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dcbc

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by dcbc

  1. They used to have these "Market Fresh" sandwiches that were something you might expect to get at Panera (of that time period) or Corner Bakery. Really solid. So, of course, they discontinued them.
  2. So my mom has Parkinson's and is in assisted living. For the last three or so years, we have reserved out the clubhouse at her facility and brought Thanksgiving to her. It's a nice space with a full kitchen, and it's easier on her. My sister called to reserve it in October, and someone beat us to the punch this year. "No problem," I say, "We live ten minutes away. One of us can pick her up and driver her over for Thanksgiving lunch and take her back afterward." I mention this to my mom, who, in this late stage of the game, is pretty irrational and fearful of going anywhere but the hair salon, and she basically clams up but makes it pretty clear that she doesn't want to do this. I talk to my sister about it, and she is fine with everyone coming to our house, but after getting the same reaction from my mom, suggests some alternatives like doing it on Friday or having it in my mom's tiny apartment. I quickly suggest that my older son might be going back to Austin for the UT/aggy game and Thursday at our place (since a lot of my wife's family might like to join us too) really is our only option. I tell her I'll handle getting my mom to be more agreeable. And so, a grown ass man and professional, I create a fall-themed, Thanksgiving lunch invitation with some form in MS Word and email it to my mom. After a few days of processing, she agrees. I was over there the other day, and she has it in a plastic sheet protector. Mission accomplished. So for this year, I've managed to simplify things. We're cooking turkey, dressing, mash potatoes, and gravy. All other sides and rolls, etc. have been farmed out appropriately. My niece is making a pie and anyone else can bring whatever the hell they want. I also recently bought a warming oven (and my wife bought my a stainless table to put it on so I don't burn down the garage/house). So timing the dressing and potatoes is less crucial and, instead of cooking the turkey on the WSM, I get to break out the offset and tend fire drink Bloody Marys on Thanksgiving morning. As some of you may have seen in the Thanksgiving-Day Spread thread, I have harvested a stunt turkey for drippings and veg for the gravy and made a crap-ton of brown stock. This weekend, I will make bread, cornbread, and biscuits to freeze/stale to use for the dressing. I'll prep the dressing and gravy the night before and cut up all the gumbo veg and make a roux to make that process easier when it's Turkey Gumbo time. I'm looking forward to a less scheduled/hectic Thanksgiving morning. But that's sure to change.
  3. After about eight hours, I had nearly 4 gallons of stock. I think I'm good for a while. My house will smell amazing for a week.
  4. I'd like to draw the curtains on that memory.
  5. I won't speak to others' food-snobbery, but I'd probably pick up any one of those on a road trip if those were my only quick options. But food snobbery aside, in any medium sized city, there always is a quick-but-much-better option for BBQ sandwich, gyro, enchiladas, or WP-tacos. That's not to say I don't have nostalgia for some of those food-orders (although as good as the enchirito might be, I don't recall ever ordering anything at T-Bell that required plastic ware). Maybe it's because, for example, Taco Bell isn't dirt-cheap anymore, and I have about half-a-dozen very good taco joints withing a few minutes of most Taco Bells around here. I am intrigued by that Arby's Gyro, but the last time I was in an Arby's was an overwhelmingly depressing experience.
  6. I came across that "perpendicular to the VHF signal source" thing on some long-ago post on the AVS Forum. I was thinking, no way such a minor adjustment does the trick, but damned if it didn't.
  7. Thanks, but see my post (#971) above. I got it figured out. I already had a preamp. Our roofers knocked our antenna off axis. I tried to re-aim it by memory the other day (had it pointed toward a majority of the UHF antennas), but I was off as far as getting ABC goes (ABC is 20 miles in the opposite direction for us and is VHF).. For our setup, ABC is the tough one to pick up, or so I thought. By setting the VHF arms of the combo, omnidirectional/VHF antenna perpendicular to the tower location it came in clear as a bell (5 green bars) with the help of the preamp. Without that pream, I get maybe one channel no matter which direction the antenna is pointed. Now I just need to source a cheap USB hard drive to set the DVR back up on my Tablo box.
