The R.A.N III Experience

Thanksgiving ‘08

Last year for Thanksgiving I did nothing, probably because I was living with William.  However, this year with a girfriend I felt it was necessary to try and pull off some sort of Thanksgiving dinner.  Rachel and I made some fantastic food, starting with the one and only green bean bundles.  If you’ve never had green bean bundles you are missing out hard-core.   They consist of green beans, bacon, and a butter/brown sugar sauce.  Fatty, yes, wonderful, yes.  I also decided to make homemade stuffing, to be specific, carmelized onions and cornbread stuffing.  Let me tell you, I went to 5 grocery stores and no one had cornbread.  My options were basically to make cornbread or to go to KFC.  I went to KFC.  Screw it, I’m not baking cornbread just for stuffing.  To go with all of this I made homemade gravy, it was awesome.  Rachel is not a fan of turkey so instead we got a honey baked ham which was stellar, which I am still eating as leftovers, you can’t beat that.  In all we had: Honey baked ham, carmelized onion cornbread stuffing, green bean bundles, garlic mashed potatoes, and homemade gravy (even though Rachel doesn’t like gravy – don’t act like I didn’t kill that gravy). 

Anyways, I don’t have much else to update on otherwise, I will have mad updates after Christmas (my vacation) in which I’m sure there will be plenty to update on.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving…New updates coming soon.

Cops & Convicts

Looks like I’m back to my once a month update cycle, gosh at this rate my blog is turning into a yearly annual cycle of 12 publications.  As you know Halloween was a few weeks ago and this is my favorite holiday of the year.  Sure, Christmas is nice and Thanksgiving is tasty but there is nothing like dressing up, carving pumpkins, and sometimes scaring little kids; I fully plan on being the guy with the chainless-chainsaw and strobe light at his house one day.  This year’s Halloween was a little different than last, mainly because I had a girl with me, granted BT is always an exceptable substitute (for company, not a girl).  Rachel and I carved pumpkins on Wednesday the 29th at my apt., this is always a great activity, one of my favorites.  I don’t use candles anymore for the lighting of the pumpkin, ever since last years glow stick idea I have been sticking with that (see pictures in the album).  

This year Halloween fell on a Friday, I love when holidays fall on the weekend – who doesn’t?  After a days worth of deciding Rachel went with the cop costume choice so I figured I’d be a convict from Pelican Bay (Prisoner #2485344 – anyone know what those numbers stand for?).  I had to work at the golf place on Halloween but was off around 8, luckily, my costume consisted of scrubs so preparing myself for the costume took little to no effort.  I did get some fake tattoos to cover my body with, too bad I messed up the other big one I had, but I got a great skull on my neck.  I was finished getting ready and drinking by 9 PM as my neighbor was having a party and of course they went all the way to Nevada to get a keg of higher proof beer so you can’t say no to this.  Rachel arrived around 10 and then Andrea made it sometime around 10:30ish I think.  Andrea was dressed up as the sexy firefighter and Rachel the sexy cop, I was not-so-much a sexy convict.

Halloween was taking us to Green Street bar in downtown SLC in Trolly Square.  I like this spot because it offers the best of both worlds.  Downstairs is a more chill/social bar scene and if you are feeling frisky you can head upstairs to where the club scene/music/dancing is.  Andrea wanted to dance and I also in the mood to hear some music decided on upstairs.  There really isn’t a lot to say about the rest of the night, I contains what you would assume, beer and music and dancing and too many Joker costumes, although some very good.  The best costume of the night was this guy that dressed up as one of Dave Chappelle’s characters (the crack rock guy – his name escapes me at the moment).  Anyway, Halloween was a good time as usual and as always there are many pictures in the 2008 photo album from this evening.

Can you believe it’s November already?  Is it the older I get the quicker time seems to pass?  Why is this?  The next few months are going to be pretty fun so I am happy about this.  Let’s see, Friday Rachel and I are going ice skating for free in downtown, then on Thanksgiving we (Rachel, Andrea, myself, and maybe some others) are having dinner at Andrea’s apt, I am making the famous AK-47 Green Bean Bundles.  On December 19th we have my work Christmas party at the American Grand 5 star hotel which is always a great time with the most amazing food ever and then the next day I am headed back to the mitten for a week!  Oh yeah, I also purchased some Pistons vs. Jazz tickets for January 10th, 2009 when Detroit comes to SLC, hopefully AI will be meshing well with the rest of the team by then and we can dominate the stupid Jazz.

Lastly and speaking of sports, how about Michigan State football?  Uhm, where did that come from?  We are now 1 win away against a very good Penn State team from going to the freaking Rose Bowl and we are ranked #15 in the BCS.  I need this.  MSU needs this.  We have a bye week this weekend which is good and bad.  Good that Ringer and the rest of the banged up team gets a chance to rest and bad that we may get some rust, but I think Dantonio will keep the boys focused as he’s done all season long.  At any rate, a great season for them and hopefully only getting better.  I will be back soon, hopefully in less than a month!  GO STATE!