So I had some ribs over at a friends place last night that were quite good. I’m not normally a sauced ribs fan… A love for dry rub ribs usually occupies to much of my heart to leave any room for sauced ribs! However, I may have to clear a small space in there for these sauced ribs.

Due to the typical Tyler style of cooking and knowing that I will always be modifying this recipe (along with every other “recipe” I try) I should put a disclaimer in here about following the portions… I payed more attention to the ingredients then I did to the measurements…. and I didn’t write it down… And we all know about the typical Acorn memory…  so modify with impudence!

Rib Sauce (all measurements seemed for a baby back size rack of ribs)
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So our President wrote an article for the washington post today

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/04/AR2009020403174.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

I’m not really sure what to think about it yet, but my first thoughts are a bad feeling about it.

So politics lately have been pissing me off. I agree with Kevin… but I think I am still a little bit in the anger mode. In fact politics has pissed me off enough that it makes me want to run for local office. I get the feeling that as long as I am honest, stand for what I truly believe, listen to others, and freely tell others what I stand for, what I plan on doing, when I fail, and when I have no clue what I am talking about…. I wouldn’t have to know a single thing about politics, and I could still do better then the majority of politicians. So what if I did run for office in Elko? Say county commissioner, or a councilman… do any of you know what that would entail? I obviously don’t want to give up engineering so it would have to be part time. and some friends pointed out that I might actually do good…. I would have the mining base, I would have quite a bit of the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) base for I’m friends with quite a few of them… I would have the hippie/climber’s base… and I would have the church base….

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/nyregion/12marriage.html?em

So I am now for the first time a honest to goodness home-owner.

Here’s pictures of the new place…

And I already made a trip to the pound… you know to just start looking for a dog….

Yep this is what I came home with.

Shade and Morgan

So a friend sent me this article that was quite interesting. Figured I’d see what everyone’s opinion on it was. It’s how some couples are dealing with both parents wanting a career outside of the home but not wanting to give up  kids. So it’s how they’ve worked out trying to split keeping house and rearing children as evenly as possible. It definitely makes some good points in the article and is an interesting one to ponder and mull over. I would also love to have the thoughts of my sister-in-laws and the other women on this board with kids. Seeing as it’s a bit harder for me to imagine things from their perspective. After all us guys are so much easier to understand.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15parenting-t.html?ex=1214020800&en=20c1b7ba0515c327&ei=5070&emc=eta1

So I was just recently (as in last night) Confirmed into the Anglican/Episcopal Community. This has of course turned my thoughts to confirmation itself and why do we do it? So these are some thoughts I formed this morning in a email to a friend. Any thoughts on the matter?

It all started with a simple enough question. “Do you feel like you have a new identity?”

So it doesn’t feel as if I have a new identity per se, but I can definitely feel the weight of importance of the decision. It feels like you have a new set of responsibilities. You officially renounce evil and vow to follow Christ and repent of evil every day you sin. It’s not that I didn’t have the responsibilities before, but now I am fully accepting those responsibilities. It feels like this, when you are saved/accept Christ as Lord, you are doing this out of faith, love, and fear of one who is Mighty. At this point you may not even really be thinking about the consequences. You just know that God is God; you are who you are, an unworthy creation loved by the creator, and you can do nothing but call him Lord. Then the next step, you get baptized and you do this because you love your Lord and he has commanded you to follow in the steps of baptism. You are His, and now you must take on the sign of his covenant and his Lordship. The next step after this is conformation, and in some ways this is the weightier of the steps. This one should be taken on with full awareness. This is the point were you say, I have realized the consequences of my decisions and I am prepared to make known my resolve to follow through, not in my own strength but in the Holy Spirits. I confirm that God is my Lord, his will is my command, and I am a member of his covenant community. You again say, “I do renounce evil. When I fail I will repent and seek his strength. When I am lost He shall guide me.”

That’s about the best way I can describe the difference I feel after being confirmed. I don’t know yet if I am correct in my observations, but that’s kinda how it feels looking back on my experiences and trying to reconcile them with what I know of the Scriptures.

So here’s a good recipe for some quick and easy Veggie Burritos that a friend made recently.

