#986: Foody Friday - BBQ Smoked Turkey Wings!

Long-time readers of Life After Work might remember that back when we were still in Urbana, Fridays were BBQ Beef Ribs day. Almost every week, Kosh and I would pig out (haha) on a half-slab each of BBQ beef ribs from Lil Porgy's while watching Babylon5 DVDs.

We have occasionally made trips down to Urbana on Fridays JUST to get us a long longed for dose of said ribs. We'd also buy like three additional portions to bring back with us, to be consumed over the span of a day or two. We also get a jar of the hot sauce, to use sparingly over the span of a year or so.

Yes, it's that good.

At the end of the year, Porgy's would add a seasonal item to the menu - BBQ Turkey Leg, which was also really really good.

Here in Chicago, there are quite a few famous BBQ places, but from what I can tell, they don't do beef ribs. And I don't do pig meat. So never the twain shall we meet, it seems.

So last week, when I saw that Jewel was having a special on turkey legs, I figured what the hey, let's get us one of them legs and see if slathering Porgy's sauce and roasting it in the oven will be some sort of substitute.

We ended up buying one drumstick (it's HUGE!!) and two Turkey Wings - both items being not just turkey, but smoked turkey - already having flavour locked in. The other day, I decided to tackle the wings. It was a challenge to find any cooking instructions online - many seemed to recommend boiling the wings then popping them in the oven for 2 hours?! Seemed waaay too long and too much of a hassle. Then I found this simple recipe that only said to cook them for one hour. Figured I'd "compromise" and go for 1.5 hours.

So I popped the wings into a Pammed tray and roasted them for an hour. Checked with the meat thermometer - they were done! Yikes!! So I slathered on the BBQ sauce and let it roast for another 30mins. Here's how they looked as I double-checked the temperature:
Don't they look just yummy??

Here's how they were served - one each for Kosh and myself. And yes, that sauce in the styrofoam cup? MORE bbq sauce, LMAO!


The aftermath:
Note the lower level of sauce in the cup. And how the plate was essentially wiped clean! The little pile of stuff is just inedible fatty junk.

The BBQ Smoked Turkey Wings experiments was a success! I'm now a lot more confident about tackling that Turkey Leg. If you want more pics from that future kitchen time, drop me a line to tell me, k?

Previously on Foody Friday:
- Broccoli & Sopapia
- Chicken pot pie, Beef&Mac bake, sopapia
- mega-pumpkin bread
- New Year edition
- another pumpkin bread entry
- mega taco puffs

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we're oooollllllddddd!!!

Things we did to mark / things that happened around the time of my birthday:

• Red Lobster on Wednesday for linner
Can never have too many of those free cheesy butter fat-laden biscuits! And the LiiT was actually REALLY well made this time :) Oh, the food itself? Edible :)


• Gave myself multiple papercut-like cuts on THREE fingers, the worst hit being my pointer finger, while cleaning the kitchen sink strainer a tad too enthusiastically :(
  
  
• Rather crappy weather had us going to Grandma Sally's on Friday for brunch
I really like breakfast food :) And Grandma Sally's has a pretty neat "Irish Benedict" on the menu: eggs benedict with corned beef hash. We split that as an "entree" and ordered their banana & pecan baked pancake for dessert. I swear it's not a pancake it's a cake!! We knew we'd take most of it home.... we were right.



• came back, hung around, and "caught" Kosh ordering stuff from the animalrescuesite.com (well, he asked for confirmation - do you really want this Cat Yin Yang pendant... ended up getting that and another bracelet, and some other stuff, thus providing funds for 70 bowls of food for animals living in sanctuaries and shelters!)
  
  
• installed graphics card in 'puter so that it won't crash after too many hours of Sim City. That was an adventure and a half!! But it's all done now... and I immediately set the game options to HIGH for everything - omg the level of detail in the game is awesome - NOW I get to see it!! :p



• the weekend is a blur... Saturday I think we might have worked out, then I probably Simmed while Kosh puttered around (he's supposed to studying for a major exam!!)... Sunday I got off my butt and did some spring cleaning of my own, rediscovering my attempt at putting together a family tree of sorts to keep track of Kosh's family and mine (I only know my most immediate Swiss relatives, and have totally lost track of nephews & nieces being produced by my Malaysian cousins!) I then hunted for, found, downloaded and started using a genealogical program to enter data... next thing we know it's like 3 am ... off the bed!!


