Caucasian

Thanksgiving was great this year, the family get together was at my sister's house in Greybull. Good food, and great drink. I brought over a bottle of Clos du Bois Chardonnay, as well as a bottle of Ravenswood Zinfandel. I am not much of a white wine drinker, but the Clos du Bois is good stuff! My sister was quite pleased with it, as she is much more of a white wine drinker.

Monday night, my folks came over to Cody for the afternoon, and I took them out for dinner that evening to the Wyoming Rib and Chop House. Nice Place! I had the Beef Toronado, which was a steak (I can't for the life of me remember what cut it was) covered with a cream sauce with crab in it. It was very tasty indeed... Before dinner I had a bowl of their homemade clam chowder, which was so good, if I closed my eyes, I could smell the salt air and imagine myself at Stagnaro's on the Santa Cruz fisherman's wharf...

One thing though, and of course, this is me being picky, on their wine list, they called out their Zinfandel wines as "Red Zinfandel". Saying Red Zinfandel is like saying Wall Sconce. A sconce is by definition a wall mounted light or candle fixture. Zinfadel by definition is a dark colored grape that makes a red wine. It's just that there are those sick people that think that they need to rob the mixture of the grape skins before the fermentation starts, which of course makes that nasty sweet stuff known as White Zinfandel. There are also some really sick people who think that the same thing can be done with Merlot grapes as well. Click on the old French guy on the side bar to learn about these sick bastards!

OK, I am done with my rant now...

Oh yeah, tonight I decided to make my weekly trip to Walmart, this time through the snow. My BMW is no fun at all on the snow... It WILL NOT slide, skid, spin the tires or fish tail. The Stability Control won't let it... Of course, I can turn that feature off with the press of a button, but then I am too scared that I am going to wrap it around a tree, or a pole, or another car, or, well you get the picture...

So, I needed to mix up a cocktail, which is required after a trip to Walmart (at least in my world). I went to my liquor shelf, let's see here, Kahlua, Stolichnya, Ketel One, Captain Morgan, Jack Daniels, hmmm... Oh yeah! I just bought some milk (which I don't usually keep in the fridge), so I mixed up a White Russian. 1 1/2 parts Kahlua, 1 1/2 parts Stoli, some ice and top off with milk... I feel like Jeff Lebowski in The Big Lebowski (only without the shaggy hair and that I am freezing my ass off in Wyoming). He was always mixing up White Russians, or as he called them, Caucasians...

Signs of the Bay Area... Even Here!

Every now and again, I see something here in Cody that reminds me of the Bay Area.

Tonight I made that dreaded trip to Walmart. I wanted to go tonight instead of tomorrow night to try to avoid the mass of people that will undoubtedly be there tomorrow shopping for Thanksgiving. In the parking lot, I saw one of the few other BMW's that inhabit this area besides mine. This particular car is a late 80's E30 325i Convertible. The license plate frame on the rear of the car is proudly advertising for Allison BMW in Mountain View. Mountain view is on the Peninsula, North of San Jose and Sunnyvale. Mountain View is also home to Moffat Federal Airfield, and NASA Ames Research Center. Moffat is also home to one of the very few remaining Derigable Hangars, Hangar #1. Hangar #1 is about 250 feet tall and nearly 700 feet long, it's doors are so immense, that they ride upon what are essentially railroad flat cars. It also generates it's own weather, and it has been known to rain inside of it. I digress...

One day downtown, I saw a mid 90's Ford Bronco, it's license plate frame proudly advertising for Burlingame Ford. Burlingame is on the Peninsula as well. My good friend Sergei lives there in a quiet little neighborhood, where tiny little houses are worth 7 figures. Burlingame was originally a community made up of summer homes for people who lived in San Francisco way back in the day. It's just North of San Mateo, but yet far enough down the Peninsula to get out of the FOG that covers The City, South City, Daly City, San Bruno, and Pacifica during the summer, however it isn't nearly as hot as it gets in the South Bay near San Jose and Los Gatos where I used to live.

I also see this Black Chevy Stepside pickup here and there that has a bumper sticker on it for KSJO radio. The morning show DJ's, Lamont & Tonelli, as well as their comedy relief in the form of an Indian (dots not feathers) guy who was a former convenience store clerk, are very popular, mainly because of the madness that they inspire in the form of what used to be called Whip'em Out Wednesday. Wednesdays were a special day for commuters throughout the bay area. Somehow, these guys had convinced many young hotties to bare their breasts while in commute traffic to cars that were displaying the KSJO bumper sticker. I had one on my Ford Ranger for a while when I first moved there, but alas, no boobs for me... Lamont and Tonelli were a hit, and they wound up getting a better deal from a classic rock station further up the Peninsula, so now Whip'em Out Wednesday (W.O.W.) is now Ta Ta Tuesday (TTT). KSJO wasn't much without those guys, and their programming was most preferred by mullet headed Camaro and Trans Am drivers, which is why even though KSJO had been around for 30 some years as a rock station, it is now a Spanish language station!

Candle Light Dinner for One...

There are only two things that I miss about my ex-girlfriend. One - the 30% discount that I used to get at Starbucks because she worked there. Two - cooking for two is way easier than cooking for one. I love to cook! Any one who has had me cook for them has been duly impressed, however I don't think that I am THAT good at it. Maybe it's all in the presentation? Tonight I had mushroom tortelini with a red marinara sauce (spiced up a bit by yours truly), a nice salad with some mushrooms, sun dried tomatoes and fetta cheese topped off with some balsamic vinaigrette, and while I was cooking this up I munched on some French Bread all the while dipping it into some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I also opened up a bottle of Clos du Bois Merlot... :) Candle light? Absolutely, gotta do the cool things for yourself!

