Things I've Learned, Part Two

Things I've Learned from Hulk Hogan:

5. Eat your vitamins and say your prayers.
4. You can wear headbands at black tie events if you're badass enough.
3. Not opening a car door for a lady is a jabroney move.
2. Come on, brother.
1. His family is insane.

Things I've Learned, Part One

Hot off the press from the realm of stolen ideas,

The Top Five Things I've Learned from away messages:

5. Generic song lyics.
4. College kids like to party/drink alcohol.
3. No matter where you go, there you are.
2. :-)
1. I am away from my computer right now.

Thanksgiving

Last week, my mother, father, and sister came to D.C. to visit me and do some sightseeing. They arrived Tuesday evening and left Sunday morning. While they were here they saw a bevy of attractions and are already planning a trip back. Aside from showing off my nuclear sweet office, I would say that the highlight of their trip was me cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

This is the first Thanksgiving dinner I have ever prepared and I was a little bit nervous. To make matters worse a Monsignor friend of mine, who was unable to go home for Thanksgiving, joined my family. I say to make matters worse because, in the words of John Lovitz from Newsradio, he is a bit of a foodie. Additionally, he and my sister took turns gently mocking me. Such is the way of the world, I suppose.

Now, for the important information. My meal consisted of turkey, asparagus, yams, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, and apple pie (with optional espresso (served on the side of course)). The following photos are the documentary of my monumental feast. (Authors note: Sorry if you have seen these before, but not everyone is on teh facebooks.)

This is the first picture of the day. It is me preparing the turkey. You'll notice a turkey, a lemon, an orange, sage, rosemary, and oregano. All of these things went inside of the turkey, as well an an onion.

This is the turkey after I took it apart and rinsed it. You'll notice the neck was included but the giblet was not. Both my father and my sister were offended by this. They thought that I, perhaps, was playing some manner of goof on them.

These are the aforementioned lemon, orange, and onion that were cut into wedges and inserted into the turkey along with a few springs of the aforementioned spices.

This is the turkey prepared for the oven, almost, I had to let it rest out of the fridge for thirty minutes so it would reach room temperature. You'll notice that the turkey is now stuffed and coated with an herbs de Provence butter.

These are the pots and pans I used to fix my sides. I actually used five but only four fit on the stove-top at any given moment. If you look carefully you'll notice that there is a probe thermometer in the left of the photo. That one's for you Alton Brown!


This is the final product. The hand showing off the feast is that of the Monsignor, no I did not wear a suit for dinner. I had on a nice green sweater vest and red/brown corduroys (thanks Dan!). I was trying to be autumnal.

This is a close-up of the finished bird. You'll notice its rich color as well as the twin towers of cranberry sauce.

Finally, what is Americana without a pie cooling on a window sill? This particular pie happens to be apple, mostly because I am a magnificent brother and did not bake a pumpkin pie because my sister abhors it.

So, there you all have it. This was my first attempt at a Thanksgiving dinner, and if I might be a braggart for a moment, it went quite well and tasted as good as it looks.

In unrelated news, the gym was very crowded today and there were no treadmills open, so I ran home after I finished lifting. I feel like I accomplished something--leaving all of my things at the office like a moran.

Smell ya later.

Playtown

I've seen the same commercial for this product several times in the past hour while watching the Godfather Part II. It is for a product called "Playtown." That sounds good enough but then they give their brief hook I get befuddled. This is the jingle, "Playtown, the town that play built." Is it me, or would that be a really shitty town? I can't imagine that play builds very good towns.

Foodstuffs

Because all anyone in the blogosphere does is steal each other's ideas, I am going to keep that proud tradition alive. In that vein, I am stealing my roommate's idea to post pictures of things I eat/drink. Also, because the dish I just made is something we used to eat in college, stealing his idea seems appropriate. Ahh, college. At least my counters look a lot nicer now.


