create your own personalized map of the USA
Now to knock out some more of those western states and the rest of the east coast. Perhaps another road trip?
No, not the archives here at w(t)f, but from the archives de Josh.
Specifically this post made back when the good lad actually spent a few months here with me.
Enjoy!
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Gatorade Girl is the cute girl working at the Vaquero Mini-Mart (”Home to the same Mexican old cowboy every day since 1984″) that sells me Gatorade when I bike down the mountain. I oughtta learn her name or something…
Josh: Hmm… Instead of doing walk-ins, i might pick up both Riverside county newspapers from the Circle K and do some callin’ today.
Josh: Or maybe i’ll go to the Vaquero Mini-Mart, and buy newspapers from Gatorade Girl
DB: LOL
DB: Yo, that might work better.
Josh: Hehe… How else am I going to establish reparte with her?
DB: “Oh, hey? Tthis is the local paper, right? What do you think about it?”
Josh: Hehe
Josh: “So, do you like farm boys? ‘Cuz i’m a farm boy, and, umm… Wanna go out?”
DB: LOL
DB: You can take her for a ride on your bike…
DB: How romantic.
Josh: LOL
Josh: Shuttup.
DB: Have her ridin’ up on the bars or sumptin’.
DB: LOL
Josh: She’ll ride the bars and I’ll sing her some Gregory Isaacs and we’ll ride off into the sunset…
Josh: And it’ll be all like awww yeeeah…
Josh: Hibbity dibbity and such.
Good times, good times. Josh even worked at the local DQ for a spell.
Oh, and the number in parens above? We will call that a count down to post number 1K here at w(t)f. Maybe happen before I pack up for MTTS. We’ll see.
I was never much into cooking when I was younger. In fact, when I first moved out I lived off Mac and Cheese and Top Ramen just like the next guy. But, there was the odd occasion when I would make up some sandwiches the way Mom used to, just because they were good.
Then I got my first restaurant job. There I got paid to cook, but I didn’t have any enthusiasm about it. Or any creativity.
Then, it happened. My first real meal, prepared without a recipe, only with the thought ‘this should be pretty good. Let’s try’. Stuffed pork chops was the dish. It was extremely easy, was very good and it got a very positive reaction from those that ate it. Might have been all the garlic I used, but it was still pretty good.
Shortly after I moved to Northern California I started getting creative. Since I was running the kitchen, I had access to pretty much everything for anything I wanted. I would make breakfast for the crew. Special appetizers for the regulars. Even the odd custom special or two. It was here I first started cooking for large groups as well. Turns out I was pretty good at it. And, the reaction was always very positive.
I had the bug.
I started creating stuff in my own kitchen at home. Salad dressings, soups and sauces. All from scratch, all without recipes. Most of the time they were good, but there was the occassional ‘um, yea, we’re going out tonight’ meals ifyouknowwhatImean. But I was never afraid to experiment. It got to the point where, one year for Christmas, my gift was flavored vinegars and oil in spiffy bottles. That was fun!
During this time, by Grandparents reached their 50th wedding anniversary. Kind of a big deal, so we went all out. Invited all of their friends and the whole family was there. I think it was close to 400 people by the end of the night. All of them fed by me.
It was a killer spread. Lots of finger foods that my crew assembled (my crew being Mom, my aunt and my sister). I had total control over all of it. While they did all of that, I worked on the main piece for the party. Carpaccio for 400. One of my greatest creations ever. I had an entire filet loin, many cloves of garlic, many lemons, lots of cilantro and parsley, some capers and plenty of crusty bread, all layed out on one of the largest butcher blocks I’ve ever used. It was awesome.
I moved back to Southern California and switched jobs. From a casual restaurant to a high end steak house chain. My cooking continued, of course, being influenced by new techniques and flavors. At this time I also discovered wine. Good times, good times.
My grill skills continues to improve as well. Any piece of meat or vegetable, any grill. As long as there was an open flame, I could make something pretty rockin’.
I also continued to experiment. But now I was using recipes to base my creations on. Experiementing with new flavors and techniques even still. And plating turned into a big deal.
It got to the point where I wanted to cook for my friends. So, I had a BBQ a few years ago and invited about 10 people. And when I say BBQ, don’t think hamburgers or hot dogs were involved. That’s not how I roll.
I marinated beef, chicken and shrimp in my own custom marinade. Appetizer was garlic cream cheese stuff jalepenos. Dessert was grilled pineapple with honey lime yogurt sauce. There was wine. There was music. It was great.
It’s something I don’t get to do enough. But, I will do it again. And when I do, you’ll all be invited!
More in the series chronicling my almost 40 years on this planet. This time, we shall take a look back at the technology that I’ve used. This time, computers. I was going to include other electronics, but it turned out I had more computer-type stuff than I thought.
My first taste of tech came in the shape of a video game console. Not just any game console either my friends, it was a real, live, Atari 2600!
Oh yea. Tank, Pitfall and a few others I don’t remember. It was a lot of fun back in the day, even though the graphics were crap. Yes, even back then we thought the graphics sucked.
But along came teh new hotness.
That’s right boys and girls, we had a ColecoVision in our house. Some great games with it too like Adventure, Donkey Kong Jr. and QBert. It was awesome and I was the most popular kid in the neighborhood.
Coming up to the big four-oh next month. In these years, I’ve seen many wheel’d technology come and go and even had some of it. This should be a lot of fun.
My first set of wheels was, as you can imagine, an honest to goodness tricycle. I remember it was red and on it, I was practically unbeatable. My first two-wheeled experience came at the back of Mom’s bike in the shape of a seat attached to the back somehow. And, since this was the very early 70’s, there were no such things as protective anything, which eventually led to my foot getting shredded in the spokes of Mom’s bike. I had to revert to crawling for about 2 weeks after that. Not sure if it was worth it.
Moving on, my next set of wheels was my very first 2 wheeler. No training wheels either bitch! I went straight to it. It too was red and bought for me by my grandfather. By far the greatest day my 5 year old life had experienced to that date. It wasn’t long until I was jumping the speed bumps at the apartment complex we lived and and even doing ‘pop-a-wheelies’.
Then it was stolen.
I was heartbroken. Grandpa to the rescue with another. Schwinn Stingray with a banana seat and super tall bars. This one was bright yellow and it served me well until I sold it when I was 12 or 13. I had MX bars on it at one point, even crazy knobby tires. Back in the day, that bike was the shit.
Sometime after that I got my first skate board. Wooden deck that might have been 12″ long. I remember there were trucks, but they were super narrow. And the wheels were made of clay with real live ball bearings in them! No foolin’. It was replaced with a kick ass Bonzai board complete with Independant trucks and crappy, flea-market wheels. Boy it was fast.
Eventually I outgrew the StingRay. It was replaced one glorious Christmas morning when I was 13 with a brand new Mongoose BMX bike! Oh man oh man oh man! Talk about rad, that bike was it! It looked pretty close to the one I have put here when I got it, but I went a bit mod crazy with it, changing everything except the frame to turn it into a proper BMX Racer. This bike won me many trophies that I still have in a box up in the garage. It was later replaced with a GT that had a longer frame and some better parts. I raced that until I lost interest in racing, mostly due to my getting a car.
(this goes long, so more after the jump) (Read on…)
