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If you’ve seen the movie Spanglish then perhaps you saw the deluxe BLT that Adam Sandler’s character makes during the course of the movie.The DVD extras reveal that Thomas Keller, renowned chef of French Laundry fame, was brought in to create a sandwich that Sandler’s character (a renowned chef) might make for a snack at night.

The sandwich that Keller creates is a BLT with crusty artisan bread, bacon, lettuce, tomato, Monterey Jack cheese, and an over-easy egg. As Keller makes the sandwich during the extras, and as Sandler makes the sandwich during the feature, both Sarah and I got really hungry to try that sandwich for ourselves.

So, last week, we got all the necessary ingredients and produced a pair of these deluxe BLTs.

How were they? Not bad. In fact, they were really good. Not the best food I’ve ever had, but good. However, I’ve had a sandwich the last couple of days that might be better.

Last Saturday, Sarah and I picked just about thirty pounds of strawberries from a local pick-your-own farm. We spent most of Saturday picking, washing, hulling and freezing the vast majority of the berries. We also made a good sized supply of freezer jam and some cooked jam that we canned.

We also make our own peanut butter now. If you haven’t tried it, and if you have a food processor, I would encourage you to try it yourself. The junk you get from the store in a bottle has maybe half the flavor and texture of homemade peanut butter. In addition, we’ve been trying to wear out our bread machine by making our own bread for the last year or so. Again, store bought bread has nothing on homemade bread; regardless of whether or not the homemade bread is made by a bread machine or not.

If you combine that homemade bread, peanut butter, and strawberry jam with some butter, you get one fantastic peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In fact, I like those sandwiches better than I liked Keller’s Spanglish sandwich.

But, maybe you want to run your own experiment at home and see which you like better. I’ve linked to the Spanglish sandwich recipe above. if you want my peanut butter recipe, I’m happy to share it, just ask. You’ll have to find your own source of homemade strawberry jam, however.

Since Sarah and I signed up with Netflix several months ago, we’ve certainly seen our fair share of movies. Rather than rate the 26 movies and five television series discs that we’ve seen, I want to write about one in particular.Regardless of your opinion on the Iraq war, I strongly encourage you to see the documentary Gunner Palace. It is an incredibly interesting, gripping film about the daily life of average, ordinary soldiers in Baghdad.

What makes Gunner Palace such an interesting movie is that it does not try to act as a vehicle for a particular political agenda. Rather, it simply wants to show what life is like for the soldiers on the ground in Iraq. Whether or not you truly believe that the US Army is fighting terrorism in Iraq; regardless of whether you believe that our soldiers should be in Iraq; you should see this movie.

The 2 Battalion of the 3rd Field Artillery of the 1st Armored Division spends their days and nights holed up in one of Uday Hussein’s palaces when they aren’t out patrolling, raiding, and gathering intelligence. They have a pool party. There is a command center in the palace. They have checkpoints. They visit orphanages. They eat food heated up in a microwave. They play video games and electric guitar. They send e-mails back home. They are constantly alert for IEDs. Their Humvees run out of gas on the freeway. In short, they do all the dirty work that we don’t see on television.

This film was a really intimate portrait of the 19-30 year olds who are the face of America in Iraq.

Someone trying to recruit me to work for their consulting firm recently sent me quite a humorous e-mail.Some excerpts from the e-mail:

We would like the opportunity to inform you of projects, permanent or consulting, that match your skills/interests . If you are not current “available” we would still be very interested in keeping you updated on career possibilities in an informal basis. [company name snipped] offer our clients the right to permanently hire our consultants for those of you interested in this approach.

Yes, I’ll check to see if I’m “currrent ‘available’,” whatever that means. Other than the improperly formed adverb current, I’m curious as to why the word available needs to be in quotes.

If you would like to share your skills and experience with a staff, truly skilled in the IT Consulting field, please forward a “word” resume and we will be in touch.

That paragraph clearly demonstrates a lack of knowledge about when and how to use commas. In addition, the word word gets saddled with mysterious and unnecessary quotes.

