Scallops and Butternut Squash

Irregular updates seem to be a bit of a theme with me, but school will do that to you I suppose.

Anyway, today’s dinner came together as one of those “Lets see what I have in the fridge,” affiars. That’s quite common to me, as I usually don’t plan out what I’m eating more than a few hours in advance. So when I went and visited my grandparents on Thanksgiving I walked away with 2 butternut squashes, homegrown by one of their friends. So I’ve been keeping them around for these few weeks trying to come up with good things to do with them. Well I made soup with one of them, which was kind of disappointing, so I will have to try it again and get it the way I like it before I pass the recipe on. But today I realized that I had some scallops in the fridge from Trader Joes, so I thought I would whip up some seared scallops and butternut squash puree. This turned out rather nicely, so I added some toasted Parmesean bread on the side, as I thought the dish could use the dry contrast of the toasted bread to the soft scallops and squash.

This dish was actually quite easy to make, although it did take a decent amount of time.
You will need:
1 Large Butternut Squash
12 or so Large Scallops
Several Slices of good bread (slightly stale bread works even better for this)
Parmesan Cheese (I prefer to use the slab of Parmesan, as opposed to a shaker here because it tastes better and melts on the bread better, but if you have nothing else I guess that work.)
Butter
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil

So as you can, ingredients wise, this is rather simple.

First, skin, the butternut squash, and remove the seeds. (This is a deceptively difficult step, as butternut squash are very hard and have tough skins. Use a sharp knife and be VERY careful! Skin it first, then cut in half, and remove the seeds with a spoon)
Then cut the squash into pieces no bigger than 1 in square. (They don’t really have to be uniform, you are going to mash them anyway, it just makes cooking easier.)
Then put them in a pot of boiling water until the are soft enough to poke with a fork easily (about 10-15 min.) Enjoy the smell, its awesome!
While this is going on, preheat your oven to about 400-425 degrees.
Take your bread, and cut it into decent size pieces. You are going to be picking these up and eating them with your hands so they should be maybe bruschetta size.
Put the bread on a cookie sheet or roasting pan, and drizzle with olive oil.
Pop these in your oven.
After maybe 10 minutes when these are a bit crispy open up the oven, and throw the cheese on top. The close up the oven again and cook until everything is nice and melty.
MMm, Delicious...

When your Butternut Squash is ready drain them out of the pot, leaving just a bit of the water left. (Lacking a strainer I just used a slotted spoon to transfer the squash pieces from one pot to the other, then added a few spoonfuls of the water afterwards)
Add a hunk of butter to the squash and mash as if you were making mashed potatoes

Here I am going to go on a bit of a tangent about the wonders of my new immersion blender. I bought this off amazon to make my squash soup and it is my new favorite toy. It makes everything! I made soup with it. I made amazing mashed potatoes for Shepherd's Pies and I used it to puree the squash. Its amazing. I love it.

Anyway, so now you should have an awesomely delicious squash puree. Add some salt and pepper to that, just a bit, to make the taste pop a bit more.

Now, in a frying pan, turn the heat all the way up and add some butter and olive oil. Once that is nice and hot, add your scallops.
This is the tricky part. Scallops cook REALLY quickly, your whole thing will be done in less than 5 minutes, so you should have everything else basically done at this point, because you really need to only pay attention to the scallops.
So when you just have raw scallops, notice how flabby and sort of jello-y they are. When you cook them they firm up, but if you cook them too much they firm up to rubber. You want them in a nice middle where you can easily cut them with a fork, and they are incredibly tender, but not raw.
So you basically have to watch them.
So throw them into the frying pan, and let them cook for about 2 minutes. Then flip them over and cook them for another 2 minutes. If you’ve done this right, the outsides should just have hints of brown on them, and the insides should be a good solid white (not the sort of translucenty color that the raw ones are.)
If you can just slice through them with a fork with no problem you are great!

Now all you need to do is throw it on a plate and eat!
Lay down a bed of the Squash, and put the scallops on top. Add the bread to the side and enjoy!

I paired this with a Harpoon Winter Warmer, which was a nice ale with a rather good amount of spice flavor that went with the scallops quite nicely.

Here’s a picture of the final product!
Happy eating!

