Boo-yah!

Well, then, now that I have your attention... I'll pull the DeadJournal and say, "current mood - peachy". A confluence of good things have come together to create this peachiness. Actually, truth be told, it was mainly just the dinner going over so well. I could have dropped a spiked bowling ball on my foot today and still have been in a good mood. There's three main parts to tonight's blog effort, so read away. (Yeah, it'll be under Monday... *grumbles about inability to set the timestamp on his own*) Oh, and Lindsay, I owe you an email. It's forthcoming.

1. ¡Está lloviendo!
Tonight certainly looked like it was going to be our best chance for the first rain of the summer. It has literally not rained since I moved into my apartment in mid-April, mind you. It was damn hot today -- not necessarily as high a temperature as we've seen in the past weeks, but just the right combination of heat and wind to make it really hot. And, of course, since it's officially monsoon season, a really hot day breeds volatile thrunderstorm conditions later. The wind really picked up around 7:00 and blew all night, and it was a HOT wind, no cool breeze. As I was leaving the track at 11:00, I saw the first roils of dust moving across the parking lot. Of course, the really big storms get started around 6:30, so this wasn't going too be anything huge since it was already so late. We had a dust storm Tuesday night, too, and that led to nothing, so I was cautiously optimistic. As I was doing my chart work at the kennel around 11:15, I heard a noise which sounded like the wind had really picked up. It continued for a minute or so as I wrote on the whiteboard, until suddenly -- PLOP! I distinctly heard a drop of water fall. PLOP! PLOP! It took a second, but then I went to the door and threw it open, and... TA-DA! It was RAINING!! A LOT!! I was so happy, if all the dogs hadn't been asleep already I would've busted a move. See, when it rains really hard in the summer, water drips in through the swamp cooler vent in the roof (since the AC is on, the swamp cooler is off). So I put a bucket up on top of the crates to catch it, and since I was done with my work, happily dashed to my truck through the rain.

As I drove home, I started thinking about all the wondrous stuff I was going to post in my blog about it all. Then, as I pulled to the light at 44th and Washington, I noticed it was letting up. Well, crap. Like I said, it wasn't a big storm since it was so late already. Here's the fun part, though -- heading north on 44th, as I crossed Van Buren, it went DRY. Not a DROP of rain had fallen north of the Chinese Cultural Center or the 202, let alone when I got to my apartments. Gak! Less than a mile south of 44th and Van Buren, water was seeping in under the kennel's front door. A mile north? A nice rain-scented breeze. (Rain-scented, you ask? Actually, it's the smell of creosote oil from the bushes of the same name. The bushes, which are all over the desert, excrete the powerfully-scented oil, which gets mixed with rainwater and then blown ahead of an advancing storm.)

You gotta love this Arizona weather.

2. Dinner & A Movie
Well, the dinner went over GREAT. The ziti was a little crisp (okay, it was blackened on the bottom), but that was the only major mishap. Everybody seemed to like the Tequila-Citrus Carne Asada, and the Shrimp Sausage Creole Linguini was popular as always. BIG props to Tara, Ann, and Kristy for helping out with clean-up. That was a daunting task which they made significantly less daunting.

Zachary and I had been talking about going to see T3 afterwards, but after having been up since 6:00 AM slicing, chopping, mixing, marinating, sautéeing, baking, deep-frying, boiling, and simmering, we kinda decided we were a little spent. Besides, Z's allergies were acting up, especially after I chopped four different varieties of onion. His eyes swelled up and his nose clogged. Bleh. I had to call Mom and ask her to bring by some medications for him before he went to his card show in the afternoon.

Anyway, even if we'd decided to go, we probably would have called it off, because Jung brought Taboo. Woo-hoo! Word games! Count me in! Zach wanted to play, too, but since he's 13 and everyone else in the room was pretty much around my age, he got left out somewhat. Eh, well... he had fun playing with the buzzer. There was lots of shouting, fist-pumping, and rapid-fire insults... okay, most of it was from me. What?! I LIKE word games! (While Zach was still playing, he was on the opposite team from myself. When he took the card dispenser, I shouted, "Okay, guys, infield in!" ... Took a second, but it was my best zinger of the night.) (We have a loving, caring, older brother/younger brother relationship... I swear.)

