Don't Close Your Eyes

So I was looking on You Tube this evening for piano instruction on how to play the opening to the song Don't close your eyes, by KIX.   Well in my search I came across this gem.   Enjoy!

Elk Head

I was just out on the back patio with the dogs.   It’s 7 PM and it’s 48 degrees out, hard to tell it is January around here.   It will change soon enough. I believe they are calling for snow next week.

We went to the auction house this morning and did a walk through.  Didn’t see anything that I needed, did see some older style snowshoes but I don’t need them.  They did sell of two large mounted Elk heads.  They were really nice, but not for me.  Each of the heads went for $125.00 which I thought was pretty cheap.  But they are an acquired look and you would need a big place to mount them.

Then we headed over to visit a friend of mine who works at Pikes Peak Auto.   They buy/sell older classic cars and parts, http://www.pikespeakmotors.com/ .   We visited for bit and then Candy and I went and walked through the junkyard to see what we could find.

Grabbed some lunch, hit the grocery store and then headed home.   We unloaded the groceries and decided to head out and did a quick 2/mile loop.  Once again the weather was awesome.   It was so nice that I hooked up the sprinkler and got some water on the back yard.

Tonight for dinner I made seafood linguini, roasted potatoes and we had bacon wrapped jalapeño’s stuffed with cream cheese.   Sort of an odd combination but oh boy was it good.

Bacon wrapped Jalapeño’s stuffed with cream cheese.   

6 Jalapeño’s cut in half and seeded

6 slices of bacon

Cream Cheese

12 toothpicks

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut your 6 bacon strips in half to give you 12 pieces.  Fill jalapeño with cream cheese then wrap with bacon and use toothpick to secure.  Place on cookie sheet.  Bake for 15 minutes then turn and bake for another 5 minutes.

To spice it up,  add jalapeno seeds into cream cheese.

Happy Hiking

End of Week Update

Wow, glad the week is over and that the weekend is finally here.   Even with what we have going on at work I did manage to get 16/miles in this week.  I should have gotten more but I am working my way back into it.

Next week will be tough as I have meetings all day, everyday next week in Denver, will try to hit the treadmill if I have the energy.  The drive to Denver and back is a real pain in the ass.

Not much to report on today.  I did a quick 2/mile loop this evening.  It was a little chilly out, but I was dressed for it.   Tomorrow may be difficult as I have to be up in our Denver office.  With today that gets me up to 9/miles since Saturday.

I cut the left over pot roast into cubes.  Cooked up some noodles and then put the cubed meet, noodles and a can of mushroom soup into a casa-role dish and baked it for 30 minutes at 350.  Everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Happy Hiking

Put a roast in the crockpot and then cut up the celery, carrots, onions, potatoes, added the vegetables and then my spices.   Set the crockpot to low and then headed out the door for a quick walk. Walking down our street I passed six deer roaming through the hood.  Yesterday when we came home from the store, we had eight deer in the front yard, eating oak nuts from the scrub oaks trees.   The nuts they eat look just about the piles they leave.  Worked my way down around the park and then back to the house, 2/miles round trip.  Once again the weather was great and it was great to be outside.

When I returned to the house I loaded the truck with items I need to get over to the shop and everything I would need to clean the Avalanche.   Candy followed me over to the shop and she cleaned and wiped out the inside of her car.  I picked up all the tools I had left out from when I was working on the truck.   Once we finished I fired up the Corvette and we took a drive up Highway 24 and through downtown Manitou Springs.  Once back I locked everything up and set the alarm as I left.

I drove the Avalanche over to drive-thru car wash to get it cleaned up.   They have free vacuums that you can use when you come out the other end.   I spent a good hour and a half cleaning and detailing the inside and out.   Looks pretty damn good!

The Pot Roast was awesome!

