Canopyflyer

My college girlfriend bought me a tri-fold wallet for my 20th birthday. It is still in daily use.

Why? It is an expensive and well made wallet and it has always felt “right” in my back pocket. While it shows obvious signs of wear, all the stitching is still in perfect shape.

That girlfriend dumped me, after 3 years of dating, for a guy that owned a fancier car. She contacted me two years later looking to get back together. I told her to pound sand, but I still use the wallet.

Thanks for the wallet Shannon… It doesn’t remind me of you, but it is a good wallet.

Just remembered, she bought me the Led Zeppelin box set for Christmas that same year. It is currently sitting in my closet. I still “use” it, but I’ve long ripped the discs to FLAC files and listen to them via my Plex server.

So two things from the same girlfriend.

I will be turning 55 next month.

Brilliant.

You are the Universe experiencing itself.

Solid recipes that tend toward being simple and easy to make, but still taste great. I have several of his books in my cookbook collection. With that said, I don’t reach for them nearly as much as some others. For reference cooking is a full on hobby for me. I have multiple bookshelves full of cookbooks.

His “Kinda Spaghetti Bolognese” is a family favorite and I make it several times a year.

As to what I think of Jamie himself? Honestly, I don’t know anything about him, other than he’s British. Entertainment celebrities is not a subject that holds any interest for me.

In the pantheon of cooks, whose recipes I’ve made:

He’s a LOT better than Rachael Ray (but who isn’t?).

But not quite as good as a Julia Child, Ina Garten, Charlie Trotter (RIP), or Jonathan Best.

That I’ve met personally?

Don’t know, but here’s a list that I consider the coolest people I’ve personally met and I’ll give a brief synopsis on how I met them:

Neil Armstrong: Went to get a haircut in Loveland, OH where I was living at the time. Walked into an old school barber shop that was on Loveland-Medaira RD, just down from Krogers. There were three men in the shop, the barber, who was cutting the hair of a man in the chair, and one more who was reading a newspaper, so I couldn’t see his face. The barber finished up and looked at the gentleman reading the newspapers and said; “Neil you’re up next.” The man put the newspaper down and I found myself face to face with the first man to walk on the moon. Yeah… It was a trip to say the least. He lived in the town next to Loveland and he was there looking for a new barber, as his previous one was a bit of a creep.

Paul Tibbets: My Demonstration Skydiving team was performing in an airshow at Lunken Airport on the east side of Cincinnati. Col Tibbets was there as part of a Hiroshima presentation. After my team wrapped up after the show I toured the displays. I had my team shirt on and walked up to the table where he was sitting. He asked a few questions and said my team and I were really brave doing demo jumps… Yeah… the guy that dropped the first nuclear bomb called my team and I… Brave… Rather a surreal moment for me. He was really interesting to talk to.

Chuck Yeager: Gen Yeager drove the pace car for the 1986 Indy 500. My high school marching band also was marching in the parades and around the track. Yes, I’m really old, I was 16 that year. Some friends and I were walking around the campus where we were staying and actually just ran into him… Literally. I knew who he was, but none of my friends did not, so I didn’t say anything. He gruffly dismissed us and walked off. Yes, we did apologize for running into him.

James Doohan: He gave a presentation at Indiana University Southeast in the early 80’s and my Dad took me to see it. He never announced that he was staying afterward and for some reason my Dad and I hung around after most everyone left. There was only about 8 people that were in the auditorium and we got time to talk directly to him. He was the type of person that you just… Loved. He was an actual good person who was also very intelligent. I actually cried when he died in 2005.

Anyway, that’s my submission of people that I think of as “cool” that I had direct interactions with. Other’s than that I would consider cool:

John Young: Robert Crippen, in an interview, stated that his heart rate while Columbia was sitting on the pad, for its first launch was over 140. John’s was 70. Yeah, John Young was sitting on top of thousands of pounds of brand new untested rocket and wasn’t bothered in the least… FUCK ME. If that ain’t cool, I don’t know what is. I never got to meet him, unfortunately.

If you find yourself throwing away a lot of stale moldy bread…

Freeze it.

When you need it, take it out the night before to thaw in a sealed bag. Or if you want toast, just throw the frozen slices straight into your toaster.