What I'm Eating: Classic Mac and Cheese

So after experimenting a little last time, I decided to go back to making something a bit more classic, and simple. Mac and Cheese! I was also craving it at the time, so there is that too.

You will need:
Butter-About 2 tbs
Flour-About 2tbs as well
Milk-About 2 cups, but you can eyeball it.
Cheese-Lots of it!
Pasta- I use about ¾ of a pound and its REALLY cheesy, and you end up with a bit of extra sauce. But thats not a bad thing!
Any veggies you care to add, I like peas.

Its actually a really simple recipe. Make a basic Cream Sauce, add cheese, pour over pasta. Eat!

So a cream sauce is basically just thickened milk.

First, put on some nice Prog-Rock. You are gonna need some good cooking music. You can't go wrong with some King Crimson, but I'm feeling some Mahavishnu Orchestra. Get that going nice and loud so you can rock out and cook. At the same time!

NOW!

Start of with a nice mid-sized saucepan.
Melt the butter in the bottom of the pan. Once its all nice an melted add in the flour.
You are looking for a nice 1-1 ratio of flour to butter here. You want all of the flour to be completely coated/dissolved in the butter, with none left over, so tweak accordingly. I trust you.

Once you have that, add in the milk.
Keep this over the heat, stirring basically constantly until its almost about to boil. You DON'T want to boil this milk. It creates a milk-disaster. Trust me. I've cleaned up many a milk-disaster kitchens.

This should be getting pretty thick as the temperature increases and the flour dissolves.

Once you are at a nice heat (don't worry if it isn't as thick as you want your sauce, the cheese adds a lot of thickness) you can start adding the cheese.
I sure hope you grated it ahead of time, or have the big bag of pre-grated lazy-man's cheese. If you don't, PANIC! AHH! HOLY CRAP EVERYTHING IS GOING TO EXPLODE....
Or not. (Remove from heat, grate cheese, put back on heat. Continue...)
Now add cheese. Lots and lots and lots and lots of cheese. Pretty much anything and everything works. In mine I added Cheddar, Monterey Jack, and Parmesan. It was super tasty. Use what you like!

Add the cheese in handful by handful stirring constantly.
This is my favorite part, I love melting the cheese...
Now stir this until all of the cheese is melted and you have a nice consistancy.
Here you are pretty much done! See, I told you it was easy.
At this point you can add any veggies, (peas... do it, you mother always said to eat your veggies, and what better what that covered in delicious cheese!) And some seasonings. I like to add some fresh black pepper. Makes it tasty.

Now, put your pasta in a bowl, top with cheese sauce and chow down! Its super good!

Variation I haven’t tried yet:
Adding beer.
You should be able to add a nice dark beer to this cheese sauce to give it some extra flavors, but I haven't figured that out yet. Need to do some more research. I keep drinking the beer before I can put it in the sauce..

Let me know how it turns out!

What I'm Eating: The Chicken Cacciatore Experiment

Hey guys, so I know its been a long time since I've posted something here, seems to be a bit of a trend, and every time I promise to be more regular. Well I'm not gonna do that again, but I do want to keep posting things. Well anyway, here's a new thing that I might keep doing if people like it. I'm calling it what I'm eating, and I'm gonna post recipes and things that I've cooked, so that if you want to try them you can.

I decided I wanted to try to cook Chicken Cacciatore tonight after shopping and seeing that chicken thighs were on sale. Thats what I get for shopping hungry. Anyway, I had a general idea of what Cacciatore was, but I'd never actually cooked it before, so I looked online to find a recipe as a bit of a guideline. I found one on the Food Network site, and with the danger of losing any interest people might have in me, here is the link: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/chicken-cacciatore-recipe/index.html It is literally the first thing that pops up if you type “Chicken Cacciatore” into google.
Anyway, so from the recipe I learned that you basically need to fry/brown chicken, and then simmer in it a sauce for a while, then serve it over pasta. Easy right?

So here's what you are going to need.
Chicken Thighs. About a package should be fine. I used 6, a few were pretty big, and a few were small, so just use what you got.
Tomatoes-2 cans. (14oz) I used diced tomatoes, but you could use whole ones too if you wanted. Just make sure you have enough.
1 med/large onion, yellow
Garlic-A whole ton. I loves me some Garlic.
Olive Oil
Flour
Pasta
Chicken Broth

This is all I used, but this recipe is pretty versatile, you can throw in other veggies if you have them or want to. Mushrooms if you are so inclined (I'm not), Bell Peppers, Squash/zucchini could be fun, just whatever you have around/looks good at the store.

