I hope you have a pleasant Thanksgiving

Water and a strobe light

This is a link to a cool video on Wimp.com. Basically its a strobe light and falling water which equals a cool effect.

Jesus is hungry

You can eithor see this old pic as a family of three or as a man feeding his fist to Jesus. I took it from a very cool site named Forgetomori.

This ones for Heath and is love of bike gears

I took this from a T-shirt by SWOBO. They are one of my favorite cycling companies. The T-shirt can be found here on their site.

XY to XX

Humans have 46 chromosomes--22 identical pairs, and a pair of sex chromosomes (XX for women, XY for men).

BSNYC posted about a computer program called the Genderanalyzer that trys to predict the gender of blogers based on some computer they trained with artificial intelligence.

Results for my blog came back this way:

We think http://laotzucycles.blogspot.com is written by a woman (89%).

If you want to try it out the link is Here

The whole world

The smaller you keep your world to the people, places and information that you have always known the more you will know every thing in the world. Of course you will only know everything in the world you know. I really like not knowing most everything in the world.

The Limits of My Fatherhood

I pride myself on being able to go with my girls anywhere they want to go in their topic of play and enjoy the process. Today I found my limit. After being with Heath and his family all day I was really excited about spending an hour or so playing with Ella tonight before bed time. We went to the basement and started good with a game where I throw a ball to her while she jumps on a mini trampoline. With the ball in the air I call out what body part she needs to hit it back to me with. It could be her hands, head, belly, bum, chin, elbow etc. Once done with this game she says she wants to play Princess's with me. Princes. The moment she said it all creative passion deflated from my soul like a popped balloon. I wanted to find an angle on the Princes world I could connect with her on but could not. As a result I have come to the conclusion that playing princes sucks and I can not connect with Ella in this area of her life. Some times a dad needs to watch football while his girl plays by her self.

A ride with Heath today

These pics are not in chronological order because for some reason I can't work my blog program. As a result please view them as part of a space/time continuum merging.
This is Heath riding my Salsa La Cruz. He feels stretched out but sure doesn't look it.


This is under 494 as it goes over the Minnesota river.

Urban (Suburban) Hike

I pretty much suck at making time to work out, hike, ride my bike or do any other fun physical activity. My current solution is to sneak in spontaneous urban hikes. If I have at least 20 minutes extra in my day I try to go exploring. I have found time while driving to a meeting, driving home and after lunch. One key to success is making sure I have sensible shoes and some outdoor gear in the car. With this mind set I am finding myself exploring a lot of nature and urban areas I had previously just driven past without notice.

This hike was a little over an hour long on the land between lake Ann and lake Lucy in Chanhassen a few days ago.


This pic does not show the giant size of this hollow tree.
I am often pleasantly surprised at how you can feel like you are in the middle of now where even in an urban (suburban) park.

Tub trouble

Getting drenched in your pajamas is what you get if you dare venture near the tub monster.

WWJHD

Some how I feel a bit guilty that I have the day off today to celebrate veterans when so many future vets are driving Humvees around the middle east hoping they will make it home to become a vet. My solution. Make the best of the day. I did lot's of winter prep work around the house and then looking for direction on what to do next I went where I often go to find direction WWJHD (What would Jill Homer do) It is very windy, cold, and a mix of sleet and rain outside. Jill Homer would go for a big ride so I did too. The first half of the ride was dominated by a strong head wind of little ice daggers exfoliating my eye balls. The second half with the tail wind was much more pleasant.

I may not be in Iraq but I did wake up to gun shots two times this morning. There is a different kind of battle going on in the woods this week and I found a victim who escaped with her freedom but not her life. I would have shut her eyes like in the movies but was afraid she would suddenly get up and scare the chitlins out of me.

Miriam Makeba

Miriam Makeba is a great south African folk artist born in 1932 who died today. Here are a couple of links to some of my favorite youtube videos of her in the 60's. Link one. Link two. When you like what you hear you will notice many more links to her work on the you tube.

Chitterlings

From The Joy of Cooking: Chitterlings, also known as "Chitlins," the small intestine of a hog, are most popular in the South or in places where authentic soul food is on the menu. Chitterlings are also the base for andouillette, a tripe and chitterling sausage very popular in France. To be specific, chitterlings are the small intestines of a young pig, which are emptied while still warm, turned inside out, and thououghly cleaned. The mucous covering is scraped away and completely removed. Chitterlings are very strong in both flavor and odor.

Basically Chitlins are the lutefisk of soul food. They smell like so strongly of pig poo I have to cook them outside of the house. Like Lutefisk chitlins are treasured by its fans. If your food doesn't scare you once in a while you aren't eating right.


Half the challenge of making Chitlins is finding good quality product in a reasonable sized package. Aunt Bessie's Pork Chitterlings are the best quality chitlins I have found. I found them at Coopers grocery in Chaska MN and find it funny that they are imported from Denmark.
Unlike the chitlins in a big frozen bucket from cub these needed little to no cleaning of the mucous coating.
When completely filled with water each piece held about 750ml of water.