MONDAY: - we finally did the touristy thing originally planned for Friday: taking the Hop-on Hop-off bus tour!

• It was the perfect day for such an endeavor; with temperatures in the 70's we weren't baked, and in fact found ourselves a wee bit chilly at times. It drained us more than we realised though - remember we'd only hit the hay at like 3am, we were on the move the whole day 11am - 7pm!
  
• We essentially took the tour bus into town for lunch, and only after did we do the actual tour. Lunch was at Bandera's. Why would we want to go to a place that seems a bit on the exclusive/expensive side, venue of power lunches, etc etc etc? Well, a while ago I had searched the 'net for places to find BBQ beef ribs (only my fave thing ever on Fridays in Urbana!) and this place seemed to have pretty good reviews for its beef ribs and skillet cornbreak, so I wanted to try it out. We shared one order of the ribs and since I couldn't see the skillet thingy we got a side of cornbread and panini. My first impression of the ribs was "omg that's it?? Porgy's has like 4 times the meat at a quarter the cost!!" But it kinda worked out well, because this was we weren't overstuffed at the end of the meal. We even took back one slice each of the cornbread and panini. The coleslaw that came with the ribs was absolutely delish, if a little bit oily - now to figure out what they used...


• after the meal, we caught the bus and off we went for the tour. I suppose you'd call us lazy and/or boring tourists: we only got off at two stops - one for free chocolate, and one at the end of the day, which happened to be the free popcorn stop teeheehee! All I wanted was sort of an overview of the city from a tourist's perspective, and that's exactly what I got - mission accomplished! :)


• We left the bus at the theatre district in the heart of the loop, and walked back while munching on popcorn. Reached home around 7pm. I was more tired than I knew - totally failed at doing math and ended up calling my brother to wish him happy birthday thinking it was 11pm his time - - turned out it was like 1 or 2 am so not only was I LATE in calling him, I WOKE HIM UP, he of the 2-month-old baby who probably needs all the sleep he can snatch!! I feel bad about it,,, maybe more certificates will make up for it?? :D :D :D


• I was so tired I passed out for an hour or two on the couch: woke up to Kosh ushering me to bed. That was about 10pm. We were still tossing and turning at 1am. You know how you can be so tired you just can't sleep? Ugh. Ended up back in front of the tv, I think I finally dosed off at 3am, while Kosh took a while longer, finally putting LotR - guaranteed to put anyone to zzzz-land! :D

... so today we woke up totally wasted. I emerged around 10am, Kosh slept till past noon. And for most of the day we've not been very productive. Total zombies, in fact. Yesterday's tour is the most probable culprit. Wow, we must really be getting old, to be so floored by a day of low-key touristy stuff. Imagine being in a foreign country and being a real tourist? We'd need a holiday to recover from such a trip!! We both feel soooo oooolllllddddd....!!

In less than a month's time it will be all over

That's what I keep telling myself.

In less than a month's time it will be all over.

But between now and then, stress is building up.

Something deemed tentative is kinda being forced by other parties to be "certain" instead. So now forced to plan for stuff when a major initial requirement is still not there.

How not to stress meh?

I feel my blood pressure up too.

Can we say F. U. N. ???

* * * *
The cat puked *again*. This time it wasn't just hair - looked like she'd regurgitated some totally unchewed food too. Urgh. It's kinda nice to have her puke on uncarpeted floors tho - *so* much easier to clean!! I suppose THAT's the silver lining to that story.

Last night, tho, she woke us up pawing [no, battering!!] the bathroom door demanding to drink water from the faucet. We didn't give her any face lah, but dammit she robbed us of sleep, especially poor Kosh!!

Right now she's making an atrocious amount of noise playing with the empty boxes piled high in the living room. Silly cat.

* * * *
Kosh is on call today. So he left at this morning 545am, and I won't see him till maybe 2pm tomorrow, and based on the other time he was on call, that's being optimistic. The folk would like us to head to their place for the weekend to mark my b-day a few days early, but seeing as Kosh needs to work on Sunday, I don't think I'd want to spend 4 hours of his one day off on Saturday driving to/from the folks'... see lah how...

