Revisiting and Old Friend

The bonus of selling my old motorcycle to someone I work with is that I can get status updates on how the bike is doing. The guy that owns it now has done quite a bit of work on it. He’s repainted it, changed the handlebars, changed the mirrors, cut off the exhaust pipes, and done a few other mechanical things. I got to see the bike today because he rode it to the hospital. It turns out he’s a Star Wars nerd, so he redid the bike with  a Boba Fett theme. If I pretend the decals aren’t on there I think it looks pretty cool. The nurse who bought it for the guy sent me a few pictures of how it looks now, so I thought I would share with a before and after shot. 

On a different topic, I joined a softball team with one of my friends. They play on Monday nights. The season was already almost half over, so I will only be playing 5 games, plus playoffs. My first game was this past Monday. It wasn’t even scheduled to start until 9:15 and then didn’t actually start until after 9:30 because the games before had run late. I didn’t ever even have an opportunity to field a ball, but I was up to bat three times. I got two singles, and grounded out. Overall I’m ok with that since I haven’t played a real game of softball since high school gym class. 

Lastly, the song from the last video [that no one even tried to guess (jerks)] was Tuolumne.

Filling the Quota

I don't really have a whole lot to talk about in this post, but as the title says, I'm filling my quota.

Last time I blogged about my amazing pizza. This time I will talk about my new craze: guacamole chicken salad sandwiches. I have been making a modified version of guacamole. I use lemon juice instead of lime because it seems like the avocado lasts longer this way. I think it might be the same concept as keeping sliced apples from turning brown by keeping them in water/lemon juice mixture. I also puree some squash and cucumber and maybe radish and asparagus in with the guac. I mix a couple table spoons of that in with a couple ounces of chicken. Add the bread, a slice or provolone, some slices of green pepper and some slices of squash or cumber and viola! It's delicious.

I recently watched Into the Wild. The soundtrack was all done by the same dude. I'm being vague so as not to completely give the answer away to this name that tune. I decided to try to learn one of the songs. I only have the first little bit learned, and I am playing it quite a bit slower than the real version. Your challenge is to tell me who the artist is and which song this is. Hint: the song is all instrumental....no vocals.... aaaaaannnnddd GO

The most amazing pizza

Today I made probably the best homemade pizza I've ever had. The crust was some that I had made a long time ago and pulled out of the freezer. It was a whole wheat dough with cornmeal and chopped almonds.

For the sauce I made a slightly modified guacamole dip. Avocado, lemon juice, a few slices of cucumber, a couple spears of asparagus, a couple slices of jalapeno, garlic, and black pepper. Then I sprinkled about 1/2 a cup of mozzarella on top of that. Next came some slices of red pepper, asparagus, a diced radish, slices of cucumber, a roma tomato, a bit of coriander, and basil. It was amazing.

Mmm Hmm

I don't really have anything spectacular to write about, but today is the last day to get a post in to keep up with the two post a month goal...

This weekend I was finally able to get my motorcycle up to Mankato. We had a couple days in a row of good weather, but the next few days are going to be pretty ridiculous for May. Soon enough though it will be nice enough to ride on a daily basis. I am still getting used to the bike being so much bigger than my last one, but I think it will all be good with a bit more experience on the bike. I'm currently looking into getting a new front tire which looks like it's going to set me back a sizable chunk of change.... sigh.

On Saturday I ran my first 5k race of the season. It went fairly well. I finished in 28:43, which is slower than the first one I ran in October, but given the abrupt change in weather and my lack of reconditioning in the warmth (it was in the upper sixties. A lot warmer than the 40-50s I have been running in) I'll take it. My foot and ankle have been fairly ok, but I'm still going to have to take it easy. The short run I went on tonight seems to have brought back some of the old pain. However, since it's going to rain and or snow for the next five or so days, I won't be running and it can get the rest it needs.

The fruit of four years of work

When I first joined quilt club, a lady named Brenda (who I haven't seen at the guild in a couple years) taught me something called English paper piecing. Since then, I've brought part of this project to work on at nearly every guild meeting. After all this time, I finally finished this quilt.

