My New Favorite Recipe

Ok, I know you're going to think it's absolutely FOUL after reading the description. All I ask is that you try making it, just once. If it isn't the best chicken recipe you've ever tried, I'll be surprised!

INGREDIENTS:
- 1 cup ketchup
- 1 cup Coca-Cola (Pepsi will ruin it!)
- 3.5 pounds of chicken, quartered

HOW TO MAKE:
1.) In a large bowl, whisk together the ketchup and coke until thoroughly mixed. Wash the chicken and pat dry with paper towels. Remove the wings from the chicken breast quarters. Put all of the chicken pieces in the bowl and toss so that the chicken is coated with the ketchup-cola mixture. Let sit refrigerated for at least 4 hours (even better, let it sit overnight!).

2.) Preheat oven to 350-degrees (or preferred, cook on the BBQ!).

3.) Remove the chicken, reserve the marinade. Place the chicken, skin side up, on a rimmed backing sheet. Sprinkle chicken with salt and freshly ground pepper. Back for 1 hour. Meanwhile, put the marinade in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook until the marinade is reduced to 1 cup, about 15 minutes. During baking, baste the chicken with the reduced marinade several times using a pastry brush. After 30 minutes, transfer the chicken to a plate, pour off the fat, and return chicken to the pan. Continue cooking 30 minutes.

4.) When chicken is done, transfer to a platter. Drizzle with more warm marinade, serving any extra on the side. Makes 4 finger-licking servings.

Here we go again!

Angie is cringing as she views this picture ... what was he thinking?!? You can't take a picture while shooting directly into the sun, you have to have the sun at your back. I know, I know ... but this angle was important, so you could see what was happening not only in the foreground (we're on the move now, loading the balloon into the chase van), but also in the background.

What's that? Could it be??? Yes, it's ANOTHER hot air balloon, dangerously low and coming in for a landing. Here we go all over again! 

Putting 'em to work

I mentioned the other day how impressed I was at the speed by which the balloon pilot and his crew collapsed the balloon and hauled it away. Well, that's because they got help ... from the entire neighborhood. Brad was set to work handing them the twistie straps, and every other kid who didn't volunteer quickly enough for that easy job got THIS JOB. Here Julian, and neighbors Hayden, Hannah, and Danny shoulder the balloon, all wrapped up, and get ready to load it into the Chase Van. 

Tieing Up the Balloon

Recognize that little guy on the left? That's Brad, recruited to help the balloon pilot and his crew by fetching all the twist-ties used to tie up the balloon. Ok, they really weren't twist-ties, more like bright, orange day-glo straps, but that's kinda what it looked like the crew was doing to the balloon ... tieing it up like a giant loaf of break.

Brad was a real champ, so eager to help, they put him to work right away. But that's not all, wait until you see what happened next ... 

Deflated

So what do you do with a 6-story tall balloon, when you have it parked between two houses, both with high-voltage power lines running to them from the street utility poles (and only mere feet away from your balloon)? Deflate. Fast!!

I was amazed at how quickly the knocked the balloon over and were able to deflate it of hot air. It was a pretty impressive sight.

But wait until you see what happened next ... 

Emergency Landing

Remember the "Low Flying Aircraft" image from yesterday? Well, it came in a bit lower. In fact, it landed right in our neighbors front yard. That's the "chase van" in the foreground. I guess when you own your own hot air balloon, your spouse (or someone) has to drive around in the Chase Van following you ... and being ready to assist with the landing, which could be just about anywhere.

Angie's taught me how to remove powerline poles and wires from my pictures, but this time, I left them in -- so you could see how close to the power lines the balloon is. And it was CLOSE. One strong gust, and the balloon probably could have taken out half the neighborhood's power! Still, the pilot seemed to know what he was doing, and the balloon really didn't stay inflated much after this pic was taken. Wait until you see what happens next ... 

Apocolyptic Coke

This morning, as I was performing my daily ritual of keying in coke cap codes, I noticed that my accumulated rewards points reach apocolyptic heights. See there, in the upper right hand corner of the screenshot: 666.

I've been playing this rewards game since the start of the summer, convincing all my friends to send me THEIR cap codes by email, too. The system allows only 10 codes to be entered per day, and some days I've hit that quota ... especially when Ken Wester sends me one of his GIANT lists!

So what will 666 Coke Rewards points get me?

