My blog n'at

I’m celebrating tonight with an assload of homework, taking care of a sick 9mo old and enjoying the Pens beatdown of the Rangers again. It’s Monday night and I’m already looking forward to this weekend getting here.  Not really. I’m busy again and just annoyed at everything. I have too much work to do and not enough time. I must purchase MS Project because people have no concept of time and I need to bitchslap some Gantt charts around.

What the fuck is wrong with you people. Black Friday USED to be a good time. Yeah you’d freeze your ass off in the cold but so what, it was part of the charm. Lushie and I used to look forward to Black Friday every year. The rule is you have ONE item you want and set your sights on that. We liked going because the people were always friendly, you could camp out and share drinks with the folks around you, it was a community event.

Since we have Teaspoon with us now we decided to pass this season and at 6am realized what a smart decision that was. Stories flooded the local news of how lines had thousands of people with fights breaking out and some dumbasses tried jumping lines. What the hell! Why are people being stupid! If you do something like this you deserve to get your ass beat down.

Here’s the mayhem that happened at Best Buy last year when I went and what post wouldn’t be complete as I reflect on when I worked retail hell at Staples on Black Friday.

Saturday had us shopping for a pumpkin. It was Teaspoon’s first time at a farm and when he saw the tractor he let out a loud “WHOA!”

The whole album of the day can be found here.

This is one of the many things I love about Pittsburgh. We’re a big city but yet also can drive 20 minutes and be in some beautiful farmland. This was taken at Soergel’s in Wexford. Teaspoon had a good day farming before heading to his first ever rugby match to watch his girlfriend Claire play. More later on that…

HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY! HOCKEY!

Looks weird when its repeated over and over again eh? You know you wanna spell check it.

I wish I could properly express how freaking psyched I am for tonight. Not only is it the home opener but its the raising of the Stanley Cup Champions banner and the start of the final season at the Mellon Arena. Oh yeah, and there will be fireworks!

The home opener is the one game I get to when the gates open. I like to get in early so I can walk around without much obstruction, walk through Pens Station so I can shop without elbows to the back from a crazy yinzer rushing to get that Crosby jersey that’s been hanging since last year, and I get a chance to sit in my seat and absorb the moment… Stanley Cup Champions.  Its like the calm before the storm.

I find it hard to hate the Rangers this year. Jagr isn’t gone. Straka is gone. Avery is there but that’s not even an effort anymore since he writes his own jokes. I guess Rozsival or Prospal could be whipping boys but they’ll have to stop skating into the boards like Happy Gilmore. This leaves the hack thug Brashear. Honestly I’m expecting Avery and Brashear to beat the tar out of each other. Knuckleheads do that.

Game starts at 7:30, gates open at 6. Game is sold out so if you don’t have tickets sit on the lawn and bring an umbrella or as Yinz Team would tell you, “bring a fucking towel”.

Final score: Pens 4 – Rangers 1

I have to give Teaspoon credit, he has good taste in presents and I made  out for my first Father’s Day. My day started with sleeping in until 8am (if you’re a parent you can appreciate more than 4 straight hours of sleep with a newborn) and waking up to a little man popping me in the face with his fist. Teaspoon and Lushie handed me a bag with the above contents inside. Pearl Jam “Black” t-shirt and Gorge box set CD’s along with The Price Is Right and MLB 2K9 video games for the Wii. Out of everything it is the card is what I will treasure forever. Lushie managed to get him to squawk for a few seconds and capture it on one of those recordable cards.

Teaspoon and I spent the day watching the US Open on the couch while flipping between the Bill Murray marathon on AMCHD. My problem with the marathon is they wasted time with showing the bomb of Ghostbusters 2 when Groundhog Day would have been more fitting. The day ended with this feast Lushie prepared…

2lb Ribeye steak with baby bella mushroom, asparagus, mashed taters with carrots and a side of shrimp cocktail. Oh yeah, ate like a rockstar. You can see the rest of the pictures over at my Flickr gallery. Thanks Teaspoon and Lushie for making me the world’s luckiest dad! I can get use to this every year

so git up and git git git down

What the bloody hell was that last night? Seriously NHL. Last night’s awards show was not only a suckubus but an insult to hockey fans. I wasn’t expecting the greatest and best awards show of all time but last night was more of “wtf is THIS?”.  It was the public access of awards shows. As I posted on twitter last night… “NHL Awards is on VS cuz not enough strippers for Fox, too french for ABC, too many big screens for NBC & CBS really wants you to see NCIS”

First off the awards. I think Ovechkin gets more credit than he deserves. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good player but when you have 528 shots and only record 110 points that shows to me that you’re a spaz who can’t pass.  If Happy Gilmore had that many shots he would score too. Meanwhile Evgeni Malkin has 112 points on 290 shots and lead his team from a 10th seed on 2/5 to the 4th seed less than 2 months later. Do the math. That is the sign of Most Valuable Player. Someone was snubbed as MVP. I know the award doesn’t have to do with playoff performance but getting your team there does. Geno was all around a better player.

