Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

The 'hawks home football crowd has been named the #46 home crowd in college football.



The chant still rings in my ears from the big Georgia Tech upset in Lawrence a few years back...

Picture Day at School!

They take pictures at school early and often these days.  Today was day one so we obliged and got the kiddies dressed up a bit.  Jack was in a playful mood - Elle not quite as much.

Catching a Football Game at KU This Year?

Here's a change that doesn't stink you should find on campus!

Romney Stars in "The Do Over"

Political rhetoric will be peaking over the next few weeks. Here, our Democrat friends, strike in advance of the Republican's Tampa convention.

Perhaps they also invited Isaac to swing by as well?

Sing Me a Song You're The Piano Girl

We've moved our piano out of the office and into the dining room!   Elle took the opportunity play it a bit.

Real Guacamole

Recently, I wrote a blog post about fake guacamole dip. As a response this, my friend Terry from Toronto emailed me her real guacamole recipe. The secret, she says, is lime juice. I took her recipe and decided give it a shot. One ingredient that Terry's recipe didn't list that I added was fresh chopped cilantro. I made a point to get real tomatoes from a roadside stand instead of the the bland ones you get from the grocery store.

The resulting guacamole was delicious! I highly recommend this! Here's Terry's recipe: My recipe for guacamole contains only ingredients. But I think you just mash them all together and - VOILA* - guacamole. *a little linguistic inconsistency Unless you have a food processor (I don't... still), use avocados that are black - super-ripe and mushy and therefore easy to mash. The page from my recipe binder (which goes back to about 1980): For each avocado used: juice of 1/2 lime 1/2 tsp salt (approximately) 1/2 garlic bud (pressed) Tabasco 1 tbsp onion grated 1/2 tomato chopped Then, I have very helpfully written: For 6 avocados: juice of 3 limes 3 tsp salt 2 garlic buds pressed Tabasco 6 tbsp grated onion 2 tomatoes chopped

Mission Guacamole Revisited

As I understand the story, Dad was hosting a Mexican themed Superbowl party a number of years ago. Along with other standard Mexican fare, he picked up a jar of Mission Brand Guacamole. As he was serving his guests, he looked at the ingredients of this "guacamole", and noticed that it contained only traces of avocado. Dad was so offended by this that he wrote a letter to the Mission Company explaining how the product was fraudulent and that they were destroying the Mission Company's reputation. Mission responded by sending Dad some coupons. These years later, I thought I'd check to see if Dad's letter did any good. Does Mission still peddle avocado-free guac? I found a display of the product at my local grocery store to see for myself.

One look at the color of Mission Guacamole tells you there's a problem. The label confirms it. It contains 2% or less of avocado powder. Mission also adds insult to injury by writing the words "with GARDEN VEGETABLES" on the product cap. Mission must have a very liberal definition of garden vegetables, because other than "concentrated crushed tomatoes", everything I recognize as a vegetable is only present in powdered form. Looks like Dad needs to write these boys another nasty letter!

The success of Tech's season will be determined in the month of September this year..... three conference games out of the gate...all to teams they lost to last year.

First Day of Kindergarten!

Jack officially started Kindergarten this week! Compared to my first day back at University Heights with Mrs. Turman it was nothing. One benefit of all the pre-school perhaps...

Football Season!

College football season is fast approaching! Erin and I are heading down to Lawrence to help usher in the Charlie Weis era. We got some nice seats and we're looking forward to a fun night game. Hopefully the Jayhawks will start the season well.

Bad Guacamole

Dad gets credit for being the first in the family for noticing the horrible practices of the food industry and guacamole products. As I discovered on a trip to Walmart today, the horrors continue. Ask any person in the world, and they will tell you the central ingredient to guacamole is avocado. Ask the "chefs" from the food industry, however, and the answer to that question is apparently whipped vegetable oil and green food coloring.



Two clues for the wary stand out. First, the price is too cheap for real guacamole, because avocados aren't that cheap. Second, the term "flavored" is never a good sign. It always means that whatever ingredient preceding it isn't actually in the product. Chocolate flavored candy means there is no chocolate in the candy. Maple flavored syrup means you're eating corn syrup, not maple syrup. Be careful out there grocery shoppers! The industry wants to trick you into eating pure crap in order to make higher profits!

Call Me, Maybe - Song of The Summer

Like it, or not, Call Me, Maybe has emerged as the song of the summer.... here are the 2012 swimming olympians singing to it!

Swagger Wagon

Regarded as one of the better ad campaigns to land recently.... and it is indeed good.

Jack's Drawings

Jack's drawings continuing to evolve.  One regular theme is our family.  He likes to draw pictures of the four of us.  His most recent interpretation of our family is the first time he has given us all arms! 

Notice how he's made himself proportionally larger than the rest of us!

Happy 35th Anniversary to the TRS-80

Here's a nice article about our family's first computer.

An Innocent Man... the story

When listening to Billy Joel the other day I recalled a Summer day back in '83 shortly after his Innocent Man album was release when Dad took Bill and I to Memphis.

Back in the day, one of the highlights of going to Memphis was visiting the Mall of Memphis and a couple of record stores.

Bill bought the Innocent Man tape and on the way back we wanted to listen to it.  Sadly, our car (probably the '77 Ford Granada) didn't feature a tape player so we used his Walkman to listen to it.  The rule was we had to alternate songs.

I remember Bill detailing the listening order to make sure he got to listen to "Tell Her About It" - the first single from the album.  Which wasn't a bad deal because I got "An Innocent Man"