Back to the Christmas!

So I have been meaning to share a couple of pics with you people who are not my family and read my blog (eliminating half of my readership in a single fell blow!) that came from Christmas time. The events that are to be portrayed come from Christmas Eve. On that day the Herzl-Betz family always goes to church to enjoy the wonderful service and then heads home to have a small meal and open our presents from the cousins over at my Oma's house, which is just across the driveway from ours.

This year was the second year that Ms. Carroll joined us, and of course she was not due to get any presents. But I decided to make a slight alteration to that agenda.

A large box? Well what could it hold?

Balloons?!?

Oh... it's Up!

Just some silly craziness from me. You know how I like presentation.

Until next time...

"Balloon: thing to take meteoric observations and commit suicide with."

- More Maxims of Mark, Johnson, 1927

Happy Halloween!

Rach and I decided to Deutsch it up for the holiday

 

 

We then went to a zombie themed pub!

 

Until next time...

"Each man is afraid of his neighbor's disapproval--a thing which, to the general run of the human race, is more dreaded than wolves and death."
- "The United States of Lyncherdom"by Mark Twain

Easter

This past Sunday was the day our Lord rose from the grave, and it was pretty awesome. First I got up and walked to a church service. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and the day was verging on being hot. The service I was going to was being held in Intermedia Arts, a kind of art collective that has fallen on hard times recently. The space was very impressive, and I loved what the congregation had done to set up the worship room. I showed up about half an hour early and therefore got to talk with a lot of the congregation and the pastor. This, plus the actual service convinced me that I needed to go to church more often.

The service was incredibly cute- they had a jazz band playing for the instrumentals, the congregation was all friendly, they had an active youth group, and the little kids were adorable. Case in point was the kids' sermon that the pastor gave. Apparently at the beginning of Lent the kids had taken little pieces of paper with the word "Hallelujah" written on them and put them in a box, as Christians are not supposed to say Hallelujah during Lent (Jesus' death being a sad time and all that noone should be overjoyed and praising. Yay guilt!). So, on Easter they opened the box again and took out the pieces of paper and handed them out to the congregation members while we sang Hallelujah. This plus the general friendliness of the group made me feel very welcome. Apparently they have a jazz service at 10:30 on Sundays which I think I'll try to attend in the future.

After the service I hardboiled some eggs and then went to lunch with Rachel, her mom, her mom's friend Jan and her daughter. We ate at this place called Ecopolitan, where the gimmick is that everything is raw and vegan. So there were a lot of buckwheat and almond "cheese" on things, and the smoothies were necessarily delicious. Service was a bit slow, and the prices were a little high, but otherwise it was a pretty enjoyable place to grab a bite to eat.

Then it was time for egg dying! Kristin and Becky came over at 2 to do this with me, Jason and Caroline. We had a lot of fun and made some very pretty eggs.

Then it was cooking time for me. Rachel proved to be a very able sous chef and helped whip together a 10 pound ham with pineapples, kartoffelsalad, mashed sweet potatoes, a salad, peppers, ants on a log, and two loaves of bread. Cooking was a lot of fun, and it seems like lots of people enjoyed it. Teagle also showed off her skillz by bringing a "butter lamb" and a Jesus-bunny cake. We had a very successful egg hunt, and then served dinner for 13 people. Pics below.



All in all, it was a very good evening, and I'd love to do it again sometime. I just really like hosting people and cooking food for a big group (well, as long as I'm not rushed). Happy Easter!

Until next time...

"Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink- under any circumstances."
- Mark Twain's Notebook

Valentime's Day!

As many of you may be aware, this past Saturday was Valentime's [sic] Day, which the girl and I decided to celebrate in style. We began by giving each other gifts- she got me a geeky shirt, and I got her a ridiculous geeky shirt. Unfortunately the hearts on her shirt didn't light up properly, but I can guarantee you that when I get a fixed copy there shall be ridiculous pics.

We then got all spiffed up and headed out to El Meson, a nice Spanish/Caribbean restaurant on 35th and Lyndale. We got to have some very exciting looking and tasting treats like ceviche! (cold, not warm) After dinner we headed out to Yum! to grab some desert, which consisted of a slice of coconut cake. I was then directed to our mystery activity location by Rachel, who was having way too much fun not telling me where we were going. It turned out to be Patrick's Cabaret, which was having a cabaret and burlesque show that night. We got there a bit early, so we decided to head over to Town Talk Diner to kill some time.