Food:

Vegetables (I use Onions, Green Peppers, mushrooms, and sometimes random peppers)
Olive Oil
Garlic Salt
Italian Seasoning
Cheese (I use Feta, my friend likes Mozzarella)
Optional: Tofu (I just tried it with tofu and it’s a good addition.
Tortillas

Directions:

1. Cut up the Vegetables
2. Place in plastic bag and add a dash of oil, and your seasonings (plastic grocery sacks work amazingly) and shake up
3. Turn oven on Broil, Line baking pan with Tin foil and cook vegetables until slightly starting to brown
4. Place Vegetables and cheese in Tortillas then either fry in a pan or bake in the oven.

Have any of you heard of muxtape.com? It’s a pretty neat site where you can upload up to 12 songs at a time to make a mixtape that others can listen to and it’s free to set up. I think it would be a great way for us to share music ideas with each other. I found out about this site from my friend Casey. She’s definitely high up there in my friends as having some of the best taste in music, so if you want to listen to her muxtape it’s caserray.muxtape.com.

I set up one but haven’t had a free moment upload anything. Once I get some songs uploaded however I’ll add the url for it in the comments.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/19/library-built-into-a.html

I was completely amazed and jealous by this persons Staircase. It made me start thinking about how completely overboard I could go if I owned a house and all the places I could turn into bookcases. I could in affect live in a library instead of a house.

So I just felt my very first earthquake. Despite it being a 6.3 the fact that I was about 80 miles from the center and our office building is probably built on mainly fill material… It wasn’t too exciting. Almost dissapointing for a 6.3 earthquake.

I just had one amazing Thanksgiving dinner. Not that I don’t usually enjoy amazing Thanksgiving dinners every year. I was thinking though just now about food in general. What makes food appetizing? Last week I went hiking and ice climbing all day. So by lunch time I was of course starving and needing some energy. My lunch consisted of 2 bagels (carbs) and a can of mussels (protean). Not your normally appetizing meal. If I had it now I don’t think I would find it that tasteful. However at the time, it was the most amazing lunch I remember having. Even this Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t as amazing to me as that lunch was when I had it. I don’t really even remember what it tasted like.

I find it interesting that we go all the time to these expensive restaurants in search of amazing food, and there I found it in the backcountry in a not normally appetizing form. Maybe the search itself exceeds the actual product… or maybe we are looking in the wrong spot. To bad I don’t have the answer to everything. Sometimes I think that would be kinda of nice.

Goal: to see all the orthodox Christian churches of a community working together, and to see the establishment of a council for this purpose.

• In a national sense, each church would be part of their denomination and subject to its authority.
• In a local sense. Every orthodox church in that community would be part of the local council.

Purpose of this council:
• Provide a means by which all the orthodox churches in a community could and would work together to minister to the community, and each other; and to provide means by which all the churches could provide for the widows and orphans of their community.
• Ensure Orthodoxy of the community churches that are part of the council
• Help inform churches if new members are currently under church discipline from their previous church (if that church is part of the community).
• Any other purposes that this council should fulfill?

To reach this goal I believe we must think with a long term commitment rather than short term ideas. If you must, think of it in terms of a war. In a war you expect the war to take longer than you initially thought. You plan strategically in terms of winning the war and not necessarily winning the every battle. Many battles you will lose, but you may still win the war and reach your goal. I do not believe I will see this goal come to fruition in my lifetime I am planning now in hopes that the generation of my grandchildren or there grandchildren this will happen.
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So I would like to purchase my own copy of the Book of Common Prayer. However I am running across quite a few versions. I’ve so far found the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer, the 1559 Book of Common Prayer, the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and the Book of Common Prayer by the Church of Ireland. Do any of you have any suggestions on which Book of Common Prayer would be better (even if it’s just a matter of preference)?

So a friend of mine out here is going the the 20th Annual Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival this weekend and I work just enough that I can’t go with him. I am quite jealous. 3 days of of bluegrass music. In talking together about bluegrass music however, a question was asked that I need some help with. Do any of you know of some good bluegrass stations that stream? There aren’t alot of stations here and the only radio station we get that plays bluegrass is the NPR station which only plays it, I think, once a week.