The new meal plan.

This past week has been a fairly boring week.  I seemed to lack the motivation to do much, so I did nothing.  Well, almost nothing.  I began a new food lifestyle (diet) from a book that Sandy wanted me to buy titled "The Belly Fat Cure", by Jorge Criuse.  Of course this necessitated several trips to the grocery store, health food store and central market in Fort Worth.  The one thing I noted is that a good deal of the items listed in the book are unobtainable and if you do find them, they are super expensive.  For example, a can of soft drink with xylitol sweetner is $1.00 per can. Compared to my Sams Diet Caffine Free cola is less than $.25 per can. 

But, we pressed on and purchased what we could and made minor substitutions for others.  The entire book is based on the premise that you should not take in more than 5 sugars and 2 carbs (this has to be explained and I wont go into it here) per meal, for a total of 15 sugars and 6 carbs per day.  With this magic formula you will loose weight since it keeps the insulin in your body from spiking and storing fat.  The cover of the book boasts you will loose 4 to 9 pounds the very first week.  Of course that did not happen for me and though I ate strickly by the meal plan, I still managed to gain 1 pound.  This was after enduring 3 days of diareah flush out due to the change in my diet and the added fiber that I am taking in.  Sandy then informed me that xylitol often has a gaseous effect until your body gets accostomed to it and finally yesterday my system seems to have settled down.  Now I am just waiting for the weight loss that is claimed by the book. 

I spent some time with Ryan (Sandy's son) this past week helping him target potential customers for this upcoming summer season.  Ryan owns Majestic Lawnscapes, a business that mows lawns, performs custom landscaping, sprinkler system installs, and high end night lighting for homes/businesses.  He taught me how to bid a business and we will work this week on submitting bids to companies in our area to help build his customer base.

Saturday, Jeremiah and Sandy took apart the old cabinet style TV that is in our bedroom, removing the entire guts from the cabinet, so I can install shelves.  The shelves will go in the cabinet to hold the DVD player and the Direct TV tuner box.  Sandy wanted to keep the cabinet since it is a solid wood cabinet with bifold doors and makes a nice looking piece of furniture.  So this week I will install the shelves before I go to Vancouver for the Olympics.  I need to order a new skylight this week as the one we have in our master bathroom is showing its age, so another trip to the roof is warranted.  Wish me luck and no more broken bones, or the trip to the Olympics will be out of the question.  Have a great day.

Beef Bourgoignon

I cooked the Beef Bourgiognon on Saturday and let it sit over night to serve on Sunday when Amanda, Danny and Remi came to visit.  It was a complicated recipe, but I loved every minute of it and when we warmed it up the next day and served it, wow was it good.  The hardest part seems to be finding the ingredients for the dinner, but other than the uncut bacon with rind, I was able to find most things.  I substituted regular bacon for the unsliced bacon and just did without the rind.  We also made new French Bread and it was much better this time.  Good solid crust and good air pockets inside the bread.  Still took a long time to make, so this may not be an everyday event. 

Danny, Amanda and Remi came to visit during the afternoon to have lunch with us.  They flew in from Rhode Island for a family reunion of sorts and came to spend some time with us.  Remi just turned 3 months old and he is as cute as ever.  Amanda is Sandys neice. She is 5'7" tall with light brown hair or sandy blond with highlights.  She has a very warm smile and is a very cute young woman of her mid-20s.  Her husband Danny looks like he should be in a male model commercial, since he keeps himself in shape and is well built.  He is slightly taller than Amanda and also has a winning smile and great personality.  He is one of those people who has a great personality and always makes me laugh.

We all ate the Beef Bourgoignon and agreed that it was outstanding.  For me it was well worth the time it took to prepare and was a wonderful addition to a great reunion with the family and seeing Remi again. We served it with rice, steamed green beans and of course fresh French Bread.  Sandy made homemade cheesecake and homemade brownies for desert and all in all, I would say it was a wonderful meal. 

