Fish

The first time I have ever been happy to see a state fish and game officer happened this weekend.  Normally, I consider them akin to sucker fish-- slimy bottom dwelling muck feeders.  But, during our fishing trip to Raccoon State Park, and after having zero luck with the fish that morning, the fully-uniformed officers showed up with a tanker truck full of rainbow trout.  Their purpose was to restock the lake.  With the fish came some rather sketchy looking boy scouts to help.  We got in on the action, too.

We helped transport 2,000 of these suckers from the truck to the lake using nothing more than 5 gallon buckets.  With all the taxes we pay here, you'd think they'd have something more technologically advanced then a gang of boy scouts and some old paint cans to do the work... maybe a trout cannon or something.

Most of the fish made it to the water without incident.  Some got dropped a few times, stepped on, etc, all to the chagrin of the game warden (note the trout next to the bucket in the photo... I had to lob him into the pond from 10 yards in one of my better Tim Tebow impersonations).  Ethan's brilliant idea was to throw them in right at our fishing pole site, the baited hooks of which were still in the water.  Good idea, but we didn't catch any.  The boy scouts petered out after a few runs from the truck to the lake, but we kept up the pace rather well.

Although mom sent us with some food, we decided to dine on a more well-balanced lunch of cinnamon rolls.  Thankfully, I'm still free and able to legally fish, after my crack at the game warden on his holstered gun ("Are you afraid someone is going to steel a trout or something?").  I also told him that if they'd let us shoot those stinking blue herons, they wouldn't need to stock the lake so often.  Like a sentry at Buckingham Palace, the guy had no sense of humor.  I'm probably blacklisted, though.

Anniversary Dinner

Two months ago, a "deal" came to us from Google Deals-- $25 for $50 at The Tin Angel in Pittsburgh.  The deal caught my eye.  First, our anniversary was coming soon and I needed something for it, and second, The Tin Angel was a restaurant in Pittsburgh that people at work raved about.  Seemed like a good fit.  I told Michelle about it since I've learned never to surprise her with restaurants without first discussing it with her.  She is not one for surprises.  However, I do need to point out that she bought the coupon... not me.  This is important to remember as you read on.  We both knew the place was very expensive, but figured the $50 coupon would help out.  This would be one of those rare chance to see what it would be like to live like the more elite members of society, only for us, we'd be pretending and would arrive in a minivan full of car seats.

We come from a long line of restaurant experience... some good, some bad, albeit the bad ones are the ones we remember most.  Examples:

1. The Cellar in Idaho Falls.  Grade: F.  Reason: our first trip was on a personal dare, and our plates were so highly spiced that I swore I saw my fork smoking just sitting in my Pan Seared Tilapia with Spring Pea Coulis.  And, I can handle my spices (see previous posts on my favorite salsa).  Michelle's Chicken Marsala, we think, was the accidental victim of a pop-top on the cayenne pepper (i.e., the chef went to sprinkle a bit and the top popped of the shaker, dumping its contents onto the dinner below).  We tried the place again later... the Tuna Steak was like eating an old sponge, and the though of it today still makes me gag.  I think the reason is because of their mantra "local food with a French flair"-- the only French things you should find in Idaho Falls are the fries at McDonalds.
2. Millies in Anaheim California:  Grade: D.  This place I actually like, but for 2 days in a row, Michelle had to send back her breakfast plate on account of a big long black curly hair found entwined in her hash browns.  She noticed it only because she inadvertently picked up the entire side of hash browns when she tried putting a forkfull in her mouth.  The hair in question held the whole plate together nicely thanks to the melted cheese.
3. Texas Roadhouse, anywhere.  Grade: C.  The only reason this gets something better than a D is due to their other menu items.  However, if you go for a burger, forget about it.  A meatball cooked until every drop of moisture has been removed and served on an extra dry dinner roll, the Texas Roadhouse burgers are the worst around.  A gallon of barbeque sauce and a Mountain Dew helps.
4. The Sahara in Las Vegas.  Grade: F.  I can't even remember the restaurant's name, but we spent a weekend in this dive/casino for a business trip Michelle was on at the time.  The breakfast buffet consisted of a bunch of middle eastern men warming up bacon, sausage, and Bisquick pancakes on a fold out table.  The Sahara was really awful.  Thankfully, the whole casino is now closed.
5. Little American in Salt Lake City.  Grade: C.  The food was always good here... they earned their "C" an account of the dead lizard found laying belly-up in the salad bar.

The Tin Angel fits into this list quite nicely.  I give it a "D"... the only reason being that there is a chance that we just picked a bad day and the two worst items on the menu.  