* * * *
Need to get hair trimmed - once it gets to a certain length, I start to shed like crazy [too long, too heavy? who knows...]. Kosh already warned me in advance "Please don't expect me to notice if you get anything done to your hair... I probably couldn't tell unless you, oh, shaved yr head,,, and even then it might take me a while to figure out what was different" LOL okay not that bad lah, but glad he's practicing prevention LOL!

* * * *
Got some BBQ Beef Ribs last nite, from Hecky's. Eh. All right lah: certainly meatier and tenderer than at Porgy's... but also very fatty too, more expensive, and the sauce is nothing, NOTHING, I tell ya, compared to that of Porgy's!

And we were forced to get a full slab cos they don't sell halves like Porgy's. But if a half = 4 ribs, then shouldn't a full = 8? Cos we got only SEVEN ribs. We were robbed!! [I let Kosh have the odd one - I was full @ 3 anyway..]

Wonder if I'm gonna be able to talk Kosh into a trip down to Champaign/Urbana *just* for a session of their beef ribs?? [yup, that's a Malaysian talking (typing?) all right... we are willing to drive for hours for our food....].

But with gas prices to f*ckin high... maybe not for a few months, eh?

* * * *
On to other stuff.

H/T samantha burns for most of these links

1. Entertainment Weekly's 25 most controversial movies of all time: I was intrigued that there were so many I didn't know/hadn't heard of at all! Tho this also reminded me that I'd wanted to get a hold of The Message. Hmmm wonder if it exists within the Chicago Public Library system? Dunno if there's any other on that list that appeals to me, tho [yeah yeah so The Da Vinci Code is there... I still dunno if I wanna watch the movie.]

2. Poem Generator. And I don't mean crummy roses are red violets are blue poems. I mean this thing generates crap like

I lie on a bed of lust, on a pillow of tears, eternally bleeding from the cruelty of thy absence

Electric arcs firing within me are nothing compared to when thy tongue dances with mine

For one kiss from thy ruby lips, would drive any mortal being to drink thy absinthe from them again and again

For now, I leave you with untold secrets, forged in heaven and whispered within dreams

*cough!* *cough!*

3. Hair Bands. Bad Hair Days. Just keep clicking "next" and be ready for some good laughs.

4. Some food anomalies... sure some are so totally photoshopped... but still worth a looksee.

5. Kenny Sia's got some great comparative art pix.

Okay that's enuf websurfin for me for today. I need to go find some food. Ciao!

a self-tag :D

Snitched this from Dawn :D

How did you get the idea for your profile name? The "azlynne1972" part was so that my ex-colleagues had a better chance of remembering the address, cos I allocated the corresponding Yahoo!Mail ID for them too. The "Jobless Bum & lovin' it" was of course part of that whole "I've quit! Good riddance to bad rubbish!" feeling of relief.

What song are you playing now, or wish you were playing?... can't seem to play my CD on the puter right now, grrr! Otherwise I'd be listening to The Rasmus' Dead Letters album. My fave songs are #4 & 5.

Has the death of a celebrity ever made you cry? Gotta agree with Dawn on this one - definitely Diana.

What colour underwear are you wearing? not gonna peek, but probably black :D

Do you want a baby? sure. one thing at a time tho. paperwork. marriage. then a year or so later can start trying, maybe? :D

What does your dad do for a living? retired from job in the energy sector many years ago. now earns his living on the golf course, har har har.

What does your mum do for a living? not working no more. keeps busy attending all sorts of cultural activities.

What is/are your pet's name(s)? via Kosh, there's Cammy the crazy kitty.

What colour are your bed sheets? bottom = striped black/white. cover sheet = some faded green thing. Yea, I don't bother to match 'em. I'd be better about it if I were on my own.

What are the last 3 digits of your phone number? On the landline, 737

What was the last concert you went to? MEAT LOAF! Last September.

Who was with you? Kosh *smile* good memories, beb!

What was the last film you watched? V for Vendetta - excellent movie! So excellent I just can't bring myself to type up a review. Just go see it. It's a wake-up call. Go see. Go. Go!!

Who do you dislike most at this moment? Ugh, noone I can think of.. I rarely "hate/dislike" people - I just turn indiffrent to them if they piss me off :D

What food do you crave right now? BBQ BEEF RIBS! Kosh had them last Friday, I'm so jealous!! And I haven't had anything "real" to eat all day, so I'm starving right now.. gonna go find some food right after posting this up!

