Just Another Saturday State Of The Marc Ramble (06/15/2013)....

So two weeks from now I will be somewhere in Georgia on Interstate 75 heading south on my way to a one week vacation on Sanibel Island. Good Gawd I am looking forward to the recuperative powers of the warm Gulf of Mexico waters and eating at places like Doc Ford's, The Island Cow, Key Lime Bistro and the Sunshine Seafood Cafe & Wine Bar. I may need to get a couple more books to bring along as my unread collection has dwindled down to three. Booked this condo six months ago and finally "the Rock has come back to Sanibel". Haha. Okay the Schliv works better there as it will actually be me and not Dwayne Johnson heading there.

I headed downtown last night to have a couple of beers and catch some live music at Main Street Fridays. They had a smooth jazz band playing and while the musicianship seemed good especially the horn section; after three songs I was bored silly. Perhaps I am just uncouth but I need my rock and roll or reggae to get into the weekend frame of mind. Smooth jazz works for me on Sunday nights. I finished my beer but quick and headed back home with a quick bite to eat detour at Bailey's. I really really wanted some Mediterranean or Middle Eastern food last night but at 930pm the options are rather limited here in Greenville. No Kojax, Maison Grec, Amir, etc. etc. to be found. LOL. No couscous for you to paraphrase the soup guy on Seinfeld. LOL.

I've no big plans today. Lots of cleaning up around the friendly confines of Schlewing-stan and working outside to burn off those beer calories of mine. Going to make a super duper fruit salad and think of tonight's grilling options. I think mahi mahi and grilled asparagus spears are in my near future.

One thing I know for sure is that in order for me to clean up some I need to get off the darn computer to do this as BooBoo Dammit and Jynx Schlewing don't seem to be in the mood to help do some of the chores. Cats have a good life.

Peace out Derek and the Dominos fans aka rock and rollers and remember to not under any circumstances text while drinking spirits. Ha!

Ramble On I Say, Ramble On (03/28/13)

So we are getting real close to starting the 2nd quarter of the year and looking back it seems that I haven't done much so far besides perhaps cleaning up my backyard pretty nice though I still have some to do. I will likely finish that up this Saturday and Sunday if the weather holds out. It will at least be milder.

I was re-reading this blog for typos and I realized that I am so accountant-like. Rapidly approaching the end of the 1st quarter. LOL. Normal peeps would say something about spring being sprung and here I am dropping fractions at the drop of a hat.

I did start planning a nice week off at Sanibel Island at the end of June. I have the condo reserved, a deposit down and beach chair at the ready. Between now and then I need to get a beer cooler. Well a larger one at least!

It might be a good idea to lose some weight between now and then because NASA may be reporting white whale sightings off Sanibel and Captiva in late June. NASA would have had they still a budget! So I guess I am safe! LOL. Seriously though I made the great choice to quit smoking 3 years ago but since then my metabolism has slowed down to the same rate as the average rate of brain activity in a typical Republican in the year 2013. Yes pretty much non-existent.

I was thinking about it this morning as I got dressed for the office that my wardrobe is really lacking in clothes that still fit me somewhat. One of my co-workers actually said that I looked dressed up today and looked sharp. Truth in fact I had just come back from getting my head shaved and was wearing decent fitting clothes that was a step above my usual shorts and T attire or short sleeves and khaki attire.

I picked up H at school at 5 and forewarned him that we were going to stop for some cold beers and nachos at Bailey's. It was sort of a reward for almost getting to the almost end of the work week as well as it being sunny and in the 60s which hasn't been seen here in the last couple of weeks.

As I had Led Zep's Celebration Day blasting on the car stereo with the windows down; the usual drive home conversation would have to wait until we reached Bailey's as Zep's Kashmir was on the player.

Once we got our large ice cold Yuengling drafts with nachos on the way our conversations took off. Either we have the attention spans of amoeba or we just like to wander when we converse which explains the way I write these blogs and the meandering that I do.

Inside of an hour we had talked about the Boston Bruins, Pittsburgh Penguins and the Montreal Canadiens. We touched upon his paternal grandmother and his maternal grandmother. We hit upon his long distance charges on my cell phone bill as well as how many gigs his Pandora usage is on our shared date usage plan with Verizon. Shared? Ha kind of like Romney/Ryan's economic plan. Sharing my effing derriere. We then segued into bad draft beer tap choices at Bailey's which led into conversation riffs on the drum skills of Jason Bonham, Keith Moon and the Mike dude from Dream Theater. That led us into a conversation about John Entwhistle's bass playing as well as the bass players from Muse and Kasabian. Then we went into a conversation about Chia Pets that would grow into "Jesus" look-alikes and how that would be a big seller in SC. Then the conversation turned to how I can never keep track of his friends besides Eean, Matt, Sam and Aaron I guess. Turns out that he has four friends name Nick. It's like what the eff! Is there that many people that name their sons after a gambler or a Russian czar. We then talked about the cons of jalapenos being drowned in some vinegary solution pretty much guaranteeing that they lose all their sizzle. We also of course had the obligatory "Dad you are such a doofus" moment when I asked him about the bass and keyboard player that are quite invisible in Black Keys videos. Turns out the the guitarist plays those instruments as well so they only have touring keyboard and bass players so the group could be called Two Black Keys and that would be apropos.