If you haven't been to the Diner before, it is awesomeness distilled with a slight infusion of crazy. They have all sorts of delicious foods and drinks that are a bit off the beaten path- for instance, they make a lot of their own liquers and throw a lot of interesting twists into existing ones, like habanero infused scotch. The place was packed (it being Valentime's [sic] Day), but we managed to get two seats at the bar very quickly. I was immediately drawn to their alcoholic malteds and ordered one called Monkey Business (see above pic), which consisted of PB, banana liquer, chocolate, rum, and vanilla ice cream. It tasted like a chocolate fluffernutter and not at all like something that would get me drunk. Rachel had some kind of blackberry concoction with homemade liquer which was also fantastic.

We then headed on over to the Cabaret to wait in the quickly growing line. Even though it was pretty cold out, the line quickly snaked around out of the alley and down the sidewalk. The people at Patrick's didn't seem to mind- they happily crammed patrons in wherever they could find room. This led to a lot of people seeing the show, but unfortunately some bad sight lines for us unless we sat seiza style on our chairs. The show itself was pretty good- the musicians and singers were talented, the belly dancers jiggly, and the burlesque performances had the right mix of raunch and whimsy to make it incredibly entertaining. For instance, in one act the performer came out wearing pretty much only pink balloons. She had a heart shaped pin that she and audience members used to pop in a suitably suggestive manner. Once down to no balloons... let's just say that tassles are fun.

After the show we headed home to watch some 28 Days Later (best Valentime's [sic] Day movie ever!), but by 1:30 were too exhausted to finish the second half.

There's been some other stuff going on, but I'll wait till later to post about it. Until next time...

"What, Sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce."
- Speech given by Mark Twain, January 11, 1868

Road Trippin' in the MidWest: Holidays Edition

Hey everybody, welcome to 2009! It's been a while since I rapped at ya (yeah, I actually just said that), so let's do a quick recap of the past two weeks:

1. F%(& a Duck Day: Friday before Christmas, the day before I planned on going home, we get news that snow will cover the entirety of the eastern half of the United States from Saturday evening to Tuesday morning, forcing Ms. Carroll and I to flee home much, much earlier than expected. I cancelled my appearance at work the next day, bundled everything into the car, and conked myself out with meds to sleep. At 4:30 in the morning we roared off into the night... and had quite a pleasant drive. It was still F%(& a Duck Day because I had wanted to get a lot of things done on Saturday... but oh well.

2. What is the What: while driving home we listened to What is the What, by Dave Eggers. It's a biographical tale based on one of the Lost Boys of Sudan and his surviving the genocide and eventual migration to the US. The man, Valentino/Achak/Dominic (depending on the year, as he has many names) is hit with one disaster after another, continuing through his life in the US. But, it's a great listen (and read as well I presume), can be funny at times, and has a very unique and engaging storytelling style. Highly recommend it, though it is incredibly long (approx. 20 hrs on cds)

3. Home: home was good; the entire fam (+ auxiliaries) was there and everyone was actually nice to one another for once... a genuine Christmas miracle. I made lots of heffezupf (German sweet bread), played in the snow, and got all sorts of wonderful things for Christmas. I also played a lot of Wii, in particular Star Wars Lightsaber duels (blocking is for sissies!) and Rayman Raving Rabbids (a bunch of psycho rabbits capture the main character and force him to fight in a gladiatorial arena through various ridiculous and hilarious mini games, i.e. shooting bunnies with plungers, making the bunnies dance, cow flinging, etc.). Now I need to get one for my house. Grr.

4. Trip back: started off on Saturday night but first made a detour to Barnes and Nobles. Ran into friends, got dragged into a Euchre game, but eventually made it out and on the road. Winds were very intense, forcing us to stop midway through Indiana to rest and wait it out a bit. 1.5 hours later I said screw it and we continued on through the howling dark. When the sun came out everything was fine, though, and we managed to make it home and watch Dr. Who and eat pizza. Side note: wisconsin can be very pretty on a cloudless day at dawn with snow and frost blanketing the countryside.