Did you dream last night? Yea. I must be concerned about Rail's & my plan for next Wed/Thurs cos i essentially did a dry run in my dream - getting guest bed ready, making sure alarm was set for early next day wake-up and trip to Putrajaya... when I woke up I was a bit disoriented wondering if it was already next week, LOL!

What was the last TV show you watched? Can you believe I havent watched tv since I got back to Malaysia? It's just not something I do here. So I suppose the last I watched was that crazy Da Vinci's Inquest marathon - watching the 2weeks' worth of episodes in one night when I was leaving for the airport the next morning. Yes, I'd packed my pags by then lah :p

What is your fav piece of jewellery? My engagement ring, plus my wavy bracelet, both from Kosh :-)

What is to the left of you?My empty water bottle.

What was the last thing you ate?Two kaya buns. Very insubstantial, and pure carbs. Did I mention I'm starving? :p

Who is your best friend of the opposite sex? Definitely Kosh :-)

Who last MSN'd you? I'll change that to Yahoo!Messenger, and that would also be Kosh - we had our "chat date" my Saturday night, his Saturday morning.

Where is your significant other right now? Well it's just after 6am his time as I type this, so he's either in bed or just getting up to head to the hospital. Halfway across the world from me. *sniff!*

Do you have a crush? Not for a long long time... but i used to have these crushes so often on such a wide variety of people! Jon from CHIPS. Starbuck @ Battlestar Galactica. Morten Harket @ A-Ha. David Copperfield. His bodyguard Kyle. The Italian guy in my class when I was attending school in Switzerland one winter. The guy from St Johns who coached me on how to handle the mace thingy (I was Band Major in Form 5 mah!). The guy who attended my Bahasa Malaysia tution classes for a while because he was resitting his SPM BM paper. You get the idea?

What is his/her name? The last "crush" I can remember is of Amir Yusoff: yea, the half-Swiss Malaysian singer. He joined us for some pool in Hartamas once (he was a friend of a friend's friend's sister). He used "perfection" (sampoerna hijau, mMMMmmMMMMmMMMmmMMMM!). My partner at that time got so damn jealous, not believing that I wasn't going to act on my "crush", padahal it's just a crush lah, rileks beb... But yea, my having that crush wasn't a good sign anyway... A symptom of other things, a sign of the beginning of the end... also good riddance :D

When was the last time you had your hair cut? Hair on HEAD, right? *innocent grin!* Last November, I think. I suppose I could do with a trim soon. I am keeping it long on purpose tho, Kosh likes it teeheee *grin!*

Are you on any meds? Nope. Should I be? Maaaaayyyyyyyyybe, LOL!

Do you have a mental disease? Nope. Not as far as I know lah. *grin!*

What shirt are you wearing? Grey teeshirt with a small "ILLINOIS" in blue & orange over my left boob.

Are you sexy? Not in my opinion. Kosh thinks otherwise. Aren't I lucky? :)

What's your favourite store? I suppose I could answer Marks & Spencer's (St Michael's). Dunno why, I like to browse thru their selection at the KLCC store... of course their products here are overpriced lah.

Are you thirsty? No, but I drink anyway (if you actually *feel* thirsday that means you are actually already dehydrated - so I've read lah)

Can you imagine yourself ever getting married? Yea. Just not gonna "mark" it in any big way, or as expected by busy-body relatives :D

Who's someone you haven't seen in a while and miss? Kosh lah! This is gonna be the longest we've been apart since Oct 2004 :(

Where do you work? I don't. I'm a jobless bum & lovin' it, remember?

Anyone like this meme, go ahead and tag yourselves, k?

time keeps on slipping slipping slipping....

... into the future....

everyting becoming a blurrrr... I don't even remember anything that happened Thursday...

Friday we had our last bbq beef ribs session for lunch.
Then headed out to a friend of Kosh's for dinner, about an hour away from us.

Saturday was supposed to be productive, but some how, well, it wasn't :p And we had dinner with another couple, essentialls Kosh's sister's friend & hubby, and dog and 2 cats. Dog had hurt its jaw and was slobbering everywhere: bleah! Apart from that, it was a fun night - played a few rounds of euchre; had my first taste of 3-milk cake.

