My So Called Life

Halbach Baconfest

/ Shane / 8 Comments

Around November or so, Nate “Bacon” Halbach gave me a call.

“You’re never going to believe this. There is a bacon festival in Chicago. On my birthday.”

It seemed like fate. Tickets were a bit on the pricey side (V.I.P. presales were over $100), but we knew we had to be there.

“No problem. We’ll buy you a ticket for Christmas / your birthday. Pack your bags my friend.”

Nothing could stop us from going. Nothing, except for the fact that the tickets sold out in less than 10 minutes.

In the end though, this turned out to be a good thing, because it spawned an idea so awesome, so epic, that just the thought alone stunned me in my tracks. I give you the first annual Halbach Baconfest.

It took Chicago Baconfest 10 minutes to sell out their tickets, but ours sold out in 1 nanosecond. Take that Chicago Baconfest!

I knew if we were going to do this thing, we had to do it right. Planning and preparation were required. I think Nathan expected that we’d just cook some bacon and call it a day. I think he was impressed several times throughout the day at the seriousness with which we approached Halbach Baconfest.

The night before we presented him with his Halbach Baconfest tee-shirt, so he could wear it on Saturday. It should be noted that, not knowing there would be tee-shirts, he brought his own bacon attire. But we needed the official items with the official logo of course.

So Saturday morning we started the day with piggy-shaped pancakes. These didn’t have bacon in them per say, but I think they were in the spirit of baconfest, and sort of set the tone.

We didn’t actually have any bacon with breakfast, which might seem strange, but breakfast rolled immediately into the bacon taste test. So there was bacon to be had. We tried to buy fancier or more exotic bacons than you would regularly buy for your daily use (read: no Oscar Meyer). There will be more details on this portion tomorrow, but this was really the only time we had straight up bacon all day.

After the taste test, we played “Pin the Tail on the Piggy”. Evie did phenomenally, although she had a height advantage in the sense that the tail location was a little low for an adult. I guess I can’t really use that as an excuse though, since I missed the easel entirely and put my tail on the wall. I wasn’t the worst though, Nathan put his partially up the stairs (I’m not really kidding!). Evie loved it and is dying to play again. I think she also enjoyed making all the piggy tails (she did the cutting and some of the curling).

Finally, it was time for the big feast (well, I’m fast-forwarding through hours of making food, including over an hour-and-a-half of straight bacon making. 54 ounces of bacon had to be cooked!

Our feast included Blue Cheese Coleslaw, Cheddar, Bacon, and Fresh Chive Biscuits, Bacon Wrapped Dates Stuffed with Blue Cheese and another set with Feta and pecans inside, Bacon-Balsamic Deviled Eggs and finally a Maple Apple Bacon Cake with Maple Glaze. Overall, everything was very good, but I have to say that most of the things didn’t seem to be that improved by bacon. For example, I couldn’t help but think that the cake would have been improved by the (::gasp::) removal of bacon. Still, for Baconfest, it was a good mix of things that really went together. I think we all agreed that the Blue Cheese Coleslaw was the standout, but the dates were pretty tasty, and certainly the most interesting. The Blue Cheese Coleslaw was the one thing that we had before, so we knew that one was good.

Finally, it was time to enter into the final phase of Baconfest: Kevin Bacon. That’s right, we had a copy of Footloose and we weren’t afraid to use it. Footloose was one of a handful of movies we had on VHS when I was little, and we watched it to death. I have to say, Footloose totally holds up! It was just as good as I remember it being. Kevin Bacon is an American treasure.

Watching it as an adult though gave me a totally different perspective on the movie. Those kids were totally out of control! I don’t know whether dancing would necessarily make them act worse, but it probably wouldn’t have helped. So I guess now I’m kind of on the side of John Lithgow. His daughter man…she should have been locked up.

The plan was to have some bacon-salted popcorn while we watched the movie, but nobody had the stomach for it after the earlier bacon feast. However, we weren’t too full to do some Footloose dancing…

Everybody cut Footloose!

Good News! All crime in Chicago has apparently been solved!

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Good news, folks! Apparently there is absolutely nothing for the police to be doing in Chicago.

Yesterday I got pulled over on the highway. Warning only, no ticket, and it’s a good thing! My speed? Going 60 in a 55.

