Last Week of Freedom

This week I’m enjoying my last week off from work.  Yesterday I spent it working on neighborhood treasurer things (and filled out paperwork for my background check for the NCAA), but today I slept in and watched the Simpsons on DVD for most of the morning.

We found the 9th season at Target for only $15!

Now I’m up watching tv and just hanging out before Rod gets home and we head to Costco to pick up TurboTax.  It’s not a very exciting week, but it’s relaxing and much needed before I start at the NCAA next week.

What are some of your favorite ways to relax?  How would you spend a week off in Indianapolis?

Heating at 100% of capacity

After learning that our furnace manufacturer had gone out of business, we ended up getting the correct replacement parts and our furnace is now functioning properly. It will be nice to wake up to a warm first floor tomorrow!

Everything looks different

It’s hard to not notice that we changed the look of the blog. Let us know what you think! We might tweak this one a bit in the future too, so your opinions are valued!

You may have also noticed that www.rodandjess.com redirects to our blog now, since the wedding info is sort of outdated. Maybe we’ll put something else up there in the future, but for now it’s blog blog blog.

Heating at 50% capacity

We woke up Saturday morning to a 56 degree first floor. Luckily our insulation has been keeping things from freezing. The gas fireplace helps stabilize temperatures too. I tried doing all the basic stuff to make sure I couldn’t get the furnace working again on my own so now we have someone coming out tomorrow morning to restore our heat.

We had a couple friends over last night to watch the Colts game and drink some winter beers. They didn’t complain about the temperature so now I’m thinking about just leaving the furnace off to save on gas this winter. Then again I’m not sure if they complained about the lack of a front door but we should probably replace that.

Rich O’s Public House

Italian beers in glasses and a pink elephant Delirium Tremens tap in the background.

When is a restaurant worth driving 2 hours to get to? When they have some of the best pizza anywhere and the best beer selection in the state!

Rich O’s Public House is the home of the New Albanian beers, which are always a huge hit at beer festivals and yet they’re not bottled. Each year at the end of the year they collect a huge number of rare beers to put on tap for their Saturnalia festival. This year since we both have a considerable amount of time off for the holidays, we decided to make a day trip down there.

We shared an order of their spicy beer cheese dip and ordered a huge refrigerator pizza. The refrigerator is a thin crust pizza, prepared in a deep dish pizza pan. The pizza is then topped with a deep dish pizza’s worth of toppings. One piece will fill you up and two will leave you stuffed! We tried a couple Italian beers (Malthus Birolla and Shangrila) as well as a number of other great beers. At the end of the night we brought back a growler of New Albanian’s Bonfire of the Valkyries, a tasty smoked black lager.

If you ever find yourself near New Albany or Louisville, we highly recommend stopping in!

Happy New Year!

Have a very happy new year!  I’m hoping that 2009 is even better than 2008, which, although there were a lot of ups and downs, was a great year.

Enjoy New Years Eve and be sure to get a cab if you’re out and drinking! 

Happy Holidays!

We made it through the night, but we did hear that the car was spotted in the neighborhood last night around 8:30PM. 911 was called so I’m sure we’ll hear something if they were caught.

I’m just glad we went from this:

To this:

I think the second looks much better! 

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and if any of the Harbisons are reading this, we missed you last night!

Merry Christmas, thieves!

I have some bad news!

This morning on my way to work, I received a call from ADT letting me know that our alarm was going off.  Of course I immediately panicked and told them to send a car out and try calling my wife (who I would later find out was on the phone with 911).  Jess called shortly after and informed me that while she was upstairs, someone kicked in the front door and stole our TV.  Yes, the very TV we were so excited about last year around this time!  The alarm must have frightened them and caused them to grab the biggest electronic item they saw and evacuate because the XBox and Wii were both sitting right there (along with Jess’ laptop and purse).

Good thing a Nintendo Wii isn’t of any value this holiday season?

I would say that we got pretty lucky, even though that sounds weird.  They only stole one thing and it was something that can be easily replaced.  Our door is completely ruined, though. The police response time was very prompt, our insurance agent (who is also a friend of ours) was very attentive and informative and got a door repair place out immediately.  The police dusted for prints but couldn’t find anything of use and Jess gave a description of the vehicle they drove off in.  The door is currently replaced with a big reinforced fake door made of plywood and bolted shut.  We probably won’t have a new one until early next week.

I don’t think I like this new door style.

Despite intensive damage, the jam held!  Too bad the hinges didn’t.

And this is what happened to the frame.

The police let us know that in burglaries like this, they usually attempt to strike again in the following 48 hours now that they know what we have in the house.  This pretty much ruins our holiday plans as we were planning on going to visit the Harbison side of the family tonight.  Instead we get to house-sit our own house.  Everyone here is okay including the dogs.  Hopefully next year’s Christmas is a big improvement over this one!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

New Opportunity in the New Year!

I have some good news!

Last month before Thanksgiving I was laid off due to Tribune trying to get some things under control before declaring bankruptcy earlier this month.  Rod and I figured things out and we knew we’d be okay until the middle of next year with cutting down on spending.

Almost immediately, I went into job search mode and have been applying just about anywhere with openings that had positions that I was qualified for!  I’ve had many interviews (a total of 12 in 6 weeks) and am pleased to announce that I will be starting at the NCAA Headquarters in a few weeks!

A few pictures of the beautiful building I’ll be working in (it’s actually right next to where we got married - I’ll be parking in the same garage as the State Museum!):

Here’s the view of the NCAA Headquarters from the canal.

Here’s the front of the building behind the Hall of Champions.

I’m extremely excited to be working in Member Services and am looking forward to the quick commute.  I’m also excited for the opportunity to be working in such an exciting field!

Brine your turkey

There are a lot of ways to cook a turkey.  Roasting, grilling, smoking and deep frying are just a few.  The past two years we have brined and roasted our turkey and it has been the juiciest turkey I have ever tasted.  Mike, from Hoosier Beer Geek, brined his first turkey this past week and verified that the brining method makes the best turkeys.

I could go into a lot of scientific detail about why brining works, but I would just be repeating everything I’ve heard or read.  If you’re interested in such things, there are a ton of articles if you search Google (or just watch Good Eats or check out Alton Brown’s I’m Just Here For the Food).  We used Alton Brown’s Roast Turkey recipe and would highly recommend it.  In fact, our turkey, green bean casserole, dressing and sweet potato pie were all based on Alton Brown recipes.  I’m not sure if we’ll try to mix things up a bit next year or keep using these recipes since they turn out so well.  By brining the turkey and using the clever little aluminum foil shield over the turkey breast, the white meat came out moist and tender and the dark meat was fully cooked.  Seriously, next time you roast a turkey, try that recipe!

We do have a lot of turkey leftovers, so we’re trying to come up with creative ways to use them besides sandwiches.  I’m thinking I’ll give a Thai red curry using turkey meat later this week.  We’ll see how that turns out! My only regret is not making a stock out of the remaining bones.  Maybe next year.

Any suggestions on how to use the rest of the leftovers?