Döner Kebab!

Scotty having a döner kebab and pilsner at Mt Ararat in Dreseden circa 2003. A little slice of paradise.

As some of you may have heard me go on about at one time or another, a döner kebab is one of my three or four favorite foods. But I only get döners when I visit Germany. I did have one in NYC once, but it was a poor imitation using a flour tortilla, instead of a pita.

Until Wednesday. A QA at work told me about a little shop that opened in Dundee that sells döners! So I skipped my packed lunch and hopped in the car at lunch to go check it out. And they do sell them Amsterdam style, not German style, which is too bad. But still the taste was 9/10ths right. The only thing that pisses me off is that they opened this shop in my old neighborhood four months after I moved.

Observations

The other day I was driving home from work with Anke and Corwin on the freeway. We get passed by a late 90's civic with one of those loud coffee can mufflers. Corwin is at the age where he likes to point out the obvious. He promptly says "lawnmower!" It's enlightening that there are things he can already figure out on his own, and doesn't need to be taught.

Flood

Yesterday I went with a couple of co-workers to Missouri Valley, IA to help clean with the flooding that occurred a couple of weeks ago. The neighborhood that we were working was a rather poor place to begin with, before everything was swamped with three to four feet of water. Most of the houses were single story homes, built on concrete slabs. The owners of these had no where to put their valuables even had they known the water was coming.

In the morning I helped out with the salvage of one of these homes. This old woman lost nearly everything. The stove, fridge, washer and dryer. All of the furnishings of the house creating a pile in the front yard. The carpet that we were pulling up was a drab brown, except for a single two foot by four foot rectangle of white where something had protected it. We cut the carpet into blocks, pulled it and the padding up and added it to the growing detritus. From the pile it would go into the bucket of a giant end loader donated by the local Case Implement dealer to be taken Zeus knows where. Nasty, ugly, smelly work. It made me thankful Woodmen provided free tetanus shots for us.

It's saddening to see those that have so little, lose nearly everything. It makes me thankful for what I have, and that I don't have to live on a flood plane. It has to be disheartening to see all of the possessions that have taken you years to accumulate and many of them that must have some sentimental value, being ruined and thrown away like the garbage that they now are. How do you start over?

After lunch I helped at a vet clinic. Most of the clinic had been emptied by the time my team got there. We were helping to clear out a storage room in the back. The vet had seven or eight book shelves back there filled with books. The bottom half of all of them sat in water for a week. It felt sacrilegious to be throwing so many books into plastic bags and added to growing pile of junk in his horse trailer. Thousands if dollars of books being added to the thousands and thousands of dollars of other stuff. The vet was in a better situation than most, financially, to deal with the disaster, but he too was hurting. Especially because during the cleanup he hasn't got any income coming in.

I had to leave early to pick up Anke at work and Corwin in daycare. The relief effort was being organized at the local pool, which was convenient, allowing me to shower and change clothes before having to climb into the car and meet civilization again. But that may have been the coldest shower I have ever taken. I suppose swimming pools don't feel the need to hook their showers up to hot water heaters.

Yard Work

For the past month and a half, Anke has had me out in the yard doing Yard Work every weekend. I had no idea that owning a house would entail quite so much of the stuff. First shoveling snow and now this.

To help with the job, I picked up a Craftsman racing mower from sears. It has a 6 3/4 pound feet of torque Briggs & Stratton engine. Big directional tri-spoke wheels. And a parachute on the back to help me slow down. On top of all that, it's menacing black, with a fire red engine cover. Maurice may have a faster car than me, but my mower smokes his. One thing that does confuse me is that I can't find the rabbit and turtle to control the throttle.

See those bushes behind me? They used to be huge. Anke thought that they were too huge, and had me wack them down to nearly nothing. She says they'll come back bigger and better than ever. All I know is that it was a lot more work than I wanted to do. And now I have a big patch of dirt that used to be covered by bush.

Notice how tall the grass is here? That is in my swampy area that nearly never dries off. At some point I'm going to have to do something about that, like a French drain. Or something. But my racing mower took care of that 8 inch wet grass like it was nothin'. Torque bitch!

Here is the obligatory picture of Corwin trying to help out. He loves water and therefor he loves the water hose. He's also getting taller and talkier.