Sending your resume obligates you in no way. I would be happy to answer any questions you may heave, simply drop me an e-mail.

Oh, yes. I will definitely heave a few questions your way. For instance, why would I want to work for/with people who are ostensibly native English speakers and yet have such a poor grasp of the language?

The Bush Administration recently concluded that it isn’t the Cuban government’s police powers that keep Castro in control of the island. Instead, it is gift packages of toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, and other sundries sent by Americans to their family members in Cuba that perpetuate Castro’s iron-fisted rule.

To hasten the fall of the dreaded Castro government, the Bush Administration righteously formulated new rules denying (unpatriotic) Americans the ability to send gift packages of toiletries to their relatives on the largest island in the Greater Antilles.

The House, inexplicably enough, decided to prolong the Communist threat just ninety miles off our shores by proposing an ammendment that would have limited the Administration’s ability to promote democracy by tightening the embargo of Cuba.
Before the clearly brain-addled House could further damage the spread of democracy abroad, a roll call vote was taken. Fortunately, there are six more patriots in the House than there are flip-flopping, liberals uninterested in the spread of freedom. The vote came up 210-216 against the ammendment. The Administration’s strong stance against Communism had survived.

True American hero and majority leader, Tom Delay (R-Texas), noted that the Castro regime would surely open gift packages sent to Cubans and pilfer the contents. The pilfered items would then be used to continue the brutal repression of the island’s peace-loving residents. Other freedom fighters in the House noted that America cannot afford to lessen its resolve by allowing Americans to ease the burdens of daily life suffered by oppressed their family members.

Surely, Fidel has once again seen what a strong, resolved, nation America is. He has seen that we speak with one powerful, united voice for freedom and democracy. Castro certainly has nightmares about the unbreakable American embargo and how the people will rise up any minute now and end his brutal rule.

As the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported:

King, who in civilian life is the Doraville police chief, rolled his eyes at the FAA regulation that requires soldiers — all of whom were armed with an arsenal of assault rifles, shotguns and pistols — to surrender pocket knives, nose hair scissors and cigarette lighters.

“If you have any of those things,” he said, almost apologetically, “put them in this box now.”

Over the last week, Sarah and I invested some time getting rid of the old range hood in our kitchen.When we bought our house, it came with a 42″ wide stainless steel range hood. It was the house’s original range hood. The buttons to turn on the fan and light were sticky with grease; the light did not work; the fan worked occasionally and noisily.

The range hood had never, ever, been cleaned, so it had forty-five years of grease, smoke, and filth in it. The new gas cooktop we installed produced more heat than the house’s original electric cooktop which was also the house’s original cooktop. When we ran one or more of the gas burners on high, we had to be careful of the range hood because that ancient grease would liquefy (due to the higher temperatures produced by the new cooktop) and drip out of the range hood. Yuck!

A couple of weeks ago, during one of my many forays to local garage sales, I picked up a relatively lightly used 36″ cooktop for less than $20.

I’ll save you some of the details related to replacing a really old and disgusting appliance with a new one. During the process of replacing the hood we found a dead mouse and a variety of old dairy delivery receipts either in the ducting or behind the cooktop. We got up close and personal with some really nasty, and greasy parts. We cleaned, primed, painted, swore, drilled, sawed, swore, drilled some more, and finally got the new cooktop installed.

Once that was done, we ordered some textured glass from a local glass store to function as a backsplash. Some more measuring, swearing, drilling, head scratching, drilling, and the like preceded the final installation of the backsplash.

However, the project is now mostly complete. There are pictures of the final product in the photo gallery.

After finishing Pat Cadigan’s cyberpunk novel, Synners my only question is:

Where and how did a story with so much potential go so horribly wrong?Spoilers Included In the Following Review

Let’s start with the dumbest part of the story first. The big bad in the story isn’t the corporation bent on world domination. Neither is it the forces of chaos or entropy. Rather, it is a stroke (no, really!) that somehow manages to become virtual and enter the worldwide network.