Secondly, someone new to the game has NO idea what these awards are about. A montage of the award and maybe a picture of it would help over a scaled down version and hack Hollywood presenters.

Now for the entertainment. Whomever hired Chaka Kahn should be shown the door. Not once but TWICE we had to put up with her bad American Idol performance. The look on the faces of the crowd explained it all as a collective “WTF” was shown.

Dear NHL, the RedWings and Pens gave you a gift with one of the highest rated cup finals of all time and you failed on capitalizing on the momentum. This isn’t a foo foo la la cute and cuddle me sport. Its fast paced, tough and gritty. It’s metal, not washed up 80′s pop. Fix it.

There were rumors for days that a huge storm was coming our way but I honestly don’t think anyone took it serious. Then there is myself (and Uncle Crappy I found out from this post) who loves severe weather. Part of this stems for me from growing up in Erie, PA where you will experience 4 seasons in one day. I know people exaggerate in Pittsburgh about the phenom but it is true up on the lake. I saw it. When you think about it what else do we have to do besides obsess about weather and gas prices?

On Wednesday Pittsburgh was slammed by a couple of storms which brought on flooding, high winds, hail and mass hysteria. The areas of Westmoreland County, Turtle Creek, Forest Hills, East Pittsburgh and parts of Monroeville were hit the hardest. Friends of mine in the areas all reported minimal damage with one having 4 inches of rain in his sun room. As a weather geek this was the super bowl for our area. I watched KDKA’s coverage for 4 hours. You’re reading that correctly, I watched a Doppler for 4 hours… in HD! Oh yeah buddy!

Floods and I have a history together. When I lived in Bellevue we had massive flooding in 2004 and 05 due to hurricanes with he last basement bath coming in 2007 shortly after we moved to our new residence. This one was due to sewage lines and not flood waters which turned out was a blessing.  The cleanup sucked and we lost around 10k in personal belongings but found out that our insurance didn’t cover natural flooding. If you are a renter you’re basically screwed when mother nature comes calling. I called my insurance agent and got the “good farking luck” speech.

Back to watching the news, I did find some humor in the clip that showed a Bellevue cop scolding a resident for driving through the flood waters which almost swept her car away. Why is it funny? She’s the drunk girlfriend of our old neighbor who stole the backhoe to go grocery shopping and put a non-working toilet on his porch. See why I miss Bellevue. It’s the people.

Weather report for Friday is more rain so Lushie and I are getting our basement ready just in case. Most of what we own are in plastic storage bins but it’s my electronics I worry about. Do you know how many years of dumpster diving it took me to collect this stuff! Though I don’t think Lushie would mind if some of these computers were tossed.

I’m doing a crossover post with my craft beer review blog Hump Day Happiness since it suits both places. This is the Easter Beer Ham that Lushie and I worked on this year. Its been a couple of weeks since we’ve made it and the taste of deliciousness is still present.

It was difficult to decide on the right beer that would compliment the ham. That was until I opened a Coney Island Lager ( www.shmaltz.com/CONEY/cil.html ) from Shmaltz brewing ( www.shmaltz.com ) while prepping the side dishes. The beer has a mild malt flavor and some bite from hops which will balance the sweetness of the brown sugar we’re going to use.

Go see the beer ham goodness over at Flickr and follow the steps below in making this beer food porn gem.

What we used:

• 7 pound ham
• 2 cups of Coney Island Lager from Shmaltz Brewing
• casserole dish
• 1 cup of brown sugar

What to do:

1. Place ham in center of casserrole dish
2. 1 inch deep cuts made around the top so the beer bath will be able to soak in
3. Put 1 cup of packed brown sugar into a large bowl
4. Add 2 cups of Coney Island Lager to the brown sugar and whisk together
   
5. Pour  the mix over the ham where you made the cuts so it runs down covering the ham
6. Let the ham sit for a few minutes while you prep your side dishes
7. Bake 15 minutes per pound. Since ours was 7lbs we baked for 105minutes or 1hr 45minutes
8. Baste your ham with the beer bath every 15 minutes. For smaller hams than 4lbs I’d suggest every 10. Judgment call really, just don’t let it burn
9. The beer bath that you were basting it in will put a sweetness to the outside that you’re going to be temped to lick. Err I mean wait to enjoy at dinner
10. Let the ham sit for 5-10 minutes. It will finish cooking itself while resting and locking in the juice
11. Slice to size you prefer. I like it .5 – 1 inch
12. Use the leftover bath as a gravy. Plate, serve and enjoy!

