Tonight was game night. But first, Jeff took some pictures of Tim for his profile.
I was able to convince a group to play Automobile. As I remember it, (being a month later -- so sad) I ended up in second place. My problem was that I never diversified much. I think you definitely need to sell the high end cars as well as the middle or low end cars.
Lately, I have been experiment cooking basic black beans. I was intrigued with a recipe from America's Test Kitchen. It involved performing two things that I haven't tried before (at least with beans). These were brining and cooking in the oven. And the recipe is as follows:
Remove any stones or ugly beans from a one pound bag of black beans. Soak them overnight (unrefrigerated) in four quarts of water with three tablespoons of salt added (dissolved of course).
Discard the water and rinse the beans thoroughly a couple of times to remove the salt. Cooking beans in salted water will toughen the skins. However, beans soaked in salted water will help create a creamy texture.
Put the beans in a pan and cover them with water. Add sliced garlic, a couple of bay leaves, oregano, onion powder, and some chopped pancetta. Bring the water up to a simmer. And then place the covered pan into an oven set to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Cook the beans for an hour.
The beans came out great! The next time I am going to try cooking some meat in there. The temperature is perfect for converting collagen into gelatin. I think a pound of Ox tails would work well.
I was a little worried when I browsed the Ace Race site and only saw events for Waco or San Antonio. Not only that, but I couldn't attend them because I would be traveling to Florida then. But there was no worries, they did indeed hold one in Austin that I could attend.
Jon and I practiced a little bit before the event. Unfortunately, I had thrown one of my two discs (you can only use the two special Ace race discs) into the brush. We must have spent twenty minutes looking for it. And I was almost ready to call it lost. But I spotted it!
I had fun again at the tournament. You only receive one throw for each basket. The only thing that counts is if it goes in the basket (ace) or if it hits any part of the basket or pole (metal). Unfortunately, I did not hit anything. And only got close once (or at least it looked close from the angle I was at).
For lunch, we decided on some burgers at Casino El Camino. Their hamburgers are pretty good. But I do wish that they would have a better quality of bun than the cheap white bread burger bun. And it seems that the Pecan Street Festival was going on at the same time.
As we were walking to the car, I spotted a little Chihuahua dog pulling a cart behind it. I don't know what the deal was with that setup...
Mike hosted a session to try out his new game that he purchased, Endeavor. It was interesting. An area control game with four different abilities that you can specialize in. However, I don't think that we will play it again anytime soon. So it is hard to judge a game based on one playing...
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At this cafe, you get what the person before you ordered. The next person gets what you ordered. link via
It looks like Monument Cafe planted a new herb garden on some unused land. Which is certainly cool. All restaurants should do something like this in my opinion. Actually, if it were up to me, I would design a restaurant where the entire roof would be a greenhouse. And it would collect and store rainwater as well. The first floor would be a parking garage. All of the outside trees would be fruit or nut bearing trees. Heck, you could probably maintain a honeybee hive somewhere on the property as well.
We went to Old Settler's park for some disc golf today. I was quite sad to see even more trees taken down. The years of drought have taken their toll. I really hope they plant new tress to replace them.
Fortunately, we missed the Outlaw Singles tournament. There wasn't anyone out on the field except us.
Jon lost his disc in the trees on hole 4. Can you spot it?
Apparently, it is so hot out here, that you need to water the trees with ice. But it was probably just discarded from a cooler for the Outlaw Singles tournament cleanup.
I like how they used towels to mark a temporary mando. Unfortunately, these trees are dead and will probably be cut down eventually.
I got one easy birdie on the "B" hole. And another one on hole 12.
And, of course, we ended with a trip to La Selva.
Jeff told me about this place and that I had to try it out. They have some pretty good sides. The tamale potato casserole was good, the apple slaw was nice and tart (perhaps a little too tart),. The pulled pork was on the dry side, however. And, while the desserts sounded good, they turned out to not be homemade. The Cheeky Monkey Parfait used banana pudding from a can.
My yogi tea gave me an interesting pattern of condensation. Which I turned into a desktop background.
We went down to Leander for some disc golf today. Man, with the recent rains, this place is overgrown! And the Hedge Balls were fruiting as well. Jon took some home for insect control.
It was hard to tell where the field is supposed to be and where the rough begins. It was all rough today.
It was also rough when we threw our discs in the water. Which was in abundance today.
I did make one birdie today though.
We stopped by Burger Central for lunch afterwards. I was hopeful. The had pictures of what meat looks like when it is cooked rare and medium rare (as well as the other degrees). So I ordered a burger with blue cheese cooked "blue" (or rare). Unfortunately, it was cooked well done. And they forget the sweet potato fries as well. I guess the new waitress was partly to blame since she was having a meltdown. But I wouldn't come back here to try it out again.
Monument Cafe has had a rather unspoken battle with a handicapped driver. There are, of course, real handicapped parking spots next to the door. But apparently not enough of them. So this car has taken to trying to fit in a spot that is not designed for it. Repeatedly. The poor rose bushes suffer the brunt of the assault. And I wonder how exactly the wheelchair gets on and off the car. Maybe they don't bother in this case.
So the new response to this situation has been to install a "do not park here" sign. Which was ignored. I wonder what the next step will be?
Gravitt held a meetup at a new location. A pizza restaurant called Plank's near Parmer and IH-35. I tried their plank (style I guess) pizza. It was meh. But they did have ZiegenBock on draft for a buck. You can't beat that! Hopefully the meetups will continue with a better frequency than they have in the past.