Anyway, this evening, part of the reason that I made myself a nice dinner, is because something that my mother said to me the other night, and has been on my mind. My mother told me the other night that I needed my own family and children of my own. I responded to her by telling her that either way, whether I get married or not, I will be happy, and that I don't feel that I need to have children to vindicate my existence. I am sure that this is not what she, as well as my father wanted to hear. What I really wanted to tell my mother is that since college, I have lived in 4 other states, and I did not find any one in any of those places who was worthy, so the chances of me finding someone in Cody Wyoming are slim and none, and that slim just left the building. It's not being pessimistic, it's being realistic.

My Dad's brother who lives in Los Angeles (Monrovia to be exact, it's near Arcadia and Pasadena where the Rose Parade is held) never married, and I think that they are worried about me growing old alone like he is. Even though my Uncle lives by himself, he does have many good friends who treat him like family, in fact when I was visiting one time, he introduced me to some people who were quite shocked to find out that he did indeed have family that was actually blood relation.

So tonight, I drink to being me, and being happy, even though some think that I'm not where I should to be in life.

Pretty simple huh?

Today was my Father's 61st birthday. The family all got together over at the folks' house in Greybull this evening. My Mother made Lasagna, which was really great. On my drive back to Cody, I started thinking about when my Dad was my age. It was 1975, Gerald Ford was in Office, Skylab was orbiting the Earth, however empty, an average car was the size of a battle ship and could accelerate from 0 to 60 sometime this month. My Dad had just bought into a farm with his Dad a few years previous, about 500 acres total, in Western Nebraska. But he also ran trains for the Burlington Northern Rail Road between the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Alliance Nebraska back and forth over the winding curves of Crawford Hill. In short, he was a very busy guy. Working nights and farming during the day. Further more, he was married and had 3 children as well... Wow! My life is pretty simple compared to that! I am a single guy, never been married, no children... I have a single job working as an engineer... I have two cats that pretty much take care of themselves... Pretty simple huh?

I've got my flair!

I just picked up my copy of the special edition of Office Space. This movie is great, it's more of a documentary of the day in day outs of working in corporate America than it is a comedy!

Snow!

We had about 2 inches of snow here today... Luckily, it still isn't cold enough for it to stick, and the weather forecast is for high 50's low 60's again in a few days... I know that one of these days when I get up, it will be the real thing, and I will be once again asking myself, I moved back to Wyoming why???

Sideways

Ever seen the movie Sideways? There is this one part where they are having dinner, and they go through bottle after bottle of wine. Then they go back to one of the character's homes and continue drinking! Holy Shit!

Food!

While on my trip, I got to have some great food. On my way through SLC I stayed with my good friend who lives there. That night we went to dinner at this place on State Street not far from the Mercedes Dealer called The Bayou. Great Cajun Food, Live Jazz, and a Beer list so long that I bet that it drives the Nazis that run that state mad to know that the Gentiles are having a good time at this place. My first night in the Bay Area we went to this wonderful little sushi house in downtown San Carlos, I had Hamachi, Sake, Unagi, Maguro and an eight piece Alaska roll, washed down by a large Saporo. Damn that was good! I am getting hungry just thinking about it! The next day when we took a break from decorating M & T's place for the party and went to Baja Fresh. A Baja Steak Burrito doesn't last long in my hands! The morning that I left I met up with another good friend of mine from college who is now a copilot for Continental Express for breakfast at Stacks in Burlingame. Nice place, I highly recommend it. When I came back through SLC, I had lunch with my buddy Pete at this new place in Draper called Goodwood BBQ. It was damned good too, kinda like Armadillo Willie's in the Bay Area without all of the Texas inspired Redneck decor. Plenty of eye candy wandering about too, which is always a good thing, especially if you live in Wyoming...

Signs

I survived my trip to the Bay Area for Halloween... Along the way I saw some interesting signs.

East of Evanston Wyoming, there are several long hills that WYDOT has seen fit to outfit with 3 lanes, and to their credit, they have posted signs that state the following: TRUCKS PROHIBITED IN FAR LEFT LANE

I tempted fate all the way along my trip by running my bright red BMW coupe at about 85 mph, and the only thing that passed me was this truck with the words "Do it Gods Way" displayed prominently on the back end. He was driving like an idiot, way more aggressively than anyone in their right mind with an 80,000 pound vehicle should drive, twice, he pulled out in front of me into the FAR LEFT LANE while going up hill. Both times, I layed on the horn, as it was quite apparent he was meaning to cut me off. Idiot. If he was doing it god's way, it makes me wonder what god he was referring to? If it had gone on any longer, it could have been a scene from Duel!

At the rest area in Evanston, there is a coral for some Bison that they have out there to impress the tourists. Near the coral, there is a sign that says: BUFFALO ARE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS. No shit? Wild animals are potentially dangerous? Can we get a sign put up that says HUMANS ARE STUPID? How about a sign posted out on the hill that says TRUCKERS THIS MEANS YOU?

Near Winnemucca Nevada, there is a billboard proclaiming that Battle Mountain Nevada was designated the Armpit of America by a poll taken by the Washington Post. How crappy of a place that Battle Mountain may be, I can think of a few places that are right there with it. Places like Richfield Idaho, Lovell Wyoming, Petersburg Indiana, Newton Iowa, Price Utah, Rawlins Wyoming and Owensboro Kentucky are right there vying for the title.

Stay tuned, more cool road trip stories are up!