This also works for most cakes and other baked goods.

I live in Wisconsin and have a co-worker that lives in the general Tallahassee area. She sent me some photos of her making snow angels. She has a LOT more snow on the ground than we do.

It’s rather disturbing.

Doing a Horny Gorilla skydive with 5 friends.

Representative photo of a Horny Gorilla not a photo of me or my friends:

We get into the formation, actually get stable and the next thing we all see is a one jumpers deployment bag, with their main parachute in it, come out from his back. Goes above the formation, then the deployment bag comes down into the middle of the formation… goes back up… comes back down. Lines are streaming all around and it’s turning into a really dangerous situation. Getting tied up in the lines, while in free fall has a great chance of being fatal.

But it was just a surreal moment for all of us, seeing this deployment bag dancing around in the middle of the Horny Gorilla.

The person next to the jumper with the deployment bag out, reaches down and pulls the affected jumper’s Pilot Chute, which is what actually deploys the main, and tosses it into the air stream. The affected jumper went flying out of the formation as his main parachute deployed. The rest of us break and track hard.

The guy actually landed his main parachute! He did not end up cutting away and pulling his reserve. The way that deployment bag just danced in an out of the middle of the formation was just unreal and we all just stared at it for what seemed an eternity.

25 years on and we all still talk about it.

I have several silicon spatulas and absolutely love them. Still have some wooden spoons around though, to help break up things that the silicone is too soft for. An example is heating frozen chili on the stove top, using a wooden spoon to break up the frozen bits as they thaw. However, the silicone spatulas are far more versatile. Plus you can scrap every last drop of sauce out of a pan with them.

Longer tongs. I have a gas top stove and using shorter handled tongs can get uncomfortable if I’m cooking something for a long period of time.

Flat strainer. Essentially a spider, except the mesh is the same as a fine mesh strainer. This was a purchase that my wife made that I thought was totally useless and indeed, it sat in the drawer for months. Until I needed just one more strainer, as all the others were used already. Turned out that it is very useful and easier to use than a full strainer in a lot of circumstances. It also doubles as a spider and it is really great at cleaning up hot oil in between batches.

Spray bottle with 50/50 white vinegar and water. Great for cleaning and disinfecting the counter top, also spray it on my cutting boards after washing them to keep them from smelling like what I last cut on them.

Lastly, a really good set of thermometers. I love the Thermoworks thermometers and have the Dot, Thermopen IR, and the 4 probe Smoke for BBQ. Along with multiple types of probes for various applications. They were expensive, but have proven themselves time and time again.

Lastly my absolute favorite kitchen item and by far the most expensive is my Wolf DF304 stove. I found one on Craigslist several years ago that was being sold by a couple who were retiring and did not want to move it to their new condo. It’s a heavy SOB. So I bought it for a song and it really is a serious cooking tool. It is by far the most even cooking oven and the stove top is extremely flexible. It also is standing up to me cooking on it every single day. A lot of people buy Wolf/Sub Zero products as a status item, which is a crying shame. They are well built, they are designed to be used in a commercial kitchen, and they cook spectacularly well.

Veggie Pasta, serves 2:

6oz Fusilli or similar pasta 4oz Fresh Mozzarella cut into bite sized pieces, or buy the pearl sized version. 1.5 cups your favorite tomato sauce. I make a maranara for it, but you can use store bought if you want. 1 red onion diced 2 med carrots diced 1 celery stalk diced 4oz bacon chopped Parmesan Regianno for serving. (Not the crap in the green can, get the real stuff.)

Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain in a colander.

Cook bacon in a skillet to desired doneness, save a tablespoon or so of the grease after cooking. Remove to paper towel lined plate. Sample bacon to make sure it’s OK.

In now empty skillet add the onion, carrots and celery. Cook till all veggies are softened. Sample bacon to make sure it’s OK.

Add sauce and reserved bacon to skillet to the veggies. Be sure to sample bacon before adding back to the skillet, to make sure it’s OK. Once the sauce is heated, add the pasta and fresh mozzarella to sauce and veggies. Once warmed through divide between two plates. Serve with the Parmesan at the table.

