Dr. Cull apparently did over $60,000 worth of damages to the police cruiser. Ouch.

In the end. Drunk driving, running from an officer, damaging a police cruiser and assaulting an officer. So sad.

Full details including video and audio are on the ABC web site, ABConYourSide

I don’t necessarily care what Mrs. Palin does, nor do I believe that she is electable. She suffers from the same problem as most politicians; a need to point out everyone else’s faults rather than lead on her principles. Americans really aren’t that stupid. Mr. Obama suffers from the same problem. Even after a couple of years, he is quick to place the blame on George Bush. Just how long can this continue before he takes responsibility for what happens during his tenure.

There are tens of thousands of haters in the world. Does Mr. Sorkin really need to play this card for a laugh? While railing on Sarah Palin, Aaron Sorkin does a fantastic job of telling every hunter or meat processor that they are idiots. He argues that Sarah killed a Moose on her Learning Channel series: Palin’s Alaska only to win voters. Apparently this was a political move. I don’t argue that the show was a big part of the hunt. However, the hunt itself still is a normal part of life for many people who live in Alaska and other rural areas.

What Mr. Sorkin doesn’t get it is that Americans are completely desensitized to our food processing. All of our meat comes wrapped up in cute little containers that doesn’t usually resemble anything like an animal. The bottom line is someone has to kill those animals for you to eat them. We all pay for little hit men to take care of the dirty work so we don’t get our hands dirty. The hunters left in America are fully aware of the consequences when they kill an animal. They are directly tied to its life. They are on the front lines of conservation efforts to ensure that these beautiful animals are around for future generations.

Coming from a family with several vegetarians, I am proud of the fact that they chose a path that matches their distaste for animals being killed. Sarah was right, even if her comment was premature. If you are using products that come from animals, then at least educate yourself on how those products get to you.

Mr. Sorkin you are no different than Sarah Palin. By offering this profanity, hate filled article, you, yourself have become the hater.

In Her Defense, I’m Sure the Moose Had It Coming by Aaron Sorkin

Recommended reading: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.

I recently watch part of a webcast with Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose. Tim Ferriss  is hard to define, but dynamic is certainly a good adjective. Kevin Rose, is the founder of Digg.com and is currently the CEO. In this webcast, Kevin quickly pushed the book, REWORK. I had heard of 37 Signals, the company of the authors, but I had not heard of the book itself. I put it on reserve in my local library and waited, and waited. Here in Columbus Ohio, I was 43rd on the reserve list. Luckily, my number was up and I got the book yesterday.

I inhaled the book in less than a couple of hours. Such an easy read and truly enjoyable. First, I can say that the book doesn’t suffer from the more is better type of philosophy. They get straight to the point. If they can fully illustrate their point in one sentence, then that is all you are likely to get. How refreshing. Actually, this ends up being a constant theme throughout the book.

The book is broken up into not so much chapters, but thoughts. Two in particular caught my attention.

1. Customer feedback. Where to store it? Their answer, overly simplified, is don’t. The logic here is that it isn’t necessary, anything worth hearing will be repeated over and over again by your customers.

2. Writing. What we learned in college is crap. Some of education’s misguided lessons.

1. The longer a document is, the more it matters.
2. Stiff, formal tone is better than being conversational.
3. …
4. The format matters as much (or more) than the content of what you write.

Just simply a great read. There really is no reason not to read it. The book covers many topics in business but can be easily applied to many situations in life. Like the tidal wave of movement behind agile programming in software development, 37 Signals embraces quick, shorter, being direct and honest. Don’t create a task list with a thousand items on it. There isn’t a good way to prioritize. Start a new list and put “Read REWORK” at the top.

The recipe was from a Vegetarian Times compilation cookbook. They actually have two separate loaf recipes but the only real difference between them is one of them contains cashews. My wife isn’t a big fan of nuts in her food so I decided to make the recipe without nuts.

The recipe is mainly lentils (LOVE THEM) and bulgur. I hadn’t worked with bulgur before but it is quite simple. You can cook it like couscous if you want. Just add boiling water and let sit. This recipe suggested cooking for 15 minutes but was totally unnecessary. Don’t confuse bulgur with cracked wheat. They are different, bulgur is wheat that has been steamed, dried and cracked, making it a quick cooking grain. Cracked wheat on the other hand is simply cracked wheat and requires longer cooking times.