So that was grand fun... our team 0WNED theirs. (No "3" in there... not quite as cool as a midget ninja jumping out of a trash can and scaring the crap out of you, I guess.) Oh, I almost forgot to mention... Zachary was finally defeated in Smash Brothers Melee! Rick was the man to do the job. Big ups.

As far as cooking goes... See, I love my job. I may gripe occasionally, but I love my dogs. However, as is the case with many an endeavor, occasionally you just need to get away and refocus. For 36 hours over the course of Friday night and all day Saturday, I didn't think AT ALL about the kennel. I was so focused on cooking, trying to keep on the schedule I had in my head, that I managed to completely disconnect from work. I can get like that during karaoke night, too, but it was SO much more fun doing the cooking because I actually had a concrete result (in the case of the ziti, literally concrete) afterwards. I just enjoy it. I don't even LIKE my own food that much. I'm a Rice-A-Roni and Velveeta Shells 'n Cheese kind of guy. I have 40 packages of ramen in my cabinet. See, I'm extremely easy to please, so if I'm satisfied with Maruchan ramen, why bother making chicken cordon bleu every night for myself? I COULD, but why bother? So, therefore, I'm hosting these dinners to satisfy my gourmet-cooking jones. I had maybe half a bowl of the clam chowder and a serving of the linguini, and one carne burrito, and that was IT last night.

So as long as people still want to come, I'll be doing these feasts fairly often.

3. Iron Chef USA
Yeah, you read that right. Iron Chef USA. Now, I'm sure most of you have picked up that I'm a big fan of Iron Chef. (I have the T-shirt.) I was hooked on the King of Iron Chefs tournament like most people were hooked on American Idol.

I was watching Good Eats or Unwrapped or something I'd Tivoed off of Food Network when I saw a commercial... "Iron Chef USA, this Saturday at 10:00!"... and I saw... William Shatner as the chairman! Zach and I were chopping vegetables at the time, and I must have said "WHAT?!" like 7 times in succession. I was floored. In the words of Jon Stewart, "I started to look around for Ashton Kutcher, for I was certain I was being Punk'd." Happy DAY! NEW Iron Chef, and in English of all languages? You could probably broadcast it in Hungarian dubbing with Portuguese subtitles and I'd still like it. Crazy go nuts!

So I checked my events guide on Tivo. Funny, searching the program list I see no Iron Chef USA. So I go to my Iron Chef season pass and look up what's coming on at 10:00 that night (Saturday), and according to Tivo it's... a regular Iron Chef. The Battle Onion, where Kunio Santo challenges Iron Chef Sakai. (Seen it.) Bleh! However, see, the Tivo updates its program list nightly, but it's beeen incorrect before, where the network has made a change in the programming, say, within a week. Since I hadn't ever seen a commercial for Iron Chef USA before, I decided to bet on Tivo being wrong, and I let it tape the show at 10:00.

So today, I call up the Iron Chef from last night, aaaaaaand...

Yay!

I've honestly only watched 5 minutes of it. It looks like it's going to be so good, I want to wait until I have a full hour to devote to it. (Today I had to watch Last Comic Standing from Tuesday night, since it's almost Tuesday again. That, by the way, is another show you should have been watching. Despite Jay Mohr.)

In closing...
So I guess that about covers it. I've literally been typing for an hour. Why? I don't know. It feels good to stick this stuff somewhere where people could theoretically see it. Steve and Nick got into a fiery debate over on Mark's blog about site usage and people visiting sites and stuff, and it got heated in a hurry. Since, frankly, I didn't understand most of what they were arguing about, I didn't want to take a side. But it got me thinking on a different tangent, about the importance of my site. I see people (like Annika) whose blogs get all kinds of random traffic, and for a while back when I started this thing up, I wanted mine to be like that. But, I've come to the realization that it's more fun to make an inside reference about midget ninjas and know that my loyal group of friends will know of what I speak. I don't have a lot of interesting political, sociological, or religious topics to air out. I just sat here for an hour and blabbered (clobbered?) on and on about [1] rain, [2] my party, and [3] Iron Chef USA (kick-ass!). And even if no one were to read it, I feel in some way like I've accomplished something. Because it's there. I have successfully placed what's in my head on the Internet. Interesting? Not really. Thought-provoking? Shit, no. But it's THERE.

And now, since my head is empty, I'm going to go fill it with Rice-A-Roni. Why? Because Rice-A-Roni is tasty.