But, we got all dressed up thinking this place with its 4-star rating and claim-to-fame being a visit by Bill Clinton (and winning the 2010 Pittsburgh Restaurant of the Year Award), not to mention the menu prices, warranted a higher class of society.  We had to pretend, after all, that we were sophisticated members of the elite class.

Michelle being 'rich'

I think we played the part well, for most of the time.

Arriving promptly at our 6PM appointment, we were a bit shocked to see that we were the only ones in the restaurant, with the one exception of another couple.  Four people in a 4-star joint?  Red flags started to rise, but then again, since we were only pretend members of high society, perhaps they lived on a different time scale than we did.

Me acting snarky

We were seated next to the windows which, to be honest, was the best part of the whole experience.  A 1,000 foot view of the city skyline.

But the fun ended there.  Our first delicacy was a fruit bowl and soup du jour (Italian Wedding).  I ordered the fruit and Michelle got the soup.  They both really stunk.  The fruit bowl consisted off 3 marble-sized chunks of cantaloupe, 3 marble-sized chunks of honeydew, a thin slice of strawberry and pineapple (and I emphases "thin"... I could nearly see through them), and one (yes, ONE) grape.  The entire "bowl" and its mass of food was about the size of a golf ball. Michelle's 1/4 cup of soup, I knew, wasn't going to be much better after her first bite furrowed her eye brows.  We swapped and, yeah, it wasn't good... like eating a bowl of hot water with floating acini de pepe.  The sausage in it was all pea-sized and tasted what I think boiled hamburger meat would taste like.

I kinda started to laugh at the whole experience, and it got funnier when the second plate came out: the vegetable boat.  I emphasize "boat" here because I think a person (very small, though) could actually get in this thing and take it down the Ohio.  Shaped like an ancient Egyptian Solar Boat, inside was a mixture of various vegetables and a bowl of clam dip.   But, upon further inspection, the olives were not pitted (found this out the hard way, literally), the celery was full-stalk, the boat had full-stalk green onions, and the clam dip was missing, well, clams.  What were we to do with green onions, by the way?  The waitress raved about the cheese that had been centrally placed at one end of the celery sticks... and, upon close inspection, it was there... about an inch long and 1/8th inches in diameter, lying at one end of each stalk like a dead inchworm.  There was some kind of gooey stuff wrapped in grape leaves, too.  Overall: blah.  But, we never got the chance to finish it because apparently the waitresses know better than you do on when you are done, constantly coming to us to say, "Please put your napkins down so we can prepare the next plate", and you would have to put your stuff down as they took it all away.  Done or not.

The Boat

I stuffed... Michelle felt she had to cut her vegetables first

 Michelle, of course, is not a seafood connoisseur, so she had to quietly ask our waitress if the place had any Ranch dip.  I offered her $20 to ask for fry sauce, too.  If we were to blow our cover, why not go full force?

Next up: the main entree.  About 95% of the menu items had some integral seafood and, as just mentioned, Michelle doesn't eat seafood.  The chicken caught her eye and she asked the waitress if she could have it stuffed with something other than crab meat, saying she doesn't care much for seafood.  The waitress said that was OK, she'd have it stuffed with shrimp instead.  After a few seconds of pause to consider what had just happened, she had to tell the waitress that, no, she doesn't like seafood-- what else you got?  She ended up with the filet, well-done.

I ordered the Ocean platter at an unknown cost.  

You see, the other half of society goes to restaurants without care at the price, so no prices are listed on the menus.  Only by luck was I able to snag a catering flyer at the front door that had the prices listed, but the Ocean platter was priced "per season".  Our half of society-- well, okay, maybe just our family-- looks for deals on the $5 footlongs from Subway.  This was a break from conscience.

Our view

Go Steelers

 The food arrived.  Visually, my seafood looked great-- the lobster tail, the mussels, the shrimp, the crab.  Michelle's filet looked, well, "done".  She cut into it and put a piece in her mouth and stopped.  She then grabbed the salt and pepper shakers and prominently doused her steak with near-fatal amounts.  I started on the lobster tail and quickly found out that I couldn't cut through the lobster meat-- it was too done.  Shrimp, same thing.  Personally, it was still OK... something I could have gotten for 1/10th the price at Bob Evans.  I then offered $20 for Michelle to order BBQ sauce, but she kept up her prominent status quite well.

The waitress then came and rolled up everything... table cloth, napkins, the whole works... to "prepare us for dessert."  She rolled off about a half dozen items from memory, but we had no idea what she had said.  So, we asked for a menu, again.  I got the parfait and Michelle got the strawberry cheesecake.  Prior to this, we were delivered each a small bowl of water with a slice of lemon in it.  I had to quietly ask Michelle, "What's this for?"  Apparently it was to dip your fingers in, not to drink....

