Children’s Day

Connie introduced me to the idea of Children’s Day, a holiday her mom came up with for the kids. It sounded like a great idea: have a little holiday for the kids in between the birthdays and Christmas and decided she wanted to do it for the godchildren, so she set to planning.

We had Children’s day at the house last weekend and it was a lot of fun. I cooked up some hamburgers for the big kids, and hot dogs for the little kids. We had lunch and I got challenged by a 9 year old (“Mr. Eugene, you’re a pretty good cook. Almost as good as me!”). We might have to have a throw down at some point.

 Ellie tried to pull a fast one over us with hand washing.

“Did you wash your hands?”
“Yes”
“What colour was the soap”
“… (goes back to wash with soap)”
(long pause, bit of back and forth moving)
“Miss Connie, how do you turn on the water?”

After lunch we watched the kids run around searching for their presents. Almost from the start, it became a race to see who could find all their presents first. They were more interested in the clue for the next present than the one they just found, which made it all the more fun to watch. At one point, I saw Mark spike the wrapping paper from one of his presents onto the coffee table, like he just scored a touchdown.

After all the presents were found, the kids kind of settled down to check out their surprises. Ellie had me help her with colouring in one of the colouring books. Then Miss Connie brought down the big box of Legos, and we spent some time playing with that. It’s been a while since I played with Legos.

We helped the kids make banana splits for dessert, went outside to throw a ball around a few times (which inevitably turned into game of Monkey in the Middle) and even played fetch with Simba for a bit.

Eventually it was time to give the kids back so off they went back home, minus the Nerf gun.

I think all the kids (big and little and even the furry 4-legged ones) had a great time playing, except for the cat who didn’t seem to like all the activity very much. The only casualty was a crayon that Simba snuck off the coffee table and snarfed down before we caught him. I guess when you’re a Lab, everything smells like food.

Ted’s Butcherblock hits the road

A couple days ago, Ted’s Butcherblock announced on Twitter that they had acquired the Magic Cheese Truck

Yes, we’re the proud new owners of – Stay tuned for details… you’ll be seeing us out on the streets very soon! 

which led me to a tweet from the day before from Magic Cheese Truck

we have sold our little magical truck to Ted’s Butcher Block . Follow them for fabulous food. Stay tuned 4 our next adventure!

Today I was surprised to find out that Ted’s Butcherblock’s new food truck was making its debut at MUSC for Food Truck Wednesdays! When @butcherblock said soon, I wasn’t expecting to see it this soon. I headed out to check them out and scope out the menu as soon as I found out.

Ted's Butcherblock food truck menuThe truck is staffed by familiar faces, which is really nice. The menu is similar to what is available in the shop, so now if the truck makes a stop near you, you can enjoy their great sandwiches without having to make the trip downtown. I went for the always yummy Bacon of the Month BLT with a very garlick-y garlic aioli.

Ted's Butcherblock Bacon of the Month BLTDelicious. I hope Ted’s food truck enjoys the same success the shop has.

Twitter archive

I just discovered that under your Twitter account settings, Twitter now lets you download a complete archive of your tweets. Scroll down to where it says “Your Twitter archive” and click the button. They’ll send  you an email with a link where you can download all your tweets packaged up nicely in a .zip file containing everything you need to view your tweets in a browser and in a CSV file to import into a spreadsheet or database of your choice.

You can check out my Twitter archive over here (up to 20-Feb-2013).

Scanning manuals

Now that I’ve finally got my scanner to work under Fedora, I thought I’d use the opportunity to scan the manuals I got with the Heathkit IG-102 signal generator I picked up a while ago. I was also lucky enough to find an assembly manual on eBay for the HD-10 keyer I picked up at Hamcation so I scanned that as well and converted them both to PDF files.

There’s another manual for the IG-102 that’s quite a bit larger (168 pages) that will take me a while to scan and convert, but I’ll get that done eventually.

Heathkit IG-102 manual cover
Heathkit HD-10 manual cover


Rutabagas?

One of the things I like about being a CSA (community supported agriculture) member (with Ambrose Farm) is that it makes me try veggies that I’d otherwise pass over at the grocery store. It’s in the bag, and unless there’s something to swap it with, I have to figure out how to use it.

This week, it’s the rutabaga. In the grocery store, they’re large purplish-white things covered in wax that I’ve never been all that interested in trying. They were in this week’s CSA share though, so I looked up some recipes. Lots of them were for mashed or roasted rutabagas. Seems they can be treated a lot like potatoes.

Roasting root veggies is usually a safe way to try things out, so I diced up two of the larger ones I got, tossed in olive oil, sprinkled some salt over them and threw them in the oven.

Roasted rutabagasAfter about 30 minutes, they came out looking golden brown-ish and tasting pretty decent. The flavour is mildly turnip-y and the texture is kind of potato-y. Good enough to eat a bowl of straight up. I’ll serve these with some sautee’d swiss chard that also came in the CSA today.