There have been a lot of ups and downs. I would get SO bored with it and not want to work on it at all. Other times I would work on it seemingly non stop. I set myself a goal of getting it done in time for the quilt show, which is coming up on April 20th and 21st. I got the top piecing done in February. My super awesome aunt Tracy did the top quilting in less than a week for me. She did a fantastic job. My other aunt Ali hand delivered the quilt to me at work so I could finish it up.

Putting the edging on this was probably the worst part of the whole process. I had to sew around the jagged edge of the blanket two times. It took a painfully long time. Then I had to carefully trim all the extra fabric and batting off before turning it right side out. This also took a painfully long time. Hand sewing the rest down was the easiest part of the whole finishing project.

In the end, I am really pleased with the outcome despite the quilt being so small for four years of work. It's about 56" x 68". It will be proudly displayed at the quilt show, and I would love to have everyone come see it. I'm also showing my two challenge projects. They are just two smaller wall hangings.

Goodbye Old Friend

It's the end of an era for me. After a winter of consideration, I decided it was time to upgrade my motorcycle. Stan (my old bike) has served me fairly well over the past three years. If you're not familiar and want to start from the beginning, click here. This was the first post I ever wrote about my old motorcycle.

There have been a lot of ups and downs in my motorcycling career. I had a lot of issues that frustrated me endlessly with the bike, but I learned a lot about how it worked and what I could do to fix it. In all honesty, I'm really going to miss working on little things on the bike. I had a few projects I wanted to fix with it if I didn't get it sold, but I found a buyer very quickly. I sold the bike to a nurse I work with who is giving it to her husband as an anniversary present, which I think is really cool.

Last weekend my brother Justin helped me pick up my new bike (which I am thinking about naming Pony). It is a 2001 Yamaha V-star 1100. It is quite a bit bigger than the Honda, but I think once I adjust to it, I will really enjoy it. Right now the bike is stored in my mom's garage. I am hoping to get it moved up here as soon as the weather is consistently nice, but I'm not sure when that will be.

The new bike is a bit dusty, but will look really spiffy once I get it cleaned up. I'm pretty intimidated by this bike. I know so little about it compared to the old bike. It will be a whole new adventure learning about this one. I hope I am up for the challenge. This bike came with a windshield, saddle bags, a passenger back rest and luggage rack.  I would like to take it out one longer cruises and maybe even get an overnight trip in sometime.

There was a whole big to do in getting this bike purchased. The guy I bought it from decided to let me know at 6:30 pm on the Friday before the Saturday I planned on coming to look at it that he had a loan out and I'd need to get the lien card. He was from a very small town, so the bank was not opened on the weekend. I didn't want to make two trips to see the bike and I work weekdays, so I was not sure how I could purchase the bike without getting screwed over. In the end I got a cashier's check written to him and his bank and had him sign a bill of sale specifying that he would use the check to pay off the loan. Then I had to trust that he would mail the lien card to me. THEN he showed me the title for the bike which early that morning had been chewed apart by his dog. I was reluctant to buy the bike with so many stupid little issues with paperwork and such, but I ended up going for it. I got everything I needed and the title was officially switched to my name this morning.

Regarding last week's movie quote, the line is from The Big Lebowski. Lately I've been going to pub trivia. I decided to throw in one random trivia question that came up during one of these outings: How many ghosts visit Scrooge in the book A Christmas Carol? Think hard. Our firs "obvious" guess was revised once we thought about it a little bit more.

It Really Ties the Room Together

Every since I moved into my apartment I've been thinking about getting an area rug. I never got around to buying one because I couldn't find one that I thought was quite right for a price I wanted to pay. I looked around random stores, at garage sales, and on craigslist but never found one. Then, I visited my aunt and she told me she had one I could have if I thought it would fit the room. Turns out it fit quite well, and the price was definitely good (cant argue with free!). The colors were a little darker than the quilt on the back of the couch, but they were all along the same range. It's taken me awhile to get used to having something covering the carpet (I kept walking in the apartment wonder what I'd left on the floor), but I definitely like the rug over bare carpet.  This week's post comes with a quiz. The title is a line from a movie. Name the movie.