I make this dish for my wife and I several times a month. It’s about 30 minutes from getting everything out to cut, to putting it on the table depending on your knife skills.

Guy who runs Plex on a Ubuntu container on Proxmox.

Another parent on one of my kid’s team has a ridiculously huge Cadillac. It’s the size of a Suburban. She has one kid and not planning to have more.

She made the mistake of making a backhanded comment about how my wife and I drive older cars to our faces. We have a 2014 Camry LE and a 2015 Lexus ES 300h. (Mine and wife’s respectively)

So I asked her what type of contracting work she does. She looked at me with a bewildered expression. I went on and said; “well you drive a big work truck, I assumed you did construction or something.”

The look she gave me could have melted steel.

Just to be clear, I have a great deal of respect for the trades. She however is married to money, not terribly bright, and looks down her nose at just about everyone. So I knew that would hit a nerve with her.

Given:

You lack the capacity to experience imposter syndrome.

TIL!

I’ve lived in Wisconsin since 2006 and did not know that.

Thank you!

Wisconsinite here where the badger is native and the mascot for the University of Wisconsin is the Badger.

This meme is inaccurate.

The American Badger will also remove your kidneys and sell them on the black market as well, to support their meth habit.

I know it scared the shit out of me the first time I saw it.

I was 15 and my family rented it. So I didn’t get to see it in its full theater screen glory. Just a 25" console TV from a well worn VHS cassette where the top 25% of the screen was wavy.

And yes, I’m old.

So is CinemaStix going away now?

I thought that was the same guy.

Not a horror film per se, but definitely leaning that way:

The original ‘ALIEN’.

The building of tension throughout the entire movie is brilliant.

I have named some of the cars I have owned.

1970 Chevy Impala: Liberty. I purchased it from a guy that lived in Liberty, KY.

1997 Nissan 200SX SE-R: Dot. It was one of ~700 200SX’s made that year that was the Pacific Blue color and it reminded me of Carl Sagan’s “The Pale Blue Dot” documentary.

2003 Acura TL: Sally. No specific reason, other than it just fit the personality of the car.

2014 Camry (current car): Pearl. It’s painted in Toyota’s Cosmic Mica Gray and it glitters in the sunlight, vaguely reminiscent of a pearl.

Just for reference, I’m 54 and have had a license since 1986. Liberty was my first car. There are a few cars not mentioned above, because I just never named them. The 200SX was the second SE-R I owned. The first was a 92 Sentra SE-R, which I liked a lot more than the 200SX, it just never got a name.

54m here, can I join in?

Pay yourself first. You pay rent, you pay a car payment, add paying yourself first. That payment can be as little as $1, but it goes into a savings fund AND IT IS GONE, just like any other payment EVERY MONTH. When the savings fund gets to an amount that it can be rolled into something that makes more interest, do it. But that money is GONE, for all intents and purposes. When do you use it? You will know, when you can pull it out for something that is not an emergency, but rather something that will last the rest of your life. No, cars don’t count.

Cars, trucks, etc… Here is the thing about cars and trucks. THEY ARE A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY AND THE NUMBER ONE WAY YOU STAY ENSLAVED TO MAKING PAYMENTS ON EVERYTHING ELSE. But wait Canopyflyer, you say with a roll of your eyes, I HAVE to have a car, because there’s no public transit where I live. Dude, I live in the United States, no one takes public transit here, I fucking know. So thanks for dropping anchor there admiral obvious. Buy the most reliable and cheap to run car you can possibly find. That doesn’t mean an old shitbox. Buy a car that’s a couple of years old that has a reputation for reliability and has already lost that first year’s depreciation. I currently drive a 10 year old Camry LE, that I bought with 7k on the odo. Using a car to show how big your cock isn’t, is the epitome of stupidity and is disastrous to your future financial health. If you’re driving the latest SmallCockMobile with a $1k payment +… You are a complete fucking moron.

CAVEAT ON VEHICLES: If you can have someone else pay for it, then sure, go buy that ego mobile. That includes the company you work for, or if you’re in a business where you have to have a certain type of vehicle. I have a great deal of respect for a person that works with their hands and needs a truck to carry their tools.

OK, maybe that’s two bits of advice, but both are financial, so I’m sticking with it.