Sunday (today) is my last full day here. Already off to a slow start... Kosh is at work for a while, while I play around on the work PC. Then it's off to do a spot of final shopping, then back for packing. And catching up with tv shows: can you believe I have 7 hours of recorded tv shows, most of them being Da Vinci's Inquest, to watch before I leave??! Yikes!!

And to top it all off.. it's been *C*O*L*D*!!! M-O-O-N that spells friggin cold!!! According to the weather reports, this weekend is the coldest of this year's meteorological winter (December - February). Brrrrrrrrrrr! I kid you not! Friday was warm (over 60F) then temps dropped so low that the overnight low was in the single digits! Saturday was totally frigid! Today it's better, slightly warmer, but still cold... Have I said bleah??!!

Anyways... these may be my last few posts for a while... i doubt that I'll be online till I'm back in Malaysia. fun. catch up with y'all then.

Da poor b-day boy! (updated)

... So we had our ribs & Bab 5 session yesterday.

Then he passed out for a bit.

Then did some work grading papers and stuff.

Only at ~2am was he ready to head over to the location of work to set-up vidcams for the med students’ practice sessions that start 730am saturday. Me tired, but me accompany him to help out anyway..

Shouldn’t have taken too too long, seeing as we’d already done a similar set up last week.

But one of the cams was missing a part of its power cord!?
And the friggin tripod that didn’t seem to grip anything right tipped one of the other cams sending it crashing to the floor.

Bottom line? Only 5 usable cams when 6 were required.

This was going to wreak havoc on an already tight and long schedule… ugh!!

Not much we could do right then, so Kosh puttered around a bit more (and I took adantage of some free time to tweak the previous canasta draft and post it – anyone noticed the time of that post?), and headed back around 5am.

I passed out in bed, while Kosh said he’d be better off NOT sleeping – so he stayed up grading more of the papers. I suppose he left the apartment by 630am to get the day started – I have no recollection of anything until I started waking up about an hour ago.

Now, *i* feel like a zombie, and I actually got ~7hrs sleep… but I know *someone* who is so going to crash once he gets back….

(update: LOL 10 mins later I get a call - the day went off surprisingly smoothly - once the person who'd "borrowed" the power cord returned it that morning! Geeeeeez!! so now = almost 5pm, and he's been passed out for quite a while... probably no activities of any sort till Sunday... yawwwwwn!)

Kosh is President for the day!

Remember Marilyn Monroe's scandalous rendition of the Happy Birthday song sung for JFK?

In homage to that, Kosh is President for the day - today is/was his birthday!

Happy Birthday, babes!
Muuuuuaaaaaaahhh!!
Smooooooooches!
Hugggggzzzzzzz!

Can't really mark it with anything special today or tomorrow, seeing as he is being kept busy with his work...

... so we had our "bbq beef ribs & Babylon 5" for dinner as our "treat" instead.

he'll probably only be in shape/mood to mark the occasion on Sunday,

poor baby!

g'bye 2005!

How we are celebrating the end of 2005 & ushering in 2006:

Staying at home,
pigging out on chips & dip,
watching tv,
reading SK's It (me) and playing with shreddage (Kosh).

Huh? Shreddage?

here's the story: We ordered Magic: The Gathering Betrayers of Kamigawa Rat's Nest Theme Deck from a place called trollandtoad.com less than a week ago. It arrived today.

And what was the packaging material used to stuff the box it came in?

Their own shredded paper! And it wasn't even cross-cut either!

And what has Kosh been doing since the package arrived?

Piecing the long pieces of paper together.

Ah, I am unworthy! I thought *i* was the master of procrastination and time-wastage, but boy was I wrong... :p

Jokingly, he said he was going to mail the put-together pieces back to the company with a suggestion that they not use their own shreddage for packaging; or at least make sure there's no risk of identity theft... I'd do it. After all, it looks like there may actually be some credit card numbers on some of the pieces of paper!

~~~

Oh, it was really weird yesterday: we were at Kosh's office for about an hour yesterday evening. It was cold but no indication of any inclement weather.

We came out to see BIG FAT SNOWFLAKES falling: there must have been about half an inch of it everywhere!

So we got in the car and drove, barely able to see anything, and the car threatening to slide around on the extremely slick surface, and headed to the library to pick up some stuff. From the library, I look out and don't see no snow falling no more; whoohoo!

But then we realise it turned to rain instead! ugh!! So we run through SLUSH back to the car.

We then drove to the bbq place for ribs. When we got outta there, it was snowing again, but this time nothing but very light & small bits of snow.

Later that night, it turned to heavier rain. So there was NO snow at all this morning: if we hadn't been out at that time, I wonder if we'd have believed anyone if they told us it had snowed at all!