The cheesecake was OK-- nothing to write home about.  My parfait was in a small, thin glass, about 2 inches in diameter and 6 inches tall.  It was some ice cream with, what I thought was, caramel sauce (or some rendition of it).  I dug in.  Pretty bland.  Halfway through, I started to notice that the sauce wasn't what I thought it was, and so I asked Michelle if I could borrow her iPhone.  I had to look up the restaurant, find the menu, look at the dessert I was eating, and then "Google" the unknown items.  The last ingredient was "creme de cassis" which, per Google, was a sweet, dark liqueur made from blackcurrents.  Yep.  Me, a dumb Mormon, pretending to be something I'm not, downing a dessert dripping in alcohol.  

To my benefit, though, the creme de cassis was at the bottom, and only after the ice cream started to melt did it start rising in the vial and soaking the rest of the dessert.  My palate was still processing the dry lobster at the time.

The desserts

Anyway, after that, the waitress brought out a large bowl of pineapple chunks, each one pierced with a small plastic sword and having a slight green tinge to them.  "Would you care for some pineapple?" she asked.  We both reached for it thankful to be getting SOMETHING that we like, just as she said, "They are soaked in creme de menthe."  About an inch away from the bowl, we both pulled our arms back like we'd just touched a 240-volt outlet, saying, "Oh, no thanks... we are full."  I said, "Yeah, we just wanted them for the swords anyway."

The bill came: $132.  Minus our coupon and with tip, we spent $101 on our dinner.  Yeah!

On the bright side, we have a memory to last forever.  Arriving in a minivan, being fed peasant portions of poorly prepared food, wanting to ask for fry or BBQ sauce (and Michelle actually asking for Ranch dip), and eating mostly through a dessert swimming in liquor, we learned that we are Idaho Spuds at heart.  Just give us a Quiznos or an IHOP in the future.

Chrissa's Dance Moves

Chrissa was fortunate enough to inherit my dance moves.  She was able to showcase those genes during our ward activity yesterday: Swing into Spring.

She's second from the right as the video starts (front), and then moves to front-middle at 0:16.

She's lucky to be the benefactor of such impeccable dancing skill... haha!

Shot in St. George

We attended Michelle's family reunion in St. George Utah this past weekend.

We traveled 1,657 miles by plane to get to SLC, then drove another 340-ish miles to our rental home in St. George Utah.  Four or five days later, we made the return trip.

All told, we traveled the equivalent of 1/5th the circumference of the earth.  Add in the stops for lunch, the potty breaks, the drive to and from the airports, and the Mt. Dew runs, and we probably could have circled the globe twice.

The reunion was a rush of unusual circumstances which culminated in me being shot in the face with a .22 caliber rifle.  Seriously.  OK, maybe the word "shot" is a bit over-dramatic, but you'll need to read on to get the full story.

We left last Wednesday afternoon and took the flight from Pittsburgh to Chicago in order to catch a plane from Chicago to SLC.  We landed in Chicago late... only 15 minutes to catch our next flight.  This wouldn't have been a big deal had we not also been forced to run from the A terminal to the B terminal inside Midway Airport-- a distance that rivals most marathons, I believe.  Add to this the kids dragging their feet, Amberlee falling on the moving walkway and refusing to get up, and then her well-placed kick to my most sensitive location (say no more), and it was a miracle that we got to our departing gate at all.  I had to virtually crawl to get there, though.  We had just minutes to spare as we were literally the last few through the Jetway before the plane left.  In fact, within seconds after exiting the first plane, we heard over the loudspeaker, "Last call for Flight 1428 with service to Salt Lake City."  Ah, the joys of air travel.  Seeing us run through the terminals must have been like watching a National Lampoons special.

Our Kids (most of them), poolside

We landed late that evening and left for St. George early the next day.  Five hours later, give or take, we arrived at our destination.  It was a fun experience getting there, though.  We did not bring our GPS nor did we rent one with our rental car.  Instead, we relied upon Michelle's new iPhone, which can give us directions provided we can type in the information correctly.  Since Michelle was navigator, her job was to type in the destination address while I drove our crappy rental car 85 MPH down the freeway.  Here is how that went:

Michelle (talking to the iPhone): "No, I don't want to go to Mexico!... (10 second pause)... No, I don't want to go to California!  I hate this phone!.... (10 second pause)...Now we are going to New York!  I give up!"

I then saw the phone go bouncing through the car as she vented her frustration.