Yes, that’s right. A stroke. You know, the medical condition that is generally caused by starvation of blood to a particular part of the brain, usually by a burst or clotted blood vessel. Who knew that not only are strokes sentient, but they seek to be freed from our tiny little skulls so that they can travel the world, see the sights, eat at some great restaurants, and kill off a few million people along the way?

Beyond the laughably awful “villian” that threatens our characters, the characters themselves never reach their full potentials. Cadigan had some real gold ready to mine in these characters, but she instead focuses on just how she’s going to get this intensely personal medical condition out into the wider world. So, some characters that had real potential are simply dumped along the wayside while we watch The Stroke get into the vast network of computers that runs LA’s traffic system. That traffic system itself had such potential, and it shows up so often in the book, that by the end we’re just waiting for the terrible or awesome events that surely are just around the bend to unfold around that system. Instead, the sense of expectancy that Cadigan has created around the system throughout the book is casually tossed out the window like an apple core from a speeding car, never to be seen again.

It’s not clear to me where it all went so wrong. Maybe Cadigan decided to avoid the predictable “large, heartless corporation seeks world domination” angle, and was left grasping for straws. Maybe someone in Cadigan’s life had a stroke and this was her own answer to the problem. Maybe she was high on mind-altering substances for the entire period of time while she wrote this book. Quite frankly, there has to be an explantion.

So, if you’re looking for a book that leaves you feeling a bystander at multi-car pile-up involving a poultry-hauling semi, read Synners. The rest of us will be over here trying to keep our athlete’s foot fungi from virtualizing and taking over the world.

Williams Sonoma is pushing the idea of giving men across the nation personalized branding irons for Father’s Day.Without any context, I saw the irons in the paper this morning and my only thought was, “What on Earth would I use a branding iron for?”

I’m certainly not about to brand the dog, and I think you’d be hard pressed to find ten men across the nation who think that branding their kids with red-hot irons is a good idea.

Even people who might have a legitimate use for a branding iron (cattle ranchers), most likely either have a longer, stronger, better branding iron already, or they use plastic tags and the like instead of branding irons. Are there cattle ranchers out there yearning for a Williams Sonoma branding iron? (Cut to a scene of a Wyoming rancher holding his new branding iron and saying in awed tones: “This Williams Sonoma branding iron makes me feel so…New York.”)

As it turns out, the product is supposed to be used for branding steaks and chops. Right. I’m sure that all this time, my steaks and chops have been just ever so slightly below average because they haven’t been branded with my initials just before being placed on the plate. That’s definitely a product I need.

The US Forest Service’s true mission as revealed by Bill Bryson in his book, A Walk In The Woods:

The Forest Service is truly an extraordinary institution. A lot of people, seeing that word forest in the title, assume that it has something to do with looking after forests. In fact, no…

[M]ostly what the Forest Service does is build roads. I am not kidding. There are 378,000 miles of roads in America’s national forests. That may seem a meaningless figure, but look at it this way–it is eight times the total mileage of America’s insterstate highway system. It is the largest road system in the world in the control of a single body. The Forest Service has the second highest number of road engineers of any government institution on the planet. To say that these guys like to build roads barely hints at their level of dedication. Show them a stand of trees anywhere and they will regard it thoughtfully for a long while, and say at last, “You know, we could put a road here.”

As seen in this week’s Sports Illustrated:

Half Man, Half Amazing

Regardless of whether or not there actually is or was a terrorist cell in Lodi, CA (of all places), the FBI’s use of the law should scare anyone and everyone.Two of the men arrested are being held on charges of “lying to the FBI.”

Who, exactly, determined that the men were lying?

It seems that the FBI not only is playing with a stacked deck, but that they have a spare deck up their sleeve, as well. Imagine the following scenario:

The FBI shows up on your doorstep early one morning and says to you, “We think you committed Crime-X. Did you?”

You stop for a second to ponder your options.