Happy Hiking

TLV

Last week I picked up a couple new bands on iTunes.   I have been jamming out this week to The Last Vegas (TLV) http://thelastvegas.com/    If you are into jamming guitar riffs and  sleazy rock tunes then you will probably like these guys.  My favorite songs include: The Other Side, Evil Eyes, Whatever Gets You Off, I'm Bad and more.  I have been listing to the 2009 album release called Whatever Gets You Off.   The album Bad Decisions was released in 2012

Another band to check out is Foxy Shazam http://foxyshazam.com/.  These guys seem like they would be cool to hang out with.  I really like their lyrics and the horns they incorporate.  The lead singer Eric Sean Nally, has a Freddy Mercury look going.  In the video's I have seen he is also quite the showman like Freddy was.  I downloaded the album Foxy Shazam released in 2010 and The Church of Rock and Roll released in 2012.

Happy Hiking

Sunshine with temperatures in the 50's

I have been meaning to get some things down in the blog but things have been crazy busy at work.  Earlier in the week it was damn cold, single digit cold. I only walked one day and needed to get back out.  Candy and I headed out this morning and did a 5/mile loop.   The weather was great, blue skies with a temperature in the mid 50’s.   We hiked through BCP and up lower Gold Camp and around.   As we were coming down we spotted a coyote out hunting.   He was checking me out and I got lucky and was able to get a decent picture.

My bird suet hasn't gotten the attraction that I had hoped for.  We have lots of birds, but I have only seen one Starling on the feeder going after it.   I have three feeders hanging and I had just filled the other two before I added this one.  When they eat up the other maybe it will get their attention.

I had ordered some parts I needed for the Model A, they arrived but with it being so cold and busy at work I haven’t had a chance to get over to the shop and do anything.   Today we had to go to the store and get caught up on some house work, so maybe tomorrow I can get over for a couple of hours.  For dinner this evening I made fried chicken and mashed potatoes.  Candy made us a salad with egg, bell pepper, red onion, bacon, yummy.

Tucker & Dale

Woke up at 7:30 AM and decided that was too early.  Went back to sleep and woke up again at 10:30 AM.   I must have been tired, which I was because I stayed up until 2:30 AM watching the movie Tucker & Dale vs Evil.   I thought it was pretty funny.

 

Anyway after getting out of bed, I got dressed and we went out on little 2/mile walk.  It was nice out today, guessing in the 40’s when we left the house.   When we got back I tried a recipe from Birds & Blooms magazine to make up a new batch of Bird food.

The recipe made cupcakes but I just made two cakes.  The cakes I made were large enough that they will fit in a feeder I have.   Here is the recipe if you are interested.  I will keep you posted on how it goes and if any birds visit and eat it.

Melt 1 cup shortening and 2 cups chunky peanut butter over low heat, then mix in 5 cups cornmeal.   Fill cake pans and top off with your choice of nuts, birdseed or dried berries.  Cool in the fridge or freezer.   I used black sunflower seeds to top mine off.

Finished working on the stained glass window.  We got it hung this evening and it looks great.  The solution was easier than what I thought it would be.  I found a three ft extension cord so using it that solved my spacing issue.

Annie Oakley

I spent most of last night getting my firearms cleaned up and getting ready for our shooting outing today.   Before the holidays I had contacted the Pikes Peak Gun Club www.pikespeakgunclub.org/ about setting up a time to come out and see the facilities and do some shooting.   A couple days later I got a call from a George Sturdevent and we worked out all the details.

We got to the range this morning just a little before 10:30AM.  We met with George and another instructor, Mr. Larry Lambert.   Candy and Eric have not had a lot of shooting experience so getting some personal instruction would be a good idea.   It was good a good review for me as well. We spent the first 30 minutes going over gun safety and proper handling.

We then headed down to the pistol range and setup our targets.   Both George and Larry brought additional guns with them for our use.   Both had two .22 caliber semi-auto pistols and Larry had a .45 semi auto.  I brought my 9 MM semi auto, .38 semi auto and my 9 MM semi-auto assault rifle.