After turning each one inside out to rinse and clean it I cut it open for the first simmer of one hour. To help with the smell I added three onions cut up.
The super strong pig poop smell forced a move to the garage. The second simmer is in new water with three new onions and for three more hours.

After four hours of simmering in two sets of water they are cut into 1 1/5 inch pieces to be sauted in ghee and olive oil.

Ghee is clarified butter that has been cooked a little longer and has a slightly nutty flavor. The liquid is extra virgin olive oil.
The chitlins were sauteed until light brown. I did this first batch a little hot and a little too long. They were still great and just like the last time I made chitlins they gave me a weird sense of euphoria that spread to slowly to each limb. Hot sauce is a must and I regret not having greens available as a side dish.


I sauteed another set of the cooked chitlins tonight with ghee and olive oil but more slowly and carefully. Wow. The experience is like perfectly cooked pork flavored squid. Not rubbery but rather like al dente pasta with a little crisp browning on the outside.

Not sure of the origin of this but I could not have said it better

Button Blog link

This is from a blog that used to be called "the history of the button." It is now a human/machine interface blog called pushclicktouch. I am perticularily fond of this pic from a hotel room airconditioner control that was poorly translated.

Halloween events

Halloween was very fun this year in Chanhassen. Lots of cute kids at the door, then a neigborhood party next door at David and Jen's. After the best elk sausage I have ever had and lots of chit chat we all went next door to our back yard for a fire. Hours of conversation, jokes and fun later Derek decided we should hoof it about a mile away through a field to the abandoned farm house I have posted about in the past here. The above pics are of me getting wood for the fire with my Bob trailer, raccoon poop infested camper bus kitchen next to the barn, my next door neigbor David hanging from a hook in the basement of the old farm house in Blair Witch style, and a creepy old wooden child poty seat.

Fall bike camp trip

Salsa La Cruz



John's Surly
Heaths NOB trailer and Fuji

Heath and John have recently blogged about our fall bike camp trip. Here is my post on the trip. It was very fun to spend the time with John and Heath and to get to use my Salsa LaCruz in its element. The little Zebra toy is what Ella gave me to take on the trip.

Danger philosophy

This is kind of a crappy pic but that darn Maya just will not stop moving for a pic. What I attempted to capture is the precarious nature of a 9 month old at the top of the stairs with a dopey dad trying to figure out his new LG Dare phone camera buttons. I think I did that much. I also attempted to capture a kid/danger philosophy Susan and I have adopted with both Ella and Maya with good success. We generally don't use gates at the top of our stairs or any other baby safety devices but rather attempt to expose our kids to each danger in a highly supervised setting as early as possible as a way to teach them the natural consequence of dangerous behaviors without them having to experience the painful effects. Stairs for example are an area parents often use gates. I would argue that the chance of Maya doing something dumb on the stairs and falling is about the same as a tired, stressed out parent trying to step over the gate and tripping while carrying the same kid. (This is not true if you have very dangerous stairs without a landing that could lead to a dead baby of course) Instead what we have done is as soon as our kids can crawl to the steps we invite them to crawl near the edge with tight supervision. When they inevitably make the fall down the stairs move I allow them to fall in slow motion in my hands. It is kind of a slow motion version of what would have happened in fast motion if I wasn't there. The kids did not like this at all even though it doesn't hurt. About three pretend falls and 10 minutes later both kids were mostly safe around fall situations. The main exception with Maya is that she would still crawl up to a ledge and do a little turning sit move that would put her in a fall position. A couple of weeks of tight supervision later and this issue has also been resolved. Now whether at the top of the stairs or on the edge of a tall couch she will carefully schooch her legs off first and safely slide down feet first on her belly. This danger exposure method worked great with our first child Ella. I initially thought the method worked because of Ella's naturally cautious way of being, however so far it has also worked very well with the very different non cautious Maya. Next week I plan to teach the girls how to shoot up heroin in a safe way.

Coen Brothers Watching

My last post talked of the new Coen brothers movie "A serious Man" that is being filmed in part half a block from my work. The plot and other info can be found here. Today I got to see the movie being made from about 30 feet from the action. No filming was going on when I watched but I got to see the Coen brothers walking around saying smart artsy stuff. If you have been living in a hole for the past 15 years below are a few of their more popular films. The guy in the center of the pic is not a Marx brother but rather some other director I have been told.
Fargo
The Big Lebowski
No Country for Old Men

A serious man

Well you can't easily see it from my second pic but the new sign says the "JollyRogers Motel" and it also has a scull and crossbones on it. It is going to be filmed as part of a Coen brothers film coming in the future called "A Serious Man". It will be a comedy set in the late 60's. They will be filming on Thursday 10-23-08. It is of interest to me because it is a half block from my work and in a place where many past and current clients have had issues to say the least.