Jeremiah is back at work now and I received an offer of employment from Edison Transportation to go to the Winter Olympics as a shuttle driver.  The funniest part is that they continue to send me emails that go to my sons email address instead of mine and this morning they called my sons cell phone to talk to me.  I guess they are so busy performing all the last minute details that some things are bound to get mixed up.  Anywho...

With the idea that I might be going to the winter olympics, Sandy and I have been busy buying and gathering the clothing items I need to go.  We drove to Fort Worth and all over Weatherford on Monday and Tuesday with very little to show for it, but Sandy loved spending a day shopping.  It made her very happy, so naturally I was happy.  All that remains to purchase is a pair of good winter boots, which must be "Black" in color, making this a bit difficult, along with a good pair of polarized sunglasses for the snow glare while driving.   The nicest part of this entire gig is that they put you up in a hotel, and provide three meals a day along with a good salary.  I certainly can't complain.

Enough for now, I will write again soon. Keep Sandy Shipp, a friend battling cancer, in your prayers.
"

A day in the kitchen

Yesterday I decided to bake French Bread from scratch using the recipe found in the Julia Childs book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". It was great fun, but the bread did not come out of the oven until 9:15 last night and did not look quite like I had imagined it was going to look. It seemed to be a little more dense and thick than I had expected, so I will try it again. As far as taste was concerned, it was good to eat especially with butter, but what is not good to eat with butter on it. It takes an amazing amount of time to make bread and the recipe covered 10 pages in the cookbook. Even though I made a real mess in the kitchen, I really enjoyed it.

We spent some time yesterday afternoon going to the store to purchase the items needed to make beef bourguignon. This will be my next attempt at French cooking. It is no wonder why the French like to eat, all the recipes seem to have butter, lard or wine in them. Who can go wrong with that combination and they spend the entire day preparing the food, so they are very hungry by the time they have the meal prepared. I still need a bottle of Burgundy wine to cook with and yes, it takes the entire bottle in this recipe.

I worked under the kitchen sink yesterday installing a water filtering system that had been in my RV and is great at removing all types of contaminants. It was a process that naturally caused me to go to Home Depot for parts, but what a fun trip. The weather outside was quite cold and with the wind of yesterday, it made it a challenge to get out of the car. I tried handing Sandy the credit card at the gas pumps so she could get out and pump gas into the car, but she respectfully declined the opportunity. :)

Our cold water pipe in the master bathroom froze yesterday morning and we were waiting for it to thaw and shoot water all over the bathroom. Luckily last night at 5 pm, the water came back on without any leaks that we can see so far. We put a portable heater on it last night and left the faucet dripping so it would not happen again. Wrong. It happened again this morning. I am ready for this cold spell to be gone. It is not even really winter yet in Texas. That does not normally come on for another few weeks, when the Stock show comes into town.

I called my boss Will Wenholz yesterday afternoon and told him I was not going to Phoenix to train new drivers this year. This will be the first year in 6 years that I have not been a trainer, and I think I will miss it somewhat, but the cost of being a trainer vs what you make in salary are no longer worth it. In the past they have helped with relocation and rent, but not this year. So I am unemployed for now.

Funny how life is sometimes. I had not heard a word from the Olympics until yesterday afternoon, after I spoke with Will and resigned myself to the fact that I was going to be unemployed, when the Olympics called. They have sent me an offer of employment contingent upon a few items that I feel I can pass or take care of, but will not count my chickens before they hatch. So for now I am happy to be unemployed and if the job at the Winter Olympics comes through, then I will be excited to go.

Yesterday afternoon I received an email from Will Wenholz, my winter boss who explained that if we (D.C., Ja and I) decided to go to Vancouver and work the Olympics instead of train for HAPA in Phoenix, that the company would be less than pleased. The language was very strongly worded and caused me a little anxiety and mixed emotions about the response of a company that I have felt very devoted to. As you know it does not take long for anxiety long to turn to anger and I found my feathers were ruffled yesterday afternoon. So I have some soul searching to do and make a decision what I want to do.