The above dish is a disgusting looking, but surprisingly tasty treat. It is corn beef hash with friend eggs and A1. I came up with the eggs on top of corn beef, or probably someone else, and my roommate decided that A1 would probably liven it up a little bit. You should try it sometime.

The following picture is something I mentioned in my last post.


This is the most exotic thing I've drunk in a while, and it was the rum that was being served at the event I went to last week. I would post pictures of what I normally drink, but we've all seen bottles of Canadian Mist and Gordon's before. After the get-together they had goody bags filled with indigenous coffee, rum, and a "passport" with lots of quick facts about the country, I picked up one to enjoy later. The coffee was also good, so says LiZhi.

My family is coming into town tomorrow and I will be preparing my first thanksgiving meal on Thursday. Providing I don't burn my house down and the food looks edible, I'll probably post pictures of that as well.

Carry on.

Long Time No See Revisted

Hi intarwebs. It's been a crazy couple of weeks. Right now my typing in inhibited because I apparently have a pinched nerve in my ring finger on my left hand--at least that's what the nurse in the attending physicians office told me. As a result my finger goes numb whenever my hang gets cold and takes a long time to de-numb itself.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Baltimore and something absolutely hilarious happened. It involves a black eye and a girl. If you want more details feel free to ask, but be warned I come off as a bigger asshole than I really am.

I found out earlier this week I am going to begin taking on new issues for my boss. They will involve foreign affairs/trade. I am very happy about this, as it is what I have wanted to do most since coming to Capitol Hill back when I was a junior in college. As a result of my soon-to-be new found responsibilities I was told it would be a good idea for me to go to a party last night. I don't want to say where it is, but I'll be more than happy to tell someone who isn't the entire internets. I went and it was pretty sweet. The party was at some country's embassy, and it was a country I'd never been before but all that changed yesterday. Thank you counting embassies as native soil law. I met the people I was supposed to meet and hope that I made a favorable impression on them.

More importantly, to me, is the delicious rum that had. It was a dark rum that was surprisingly sweet. Some website gave it a 91, which seems like that is a good number. Personally, I think that it is the best rum I've ever drunk. Sorry Admiral Nelson.

That's pretty much all for now, except to say that a pal and I are going to listen to Bach's Cello Suite tonight at the Kennedy Center, so that'll be cool. They tell me Yo Yo Ma won't be performing it but it should be good music, nevertheless.

Stay tuned for more info from the city that lacks a "J" street due to a rivalry between John Jay and Pierre L'Enfant.

Edit: After consulting various sources to check the accuracy of the previous statement, despite the high verisimilitude of the above fact, I discovered it is, in fact, an urban legend. C'est la vie.

Long Time No See

For all of my adoring fans who have been been complaining about me not updating the blog in a while, I've been busy. Back off.

In related news, I haven't been busy. I started a gym membership last week at the House Staff Fitness Center and it's a pretty nice facility. It's smaller than Shirk (for those of you who get the reference) but doesn't cost $40,000 a year in membership dues, so that's a plus. I go three days a week after work. I normally run about two miles then lift for about forty minutes. It's pretty sweet. I figure I'll ripped in like one or two more weeks. Look out ladies!

Work has been going steadily, ya know.

Yesterday I got to practice using my French. Président Sarkozy came over from France for a bunch of reasons, one of which was to give an address to a joint session of Congress. I scored our office's ticket and got to sit in the gallery whilst he gave his speech. It was pretty good and Mitch McConnell called it "Reaganesque." He is a very good orator, even when translated by a woman with a British accent. B.t. dubs, are there no Americans who speak French who might be able to do the translations for the U.S. Congress? Come on, John Kerry speaks French, why not let him do it? Which reminds me, I wonder if they ever changed Freedom Fries back to French fries in the Rayburn cafeteria.

For Halloween a coworker and I went to Baltimore for a party that a coworker's friend was holding. The coworker was a box of wine and I was Tom Cruise from Risky Business. I don't have much to say other than they apparently aren't sticklers for pants at the bars in Baltimore.