We weren’t worried about presentation at this point. The aroma of beer and ham was intoxicating (no pun intended).

Let me know how it works out for you!

cheers!

(Chris, Bob and I at my bday party in 2001)

Some of you may recall from last year that Lushie and I love to celebrate Birthday Week. This year I insisted that we take a hiatus on it since I’m being laid off the day before my birthday and I don’t want that added strain on a 30 week pregnant Lushie. She insisted and it began.

What I like most about it are the small things. Every day I wake up to a card, a kiss. (awww nice eh?) and a special rub of the baby belly. Inside each card is a “Good for” coupon she writes. One day it’s “I’ll pay for a good car wash” or “6pk of your choice from 3 Sons.” Yesterday was a new watch since my $12 cheapie was stolen (hahaha suckers) and today was a University of Pittsburgh ball cap. We’re going to hit a brewery and a few fine craft beer establishments this weekend so that right there would have been fine but Lushie insists that she has one kickass present that’s the greatest gift ever and I will open a day early because “you’re gonna need it.”  Not sure what that could be since I already have the perfect present in her belly.

So here’s to birthday week. Cheers to everyone else celebrating right now and for those who don’t… srsly, you’re missing out.

cheers!

We’re buds. Served in the war together.

This is my favorite holiday of the year.

I, like so many others I read online yesterday, thought the NHL All Star game has taken a long walk off a short pier. A waste of time. The NHL All Star Game will take a break next year for the Winter Olympics so they have 2 years to fix some serious problems that I saw over the weekend and would like to share.

1) Take the voting away from the fans until they can play nice – This is supposed to be the BEST of the best. Instead some jagoffs from Montreal spammed the ever living hell out of the voting so it would be an all Montreal team. Pens fans came out in forces to get Sid selected but Caps fans failed to get Ovechkin starting. Slackers.

SOLUTION: Until integrity can be restored to the game have the players, coaches and GM’s vote.

2) Make the game mean something – There’s no hitting, no defense and not effort to make plays. It’s become a lackadaisical spin off of what hockey is or what the “hockey is too violent” freaks want wrapped up in a hug. What I saw Sunday was 3 periods of watching pre-game skating without the drills. Do some skating and fancy moves then shoot.

SOLUTION: Follow MLB’s style and have the winning league get home ice for the cup finals. Some may bitch that it’s not fair when teams work so hard during the season. Try playing 162 games and then playoff games to not have home field. MLB can do it, suck it up buttercup. You fought to play in the game, not to host it. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy then get rid of the All Star Game completely or move it to the end of the season like the NFL when no one cares.

3) Fix the Skills Competition – I don’t think the clock for timing players skating around the rink has ever worked. The trick shots (which should the equivalent to the NBA Slam Dunk and MLB HR Derby) was harder to watch than SlapShot 2 sober. The only saving grace was the accuracy competition which is as exciting as watching someone pitch a ball through a tire hanging from a tree.

SOLUTION: Find players with actual skills to do trick shots. I saw MAYBE 3 decent shots while the rest were sloppy puck handling, unmotivated, drunken Stars on Ice quality attempts. You want accuracy? Put Randy Quaid in net and be the ball. Speed skating should hire the people who time trials at the Olympics.

4) Versus needs an upgrade – WORST.CAMERA.WORK.EVER!  The game was decent but the skills competition was a mess. It was like someone with A.D.D. was working the boards. You’re watching the net, then the skater, then the far end of the ice, then from the stands, from the men’s room, WOOHOO NACHOS, from outside, a fan laughs, back to the ice, over to the goalie, overhead shot! All within a minute. That’s what it felt like.

SOLUTION: Talk to the guys at NBC. They don’t have much coverage but they do it right. No matter what happens don’t let Fox take over. I can’t deal with a glowing puck or robots fighting.

Let me know what you thought of the weekend. What would you keep or change?

go pens!

P.S. – Check out this sick goal Malkin made. Just about the only highlight from the game