Woo Hoo!

Today is my last day of work this week!

Marie has a music teacher seminar to go to tomorrow so I decided to take the day off and take the kids up to my parents. My nieces are also on a day off school (as my kids are too) so the boys are gonna have fun playin' up at the farm. I'm gonna take a complete change of clothes for them 'cause there's no doubt in my mind that they will get muddy.

Ya know, lately the biggest issue I've been havin' is that I hate havin' such a long commute to work. I don't feel like I have enough time at home with my family and I certainly don't have enough vacation time... 15 days plus 3 personal obligation days. I've already used the 3 PODs and 2 vacation days for Marie's specialist appointments and I used 6 days for our trip down south, one day of vacation for this past Monday with the doctor visit for the kids and tomorrow for Marie's seminar. That leaves me 5 days for the rest of the year. My trip to Algonquin will use two days and the remaining three days will be used at Christmas. Oh well, what choice do I have eh? I get what I get.

I was chattin' with Jim about people and their "addiction" to exercise. He talked about how the endorphins that are secreeted are similar to what some drugs cause. We talked about Jill in Alaska and how she's having trouble stopping to allow her knee to heal and I said I didn't quite get it... if she would just stop, she would heal and then she could get back to what she loves. Jim helped me understand how she could be "hooked" on the physical activity. I guess that's why I'm a fat-ass... I'm not addicted! LOL!

I'm typing this while I'm on a conference call and boy, the topic is no where near exciting. I should be excited but I just can't get motivated... it's the usual large corporation of lots of talkin' and very little action.

Next random thought... I made some chicken the other night and seasoned it with cumin, cayenne pepper, salt pepper and paprika. It had a curry type of flavour and it was very enjoyable. I think I might do that again.

On the topic of food, I was lookin' at a smoker at Bass Pro as well as doin' a lot of readin' on the topic of smoke cookin' meats. I really don't think it necessary to get a smoker since I have a pretty big BBQ. I'm just going change the way I do the smoking... I'm going get a larger metal pan to but the wood in and I'm going to try bigger pieces of wood rather than the chips. I'm also going to put in a pan of water to keep the meat moist. I think my first attempt will be with ribs although I'd love to try brisket... but brisket requires long cook times, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1-1.5 hours per pound so I could be looking at a 15 hour cook day. It's supposed to be great food though so we'll see. Marie will prolly think I'm crazy but that's nothing new.

Well, back to work now... Have a great day everyone! In fact, have a great weekend!

g.