• You can say, “Yes.” This ensures that the grey men will charge you with committing Crime-X, slap government issue handcuffs on you and drive you away to an undisclosed location in unobtrusive, generic sedans. The newspapers the next day will carry stories identifying a “law enforcement source” that claims you confessed to committing Crime-X.
• You can say, “No.” This ensures that the grey men will charge you with lying to the FBI, slap government issue handcuffs on you, and drive you away to an undisclosed location in unobtrusive, generic sedans. The newspapers the next day will carry stories announcing that you were accused of committing Crime-X by the FBI. Oh, and that you were hauled off on a charge of lying to the FBI.

Well, gollly. Those are two rosy options.

Even if you didn’t commit Crime-X, and if you manage to clear your name months later after a protracted legal fight the government will never apologize for the actions of its agents.

All bets are off if you’re accused of terrorism. If you’re not a US citizen, you will assuredly be held as an “enemy combatant” for years without access to a lawyer or the legal system. Then, if you’re determined to be innocent by some byzantine and largely random process that accepts no input from the outside world, you’ll be quietly released and a one paragraph notice may appear in a few of the larger papers around the nation.

If you’re a US citizen, the government may first attempt to revoke your citizenship so that it can hold you as an “enemy combatant” (see above).

So yeah, it’s a good idea to let the FBI run around arresting people on charges of “lying to the FBI.” That doesn’t seem like a law ripe for abuse or anything.

Some pictures that we took recently are now on-line. You can see pictures we took during Bratfest and over Memorial Day.

Sarah and I finished making a Leopold bench last night for our yard.I’d been mumbling about making some sort of bench for the better part of a year. But, beyond mumbling, I never did much about it.

Apparently, Sarah got tired of hearing about it, so she found plans for a Leopold Bench on-line and sent them to me.

We had a pile of 2×8′s sitting in the basement from a project that we had finished, so I started with those. They weren’t in the best shape as some of them had a bit of warping and what-not. But, what else was I going to use them for?

So, some cutting, sanding, staining, and assembly later, we have a pair of Leopold benches. Yes, I wrote a pair. We’re giving one to our friends who are leaving Madison for Vermont.

You can see the new bench below sitting next to Ira’s pen in the back yard.

At some basic theoretical level, I always understood why open records laws were important.The idea that anyone can wander up to any governmental agency, demand information, and get it is a good idea. After all, our tax dollars pay for the generation, collection, organization, and strorage of that data. Our tax dollars pay for the bureaucrats who use that data. In the end, that data belongs to us.

Now that I find myself writing a story for one of the local newspapers where I am trying to get data from a relatively mundane city agency, I fully appreciate how important open records laws are to journalists.

I’m writing a story about automobile crashes in the city of Madison and how one of the intersections that used to be very dangerous is now quite safe. Changes made to a highway underpass a full 1/4 of a mile away from the problematic intersection freed up traffic to flow better through the intersection which reduced the number of accidents at that intersection by over 80%. Obviously, that was a change for the better. That is why we pay tax dollars for a traffic engineering department.

The Madison Traffic Engineering department publishes an annual crash report every year in late July or early August. This report contains a variety of information about crashes around the city between motor vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians. Quite frankly, it is an excellent piece of information that is freely available to the public.

In the course of working a different angle of a story, I learned that the vast majority of the data for 2004 is sitting on Traffic Engineering’s computers. They just don’t release it until later in the summer for two reasons:

1. They like to check their data against data they get from the state DOT, even though the two data sets vary little.
2. They like to stage manage the release of the data later in the summer so that all the newspapers get the data at the same time.

So, when I found out that I could get the data sooner than everyone else, and just by asking, I went for it.

My requests for the data were met with stonewalling and lame excuses. Clearly, they were trying to put me off until later in the summer when it wouldn’t matter if they gave me the data I wanted.

So, at the urging of a local newspaper editor, I filed an open records request for the data.