Anyway, what you are basically going to do is dredge the chicken in flour, then fry it in the pan. Take it out of the pan, throw in everything else, wait, then re-add the chicken and cook.

First, take a lesson from me, skin the chicken. You might be saying now “But Stefan, chicken skin is delicious, and I want to keep it!” To that I say, “Well you are weird, skin is gross... Also it makes it harder to cook the chicken. So get rid of it!” (I made the mistake of leaving it on, and I had to re-cook some of the chicken after everything else was done.)

Now, most recipes would have you dredge (fancy cooking word for coat) the chicken in flour. But to that I say, “Boring!” So I spiced up the flour first. I added Onion Powder, Basil, Oregano, Salt, Pepper and Rosemary to the flour, mixed it up, and coated the chicken with it. I like spices. They make food taste good. You should like spices too! I just put the flour on a plate, mixed in the spices and coated the chicken. This kept me from having too much excess flour at the end, because I didn't need to put too much in the plate.

Then I added the olive oil to my pan, a large saute-pan. Don't use a frying pan! You are going to need something with high sides, because you going to be adding a bunch of liquid to this.
When the olive oil is nice a hot. (Quick tip-you can tell when its hot enough when its viscosity goes down. The faster you can make it run around the pan, the hotter it is. Try it sometime! Put room-temp. Olive oil in a pan, then tilt the pan. Then heat up the pan and tilt the oil around. Its a good indicator) Put the chicken in the pan ex-skin side down. You want to just brown both sides a bit. This shouldn't take more than 5 or so minutes, depending on your stove.
When the chicken is all nice and brown, remove it, and put it on a nice CLEAN plate (Raw chicken=salmonella and that=bad so get a new plate!) Leave all of the delicious chicken-y juices in the pan. Mmm, chicken-y oil juices!
Your kitchen should smell great at this point, and your roommates should start asking you whats for dinner. Now depending on how nice you are, you could tell them, or you could tell them to go to hell!

Now add your garlic and onion to this. I cut my onion into nice big pieces, but if you arn't a fan of big pieces of onions, 1) Shame on you, and 2) cut the onion smaller! Its really up to you.
Cook that in here a bit, and add any more veggies you might want to add.
Then throw your tomatoes and about 1/2-2/3 of a cup of chicken broth to this. You can just eyeball it.
Also, if you have some wine laying around, you can add that to the mix too. Red or white, doesn't really matter, but I like red. Spice this! Use some of the same spices from your flour mix. I also like to add some cracked red pepper, but I'm just adventurous like that.

Let this cook for a few minutes and throw the chicken into the mix. Make sure you put it in ex-skin side down. Thats where all the meat is, and you don't want to waste heat cooking the bones and stuff. ( I made this mistake.) You can flip the chicken a bit past half-way through too to make sure you are getting an even cook.

You are going to want to let this simmer for 20-30 minutes. Simmer means a bit of bubbling, but not a whole rolling boil. Thats no good. Simmering is the name of the game. The sauce should simmer down a bit. This is good, intensifying flavors and all fo that.

Maybe 10 minutes into this, you can start your pasta, I used some nice Bow-ties, but really any pasta will work well. Pick something you like!

Then after the 20 or so minutes, check it to make sure its done. Cut open one of the thighs. You want NO pink. Just fully cooked delicious chicken.

If your chicken and pasta is done, then so are you! Just put the chicken and sauce over a bed of pasta, add some Parmesan if you so desire and eat!

Its easy and tasty!
I had this mean with a Black Chocolate Stout from Brookline Brewery.
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/45/680/
This went really well, as its a very dark, almost bitter stout, with a big bittersweet chocolate taste that went really well with the dark flavors of the Cacciatore.
So serve this with a big dark beer, on a chilly fall day like today if you are on the East Coast with me, or just imagine a chilly day if you are on the west coast (While you are at it, pity me... its cold....)

So yea thats it! Let me know how it turned out if you try this! Let me know if anything is unclear, I'll help you out!

Here's a picture of my finished product!