Unfortunately, even with the enjoyment of learning about bulgur, the recipe was disappointing. We served it to the kids who were excited because they thought it was meatloaf. They instantly made horrible faces and announced that it wasn’t very good. I figure that I have a more advanced palate. Unfortunately, my reaction was much the same. It was flavorless. It wasn’t dried out but nothing really helped it taste like anything. I tried to melt cheese on top of one slice and that was unsuccessful. I poured copious amounts of hot pepper sauce over another slice and that was decent, assuming that you like hot pepper sauce.

We wont be making that recipe again, but would love to hear from anyone who has a vegetarian loaf recipe that actually tastes like something.

Dr. Cull was my wife’s physician and delivered both of our children. There were complications with Jameson’s birth but luckily both my wife and son were ok minus some bruising. In hindsight there were many people at the time questioning our choice in an Obstetrician. My wife had been with Dr. Cull for years and it just didn’t make sense for her to change based solely on rumor.

However, after our second child was born, the rumors became much louder and hard to ignore. She moved her practice more towards cosmetic procedures and at that time, my wife found a new Dr.

Now, here we are four years later and Dr. Cull has been suspended for drinking on the job as well as suggestions of drug use.

The full article is on the Columbus Dispatch web site.
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/01/14/copy/missedbullet.ART_ART_01-14-10_B4_3CG9UJN.html

I have been disappointed by your product placement techniques in the past but I’ve let it slide. Of course you know what I am talking about. You know when you put green peppers on sale, but put a little tiny row of green peppers in a sea of red peppers, with a massive sign saying Peppers 3 for $3.00 with a little caption underneath the price, stating green peppers only. Do the accidental full price sales make up for deceiving your customers?

But that is not what upset me today. This store, starting a couple of weeks ago, made buying alcohol difficult. When you are 40 and you get ID’d, you think it is amusing the first time. After three or four times, it is just plain unpleasant. Now, this isn’t your run of the mill ID check, this is a full out interrogation. My ID is in my wallet, in a see through sleeve. They don’t accept this, they have to touch it and feel it… well, unless you are a manager. Yes, their new process, now makes their under 18 clerks request that you remove your id so that their manager can see it. Of course, the manager can fully see that I am old enough to buy alcohol, so he/she just smiles and refuses to look at the ID now that it is out of my wallet.

I digress, today at the lovely store in Dublin Ohio, I once again, got the routine but this time, I was especially lucky to get a smarmy clerk who thought that denying me beer today was a lovely thing indeed. After taking out my ID and her insisting that it can’t be in its clear sleeve, she mockingly laughed and said that she couldn’t sell me beer because my ID was expired and that it was illegal for me to buy beer. He attitude was what annoyed me. She got a kick out of it. “My employer is making me ID EVERYONE and I finally am able to deny someone. Yeah for me!” Ugh.

Good news, is that my new friend at Kroger told me that my license expired. Goody goody.

Bad news is that I wont be shopping at Kroger in the near future. Meijer seems to have no problem seeing that I am 40 years old and frankly has better prices. The extra mile is worth it.

For all of you who enjoy interrogations at the grocery store, please visit my new favorite store and be sure to say hello to Lisa. She is soooo nice.

Kroger
7625 Sawmill Rd
Dublin Ohio
614-923-2333

Her bright intellect along with her winning smile would have made a fine addition to their classroom. Alas it is not to be. I can only reflect on the possibility that this may not be her last rejection letter. Where have we failed as parents? Will she get into college? We are relieved in the end that we did not tell her of our request to send her to Olentangy’s preschool. At least she is not aware that she fell so very short.

I was attracted to the idea because I freeze a lot of the vegetables out of our garden. Unfortunately, I might as well just buy the vegetables from the grocery for that price. Well, I did have another idea.

I bought the gallon size because I felt that I could place an ordinary quart freezer bag inside of the gallon sized vacuum bags and it would take the air out of both of them. If you want to play, you can do just that.

Here are some caveats.