Anke has also had me planting plants galore. Two rose bushes. Two currant bushes. Transplanted a blue berry bush. Weeding, weeding, weeding. Ripping out Virginia creeper and a couple of poison ivy vines by the root. The yard really did need a lot of work. Since the house was unoccupied last summer, the yard was a bit neglected. We also planted two bamboo plants, one of which is shown. I'm actually excited about the bamboo. They are small now, but they should reach around 6 or 7 feet in height. The bamboo photo was taken with my new phone. It isn't quite camera quality and very far from our DSLR, but it's much better than my old phone.

Social Distortion

Maurice and I went to see Social D on May Day.

The first opening act was The Black Halos. They were kind of like the Evil Dead 2 of punk bands. Like Evil Dead 2, you're not quite sure if that was supposed to be funny or did it just happen to be funny? It took me awhile decide: Is the lead singer was really trying to be super cool or is it a bit of a tongue in cheek act? It was when the lead singer took off his shirt and he had a bit of a Chris Willcolm build (a round belly and narrow chest) that I decided, he can't be taking himself too seriously. I liked them a bit better after that. Musically I thought that they were a talented band, but the lead singer needs to learn how to sing. I could never understand him.

Band two was I Hate Kate, and they were very good. More of a modern rock band, but very strong. ...this post is now continued almost a week later. I'm sure there was more that I wanted to say about I Hate Kate, but I can't recall what it was. Anyway, I liked them.

I like Socol Auditorium. It's an old place in south Omaha, that has lots of character. And no air conditioning. It is set up mainly like a giant high school auditorium, but with no seats. There is a balcony that rings the main floor, giving a good view of the stage if you are in the first couple of rows. But Maurice said that the balcony is a good 10 degrees hotter than the floor. When we got there early the building was comfortably cool and it remained that way though the first two bands. Then it rapidly started heating up as the energy level was noticeably raised when Social D took the stage. They played a variety of tracks from their whole catalog of albums including favorites like Prison Bound, Ball and Chain and Highway 101 from their newest album. A couple of covers were included- The Stones Under My Thumb, Hank Williams Sr.'s Six More Miles and of course Ring of Fire made popular by Johnny Cash, but written by his wife June Carter before their marriage. The didn't play my favorite Social D song Story of my Life, but that was the only disappointment of the night.

Social Distortion played with the precision that one would expect of a band that's been around since the late 70's, but more energy than one might expect of guys on the north side of their mid 40's. I was surprised by how old they looked until I thought about how long Mike Ness has been making rock 'n roll. And I doubt they were all easy years.

It was also fun seeing Omaha's Rockabilly crowd come out. There was an authentic rad rod parked across from Socol when we came in. If I had more garage space and time. And money. I'd really enjoy having a rat rod. Along with several other cars. But now I'm getting off topic. There were several cats there with the slicked back black hair or horn rimmed glasses or black and white wing tips. The punk girls with tattoos and 50's style bobbed hair, the tight capri pants and string tank tops. Yummy. I love punk girls.

A grand night out, and one of my last ones for the next year or so.

PowerBook G4

A design flaw of the titanium PowerBooks is that the hinges are made of aluminum and not titanium. Therefor they are a bit fragile. The PowerBook is a bit outdated, but it does most of what I want a laptop to do, so I wasn't ready to give up on it yet. Plus it is still stylish and aesthetically pleasing.

I was able to pick up a used hinge mount from ifixit.com for under $20 w/ shipping.

Replacing the broken hinge mount was surprisingly easy. I was lucky that only the brittle hinge mount broke and not the actual hinge itself. That is closer to the $100 and requires complete disassembly of the laptop to reinstall. I think I could have done it, but it would have been much more of a pain in the arse.

It was so easy I let Corwin finish up for me.

Weekend Images

We have bonus images this week, but Dinner is the official photo of the week. Slow cooking the beef ribs wasn't so easy as a hurricane rolled during hour two of the ribs cooking. The patio is located underneath the deck and I put the patio furniture umbrella beside the grill to help keep the water off, and my grill temperature up. And marinated vegetable kabobs is a yummy way of eating my veggies, which Anke says I need to do a better job of in order to set a proper example of Corwin and the soon to arrive Scotty Version III.

Corwin has a ball on his little swing that he got from his Opa.

Finally starting to get some green in the forest.

Corwin is all about learning how to drive. But it won't be in this car.

I'm just buzzed

This is short film of Will Ferrel and his daughter. Very funny.

Nappy Headed Moe

For the record I thought that Imus deserved to be fired, and I'm glad that he was. But this made me laugh.

Weekend

I completed my first home improve- ment project. While Dad was in town on Saturday we mounted the kitchen cabinets that I picked up for $50 and a case of beer. Anke won out and they ended up in the laundry room and not the garage. The look really nice though. Dad and I ended up buying a new hammer drill to mount them into the concrete wall. The difference that the hammer drill made, vs. the old average drill in attacking in the concrete wall was shocking. The right tool for the job.