~~~

Currently listening to: The Rasmus' Hide from the Sun
(yo, bro: that's your b-day present to me, btw. Thanx!!)
It sounds slightly darker/heavier than Dead Letters; a few tracks seem to stand out; still too early to tell whether this surpasses Dead Letters... need more listening time :-)

Also just received F.R.I.E.N.D.S Season 10 DVD.
I suppose it turned out well that they were late releasing Season 10 on VCD in Malaysia, so in the end I didn't get around to buying it. So now, for the season that matters most (well, just because it's the LAST season), I have it on DVD :-) Along with a 45 minute gag reel and whatever other special features they have there. Whoohooo!

Of course, one slight blemish on the above: our DVD player is starting to run amok! Most of the time it refuses to load the DVD, making weird noises that make us cringe instead! Sometimes it loads the disc, only to say "wrong disc." It's getting really frustrating! My quest to re-watch my Babylon 5 DVD's has been put on hold because I'd start to get really mad at the absurd situation.

The player was a cheapo free gift, so maybe it wasn't designed to last more than a year?? I'd rather fix it than buy a new (and branded, more reliable?) one: as far as possible I don't want to be part of a "throw-away" society... but then again, getting it fixed in this country would cost a lot just for labor charges, so it's probably more worth it to just go ahead and get a new one. Sigh.

~~~

New Year already happened in Malaysia and that part of the world...

we're about 3.25hrs away, if I have my math right. I'll be getting offline, and fixin myself a drink or two soon...

On a related note, here's Modern Drunkard Magazine Online's 86 rules of boozing.

Have a good 2006, everyone!

Miracles of the season!

First, to put a smile on your face:

An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding. The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car. He says, "Sir, have you been drinking?"

"Just water," says the priest.

The trooper says, "Then why do I smell wine?"

The priest looks at the bottle and says, "Good Lord! He's done it again!"

Second: today (well, technically YESTERDAY since it's past midnight) was a culinary experiment... once I woke up this morning, I started chopping veggies (broccoli, carrots, celery, onions), and dumped them into a crock-pot along with pre-washed & sliced mushrooms, 3 chicken breasts and half a bottle of barbeque sauce, and let it cook for 8 hours. It's my first crock-pot experiment! Turned out okay... the broccoli florets were pretty much disintegrated, and the chicken was slightly dry I think because it was cooked a bit too long, and it needed to be at the bottom of the pot in order to be soaking in the sauce... but still totally edible :-)

We are going to experiment with the crock-pot more: need to prepare more meals at home in order to control portion size and to reduce the amount of times we eat out (or carry out) weekly!!

And once the crock-pot had been set-up, I sauteed some chopped onion and a sliced smoked polish sausage, then poured into the pan a mixture of 3 eggs, 3 tsp milk and some garlic. Scrambled the mixture. Loaded it with shredded cheese, so it would melt into the eggs. mmmMmmMMmMMmmmm!! Split that with Kosh for a late brunch.

Tomorrow (Or technically later today) is BBQ Beef Ribs day again, whoohooo!

Kosh wondered the other day: if this item was available EVERY day, would I insist on getting it as often as once a week? In other words, do we make it a point to get it every Friday only because it's only available on Fridays? Yeah, probably :p

Gosh darn it, it's less than 48 hours to 2006?!

Mmmmmmmmmmm, ribs!

So I trekked thru the snow to get to my bbq beef ribs… and what a trek it was!

On the positive side, I didn’t feel it was as cold as I thought it was gonna be when the weathermen kept saying “And Friday will be COLD,” you could hear the capital letters and underline when they said it!

But… all effort so far has concentrated on getting the roads cleared & salted. To my dismay, the pedestrian walkways were untouched! I had to trudge through in about 4 inches of snow, such that often I’d have the snow up to my mid-shin. Which by itself wasn’t so bad, if only I had higher boots – mine are ankle high. So I was getting lots of snow in my boots despite my best efforts not to. My toes were quite frozen by the time I made it to the bbq place.

For the walk back, took a different route that thankfully was not as snowy.

Had the ribs while re-watching Season 1 Disc 1 of Babylon 5.

