind. It was blowing pretty steadily when we got there and would gust more and more frequently as time wore on. I should also explain that the plane needs to be assembled on site. put together, it is much too large to fit in my car.

After 20 minutes of chasing down screw baggies and wings being blown away, I was pretty sure that this wasn't what the manufacturers had in mind when they said "Fly your plane on a calm day." But I was at the park, my plane was put together, and dangit, I wanted to fly!

I put my plane on the park's road to use as a runway. I should have stopped when the plane kept being blown off course while trying to take off, but instead I picked it up to hand launch it. Being launched into a good breeze made it very easy to get up in the air. Having gusts come made the plane very difficult to control. At least I'd read the part of the manual that said to let off the throttle when landing to protect the propeller and motor in case of unintended contact with the ground. Because after a glorious 20 seconds of poorly controlled flight, my plane was not going the right way - where in this case, the 'right' way is anywhere but down. I wasn't trying to land, and I surely wasn't intending contact with the ground, but I let off the throttle in a hurry. It was an inauspicious beginning to my career as an rc pilot, and besides a slight crease to the tail fin, my plane came away suprisingly unscathed.

When the instructions say not to fly your plane in the wind, you should probably listen. Experience is supposedly the best teacher. Sometimes, though, experience is just a jerk.

Home-Teach-A-Saurus

My daughter dressed up her brother's remote controlled dinosaur. She thought it was pretty funny. I agree.

Take Me Out To The Ballgame...!

Welcome to the Tucson Toros inaugural season! For a while, Tucson has been home to the Sidewinders - a minor league affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks. But the Sidewinders moved to Reno, leaving Hi Corbett Field vacant. Enter the Toros. If you cared, you could read all about the storied history of the Tucson Toros on wikipedia. But you don't, so let's get back to the game.

Of course, nothing completes a game quite like a ballpark dog.

I was a bit unsure what to wear to the game. I don't have any Toros gear, but their colors are red, black, and gold, so I figured a Cardinals shirt would work. I guessed right. I didn't see a single Toros shirt in the stands. People generally wore whatever baseball apparel they had - regardless of the team. It seemed to me, though, that I saw more Cardinals shirts and hats than any other club. It made my heart proud.

I promise, the stands filled up a bit more before the game. The crowd was a whopping 3,116!

It took some doing, but he finally got his hat back from his sister.

Getting the kids to look at the camera was like pulling teeth. They kept watching Tuffy the Toro. He was their favorite part of the game. About every 5 minutes, Boofus would ask where Tuffy was. Chubbles kept us up to date on his whereabouts: "Duddy dow dere!"

Tuffy Update: I got the kids to leave their mom alone this morning by telling them that I had Tuffy on the computer. This post was actually delayed an hour because I kept getting interrupted. "See Duddy!!!!!"

And after all that fun, there was a baseball game too! The Toros took on the Outlaws of Chico, California. The Toros starting pitcher struggled early, giving up 5 runs in the first three innings. Relief arrived in the fourth inning and the Outlaws were shut out for the rest of the game. The Outlaws' starter took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, but the Toros scattered four runs over the last four innings, including a run in the ninth, to get the crowd pumped...before the game ended with a double play. Ah well.

It was Fireworks Friday, so we enjoyed some of those after the game.

Then they let the kids run the bases after the fireworks. Here's Boofus rounding third. She's looking, and I think she's gonna make a break for home.

We really did have a blast and I , at least, am looking forward to the next time we can make it to a game. Come on down to Tucson this summer, and you can come with.

I love Jets

Picture from http://farm1.static.flickr.com/40/100127291_dffd8dd77f.jpg?v=0

Among the many things I wanted to be when I grew up, (astronaut, garbage man - I mean sanitation engineer, army sniper...) I wanted to fly fighter jets. Jets are just so cool!

Picture from http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3301/3343217161_bf0f2b2973.jpg?v=0

I didn't become a fighter pilot, (or an astronaut, or a sniper) I'm an electrical engineer. I design electronics that go into missiles. On a scale of separation, that's actually a lot closer to fighter jets than most people... but I still sit in a cubical.

Picture from http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3131/2466139778_0f980bdd1d.jpg?v=0

When I came down to interview with the company I work for, they put all of us hopefuls on a bus to tour the plantsite - which happens to be right next to the airport that is home to the state air national guard. On our way, four F-16s in succession flew over us to land. It was the coolest thing I saw during the whole trip.

Picture from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2284/2987490703_84a35543e4.jpg?v=0

I see similar sights a couple of times a week. The building I work in faces the runway at about a 30 degree angle so I can see the jets if they are taking off or landing as I arrive or leave. I never get tired of it.

Picture from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2078/2496587496_0de872625b.jpg?v=0 This picture is actually taken at my airport. I work in the building in the background.

Last night I had to work late. When I came out of my building, a flight of four F-16s was taking off... at night... with afterburners.

Picture from http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3010/3257050478_2b44b31e4a.jpg

Picture from http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2059/2048963560_f4ae2b58f1.jpg?v=0

I still want to be a fighter pilot when I grow up.

Many thanks to the photographers who took these pictures and posted them on flickr.