Its Beer Time!

So I said I would write a blog entry about beer, so now I am.
I found a cool little craft beer shop a few blocks from my apartment, so I've been going there and sampling all sorts of different beers. This is going to be reviews of 4 of them. I don't know where you can get all of these. I know you can find at least on at most Bev-Mo's if you are on the West Coast. But other than that, I dunno... Sorry.

First up is the Podge Belgian Imperial Stout.
This beer is an import from Belgium, and its not from a very big brewer, so you might have more trouble finding it. Their website, www.alvinne.be is all in dutch, so its also hard to understand, even with google translator.
I poured this 12 oz bottle into a pint glass, it had a very dark body, with a thin tan head. It was a very nicely carbonated beer, with some nice textures and tastes. It was smoother than I expected, with some dark, chocolate and a bit of coffee taste. However overall, it wasn't exceptional. It was a good beer, but I don't think it is completely worth the money. Being an import it runs about 5 bucks per 12 oz bottle, and if you want a comparable beer you can but the Rasputin Imperial Stout, from North Coast Breweries for less than half the cost. This beer would be great if it was cheaper, but as it stands, it is simply too expensive. It is a quality stout, but not good enough to warrant the price tag. I would gladly drink it again, but I won't be buying it.

The next beer is the Three Philosophers belgian-style ale by Ommegang. The website for this beer is http://www.ommegang.com/index.php?mcat=1&scat=4 However, I didn't like this beer too much. My main problem is that it is very sweet. Too sweet. I enjoy belgian beer, and all of its fruity after taste, but this beer was so sweet it was almost syrupy, and the cherry aftertaste was absolutely overpowering. As soon as you taste it, you get the taste of a nice mild ale, but then it gets completely washed away by the aforementioned cherry flavor. Its almost syrupy, its so sweet. It reminded me of drinking Port, or some other dessert wine. I can see this working better if it was a bit more bitter, or went easier on the sweetness. Overall, I wouldn't buy, or drink this beer again. Finishing off the 4 pack that I bought was kind of a chore, each time I though I would get a different, or better experience, but each time I was wrong. However, people who generally don't like beer because of its bitterness, might want to give this one a try, as it is basically the opposite of bitter.

On the subject of Belgians, I was redeemed by the Unibroue Maudite. This is a Canadian beer, brewed in Quebec, whose name, Maudite means Damned. (This was basically why I bought this beer, I mean its named Damned...) This beer was excellent. It was exactly what the Three Philosophers should be. A bit more bitter right off the bat, with a lighter, sweet aftertaste that tasted slightly of cherries (its the type of Cherry lambic malt that they use in Belgians). A very nice, easily drinkable beer. I really enjoyed it, and am looking forward to drinking the rest of the 4 pack. It was mildly expensive, but not excessively so, and I feel that I will be putting this one in the rotation of good beers I will buy regularly.

The final beer that I will be quickly reviewing is Mayflower Breweries Porter. This was another very good beer. I was looking for a nice strong dark beer, and I got it in the Mayflower Porter. It is a nice, decently bitter dark porter. It isn't immensely carbonated, but I didn't find that this detracted from the beer at all. Its rather smooth and has tastes both chocolate-y (but not overly so), and with a bit of coffee. It was a very good beer, and being a Massachusetts micro-brew, it was rather cheap. This is another one that I will have to be sure to keep stocked in my refrigerator, and I advice you to give it a try if you happen to run into it.

Well thats it for my beer reviews. If people liked this, I might keep at it, and do a regular sort of “What I'm Drinking” sort of thing...
So let me know! Also let me know if you find these beers, I'd be interested to see how far west some of these get.

The First in a Series of Posts

So I haven't blogged at all recently, but all of a sudden I have a bunch of things to say, so I'm going to spread them out over a few posts as opposed to one big gigantic uber-post.
This one is about my life! Subjects to come: Beer, Music, Kurt Vonnegut

So,
I moved to Boston.
That actually happened! Yay!
I arrived in Connecticut, and stayed with my family for about a week, seeing everyone and slowly moving my stuff up to my apartment in Boston, but about 2 weeks ago I took the whole plunge and made my permanent move up.
My apartment is nice. Its small, and only really has two rooms, but its good enough for me. I would like some more counter space, and maybe some more storage, but I really can't complain. Its going to work out just fine for me.