I immediately recognised (again) David McCallum, who was a guest on the last episode on Disc 1 (Ep 1.04). He was in this very old, short-lived, tv series called Sapphire & Steel. I only vaguely remember it, I was kinda too young to really understand it, but somehow it left a great impression on me. Maybe i can invest in the series DVD....

But anyway... the whole recognising someone in another tv show thing reminds me of some recent events relating to Kosh…

Recently I’ve become quite hooked on this Canadian tv series Da Vinci’s Inquest. Yes, it’s another cop-type show, but the title character is a very committed coroner who “speaks for the dead” so it’s a slightly different take on things. Plus, it’s got lots of story arcs, i.e. while there are some episodes with stand-alone deaths that are solved/resolved, there are lots of other things going on, that take a while to resolve, or are actually little pieces of a much greater whole! And that greater whole is something you’ll find out much much later… Another reason I like it is that it’s not slick. You don’t get me? Okay, think CSI and its derivatives: those are so slick, after a while every episode looks the same.

Anyways.. so a while ago I watching DVI, where this guy was arrested, suspected to be responsible for the disappearance of prostitutes over the past few years. Kosh glances at the screen and goes “Hey, that’s Max Headroom!” I’m like, “Matt Frewer? Hmmm… I dunno… I can see why you would say that, but I don’t think that’s him.” A while later, we catch another episode, also involving this guy. Kosh then gets online and starts searching for information. To make a long story short: he was right. I’m kinda pissed that I didn’t recognize ol’ Max Headroom myself, I really liked him/it despite his short career (killed off because of its association with the failed New Coke).

Another example of Kosh’s vast knowledge and quick recognition of the trivial: A recent episode of Smallville featured Jonathan Kent’s brother, some senator or something, visiting the Kent farm. In a car that is the same make as The Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee. Already Kosh starts speculating out loud about a possible “internal reference” to the Dukes of Hazzard; after all, isn’t the guy who plays Jonathan Kent one of the brothers from the series? (Me, I wouldn’t know, I’ve only heard about the series, seen some spoofs of it on Family Guy, and refused to see the new movie.) Back to that Smallville episode: there was a scene where Jonathan Kent drives the car rather showily/recklessly, then invites his brother to hop on in. At this point Kosh goes “Go in thru the window! Go in thru the window!” and yes, he hops in thru the window. Kosh gives out a whoop and declares that there MUST be some sort of connection with the original Dukes of Hazzard, maybe the senator guy played the other brother… Again, he goes online to check (again needing my help to point him to tv.com – imdb.com is too unwieldy for a specific search like that), and yes indeedy, turns out that Jonathan Kent’s brother is played Tom Wopat, the “other” Duke of Hazzard. Someone was SO proud of himself that day, LOL!

Moral of the story?
If ever you play Trivial Pursuit, you wanna have Kosh on your team. His brain is overflowing with all these trivial facts. Don’t ask about all that doctor stuff he’s supposed to know, though, LMAO!

btw, Kosh is driving to Cleveland OH right now, another interview tomorrow, this time for Case Western. He called to vent about MapQuest's screwy directions that had him driving around Indianapolis wasting lots of time. Poor baby! Hope he arrives safe and that the interview goes well.

Of course, the psycho kitty thinks he's coming back tonight, and is hanging out by the front window waiting for daddy to get back. Sorry kitty, no daddy till probably Sunday!

In the meantime, I'm kicking back dividing my time between sudoku, DVI, Bab5, miscellaneous tv shows and reading George R R Martin's A Feast for Crows. Tomorrow I *will* brave the cold and make the trek to the gym. It's been waaaaaay too long since my last workout, no thanks to the nasty weather followed by thanksgiving and poor health. I'll do cardio but also will soak in the spa pool. Mmmmm, can't wait!! Gotta get back on-track!

See y'all later!

I can breathe again!

Wow, I was knocked out of commission for quite a few days... hence the total blog/sms silence for the past few days....

It had actually already started last week, that thanksgiving weekend, where Kosh’s parents were nursing some sort of cold. Maybe we caught it from them? Once we got back to Urbana, I was feeling slightly under the weather, but Kosh was actually really sneezing, sniffing and having a high temperature. It got better, but still dragged on; in fact, he was still feeling like crap that day he went for that interview at Northwestern.