Officer: “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
Me: “I honestly have no idea.”
Officer: “Do you know how fast you were going?”
Me: “No. I was just keeping up with traffic.”
Officer: “You’re operating a motor vehicle and you have no idea how fast you were going?”
Me: “I could take a guess…but no, I couldn’t say for sure. If I was passing people, I would have looked, but I was just keeping up with traffic.”
Officer: “What if I told you you were going 80?”
Me, thinking: “Oh crap, I was going 80?”
Me: “Well, I would be surprised, but I was just keeping up with everybody else.”
Officer: “Well, you were going 62. But I’ll put down 60 so I can just give you a warning.”
Me, thinking: “I was only going 62??”

First off, I think we can all agree that going 5 over is pretty standard anywhere in the country. Second off, if you’re going 55 on the highway around Chicago, you are a hazard to traffic and you’re probably going to die. Without question, the average is somewhere around 70 mph or so. Everybody goes 70, every day, right past cops and nobody bats an eye.

“But you were technically speeding,” Sara gleefully points out. Okay, I suppose. But why was I picked out, out of the hundreds of cars around me going exactly the same speed? I have a theory.

Usually, one is very aware of where all the cop cars are at any given moment. In this particular case, I didn’t notice he was behind me until he was *right* behind me. So I think that he was trying to go very fast (speeding if you will), and I didn’t get out of his way fast enough. So he thought to himself, “This guy must not be paying attention, I’m going to pull him over for something.”

There is no way someone can justify to me why I got pulled over for going 60 mph on the highway.

Indianapolis

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Last weekend, we took a quick little vacation down to Indianapolis to visit my sister.

One of the first things I saw when I stepped out of the car in Indianapolis was a man with phone taped on his head. Forget bluetooth, this guy just grabbed some masking tape and wound it around his head 3 or 4 times so he could work and talk at the same time.

I’d like to think this set the tone for the whole trip.

So we got down there Saturday, and Saturday was the Jewish holiday Purim. The whole week at school they had been building up to Purim, so Evie was really excited about it. So before we went we found a Jewish deli downtown to stop in and get a traditional hamantashen. Evie had made hamantashen at school and couldn’t stop talking about it, so we knew she would be pretty excited about this.

So we’re standing in the Jewish deli and I didn’t see any hamantashen. The conversation went something like this:
Me: “Do you have any hamantashen?”
Guy: “What?”
Me: “Hamantashen.”
Guy: “What?”
Me: “Hamantashen. You know, triangles? Today’s Purim?”
Guy, confused: “No, we don’t have any of those.”
Now look, even a year ago I wouldn’t have had any idea what hamantashen were or when Purim was. But then I don’t own a self-proclaimed Jewish deli. I wasn’t standing under a sign that said, “Let’s Nosh“.

I was probably more disappointed with this than Evie, since she had an M&M cookie instead. That tends to make the disappointment disappear.

So we checked into the hotel, and luckily, Evie managed to slip some castanets into her suitcase before we left, so everybody was very happy to see us, I can assure you. We were right next to Lucas Oil Field (where the Colts play) so it was very easy to find our hotel. I found Indianapolis to be very navigateable.

We hit up the Saffron Cafe for dinner, and it was very good. As expected, Evie loved the falafel, and Oliver loved the spinach dip stuff. As for myself, my tilapia tajine was awesome. A tajine is like a beautiful clay bowl with a pointy lid, so when you cook the food all of the juices are kept in.

The hotel provided breakfast, but Sunday morning could only be described as a breakfast disaster.

There was some kind of big hockey tournament going on, so there were about a hundred 11 year old boys and their associated families, all trying to eat breakfast at the same time. Evie was set on making a waffle, so we had to wait for about forever in line for that. They actually ran out of batter at one point, so we had to wait on that. Finally I got her squared away and decided to go for a waffle myself. I was only the 2nd person in line at that point, and there were two waffle makers, so I figured I was set. Well, the guy at the first waffle maker secretly had several cups of batter and proceeded to make waffle after waffle. The kid at the second waffle maker couldn’t figure out how to do it, and ruined a few waffles before finally getting it right. Just as he was about to walk away…waffle on the floor. Finally I gave up and settle for just a bagel.

Afterwards, there was no trash bag for my trash, so I stood around waiting for that for about 5 minutes. The family made it all the way to the room and then came back looking for me, since I had the key. “No worries,” I thought, “At least Evie isn’t around to see me snatch one of these delicious looking doughnut holes…” Or so I thought, because the lady in front of me took all 6 remaining doughnut holes. All in all, it was a sad 45 minutes.

As sort of a side note, why does the world hate decaf drinkers? Sara and I got coffee from the lobby Saturday night and it was awful. On Sunday morning the decaf was out, so we got regular. It was about 100 times better! If they hadn’t been out of decaf I never would have known that they don’t just have crappy coffee, they just have crappy *decaf* coffee!