5. Duluth: Went up to see Rachel's parents on Monday night, and Rachel actually drove most of the way! Had a lot of fun and good food up there, and actually got some presents from Rachel's parents. First is Fallout 3, the most awesome game in teh history of ever. The other is a wacky websites page-a-day calendar, which is also amazing. For instance, today's website is Everyday's A Holiday, which, you guessed it, tells you what holiday it is today. I think I'll just randomly link in websites from now on from there. Today happens to be the festival of sleep! Anyway, purchased beer and root beer at Fitgers, did some more reconnaissance for my secret project, and eventually headed home.

6. New Year's: we had a booze train, lots of good food and drink, good friends and a glowing polar descending from a tree in lieu of some oversized disco ball. 'Nuff said.

7. For the entirety of New Year's Day I played either Warhammer (I have shiny new Eldars now!), Order Of The Stick, saw people playing games, or watched Spinal Tap. I may have OD'd on fun.

8. ...and that brings us to today, where I am sitting in the computer lab, watching people watch YouTube.

So, until next time...

"New Year's Day--Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. Yesterday, everybody smoked his last cigar, took his last drink, and swore his last oath. Today, we are a pious and exemplary community. Thirty days from now, we shall have cast our reformation to the winds and gone to cutting our ancient shortcomings considerably shorter than ever. We shall also reflect pleasantly upon how we did the same old thing last year about this time. However, go in, community. New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls, and humbug resolutions, and we wish you to enjoy it with a looseness suited to the greatness of the occasion."
- Letter to Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, Jan. 1863 , by Mark Twain

T-Day Week

Dammit, forgot about the blog for a while again. Well, no time like the present to catch up, now is there?

In my last blog post I headed home to Elmira, NY to do some shooting in the woods. Unfortunately that didn't work out so well for me, as not only did I not see any deer until Thanksgiving morning but I didn't even see any fresh tracks until then. My dad and I were pretty frightened that he had shot everything in the woods, but the last day proved us wrong. We switched to the one part of our property that we had not hunted yet and saw tons of tracks, droppings, and even the occasional deer. Unfortunately I didn't get a good shot at anything, but oh well. At least I saw something after all.

Being home this time was... weird. I don't know why, but it just feels very different to be home again now that I'm out of college. I guess I'm beginning to no longer consider home "home" anymore. I've spent the last 4.5 years out here in Minnesota, and now I'll be with the parents for a grand total of 3-4 weeks out of the year. I guess the really weird part is how ok I am with that; it's not scary or even sad- it just seems right.

But still, getting to see the whole family was pretty cool. I got to help Hans along on his quest to construct the perfect board game (the latest sounds like some kind of weird cross between the rules of Call of Cthulhu and Epic Duels), drink amazing Belgian beer with my dad and Siegi, tease Liesel about her boyfriend, see my Orio, and even kid around Oma (though I got to be careful with the latter nowadays). Perhaps as a gift to the fact that we were all home my dad even got the Wii, which was a blast. I mean seriously, how can you make a duck-hunt rip off so much fun?

Also while I was home I got to catch up with some of my high school friends. We played the requisite couple of games of Euchre and also went to see Role Models. I would describe this movie as the only cute rated-R movie that I have ever seen. Sure, it has its boatloads of sophomoric humor, but there's definitely a lot of tenderness thrown into the movie... also a lot of geekery. We decided that the writers for the movie just wanted to have an epic foam sword battle movie, but had to make some pretty major edits to get people to watch it. The final scene in particular has some pretty jaw dropping feats of Assassin-style sword fighting.

I got back on Friday to discover two things: 1) I was alone in the house, and 2) the water was shut off. The latter was fixed by a call to Jason, but the former was not resolved until Sunday, leaving me to go a little stir crazy at home. I filled this empty void in my life by watching Roughnecks: The Starship Trooper Chronicles on Youtube. It's actually a pretty good CGI cartoon, and a bit more mature than your average one. Of course watching the entire series in two days is a bit crazy... but I was pretty bored and drunk, in my defense.

Anyway, people came home, Teagle baked an awesome apple-cinnamon spice cake, and work resumed. There's some other, sometimes geekier stuff going on with me right now, but I'll leave that for another post.

Until next time...

"Thanksgiving Day. Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji."
- "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" by Mark Twain