Me, on the other hand, felt like my immune system was putting up a relatively good fight, and not allowing the cold much foothold in my body. A slight fever (99.4F) was my only symptom. Then came the day after Kosh’s interview: woke up feeling like crap – as if my defenses had given up some ground to the cold. Ugh.

So THAT dragged on for a few days. We got back to Urbana on Sunday. Monday I woke up with a temperature of 100.6F. And felt SO crappy. Stuffed nose. Sinuses so painful that breathing felt like a knife was cutting thru them. Bloody snot. Ugh.

Really didn’t help that the weather has turned COLD cold (remember the unseasonably warm autumn weather I’d enjoyed earlier? Well, now we’re having 20F BELOW seasonal temperatures! Yikes!!)

I surrendered and took Tylenol, slept most of the days Monday & Tuesday, musta gone through a whole box of tissues already… Wednesday felt slightly better, but today, Thursday, I can confidently say the worst is over. I can breathe again!

Maybe I'll feel so much better that I'll be willing to battle the cold and snow (4 - 6 inches of snow expected between 10am and 12mn today!) to get to my extra hot bbq beef ribs tomorrow... yummmmm!!!

my weekend plans

Activity update:
25min walk to gym
30min cross-training program on an elliptical thingy @ 220cal
1x10, 1x7 @ 30lbs bicep curls (weird that I had trouble with this: I blame the machine!)
2x15 @ 30lbs tricep pushdowns
25min walk back
15min walk to/from BBQ place to get RIBS!

Tomorrow’s plan:
1hr (?) walk to “other” gym on other side of campus
Treat myself to ~30min sauna!
1hr (?) walk back

Today has been unusually warm, and we’re going to pay for it tomorrow, so it seems. The weather forecast for tomorrow afternoon is severe thunderstorms, maybe strong enough to generate tornados! Fun. So will carry out my sauna trip in the morning, just to make sure I’m back holed up in the apartment well before any drops start to fall!

May need to give myself a break on Sunday, cos I wonder just how much I’m going to “activate” my shins with my planned walk tomorrow!

activity update & ribs!!

Today was a very sluggish day...

Woke up with a slight pain in my right ankle, limped around a bit before it wore off.

Later, was all dressed up for the gym, but just sat there, just not liking the idea of going to the gym. *sigh* Dragged myself out anyway.

But decided to go run an errand at the Chemistry Department instead. Then walked right past the gym... and was totally NOT tempted to enter. So I didnt.

Still got a 1hr walk out of the whole thing, so not too bad lah.

But..... in order to "earn" my X-hot BBQ beef ribs (only available on Fridays at the nearby BBQ place, yum!!), tomorrow I will have to go the gym first, and only swing by the BBQ place on the way back.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm I am drooling thinking about them ribs!

*stomach rumbles*

Yikes, am getting hungry again :p guess my weird salad thing is starting to wear off.

Weird salad thing?

Yeah, well yesterday I gave the kitty her tuna treat as I chopped half a red, green and yellow pepper (capsicum) and 1/3 large red onion. Surprisingly large volume, totally filled the bowl I was going to use... so I split it into two. Mixed in the tuna and two spoons of mayo, and there was my dinner.

For the "extra / leftover" veggies: today, I decided to mix in one chopped green apple, and some of my yummy roasted garlic vinaigrette. Imagine: peppers, onions, apples ina vinaigrette. It was definitely... interesting :) Had that with a beef burger patty and a slice of cheese and half a slice of bagel.

Hmmm that was about 6 hours ago, so I should get some food in me.

Will head back soon (am in library right now).

Cheerio!

A Spotted Hagrid!

Last Friday, walked into my fave BBQ place for their Friday special : BBQ Beef Ribs.

Bummer, they had (just!!) run out… so ordered half-chicken instead.

Turned around, looking for a place to wait till they called out my number.

Saw this BIG person, hair all over the place, sitting at a nearby table.
He was devouring an order of ribs (grrrr! I wanted that!!), while reading.

My first thought : o*m*g* it’s Hagrid!!
He looked so much like the guy who plays Hagrid in the HP movies!

And what, dear reader, do you think he was reading?

Take a guess… a wild guess…

Yep: Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince!!

Ah, sometimes it’s the small things, chance coincidences like this one, that just make my day :D