  8. Indeed, they do. But only if you go inside. See Brisket's post above about the drive-thru.
  9. We're talking I rotated the antenna 15 degrees and it went from unwatchably pixilated to perfect reception. And I'm dealing with a relative low elevation with lots of hills and a ton of trees between me and that tower.
  10. So some potentially helpful advice for anyone who is picking up ABC (VHF) but only at yellow-bar level. If you have an omnidirectional antenna (figure-8) with straight VHF antennae (rabbit ears) horizontally on either side, you want the you want the VHF antennae positioned perpendicular in direction with regard to the VHF tower's location. I'm still shortening my cable run, but even before that, doing this took me from yellow to full green bars and perfect reception of ABC. Stay thirsty, friends.
  11. Here we go!
  12. Civil Service, to be sure.
  13. On this Veteran's Day, thanks to all of you who served our country honorably and selflessly. I will attempt to honor you by making the most bangin' pre-Turkey-Day brown stock ever. In addition to the carcass and bones of the turkey-for-ants above (a/k/a Stunt Turkey), which have taken a trip through the air fryer to roast up, I also roasted many reserved and frozen bones from pork shoulders, pork ribs, and two tomahawk ribeyes. Roasting some garlic, onions, and carrots now (celery goes in raw) and will be spending my time off today simmering all of the goodness out of this barnyard, skeletal cornucopia, which ultimately will end up in dressing, gravy, and gumbo. Pictures incoming.
  14. My situation is more complicated. Roof mounted antenna. Most towers are to the southeast (around 20 miles). ABC is probably 20 miles to the north and is VHF. With a preamp, I pick everything up, but ABC is super glitchy. Tomorrow, I'm going to do what I should have done some time ago and take the slack out of that cable run (I used a section of cable from our old satellite installation and have several feet of looped cable I never cut down. I figure a few feet shorter might get me there).
  15. And if you "cut the cord," you have cables running all over the house from cable. You can just plug the antenna into that, although an amp might be helpful in that instance.
  16. I checked the stuff I bought with a meter. High teens isn't bad at all. It's not as good as the white oak I get from my friend, but it does pretty well in a pinch. We lost a couple of small trees last year, and I've been drying the resultant splits since April or so.
  17. This won't help, but I have a friend with land and a lot of trees. I go out there and help him cut/split a few times a year, and he keeps me in free cooking wood. In a pinch, I run by academy and pick up a box of post oak splits. They run about $18. They're kiln-dried, but the moisture content is in the high teens, they burn well, and smell great.
  18. It's a 10 lb turkey purchased to harvest bones for stock and and to collect drippings because I want to make things ahead of time with these ingredients. Unfortunately, I don't keep a small roasting pan around. So, yeah, it looks, how should I say, unimpressive in its girth. But one of those drums had a nice crisp on one side, and the dogs and I suitably were impressed. /TLDR. Yes, it's a turkey for ants.
  19. Truth. I've got a cheap Leslie pedal, and the lack of a dry/wet adjustment really holds it back. It would make a killer, subtle effect on leads with one, but without, it just sounds like I should be playing "Let it Loose" or "Cold Shot." So my options are either to spend big bucks on another Leslie pedal (been there/done that), or buy a decent line splitter, and have a little "Leslie" sitting next to the main amp. I don't hate this latter idea, but I can't get enthusiastic about spending big bucks on a line splitter.
  20. If I had that, I would do nothing but play Allman Brothers leads (badly) much to the annoyance of all. Then, I would set it to whammy mode . . . much to the annoyance of all. Cool pedal. I had a Digitech Whammy pedal for a good while, and it was a lot of fun.
  21. According to those in this thread, yes. Football broadcast on ABC will show up in ESPN3.
  22. Last time I tried that, I couldn't even get anyone to answer me on the intercom. There is no worse drive-thru on the planet than Popeye's.
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