Kitchen Updates

We've finished our kitchen and family room remodel. The project started in December 2007 with the demo of the old cabinets. We had the new cabinets in, granite in and water back on by January 2008. The new floor was in by summer 2008, but the family room still had dark brown panelled walls and dirty blue carpet. So in early 2009, we set out to do away with the panelling. Now it's summer 2009 and we took the paint color we used on the new drywall and extended it into the kitchen. The whole thing looks great now and we are happy to have it done.

Into Great Silence

I came across a great film recently. It followed the lives of monks living in France. I was very impressed by their simple, prayerful way of life. Certainly something of this peace and contemplation would go a long way for those of us living "in the world".

Chili Cook Off Today - Posting My Recipe

Jeff's 5 Decade Chili

This chili has a nice kick and is very flavorful.

Ingredients

1. 3 pounds ground round
2. 1 pound thin sliced steak
3. 3 tomatoes
4. 1 can tomato paste
5. 1 can tomato sauce
6. 1 48 oz jar Randall mixed beans
7. 4 bell peppers various colors
8. 1 large onion
9. 2 habenero peppers
10. 3 jalapeno peppers
11. seasoned salt to taste
12. chili powder to taste
13. garlic 2 large cloves

Directions

1. chop bell peppers, garlic, habenero peppers, jalepenos and onions and cook in a large pot with a small amount of water until soft
2. brown meats separately in a frying pan and add to large pot once veggies are soft and meat is browned
3. add 1 32 oz jar of mixed beans
4. add mixed beans
5. add tomato paste
6. add tomato sauce
7. add chili powder to taste
8. add seasoned salt to taste

Search, share, and cook your recipes on Mac OS X with SousChef!

The War - Update

I just noticed I never got back with updates after "The War" post. Everything turned out fine. Hopefully we won't have to go there again any time soon.

Philmont blog link

I just realized I never linked to the philmont blog. Not that I've been all that active or anything but here's the link

The War

When you aren't sure how something works, you tend to throw everything you've got at it. Especially when it's trying to kill you.

That's the current rather barbaric state of cancer treatment. Throw chemicals into the bloodstream that are designed to kill EVERY fast growing cell because the cancer cells are fast growing and they should die off along with other fast growing cells like hair, blood platelets, etc, etc. One of the chemicals used is called "Red Devil" and the title isn't meant to convey affection.

So this is what my wife is dealing with. So this is why my blog just sits here for months at a time and that trend is bound to continue. I just thought I'd share the reason for the current lack of updates.

People who have Metastisis (sp?) have so much cancer that it can't be killed faster than it re-grows. Fortunately we aren't in that situation but this is still a serious situation. We went to the pharmacy to pick up the anti-nausea drugs and the pharmacist, obviously a newbie, informed us the claim had been denied by the insurance. Let's see. Fresh chemo in your veins. Seven pm on a friday evening and we are being asked to call a doctor that closed 2 hours ago and ask him to fax something to an 800 number that is only manned monday through friday so we can have the medicine to avoid devastating nausea. The bean counter that dreamed up this pre-authorization fiasco and sprung it on us on a friday evening when everything was closed will certainly rot in hell.

I am thankful that Robin on GMA came on and removed her wig. My wife and I watched that episode with great relief because of our aprehension over the hair loss thing. The episode came on after the first chemo visit and the nurse told us in no uncertain terms we needed to go "wig shopping" because by the time we came back for the next treatment the hair would be gone.

While I'm thankful we have technology to fight cancer, I wish we understood it well enough that it would become possible to fight cancer without losing your hair. I also wish the insurance industry would fall into an active volcano.

A nicer hike

This time I carried less crap and we walked a shorter distance over smaller hills. A pleasure after the previous week's torture. Why are we doing this? Philmont. We picked Trek #32. Trek 32 is 85 miles ranging from 6,500 feet to 12,500 feet covered over a 10 day period. Why didn't those boys pick a nice 50 mile trek? So now I'm off to the races to try to whip into shape before we leave in mid June.

The Bataan Death March (steps gone wild)

In a previous post, I talked about counting steps. Recently we went on another practice hike and I went a little overboard on the amount of stuff I carried. The result was the Bataan Death March.

Photos are available of the hike from/to/through the bad place. I took too much stuff and walked too far on hills that were too steep. Not something I look forward to doing again any time soon.

12659 steps

I just came in from outside where it's 21 degrees (f) and lightly snowing and I'm covered in sweat. I was lugging a 25ish pound pack with our Philmont crew. We covered 5.27 miles but it felt like more. Today's hike was mapped out to be 7 miles but my pedometer registered just over 5. There were 6 of us today. Three dads and three of the six scouts that will make the trip this summer. I've really gotta get in shape and do it soon. I shouldn't be this sore or worn out at sea level when our expedition will range from 6,000 to 12,000 feet. We talked about which trek we should get and yes, those boys want to summit Baldy at 12,000 feet. At their age it's no big deal, but it's a killer for the dads.

Philmont Hike

Here it is 7am on a Saturday and do you think we could sleep in after a long and stressful week? NO! We're digging up our heavy packs so we can go walk 6 miles in the snow practicing for our Philmont trek this summer.

moved over to google now (and dot mac)

Well while I'm moving everything around, why not move my blog. Well it was Google's idea, not mine. I guess they must have swallowed blogger.com since I last used it. There was a cryptic error during the move but it seems to be working now. I'm trying to take apart all these disparate sites I've maintained and point them all to one or at most 2 servers.

The bulk of stuff I'm updating these days is at dot mac as www.jeffkendall.org. There's still rocketlandmod.com and r0k.org and I don't think I'll merge them over to dot mac because of the glaring lack of php support, but I will unify the sites and link between them. This is critical since the only thing I plan to keep up is on dot mac. Are you confused yet? I am.

Meanwhile, I'm lovin' this Macbook. It's got lots of nice features like the ability to switch languages on the fly. 是是你 for visiting my blog!