The cabinets still need to be cleaned up a bit, but they do look nice. Now I have to find a new storage solution for the garage.

For lunch Dad wanted to order food from the Thai Kitchen. A little hole in the wall place in South O. It's a bit odd to me that the best Thai that I've ever had would be found in the Mexican neighborhood of Omaha. But I am so proud of Dad for broadening his culinary horizons. I never thought the day would come when my father would say, "Let's get Thai."

Sunday was a good day too. Anke, Corwin and I took a walk on the Fontenelle Forest board walk Sunday morning. That afternoon I had a couple of beers with Maurice at the Horseshoe casino and we discussed the finer points of IT in the insurance industry. That afternoon Casa de Parker had a winged visitor in the basement. The poor little fellow was scared out of his mind. He found a nice retreat in one of Anke's plants for a while. I eventually shooed Mr. Sparrow into the garage and he was able to find the great outdoors from there.

For dinner I fired up my new Webber grill for the first time. I'm a slut for aesthetics, and that is kind of how I ended up with an expensive charcoal grill instead of a cheep gas grill. All of the cool looking gas grills are north of $300. But I got this groovy retro Webber with the blue enamel coat for much less than that. But still more than a sane person should pay for a charcoal grill. I cooked some chicken breasts that had a Turkish rub on them, along with some onions and potato kebabs. The chicken breasts turned out freaking phenomenal. The best chicken breast that I have ever had in my life! Charcoal does rule. They were so good that I broke out my last bottle of Eibauer (Scotty's favorite beer in the whole wide world, but only available on the other side of the world) to complement my dinner. Sometimes I think that I may lead a charmed life.

Photo of the Week

This is a new series I'm starting. Once a week I'm going to try and post a random photo. Some will be recent and some will be old. Like this one. If I had to guess, I'd say it's 1991 or so. I wish when I had taken this, I had a better idea of what I was doing. The framing on it is off. The front of the Blazer should be in the picture. And the back corner of the Cougar shouldn't be cut off either. Or probably the Cougar should have been moved, taken out of the photo completely. The composition of the old mower and old truck alone would have worked better in hind site.

That old black truck still holds a special place in my heart. Who can say why. It was slow, old, ugly, rusty. And the damn thing burned my leg back in the late 70's when it had side pipes. (It didn't have side pipes the next week, however.) Left a nice little scar on my leg that looked like a goldfish, that has since faded away in the skin cells of time.

But many good times were had with it. It was the first vehicle that I can ever recall riding in. Mom and Dad got it in 1975. My folks were cruising the SUV before the SUV was hip. As a youngster, it was always a special treat to get to ride on the console between the two front seats. That was a concussion waiting to happen. Now I strap Corwin down in the middle back seat of anything he's riding in. Different times.

Later it was my primary mode of transportation a couple of times in my driving career. By this time it wasn't quite as swanky as when I was a child. Rusting like nothing else. The passenger seat and driver seat didn't match. It was beat up, so it could be abused. I recall climbing snowing hills in the old beast with Tony. Getting just a few feet from the top of one, and losing traction. Sliding down the hill, the truck turning sideways and getting sideswiped by a tree. Loading boxes in and helping Maurice move to Ottumwa. Whacking stop signs around the high school that no business trying to stop the natural flow of traffic. Taking the roof off and mudding it with Mo. But that's another picture.

Sokol

The Reverend Horton Heat is playing at Sokol Undergound in Omaha tonight. Unfortunately I'm not going. The whole job, pregnant wife, kid thing strikes again. I think that I should have made an effort to go to more shows before Corwin was born. On the bright side Social Distortion is playing at Sokol on May 1 and I am going to that. If, on the odd chance, anyone else wants to go, me let me know.

Rainy Day Corwin

Sandhill Cranes

We arrived in Kearney Nebraska to try and view the migrating Sandhill Cranes around 3ish on Sunday, March 11. First we checked into a motel and then we had dinner at Whiskey Creek- recommended by Matt who hails from Kearney and absolutely despises Sandhill Cranes with an unhealthy passion- which was very good. I had a Jim Beam marinaded steak which although good, pails in comparison to the average steak that Russ brings camping with him and that generally gets cooked over an open fire. After dinner it was off to the public viewing area at Fort Kearny State Recreation Area.