560 pts ...... Coca-Cola Leather Football
507 pts ...... Rawlings Bat Pack
290 pts ...... 1899 Coca-Cola Evolution T-Shirt

Nothing worth cashing in for yet, I'm still entering codes and holding out for the BIG prizes.

Sith Lord

I *wish* I had my own digital camera. Sometimes, I'll be driving down a highway, and I'll see something that strikes me as amusing, or beautiful, or interesting or just plain odd -- and I'll want my camera to capture the moment. But whereas the camera is "shared" by the family, I'm not allowed to carry it on my person all the time.

If I'd had a camera this morning, I would have caught a picture of the Black Saturn Ion in front of me (instead of downloading and using this crappy stock photo from the Internet).

Why was the Ion worth capturing in a Kodak moment? It was the license plates that made me /laugh: "SITH". Now I don't consider myself really "up" on Star Wars trivia; I've seen all 3 movies, and I think I've read a couple paperback novels related to the Star Wars universe. But I'd get creamed in a game of Star Wars Trivia, and probably only be able to answer a handful of Alex's questions in Star Wars Jeopardy. But I know that there were only TWO (2) Sith Lords, a Master and an Apprentice, and that if you're either one of those, it's probably not smart to go around advertising that on the vanity license plates of your Saturn Ion. It's definately one of those conditions covered under the "Don't ask, don't tell" clause.

I wish I'd had one of my kid's plastic light sabre's in the car. It would have been so funny to see the expression on the Sith Lords face when I walked up alongside his car at the traffic light, and pulled out my LIGHT SABRE!!!!

I shouldn't laugh. For all I know, I was driving behind Chad Vader:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGR4-SeuJ0

The Science Lab: Week #1

I think we've made a decision to take Julian out of private school, chalking it up to a very bad mistake. We haven't told the school yet, or for that matter even Julian (although we've dropped hints here and there that we are not entirely happy with Presentation of Mary Academy). At the thought of returning to Weston school, he has some interest (he is looking forward to sharing class and recess with his best school friend, Connor), but also some regrets (Weston does not have a science lab like PMA does, Dad). Nevermind the fact that he won't be able to visit the PMA science lab until the 5th grade, it's something he's keenly interested in and will miss when he leaves PMA.

So, I suggested we build a science lab. Ever since the flood of 2006, in which the under half of my house was submerged beneath two feet of water, the basement has remained unused. Worse, we partially demolished it, tearing out wallboard and ceiling tiles, and leaving the floor littered with powdery debris. The cement floor is covered with glue patterns (which were used to hold down the wall-to-wall, saturated carpeting that got ripped out). Part of my suggestion to build our own science lab was an excuse to clean-up this clutter in the basement.

So this weekend, the three boys and I sat around the kitchen table, and laid out plans for our science lab (Phase I):

1.) Remove the glue patterns from what used to be the "finished half" of the basement

2.) Scrub / clean the floor, removing the fine layer of white wallboard dust

3.) Make a floorplan for tables, supply cabinets, and workstations

4.) Paint the floor

5.) Purchase tables, cabinets, chairs, office and lab supplies, etc. (help me, E-Bay, you're my only hope!)

Julian is SO EXCITED. After we made our plans, we went to the local hardware store to get some help, as I wasn't sure how to start with even step #1: removing glue from the basement floor. The bristle brush I had selected would never work, said the helpful man in the orange apron. Instead, he suggested we buy scrapers (4" wide razor blades on the end of foot-long plastic handles). I got two (one for myself, and one for Julian -- to see exactly how committed he was to this project). I also got 4 face masks, expecting each of the kids would be down in the basement with me, breathing in all that dust we're going to stir up, and two pairs of knee-pads. Lab Cost to Date: $37

To his credit, Julian really "stuck with it". We both nicked our hands while figuring out how to use our new razor-sharp work tools. After that sacrifice of blood, we worked for several hours and several sessions throughout the weekend. We managed to get about 30% of the floor glue scrapped up, and I think we'll be done with this first step before the next weekend. All the while, Julian is scheming with his brothers about the "projects" we should work on in the lab: grow some hamsters (maybe we could start with invisible hamsters, like Jimmy Neutron has in his lab, ok Dad?), take apart a television set, grow rock crystals, get a rock tumbler and turn some of his gem stones into smooth rocks, make a volcano, turn a potato into a battery, make some anit-matter (that might be tough one ...), and the list went on.

Yeah, science kits are going to be BIG on the Christmas Wish List this year, I think.

Sir Brad Defeats the Undead Horror!