The instructors worked with Candy, Eric and I and showed us how to handle, load and fire the weapons.   Candy and Eric had a blast and did a great job shooting and hitting the targets.  Both of them had great groupings.   I didn’t do too bad myself.

After we shot about 150 rounds we then headed back to the club house to get some coffee and warm up a little.   It was a little windy out and that made it a little cold.

We moved to the trap range next.   Candy hit her first three practice shots and I think Eric got two out of the three.   I managed to hit two out of my three as well.  We then took our positions and away we went.   Candy was shooting a 20 gauge and Eric and I were shooting 12 gauge shot guns.  Candy was doing so well, we decided to give her the nickname Annie Oakley.

We each shot five trap, and then moved to the next position and would shoot again.   It didn't take long to use up the 100 shells that I had brought with us.   We all had a great time, made some new friends and are looking forward to getting back out again to do some more shooting.   The only request they had from Candy and Eric is that we wait until it warms up a little bit.

All in all it was a great day and everyone had a lot of SAFE fun.

Happy Shooting

Left my boots at the office

Oh it was cold this morning.  How cold was it Dennis?  It was so cold that politicians had their hands in their OWN pockets!  Now that’s pretty darn cold, but I braved it and made the 3/mile walk to work.  Not wanting to deal with the cold tonight, I snagged a ride home from a co-worker.

This morning the auction house called and let me know we snagged an old stained glass window and frame from the auction yesterday.   Not having a car created a bit of a dilemma, luckily there is a young kid working at our office and he let me borrow his.

When I got home this evening I started working on the window.   I added a rope light behind the glass and mounted brackets for hanging.  Cleaned up the wood frame and oiled, wiped the glass.   I went ahead and hung it so I could get an idea of what it is going to look like when done.  I am going to have to build a box around the window so that I can get at least 3 inches of distance from the wall to the glass.  The plug for the rope light 2 inches long and the glass is up against the plug and won’t lay flat against the wall.  Guess that will give me something to do this weekend.  It looks pretty awesome!   If you come across any old stained glass windows, let me know as I am in the market.

Yes, I left my boots at the office when I left this evening.   Luckily I have another pair that I can use tomorrow.

Happy Hiking

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2013! Here it is ready or not. Hard to believe that 2012 has come and gone, but it has.   I should probably do a retrospect posting, but I don’t see that happening or at least not this evening.   For New Years eve, we hung out at home and kicked back, worked on getting my task list updated and watched TV.   Watched the Ball drop in NYC and then hit the sack.

Did you make any resolutions?   If you did good luck to you and I am sure you can make it happen.  I made one and that is to spend more time working on my blog.   I figure if I can do that, it will keep me active and on the look out for new things to learn and share.

I have managed to keep pretty busy these last couple of days.   Spent Sunday at the shop working on the Model A and hanging on the new parts I got for Christmas.    I got it running and drove it out of the shop and it died.    I couldn’t get it started so I ended up using a chain and the Avalanche to pull it back in.   It was a trick doing it by myself, but I did it.

Once back in the shop, I hooked the charger back up to the battery.   I went ahead and pulled off the exhaust manifold and pull the exhaust pipe and muffler.   Pulled the carburetor off and am having a guy rebuild it for me.  Had to order a couple of other items and they should be here in a couple of days.  I am getting closer.

We went out this morning and did a quick two miles.   It was pretty cold out but we couldn't let that stop us from getting some miles on board for the first day of the New Year.   Candy snapped this picture of me this morning while on the trail.  

After got back we loaded up in the truck and drove over to the auction house.   They were having a big sale today.  The place was packed but we made our way through.   We found three items that we had an interest in.   We didn’t want to hang there all day so we placed absentee bids on the items.   No one called so I guess we must have been outbid.

It’s back to work tomorrow after having a week off.  I am ready to go and have lots to do.  I have a good feeling about what 2013 has the potential to be and plan on taking advantage of each and every day.

Happy Hiking