Hmmm. Well I went off on another tangent here as I am wont to do at times. I have also lost my train of thought as I have the last ten minutes scratching Jinx Jynx's tummy so I am going to sign off for now and try to be a little less scattered the next time. Ha!

Peace out!

Up Pretty Early (01/13/13)

You know it seems odd writing 13 in the date field whenever I write it out. No doubt it is related to the "bad luck" connotation of this number. It's even weirder when you write it twice like I just did in the blog title. Boy would the Mayans or some other ancient people go to town had we 13 months in a year. LOL.

As an aside I actually laugh when I type in the LOLs on here. My cat doesn't think of it as being too strange as she hasn't said anything to me about it. Yet! LOL. My cat probably thinks that a lot of us humans are weird anyways as often when people walk in and see her or cross her path during the day they or we feel compelled to call out Jynx. Often repeatedly. The cat must think humans are effing delusional!

As is usually the case when I am writing up a blog on here I am listening to "Deep Tracks" out of Chicago. They just played a version of "Wooden Ships" that I always assumed was only a Crosby, Stills and Nash tune. Crosby and Stills along with Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kastner wrote the song back in the late 60s and the Airplane included it on their classic "Volunteers" album in '69. The CSN version was also released that same year. It's interesting to hear both versions. Lots of commonality and some distinct differences as well as the Airplane had some amazing musicians back then. The harmonies of Grace Slick and Marty Balin are great on the Airplane version. Then again the vocal harmonies of CSN are second to none. I have the feeling that I will be YouTube-ing CSN songs all morning now or at least until I run out of my pot of coffee Kahlua.

I had to make a Total Wine run yesterday to restock my coffee cordial. I had reached a critical point in my inventory levels there. I also bought a 6-pack of Anchor Brewing Company's Liberty Ale out of SF for imbibing at some near future date. LOL.

So as I had mentioned in my previous blog I tried a recipe out of Wednesday's Greenville News called "Kiki's Beef Curry on Flatbread". I have found when trying recipe's out for the first time that they are definitely hit or miss when it comes out to the spice content.

I thought I had all the ingredients but it turns out I was missing a cup of plain yogourt to add to the curried beef mixture right at the end of the cooking process. I'm not sure if that would have acted as a thickener or not.

One of the mistakes I made when browning the meat, onions and curry powder was perhaps not draining some of the fat at the end of that process. I was using a low-fat content ground beef but the end result was still a bit drippy as H put it. It was not as spicy as H likes his food. I figured as much as I didn't think that the newspaper was going to publish a high octane heat content recipe for a family dinner. Next go around on this recipe I will make sure to add some sriracha to up the spice factor.

The end result though was tasty and definitely gave off the aroma of Indian food having been prepared so the recipe is definitely a keeper for me. There aren't many leftovers left from it as I saw when I put it away last night.

The simple salsa recipe of olive oil, tomato and fresh parsley was excellent. I am definitely going to use that again. One of the things I have noticed when I used fresh herbs like parsley or cilantro is that I either have to have more patience in cutting or dicing the herb or be way more patient in de-stemming it or something. I take too many shortcuts there and I keep realizing that I don't like the "stemmy" part of the herbs if they are not cut fine enough. I also need a new zester thingy. Zesting the lemon last night was a pain in my derriere!

Going to try a chicken stew recipe today. I'll see how that turns out!

I watched a bit of the playoff football games yesterday but I got real tired of the hyperbole used in describing plays and performances. The word sublime and football should not be used in the same sentence. Sublime is John Butler playing an accoustic guitar. Sublime is listening to Morgan Freeman speak. Sublime is a CSN harmony or hearing Julia Roberts laugh. Watching 250 to 350 lb. behemoths running into each other is not sublime. It just seems that sports announcers on a weekly basis are spouting off on the greatest ever efforts, plays and mistakes made in the short history of televised sports. It's really not that spectacular, amazing or thrilling on such an ongoing basis. There's definitely some major exaggeration going on there.

I finally gave up on GB-SF game and ended up watching "GoldenEye" which was the first Bond film with Pierce Brosnan in the lead role. I am sure that I have seen it before but it almost seemed like I was watching it for the first time. I must say that Famke Janssen and Izabella Scorupco are as easy on the eyes for the male viewers as Brosnan likely is for the female viewers. Judi Dench as M was great. Even in a small role, she brings so much to the table.

After the movie I decided to start planning some of my vacation time for this year. There is definitely a beach trip or two in my 2013 summer plans. I've been trying to find something relatively affordable in the Outer Banks for June or July. It doesn't look it is going to happen unless I want to rough it a bit with some tent camping.