Again, I got more stonewalling from the staff of Traffic Engineering. Now, I was just getting it from someone higher on the totem pole.

So, I’m still working on getting the data I (partially) paid for with my taxes from people whose salary I (partially) pay.

Hopefully, this goofy soap opera will end soon.

Use these directions to travel from Watertown, SD to Madison, WI. This may not be the fastest route, but it is perhaps the most interesting.

• Leave Watertown by traveling south on Interstate 29.
• About twelve miles south of Watertown, exit the Interstate on the State Highway 22/Clear Lake exit.
• Start traveling east on State Highway 22.
• Stay on State Highway 22 through Clear Lake.
• At the Minnesota border, the road becomes Minnesota State Highway 68. Keep traveling east on it.
• Continue traveling east on MN Highway 68 until you reach Morgan.
• Just after Morgan, start looking for County Highway 29.
• Take a left on to County Highway 29.
• Take highway 29 until it ends at an intersection with US Highway 14 just west of New Ulm.
• Turn left on to US Highway 14 to travel east through New Ulm.
• Just east of Cortland, MN, (which itself is about six miles east of New Ulm) turn right on to Nicollet County Highway 25. This road is not on my map, but it does exist and is in reasonably good shape.
• Take highway 25 until it intersects with Nicollet County Highway 23. Turn right onto highway 23.
• You are now traveling south on highway 23. This road does appear on my map and also seems to be a popular truck route. You should eventually cross an iron bridge over the Minnesota River.
• Shorty after crossing the bridge, turn left onto Minnesota Highway 68 (east bound).
• When you meet up with US Highway 169 (a four lane divided highway) turn left, towards Mankato.
• When highway 169 meets up with US Highway 14, take US 14 east.
• Take US 14 East through Mankato.
• On the east side of Mankato, take the Minnesota State Highway 22 exit off of US 14 east.
• Start traveling south on MN 22. This should take you through a heavily sprawl-infested area with a big mall or two.
• Shortly after all the sprawl ends, turn left on MN Highway 83. This turn is after the Hoffman Road intersection.
• Take MN Highway 83 until it ends at an intersection with MN Highway 30.
• Turn left onto MN Highway 30 (East) towards New Richland, Ellendale, and the like.
• Stay on MN Highway 30 until you get to Interstate 90.
• Turn on to the Interstate heading east.
• Stay on the Interstate into Wisconsin and through the I-90/I-94 merge.
• Get off the Interstate at exit 126 (Highway V/Dane/Deforest).
• Turn right at the top of the ramp. After completing the turn, there should be a gas station with a giant, pink elephant on your left.
• Travel just about four miles to the intersection of Highway V and Highway 113. The junction is just over the top of a hill that has a farm at the top on the left side.
• Turn left onto Highway 113 (south).
• Travel about four miles into the city of Waunakee. At the junction of 113 and Highway Q, get in the right lane and prepare to travel straight. Ignore the sign with an arrow towards Madison! That sign will take you to the east side of Madison and you want the west side of Madison.
• You are now traveling south on Highway Q. About 1/2 mile down the road from the intersection, you should come across Endres Mfg. on the left side of the road. You’ll recognize it by all the tsotchkes out front.
• Now you’ll travel about eight miles from the previous junction (7.5 from Endres Mfg.) to the junction of highway M.
• There is a PDQ gas station on the right-hand side of the road just before the intersection.
• Turn right on to Highway M (traveling west)
• Get into the left lane and travel about one mile.
• At the Intersection with a McDonalds, turn left to get on Highway Q again (traveling south). This is Allen Blvd.
• Travel another mile or so until Highway Q ends in a “T” intersection. There should be a jeweler on one corner and a Chinese restaurant, the Imperial Garden, on the other. This is the intersection of Allen Blvd and University Ave.
• Turn left on to University Avenue (heading east).
• About two miles later, turn right on to Segoe Rd. You’ll need to merge into the far right-hand lane just after the bridge to complete this turn.

After all of that, you can start looking for our house on the left side of the road.