The Sandhill Cranes are interesting in that they winter and summer in many different locations, but nearly all of them meet in the Sandhills of Nebraska in the spring and fall to stop, have a break, get some food and inevitably party in the middle of their migrations.
The weather on Sunday was wonderful, but as the evening wore on, it got progressively chillier. We were able to bundle Corwin up satisfactorily, but I remained a bit cool. The cranes were supposed to show up at around 6ish, but they didn't arrive until 7:15ish. We nearly gave up on them, but another fellow told us to stick around as there was a large flock in a field just over over a couple of hills. We waited it out and got to see many formations of birds flying above us. Without exaggerating I would guess that there were at least 10 t0 20 thousand birds in the sky. They never did land in the river near enough to us to get any good pictures, unfortunately.
The next morning, it was cold and rather foggy. We got to another public viewing site at around 6:30 but never did see anything other than some light ghostly cranes flying overhead. You'll notice the cool hat I'm wearing. It's an old Mack Trucks stocking cap from my youth that I found in my folks house this year. It was a present from my father from when he must have been close to my age.
Later we went to Rowe Sanctuary and saw many cranes flying over the river. Corwin had a grand time playing on the path to the viewing blind. Rowe gives out guided tours to viewing the Cranes in the evening and morning, but Corwin is still too young to go on one of these.


After leaving Rowe we cruised a couple of gravel roads where we saw a truly impressive flock of cranes hanging out.
We crept up slowly on them and watched for a good minute before they all suddenly took to wing.
At first we thought that these birds have really slow reactions if they are just now running away from us. But then, we too heard the train whistle in the background. The trip was worthwhile, but also a bit disappointing. I really wanted to see the dance that Sandhill Cranes are known for. But we got some good intel for the next trip. I think that our best bet will be to have someone baby sit Corwin and Baby overnight so Anke and I can rent a blind and cabin. We also need to get a telephoto lense for out DSLR.

A special thanks goes out to Maurice for allowing me to borrow his Jeep. That allowed Inga, Andre, Anouk, Corwin, Anke, myself and all our gear to travel to the middle of Nebraska in one vehicle, making the trip much simpler.

Happy Birthday to Me

Normally my birthdays tend to suck. It's my own fault because I generally want something grand to happen and, really, grand things rarely happen. But sometimes they are nice. Last year I got an unexpected card on my birthday that made the whole day brighter. This year it looks like we are going to have some kick ass warm and sunny weather. Internet tells me- and Internet never lies- that it will be sunny and 76 today. I can recall one other birthday where the weather was so nice, I think it would have been '95. The weather was warm that day and I had a birthday party at the old Ottumwa house on Church street. Many of my friends were there. Cold beer was on tap. I made out with a cute girl at the end of the night. Good times.

Times change however, but this is going to be a good birthday too I think. I have, I can say with absolutely no impartiality, the world's coolest little boy. I have a lovely wife, that drives me nuts on occasion but loves me with all her heart, brewing another little boy for us. And if we do nothing else well, we make good kids.

Anke's sister Inga is visiting with Andre and their daughter Anouk. We went to view the sandhill cranes on Sunday and Monday. More on the later, I promise, but it was pretty cool if you're a nature dork like me. It makes me happy that I'm able to share silly things like watching birds with my wife.

There is a cake waiting for me when I get home and lasagna on the menu for dinner. It shall be a good day.

Napping

Little Corwin wasn't feeling so well on Sunday. At one point I picked him up when he was whining and he fell asleep on my shoulder. So I curled up on the couch with him and took a nap too. Somehow he managed to sleep with the sun shining on him through the window.

Truck

Saturday morning I took Mom and Dad's old battered truck (In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I did a bit of the battering to it myself. With a boat.) to get some cabinets for the garage. But first I had to shovel snow out of the bed. The cabinets were stored in a barn down a snowy hill in Iowa. But said battered truck climbed up and down the hill in 4 low like a billy goat. I was a bit surprised and impressed how easily it handled the short off-roading trip. Having the truck here has been really helpful the past couple of weeks. Thanks Mom and Dad.

The cabinets that I picked up are rather nice. Anke thinks that they are too nice to put in the garage, and wants to place them in the laundry room instead. I should have gotten the ugly cabinets.

Robin

I saw what must be the first robin of spring yesterday. Or a bird that was simply too stupid to fly south for the winter. It was perched on a branch outside the kitchen window, puffed up like a little gray and orange ball. The robin says it is spring, but the snow on the ground says it isn't.

Pictures from Home

There are deer sleeping in my back yard

I'm not sure how I feel about that.