Much of the offers there are based on 3-4 families sharing a living space and dropping for $3000 or $4000 for a week's rental. There is very little available there for my family status these days though there might be some smaller timeshare condos available once I can figure out these websites without having to endure hard sells for timeshares. There could be a deal though for a two or three day recharge the batteries at the beach if I want to sit through a presentation or two. There are deals to be had in late August early September so that may end up being a late summer option.

I did happen to find some great possibilities for June/July at Sanibel Island in SW Florida. That trip is definitely going to happen once I check out the department roster for those two months. I loved my time there last summer and to be right on the island for a week and minutes from the beach would be sublime. Ha! There is that word again. LOL. That trip will be booked in the next two weeks. Yes!

Okay that's it for now. Time for some breakfast. OTC is hungry!

Peace out!

Up At 315am...Oh Joy...

Well it's around 315am here in Ft. Myers, FL where I have been since last Saturday. This is the first night this week that I haven't been able to sleep through the night. I wonder what I did differently today to cause this. It's been nice getting through the night without having to get up to pass time until I get tired enough to go back to bed and catch some zzzs.

I'm trying to think of the last time I was away for over a week from home. Over the last few years, most of the vacation breaks I have taken have been what most would consider long weekends. Typically 4 or 5 days off as opposed to this nice 9 day break I took this go around. Pretty sure that my face will look well rested after this time off though if I have a couple of these middle of the night episodes I will have circles under my eyes darker than those crop circles in some farmers' field in the middle of Podunk, Iowa.

I spent about 5 hours today at the beach at Gulfside City Park on Sanibel Island. It was great. The air temperature was around 90 I think and the water temperature was in the upper 80s. Put it this way; there was no shock to the system as one approached the swimming trunk's water level height. Most guys would get this. LOL.

Ever since I was way young as Mashmakkan once sang "As The Years Go By", a lot of my more serene moments in life have occurred in or near some body of water. The combination of hot sun and nearby lake, gulf or ocean just lowers the stress ratio by umpteen degrees. Not sure what umpteen is but I am pretty sure that it is more than 1 or 2 as there is a teen in there.

The only thing that was missing today was a beach chair to sit on and a radio to listen to while listening to the gentle roll of the waves in the Gulf of Mexico. My body is just not meant to lay down on the sand regardless of what I am laying on. It's hard to find a comfortable position that lasts more than 10 minutes when sitting on hard sand and trying to read a Steve Martini book. It would have been nice to have a radio with me tuned into the region's classic rock station. Turns out they have a station called the "The Arrow" here that plays Tom Petty, Foreigner and Queensryche. Sounds like my kind of station. Any station that plays "Silent Lucidity" or "Jet City Woman" can't go wrong in my books.

Prior to arriving at the beach I stopped for a late breakfast at Island Cow on Sanibel Island. We had been there a couple of days earlier for lunch and liking that experience I decided to stop in for breakfast there. I got myself a table outside in the shade near to a large fan that kept the air circulating which was a good thing as the air was already rather sticky at 1030am.

I ordered the Farmer's Frittata which is an open-faced omelet with three cheeses. No idea what cheeses though; I'm a blogger not a true blue restaurant reviewer. LOL. In the frittata there was sausage, peppers and onions. They served that with home-style potatoes and grits and a slice of watermelon and of pineapple. I should have said hold the grits and double up on the fruit. For the life of me I just don't get grits. It's like eating papier mache even though I have never eaten papier mache.I just think that it may resemble it in texture. LOL. I tried a forkful and set it aside. It just isn't for me. The frittata though knocked my socks off even though I was wearing sandals so there were no socks to knock off. I have a rule. Sandals no socks. One of my many rules it seems. LOL. But let's face it socks and sandals get you nominated to the geek hall of shame. They serve Starbucks as their house coffee and you can never go wrong with that brand especially if you like their darker roasts. My only complaint is that they charged $3 for the coffee to go with breakfast which seems a little high. Then again I think they mark up the beverages to make up for smaller margins on the food as the servings are quite large for the price charged. I also have to take into the equation that I am in one of the tourist meccas of southwest Florida so chances are that prices will be higher than my hometown prices.

Sanibel Island also has an interesting grocery store called Jerry's Foods that Istopped in for liquid refreshments (Labatt's Blue) and freshly made sandwich for later in the day. Jerry's seems to be an upscale grocery store locations in Eden Prairie and Edina in Minnesota and here on Sanibel Island. I'm thinking the original Jerry had it with Minnesota winters one year and decided to come down to southwest Florida and presto decided that expansion in this neck of the woods was a good thing. Their prices are a little higher than let's say a Food Lion or BiLo and obviously if you are a WalMart shopper you would be scandalized by the prices, friendliness of the store staff and the cleanliness of the store. I liked the store.They have a great bakery section where you can by singles of some great danishes and pastries as well as some freshly baked breads. Given their location their fresh fish selection is outstanding as well Given that this was in essence a beer run I could have just stopped at a gas station but having heard about Jerry's two days prior I figured I may as well stop by. It was well worth it.

Okay that's it for now...