Cade: "Give it to me."

I took the phone and did the typing as Michelle took over the steering wheel.  We made it.

The Navigator

The reunion was like other reunions... lots of kids, noise, and the occasional wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Somewhere in the middle of it all, we managed to eat, sleep, and get sunburned.

Admittedly, St. George is not my ideal vacation spot.  First, it is hell and gone away from a reasonably priced airport.  Second, it is dry, hot, and aside from the buildings and people, desolate.  Everything outdoors is the color of silly putty... the dirt, the rocks, the houses.  My retinas still see everything in shades of pink.

Preston "Mountain Man" Jensen

The first night began the conspiracy: the ladies left to go "grocery shopping" for the 3.5 day duration.  They were gone 3 hours, at least.  For much of that time, the men threatened mutiny and a trip to Pizza Hut.  $750 later, the ladies returned with enough groceries to pilot our own Costco.  I'm still not sure what the 40 lbs of potatoes, 2 quarts of vinegar, and 40 bags of microwavable popcorn were for (OK, family, I know there is going to be a rebuttal, but I'm just being honest).  Throw in the whole carrot cake and boxes of applesauce, and I could have sworn we were preparing for a wagon trip back to Independence Missouri.

We needed culinary help...

Our family slideshow, which we (Michelle and I.. though I'm more proud of my 1% contribution to it than she was of her 99%) produced for the family, seemed to be a hit.  Part way through it, the DVD player threatened to die on us, but I managed to keep it alive.   I'm trying to upload it to YouTube, so when that happens, I'll post it again for your viewing pleasure, if you dare.  We bought a computer, software, and burned through at least a dozen DVDs before it was done.

Amberlee posing with "The Shooter"

The storms seemed to gather when my in-laws took my target shooting, though.  Jason was the shooter, and I was the victim.  I always knew he was a bad shot, but this proves my theory.  After an hour or so of shotgunning clay pigeons, we turned our attention to rifles, mostly .22s and my new .22-250 (which I love).  Near the end of the rifling, I heard a bullet ricochet off a distant rock.  I had the premonition to go sit in the truck-- not sure why, but I behaved as all righteous men of outstanding church membership do.  I get in the truck and, leaving the door open, I watch from what I thought was a safe location-- 10 feet directly behind the shooters and at least 30 feet from the target.  A few moments later, Jason (the terrible shot I mentioned earlier) shoots his .22 at a target, and within a split second after I hear it "ping" the target, it pings me in the face... just above the upper lip, and dead-center.

Let me tell you, it was a small projectile, but it was moving, baby!  It smacked me hard enough to splatter blood on the truck's ceiling (see photo below), and i quickly began checking my teeth and mouth for tooth and/or bullet fragments.  Finding none (bullet fragments... I still had my teeth), I yelled, "STOP, I'M HIT!" and went about the duty of stemming the flow of blood out of the wound and all over my hands.

My blood spatter, middle center and middle upper parts of photo

Keep in mind that the volume of blood wasn't in "Wes Craven" amounts, but it was enough to make me think that 1) the bullet was still in my lip, and 2) the hole was big.  Clint, M.D., took over and provided me with an alcohol wipe and made sure in his estimation that the bullet was not lodged in my dermis.  I still think there is something lodged in my skin, though.  Shrapnel is a quality of a tough guy, no?

We made a pact on our way back home to not tell our wives, less we should lose our shooting privileges forever.  However, the Mecham's young son, whom we took with us, promptly shouted our situation upon walking through the front door of our rental home, spawning a rush of inquiries into the incident.

My thoughts: whatever guardian angel I've been assigned must be a doofus.  I say that with all possible respect, though.  I mean, I was prompted to get under cover to avoid possible ricocheting bullets, so I crawled into the truck and-- what happens?-- a get hit with a ricocheted bullet.  Some say it was a miracle I wasn't hurt worse... but, to me, there was no miracle at all.  To me, the miracle would have been to not get shot in the first place.  Or, to go to where I had been standing and see someone else lying there bloodied... or to see a smoking hunk of lead lying in my shoe prints.  My promptings put me in the line of fire... had I stayed where I was, we'd be laughing at the piece of lead that had lodged in Clint's surburban.

Ethan

In any event, the shot wasn't in my eye, so for that, I'm thankful.  Instead, it was centered perfectly between my nose and my upper lip, and between the right and left nostril.  It was a freak accident.  As for Jason, I have to rub it in...

Anyway, once the reunion was over, we traveled back to the Ogden area where I visited with my family for a day prior to our departure to Pennsylvania.  The bags made it, my gun made it, our kids made it... now back to reality.