More Haloween pics ... I told you it would become tortorous! These are more staged photo's in which I spent great time in considering poses of the central figures, and spent no time considering the backdrop. Ooops!

Here, Sir Brad of Manchester brings the Undead Horror to his knees, saving Batman in the process, so that the pair of them could continue on with Trick-or-Treating!! The Undead Horror, being undead, simply rose again ... and followed.

(To Be Continued...) 

Trick or Treat!

Is there anything better than Haloween? Dressing up in costume, running (and I mean RUNNING) from house to house with your candy bag, seeing all these other ghouls and ghosts, and trying to recognize which ones are your friends. In the North End, we do the "trick or treat" thing during the day, from 1:00pm to 4:00pm. This is great for kids our age, although when they get a bit older, I think we'll sneak them over to one of their cousins houses -- where Haloween is done properly at night!

I got a bunch of great pics, and I'll torture you with all of them, but this one captures the mood of the day best. Here is Sir Brad of Manchester, and behind him to the left is the Dark Knight, aka Batman. 

Daring, or maybe just foolish ...

About this Picture: This is another shot of my son (Julian, left) and his Aunt Carolyn (middle) and cousin Jenna (right). I had waded out to about my waist ... camera in hand. Waist deep doesn't describe the risk to my camera very well. This is the ocean, so that means the water had ebbed to well below my bathing suit bottoms at some points, and was crashing nipple height at other times -- all with me holding my camera as high above me head, and clutched as tightly in my hand as possible.

The camera angle I was going for was as close to the water surface as possible, with the kids in the background and an approaching wave coming at me. But after some experimenting, I found that wasn't very easy to do. Any decent picture of a big wave approaching me meant I couldn't see any of the kids from that camera angle (they would be behind the mountain of approaching water). And I probably risked my camera more than I should have, by holding it that close to on-rushing water. The wave that's approaching me in this shot, although hard to see in the picture, is about 3' tall. It hasn't started to curl yet, but it was big enough to almost knock me over and call an end to the shoot.

This is the last one I snapped, not really the effect I was looking for, but something I wanted to keep as a reminder of the failed experiment. =)

My Best Friend

Meet Pete, my bestest bud since my junior year in High School. That's his son, Dirt Eater. And let me tell you, this kid lives up to that name!! I wish I'd thought to capture the picture a few moments after this, when he'd been able to gulp down a couple fistfulls before Dad realized what he was up to.

The picture isn't seasonal ... but it's where we've left off last! 

Good waves

More flashbacks to summer, as I clean out my camera. Most of the week had a very calm (read boring) ocean, with hardly a ripple of waves at all. But on this particular day, the waves were pretty good. They started out small (like these), but by then end of the day, they were HUGE!! You only get to see the small waves, because once they became any respectable size to enjoy -- I spend the rest of the day in them! 

Reading Plaques

I like visiting museums, historical sites, and other touristy places. I love to take the time to stop and read all the signs -- every last one of them. My wife (aka The Warden) hates that about me. This is the woman who, after I paid $16 for her admission ticket, toured the entire building top to bottom in less than 15 minutes. Me? I was still on the first floor, looking at the penquins, reading the sign about the penquins natural habitats, their care and feeding at the aquarium, etc. I'll never be able to take the family to the Smithsonian, at least not with her in tow. :-) 

Portland Headlight

Portland Headlight. This is not a B&W photograph of Portland headlight, but I'm excited that it turned out looking like it was. The sky was gray and overcast, the headlight itself is painted all white with black trim. The effect was photograph that looks B&W, without my having to fiddle with any settings on my camera (which I still don't know how to do) or doctor anything up in Photoshop (which I know very well how to do, but the purist in me wants to keep my pictures as clean as possible -- no photoshop magic).

Rock, Table, Chairs

 

On the Rocks

On the rocks, at the Two Lights Clam Shack. I think it's actually called the Two Lights Restaurant, but any place that gives you a number, announces your order on a big loudspeaker so you can be heard among the throng of patrons waiting outside, and has more table space outside (picnic tables at that) than inside is not a seafood restaurant. It's a clam shack!

We love this place, because it's right on the water, and you can crawl on the rocks while waiting for your order. On this trip, we brought our good friend Zachery Moore (who stayed at the beach for an extra few days with us). And it was a bit of a disappointment when our number was called, becuase it called an end to rock climbing ... at least until our next visit. 

The Biggest Sand Castle EVER!!!