Obviously the main event was the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. I would have to say it lived up to the billing. We spent SEVEN STRAIGHT HOURS at the children’s museum, and we definitely didn’t see everything. This is unprecedented, and I never would have guessed that we would have lasted that long.

The museum is expensive, but it turns out it wasn’t that bad of a deal. Once you’re in, there are quite a few free programs, in addition to the museum itself. In particular, we caught a free showing of One World, One Sky in the planetarium, something that we had happily payed to see all by itself.

There were plenty of neat things to see, and a pretty good mix of things for younger and older kids. I would have loved the dinosaur stuff when I was a kid. As an adult though, my favorite was the Chihuly glass, which made for some great pictures.

One other funny thing from the museum: I have seen toys from my childhood on display in museums before, but this is the first time I’ve seen my first car as an exhibit. They had a Chevy Celebrity in one of the exhibits! Way to make me feel old.

After the museum marathon, we were worried about the kids’ behavior, so we hit up a pizza joint, Bazbeaux. Very excellent pizza and just what the doctor ordered for dinner. We had enough for leftovers the next day as well.

We had tentatively planned on going to the zoo the next day, but it seemed like a little much, so we decided to spend a little time at the Eiteljorg museum instead. The Eiteljorg is a Native American museum, and it was a lot better than I thought it would be! First off, the building itself is beautiful, maybe my favorite part. The Red/Black exhibit about the interrelated history of Native Americans and African Americans was fascinating. And the kid’s section was much bigger and much more interesting than I was anticipating. Well worth a short trip!

One thing I didn’t mention was the amount of time we spent swimming in the hotel pool. This is certainly something I enjoyed a lot as a kid, and one of the best parts about staying in a hotel. We sure got our money’s worth out of that pool, believe me! Oliver really loves playing and splashing in the water. Evie likes being in the water, if not splashing.

On the way home we decided to stop off at Fair Oaks Farms. We had seen the signs from the highway, and an organic dairy seemed like a good diversion. However, I have to say, “No thank you”. It would have cost us $27 for our family to go, which seems very excessive. Call me naive, but I thought they just opened up their operation to tours to spread their brand name. We’ve gone to all kids of cheese factory tours, etc. that didn’t cost anything. We ended up getting an ice cream, but even that was pretty expensive. In my opinion, not worth the stop.

Overall, I would say Indianapolis is a great little vacation from Chicago. We had a great time. I was specifically impressed with the food. There were a lot of great looking restaurants, and we had trouble deciding where to go. And the Children’s Museum was everything it was billed to be. So for kids or adults, it’s worth a short trip!

Everything I know about kung-fu, I learned by raising kids

/ Shane / Leave a comment
  1. Stay on the balls of your feet – You gotta be ready to move. The second you’re caught off balance and flat footed, disaster is going to strike.
  2. Control the hips – It’s all about the core; you can’t trust the extremities. If you’re holding an arm or a leg or something, you might as well not be holding on at all. I learned this one during diaper changes. If you want a struggling kid / slippery eel not to move, you gotta hold on to the hips.
  3. It is important to center yourself before conflict – If you’re not zen going into a situation, then things are going to go bad fast. This isn’t just for physical conflict either, it’s doubly true for head-to-head power struggles with your toddler. Your mental health is a tenuous balance at best when you have small kids, but it’s important to hold it together as much as you can, or everything else is going to suffer.
  4. The best defense is a good offense – Get out of the house! Don’t put yourself in a position to fail. Occupy your kids before they get a chance to even think of mischief. Sometimes it might seem easier to just sit back and handle things as they come, but you always end up regretting it.
  5. The bigger you think you are, the harder you’re going to fall.Enough said.

Quick Hits

/ Shane / Leave a comment
  • These days, Evie insists on have tights sticking out of her drawer with her drawer closed, so it looks like legs sticking out. Those legs represent the Wicked Witch of the West.*
  • Nothing makes me feel less manly than having the alarm go off in the night. I guess I should feel the opposite, like big strong protector of the household, but really I’m just reluctantly jabbing a stick into dark rooms to startle anybody in there, ready to run at the first sign of trouble.
  • Although Oliver can’t walk yet, we discovered he can open the front and back doors. We have lever handles, and it turns out those handles are just a little lower than the rest of the doors in the house, so he can reach and pull if he really tries.
  • Babies are generally very good at getting you what you want, but a baby with sunglasses on is irresistible. I forgot about this since Evie was a baby, but it never fails. It’s like the atomic bomb of cuteness.

* EDIT: It has been pointed out that the legs would more correctly represent the Wicked Witch of the East, which is true. But come on guys, she’s three!