The tables were a little small for gaming. But it's a restaurant. What do you expect?
Jon and I started out with a quick two player game of Race for the Galaxy.
My big game for the day was a game of Age of Steam on the original map. Jeff had wanted to play it and I was more than happy to oblige. We had two other people join who were also new to the game. Unfortunately, this was not their type of game. But they did keep playing all the same.
My position was not the best. Jon was all alone on one section of the board. I was in the middle of the board surrounded by people. I know Jon commented during the end game that he made a mistake by not upgrading his engine. While he had better goods than I did at the end, t he was not able to catch up to me.
One of the first drinks that I started to make was iced tea. The amount of sugar in Coke/Pepsi was getting to be too much for me. So I started to look for an alternative. Iced tea sweetened with some lemon juice and agave nectar did the trick. I like the convenience of Celestial Seasonings tea bags. And I found four flavors that I liked at HEB (Mandarin Orange Spice, Black Cherry Berry, Raspberry Zinger, and Wild Berry Zinger). Unfortunately, once I find something that I like, stores stop carrying them. Luckily for me, Amazon does carry those flavors. So I buy a case of each and it lasts me for about a year.
It is not that hard to make. I fill by teapot full of water and bring it to a boil. I then take eight bags of tea and steep them in the water for 6 minutes (actually, you can forget about them and let them steep longer than that without any harm). While the water is coming up to a boil and/or steeping in the tea, I squeeze the juice of three lemons into a clean 64 ounce plastic container. I then pour in 100 grams of organic raw blue agave nectar. I fill the bottle about half way with cold water and wait for the tea to finish steeping. When it is done, I port the tea in and fill it up to the top with cold water and place it in the refrigerator for when I need it (and for it to chill back down).
A hundred grams of agave sweetener in a 64 ounce bottle works out to be 36 calories per 8 ounce serving (10 grams of carbohydrates).
Jeff wanted to play a new area control game about ancient gods. Unfortunately, no one had played it before or read the rules beforehand. So I am sure that we got some things wrong (not even counting the mistake when assembling the board).
While I love dice games, this one had a fatal flaw. When attacking, an enemy unit is killed on a four, five, or six. So far, so good. However, if a six is rolled, you get to roll the dice again for an extra attack. For as long as you keep rolling sixes. This was used to devastating effect on Jeff and Tim almost wiped him off of the board. Thankfully, we called the game after an hour or so and I was able to leave. I was not enjoying that game at all.
Jon and I are attending the Blue Skies Over Texas disc golf tournament. We met pretty early at Starbucks to car pool down there.
The unique thing about this tournament is that we play Mary Moore Seawright course twice. For the first time, we play it normally. And then, after lunch, we play it in reverse. The tees are placed where the baskets normally are and vice versa. Notice the backward spelling for the second round on the score card?
We practiced a little bit before the tournament started and I got a couple of birdies. An auspicious start indeed.
I had fun at the tournament. The only negative thing about the day was that it was quite hot out there. I must have drank four liters of liquid during the day. It was also dry and dusty. So when I finally got home and showered, the water was running dark brown.
I went to Old Settler's Park for some disc golf today. It looks like another tree is down.
And two more trees were removed on the hill. Sadly, with these mando trees gone, the hole is much easier. So someone moved the tee to a new location.
And is there a new tee for the winter variant?
Apparently, there is a new Kelli attraction in the park.
I finally got a birdie on hole 16. Leaving me +2 for the round.
After a hot round, I cooled off at La Selva. Mmm, agua fresca and Mexican ice cream...
My iPhone unexpectedly had a software problem today. Unfortunately, it exposed a catastrophic flaw. This morning, as I was out playing disc golf (using the phone: recording scores and taking pictures), I noticed a strange message on the phone. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of the message or record it. But the gist of it was that it could not authorize itself and it needed to connect to iTunes. I was able to still take notes and take pictures while it was in its problem state. But the message was worrying me. So, I thought that if I turned it off and then turned it back on, it might clear itself of the hiccup. Boy that was the wrong move! Now the phone wouldn't even finish booting up! And it was now a very expensive brick.
So, when I finally got home, I connected my iPhone to the computer and tried to sync it. This was what I saw. My phone is locked with a passcode and it will not allow a sync. Normally, when the phone boots up, it requires you to unlock it with the passcode before it completes the bootup sequence. Well, I guess it checks for authorization BEFORE it allows you to unlock it! Now I cannot connect to it. Argh!
So I searched online and found a process to get it into recovery mode. You have to power it off forcefully (press and hold the power button and then slide to power off) and then press and hold the home button when you plug in the iPhone to the computer.
Great, my iPhone is in recovery mode. Now, all I need to do is perform a recovery option in iTunes and we are all set. Wrong! I cannot restore it. The helpful error message of 23 is my only clue. Sigh. By this time it is getting late on a Saturday. So I race down to the Apple store to see if something can be done. The store was freakin packed! And it looks like the genius bar is full for the day. But I hang around and an employee walks up to me and asks me if I need help. I explain my problem to him and he checks it out. When he comes back, he tells me that the USB connection is broken and that they have replaced my phone for me. Yea! One thing went right today. Well almost. I had been a bad person and not been performing regular syncs with my phone. So when I went back and restored my phone, I found out that the latest backup was a month old...