It started with a reasonable idea in my 8-year old son's thinking. To make a really BIG sand castle, you need a really BIG pail. I watched with mild amusement as they took the big green bucket (which we use to ferry toys to and from the beach), and started filling it with sand.

"This is going to be the biggest sand castle EVER!"

"Don't use the dry sand, it's too dry."

It took them about 10 minutes to fill the bucket up with sand, pack it down hard, and then fill it again. Heavy, wet sand -- it probably wieghed well over 150 pounds -- and when the Engineers went to turn it upside down, to make the foundation of their castle, they realized it was too heavy.

"Push!!!"

"No Puuuuuullllll."

Kodak moments. 

Where are the waves?

This beach scene is typical of those on our vacation -- a calm, flat ocean with no waves. I hate it when that happens. Me? I like it when the ocean is angry (if not mildly annoyed), with 6' - 8' waves that pick you up and smash you back down. Waves that are so huge, you can't jump over them, and even when try to dive through them, it feels like you're diving through a brick wall.

We had ONE day with waves like that, but most of the days were more like this one -- which worked out great for the kids! 

Cars, cars, cars!

Cars. If my children have inherited any OCD traits from their mother, than Donovan's obsession is cars. He used to be fascinated with Hummers (still is, to a certain extent), and we have no less than 8 different Hummer toy trucks in the house. As of late, his obsession has shifted to Cars (and since watching the Pixar movie of the same title, Lightning McQueen #95 in particular). And he got indulged BIG TIME on his birthday.

Aside from the Cars Playstation2 game referenced in yesterday's blog, he got a bunch of different sized cars on his birthday, all from the hit movie. He was in HEAVEN! Thank goodness Grampy had the foresight to buy dozens of AA-sized batteries (my personal favorite present, as we seem to go through 3-5 batteries daily, as we cycle them from dozens of battery-operated cars now in the house).

What happened to toy cars that you sorta pushed along with your hands, the kind I used to play with in the sandbox of my backyard? Todays cars have buttons that beep and honk and play music (yes, music -- and not very tasteful music at that). They have headlights that glow, and engines that roar. And you don't dare take them outside to the sandbox for fear that sand will get in their sensitive electronics and break them, or jam up the wheels.

Ah well, look at the expression on his face. Another car. His collection of cars easily numbers in the tripple digits, but that doesn't lessen the delight and happiness of getting ... a new car!

Top-Rated Game? Cars!

I never got a chance to see the Cars movie -- the boys went to go see that flick with their mother. But I've read the bedtime books (we have two different books about the movie, and I've read them as bedtime stories at least a dozen times each!). I've also heard just about every line in the movie, quoted to me as matchbox cars vroooomed around my feet.

"I'm faster than fast, quicker than quick. Speed? I AM SPEED!"

Top-rated game for the Five Year Old in 2006? Cars, hands-down. It's a fun little race car game, a bit easier than Dad's favorite (Need for Speed) and eaiser for the kids to master. In fact, I think they've unlocked all the levels and all the race tracks, except the final one -- and that is only a few days away from being unlocked.

Still, like bedtime stories -- it will get replayed again and again, for weeks to come.

Lightning McQueen

Donovan turned five (oh my gosh, where is the time going -- my babies are growing up!), and this is a picture of the Birthday Cake. That's Number 95, Lightning McQueen, starring front and center on the birthday cake. Lightning McQueen is Donovan's latest obsession.

It was a delicious cake, and Tucker (our mutt) can attest to that. He had a nice long lick along the front of it, while the rest of us were outside, and he found the cake just a hair to close to the countertop where we had left it.

What you see is the cake after we surgically cut away the parts that had been left behind from his exploring tongue. Damn dog!! 

Squirt

MEMORIES: We used to have this ENORMOUS styrofoam sailboat at the beach house. I'm not sure how we came to own it, I don't think we bought it. More likely, we salvaged it from other drift on the beach, or perhaps it was given to us by another family who had outgrown it. I'm drifting back to the foggy cobwebs of my memory, I think I was perhaps 8 or 9 at the time.

The sailboat was really just a large, flat lenght of styrofoam, maybe 12' - 15' long. It had a slot in the center for the keel, and a hole for the mast, and a rudder. By the time it came into our ownership, I don't remember we ever owned the sail, the mast, and the rudder was broken off. So truly all we had was a large, flat piece of styrofoam. It was light, and two of us could carry it down from the cottage to the beach easily.