• The vacuum sealer is slow. It takes about 10 to 15 seconds to take the air out of my test bags.
• The seal on the quart bag will indeed seal up before the air is drawn out if you don’t follow my technique

To successfully take the air out of the bag inside of the vacuum bag you need to offset the top edges of the bag so that they don’t seal. It is easier to seal the bag after the air is removed if the gap is at the edge. However, I found that it really doesn’t matter that much. During my tests, I realized that the bags seal tight enough that most times the bag will still keep its vacuum outside of the vaccum bag without the edges being sealed. This makes it easy to seal the edge with your fingers rather than trying to do this inside of the vaccum bag. But once again, pressing down the seal through the vacuum bag was never difficult.

So, if you want a diversion you can give yourself a new toy for the kitchen. Just don’t expect it to be a professional tool even with the bags that are supposed to be used with the vacuum sealer.

Jamie Oliver has to be at the top of the list when it comes to this type of colorful word choice. We have been watching Jamie’s new show on the Food network, Jamie at Home, and I find it absolutely entertaining. I’m also happy to see that the show actually got aired in the US. Just the fact that all of his measures are metric makes me think that there are people watching the show in some dark corner complaining because they can’t figure out how to convert 1 kilo to an American weight. (it’s a little over 2lbs in case you are curious)

The show is bright, funny and he makes you want to dig in and prepare or taste whatever he is making. The show also tries to showcase how easy it is to grow your own vegetables. While I would love to see him digging in the dirt more often, there certainly is a limit to how much time can be devoted to growing vegetables when the show is about cooking.

All in all, Jamie has a way of making you feel like his new best friend. The show is wildly entertaining.

Jamie has a web site that is well worth a visit, http://www.jamieoliver.com/. Be sure to check out school dinners. Jamie is campaigning to improve the quality of food being served to children.

The Food Network is currently airing “At Home”, Jamie Oliver, The Food Network

A couple of points to keep in mind. I was much more interested in the garden portion of the show. I also did not have more than about 45 minutes to devote to the home portion. Trying to take two children under the age of 5 is a challenge under the best circumstances. Looking at windows and roofing materials just doesn’t peek their interest. This year we went mostly for the child book themed gardens.

The gardens were cute but at the same time very similar to past years. For those of us like myself who go for the plants, I find the selection of plants fairly dull and common. You will find tulips in virtually every exhibit and most have a nice selection of astilbe, azaleas, and flowering cherries. Is it really that hard to find other plants? Are tulips the only flower that can be forced?

Is it just me or do you find it annoying that the exhibits are painstakingly put together with varieties of plants but few take the time to label the plantings? If I see a new type of plant that interests me, I would love to at least know what I am looking at. This year, I did find a plant I hadn’t seen before but I still had to ask several people before someone could tell me what it was. If you are curious it was Fothergilla.

Back to the exhibits, my favorite would have to be Winnie the Pooh. The garden’s centerpiece was a large tree house with a house in the trunk viewable from the center of the garden. The garden was easy to navigate even with a stroller. A small pond had Winnie the Pooh video being projected into the water. The use of what looked like a duck house or bird house above the water served to hide all of the projection equipment. 

My second choice would have been Noah’s Ark. This is where I saw the Fothergilla. The Ark had a walkway tunnel through its center. The tunnel had several windows to cages which held baby ducks, baby chicks, roosters, ducks and I’m sure some other animals. Tom McNutt was signing autographs at the back of this garden. Both kids were able to get a nice autographed photo of him with all of Noah’s creatures. He was gracious and friendly towards the kids as well as the adults.

One other garden that deserves mention is the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. This garden immersed you in snow covered pines after walking through "the wardrobe". Nicely done. All in all, the gardens were nice but this portion of the show always seems to lack reasonable space. All of the gardens seem cramped especially when you have the pleasure of a couple of toddlers.

The home space I cannot really comment on for my previously mentioned reasons. That aside, Fortin Ironworks has a beautiful display directly inside of the doors. Other than that few exhibitors caught my attention. Some ladies along the back wall of the exhibit hall grabbed us to sign a petition to put gambling back on the ballot. It didn’t really bother me except that they didn’t want to tell you what you were signing right away. Please cut to the chase. Tell me what you want me to sign and why.

The entire show seems to suffer from space issues. I also would strongly urge the organizations putting together the show to save more room for seating. The food court was impossible to eat in because everyone was using it to rest. I also would love more scheduled events or maybe entertainment in between the main speakers. It would give the visitors more time to take a break.