I love training new drivers and I feel a good trainer with a positive attitude is a great benefit to the company and to the student or potential employee. I know it made a great difference to me having a great trainer and I try to pass that on to my students. But, it is not the part of the job that you make any real money working since it any wages are wiped out by your living away from home expenses and travel expenses. Until this coming season, I have the past 6 years as a trainer without Sandy. This will be the first year that Sandy is to accompany me during training and I am looking forward to it. So Thursday will be the day I decide which way I am going this year, be it Vancouver or Phoenix.

This morning I drove Sandy to the dentist office in Fort Worth and she had her first checkup and professional cleaning in several years. She has not had dental insurance, so she does her own cleaning and dental maintenance here at the house and her teeth look great. The dental hygienist took all the required x-rays and gum checks to find that Sandy was going to require a little more work than originally thought. Three hours and $400.00 later, she returned to the car, not able to eat any hard or crunchy items for 24 hours and consumed four Advil to help her cope with the pain. She loves dentists almost as much as I do. :)

J Dub received a letter from the Nebraska unemployment office advising him that his appeal on the ruling of not paying him unemployment benefits from Werner Trucking had been overturned and he will be paid all the back pay he is due. This is great news since he borrowed some money from Sandy and I until he found employment. He has obtained a job driving school buses and seems to really enjoy it. We hope he can make enough money to support himself, and save a little to pay his way back to Alaska this summer where he will be going to drive tour buses again.

A big cold front is coming toward Texas Thursday and we spent the afternoon preparing the outside of the house for this impending storm. Where is this global warming Al Gore is talking about. The Bering Sea froze more two years ago than it has in decades, so what is going on with mother nature?

Also today, I received my order of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". Sandy I watched the movie Julie and Julia a few weeks ago and I ordered the books, so we can begin to cook some of the meals they showed in the movie. Wish me luck,,,we may need it. :) Have a good day and talk to you soon.

To Phoenix or not to Phoenix? That is the question.

Yesterday I had a conference call with my winter boss Will Wenholz from Princess Tours (now known as Holland America-Princess Tours, "HAPA" for short) regarding our training time in Phoenix, AZ. The "our" part is my friend D.C. who has been a fellow worker and friend since 2002 that I met in Alaska on my first year there and Ja, who is D.C.'s girlfriend that also works for HAPA tours and will be a first year trainer. D.C. is slightly older than I am, taller than I am, but who isn't, ha ha, about 6 feet tall, gray/black hair that is thinning somewhat on top who keeps himself very fit and must be handsome since all the women seem to go gaga over him. Ja is a cute and spunky redhead, several years younger than DC and they seem to be a good match.
Will is a young man in his late 20's or early 30's, very slender and has a "Howdy Doodie" attitude toward life that makes him very pleasant company. He is very efficient and gets back to you on any request almost immediately, so he is an ideal boss. (I like getting answers when I have questions)

We discussed the upcoming training of new employees that will be conducted in Phoenix beginning with training the trainer in Seattle on January 17th. The biggest issue to all of us is that we have been tentatively offered jobs in Vancouver for the Winter Olympics. We would all be driving transfer buses or shuttles to the Olympics. I have always wanted to experience the Olympics and what could be better than to be at the Olympics and get paid for it? Will agreed that we should go to the Olympics when we are offered the jobs not on a tentative basis and train for HAPA again next year or help out at the end of this training season. So, we are waiting for final word from Vancouver and then we will make our final decision. More on this as things develop. Until next time. Jim

The beginning for 2010

The year is 2010 and I have followed Amanda Hein's advice and decided to begin a blog for 2010. This blog will include my travels for the year and photos of fun times in my life. I have several trips scheduled for this year and will try to update this blog everyday with news or photos of my latest adventure. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are scary, but most of the time they are a true experience that I hope will come through my writings.