You might question what use a large flat piece of styrofoam might be at the beach. My father used it as ... a bed. It was a sanctuary to escape the both children and spouse, and get away for a time on the ocean. He would push the styrofoam boat out just past the breakers, haul himself aboard and just lay out for a nap.

Of course, then there was that one time when he did more than just doze off ... he fell fast asleep. And by the time he woke up, Higgin's Beach was nowhere in sight.

I doze and take naps on an inflatable float -- this one, that my father is floating on now. It's enough, for now, but I sometimes wish I had my own styrofoam raft, and could sail out on the ocean for a time, lost and adrift.

The Dive

Normally, I might be concerned that my older sister would KILL ME for posting a picture of her arse on the internet, for all the world to see. But I find comfort in knowing my Suzy-Q is a bit phobic of technology, only checks here eMail once every month or so, and probably doesn't even know my blog exists. So there's really little risk in posting it ... ha!

Yep, that's my big sister, showing my neices how to do a ... well, I'm not exactly sure WHAT type of dive you'd call this. I don't think I've seen it in the Olympics before though! I had such a laugh at this!

Under Siege

Nephew Benjamin had his first birthday party recently (ok, it was a couple weeks ago, but I've been on vacation and, well, ya ...)

My baby sister bought one of those inflatable castle-shapped Jump-N-Gyms off ebay (she gets a lot of stuff from ebay!), and her kids got to play around in it for a day. But it seemed to have sprung a leak on the eve before the big party. The leak was cleverly patched with duct tape, proving once again that duct tape is the ultimate, versatile, engineering tool. After several more kids (namely, my three sons) joined the collection of (much younger) kids already inside, however, well ... you can see the consequences yourself.

The hole grew larger, the castle deflated in several different directions all at once, and the walls came tumbling down. Now you can't tell from the picture, but there are actually a half-dozen or so children under that heap. One concerned parent (nice legs, cute butt!) is checking on them, while this concerned parent was taking pictures. That's my oldest son's hand sticking up in the far, left corner. Ahhhh, to be 8 again!

The castle was never the same after this collapse. If all the children vacated the structure, it would fully inflate in seconds, but as soon as 2-3 got back in side, it became a crumpled heap again. Bummer ... I was kinda looking forward to going inside for a tumble myself. Yeah, I'm still a kid.

Happy 1st Birthday, Benjamin! We had fun!!

Hamming It Up For The Camera

One of our Family Rituals is to bring the kids down to The Picture People twice a year. Once in the fall for a family photograph with all of us, and once on their birthday where they can ham it up for the camera and be the special star. I really like the pictures that we get back from The Picture People, and sometimes it's hard to choose which one we should keep for framing.

JPSnotes: I'm not sure why, but part of the ritual is only selecting one photograph for framing, even though there might be 2-3 really great shots in the half-dozen photo's taken.

This is Donovan (or "Don", as he's asked to be called now, in his most serious 5-year old voice) starring in one of the pictures that probably will NOT make the "final pick". I love this shot, because it's so Donovan: happy, go-lucky, carefree, smiles ear-to-ear! If I were as clever as my baby sister, I'd find a way to show my personal favorite in the photoshoot -- but that will have to wait until tomorrow's edition of the PureGemini blog!

PS -- sorry to be so behind in blog entries, but vacations in Maine are internet free, just as vacations SHOULD be! Oh, and SOOOO many great pictures from the vacation, can't wait to publish them here! 

Miss my Mom

It's about a 40-minute drive from work to the cemetery where my mother is buried, a little longer enroute, when you stop to purchase a flower to lay on her grave stone. So a little over an hour and a half round-trip, but I wasn't too concerned about taking a long lunch today.

It was a quiet drive, with the radio off and my mind just wandering. Peaceful, calm.

I wasn't the first to visit this day. There were some flowers and a sand dollar (from Higgin's Beach, no dobut) laid atop her grave marker. I went to move them aside, to lay my palms on the flat stone (a ritual of mine) ... when my world just crashed. When I read the tombstone, it said:

J. Bradford Seabury

Suddenly everything stopped, I didn't quite know where I was any more. "No, that's wrong," I whispered. But the sane, reasoning side of my brain couldn't counter what my eyes were reading and the letters that my fingers traced. Slowly I came around, and read the entire grave stone. I saw my mother's name in the stone, August 8th, 2005 was written near her name. That area near my father's inscription was a blank slate. The world started to slowly turn again, and I came back to reality.

I miss you, Mom. I'll remember what you said, and I'll try harder.

Laughter