I also joined the Boston College "Screaming Eagles" Marching Band, so I had a full Band Camp experience for 10 consecutive days. That was incredibly exhausting, with me re-learning how to march and stuff. It was really long too, from 9am to 11pm every day. But at least they fed us, so not paying for food for that whole time was nice.
Its also interesting being at a school with a large, well-respected marching band that gets support and has facilities and all of the normal things bands should have, but that UCI does not. Like I have a band locker to store my trumpet. Thats a new concept. But the people are cool, and apparently never heard a trumpet player hit high notes before, so I get basically free reign on taking things up and stuff.
We had our first game on Saturday, which was quite the experience. I wake up at 7:30 to get to school by 8:45. I have to ride my bike so that tacks on some extra time there. First we eat breakfast, (Provided) then go out on the field for a quick rehearsal, then come back and do a "team walk" where the band marches around campus, through all the dorms and everything, meets up with the football team, and marches into the stadium.
Then we went back to the band room, eat lunch (provided again...) change into our uniforms and go warm up for our little pep rally thing we do. THis pep rally thing is basically the band standing on the steps outside the band room (which is adjacent to the football stadium) and play some pep tunes for the people that gather there. And people come and listen! They aren't just like "Meh, band, whatever..." People think its cool and come and hang out.
Also there is a whole shitload of tailgating thats going on, so thats kinda cool to watch. Its like actually being at a college gameday, as opposed to game day at UCI where only the band and the athletes know that there is a game going on.
Anyways, after that, we go march into the stadium, and play our little pre-game set, go into the stands, play for the game, do a halftime show, finish off the game and then go home.
Odd things about BC Football:
Their student section are called the "Superfans" and they all have yellow t-shirts that say "BC Superfan" on them.
BC colors are technically Maroon and Gold, but all of that red and gold I see still makes me uncomfortable, because, FUCK USC.
During touchdowns the superfans like to crowd-surf. In stadium bleachers. Its really safe and intelligent....
The fans fucking love the band, and shout out songs they want to hear. Like they know what songs we play, and want to hear certain ones, and they have dances and stuff they made up to go along with some of the songs we play.

So yea, thats about it for Band, I haven't started any of my grad student-y stuff yet, so it almost feels like I'm an undergrad still, but I have faith that it will all change and I will want to kill myself with all the work that I have to do soon.

I went grocery shopping today, and had to take the train/subway. It was weird not having a car to throw all of my crap into.

But I cooked my first real meal in my apartment today. Lemon-pepper chicken with tomatoes and onions over pasta. Yea, you're jealous of my skills...

So now I don't have anything really big to do until thursday. I mean I have band on tuesday, but its not really that big of a deal, just a few hours at night. I kinda want to go explore Boston, but I don't know where to start. Well, I'll figure that out tomorrow.

Thats pretty much it. I'm excited for grad school to start, and I hope I'm not getting too over my head, but whatever. It'll work out!

Stefan's Shipping off to Boston: Day 6 the Final installment, This time it's serious.

My final day of driving, and it couldn't come soon enough. It was interesting and even a bit fun, but waking up and driving 8 hours a day really takes its toll.
So today the day started in North East, Pennsylvania. Thats the actual town name BTW. North East. Yea odd. Anyway, it was an 8 hour drive on little 2 lane New England highways. These highways are cool because they wind through the hills and mountains, surrounded by forests and whatnot. This makes them really pretty.
The downside however, is that they are only 2 lane roads and if there is any construction or anything, they slow to a standstill. And that happened just before I crossed the border from New York to Connecticut. We came to a screeching halt, and I just sat on the road, moving in car length intervals for a good 45 minutes, maybe even an hour. After sitting there, and listening to a whole album, I was like, screw it. So I got off as soon as I could, and decided to attempt to find a detour around this construction.
Next thing I know, i'm driving pretty much randomly around this little town. So I just decided to head easterly, and try to find the highway again. Surprisingly, it worked out pretty well. I didn't get too lost and I feel like I found the freeway and got back on the road faster than I would have if I just stayed in the traffic.
Another part of this drive was the rain. It rained 7 out of the 8 hours I was on the road. I basically followed the rain from Chicago to Connecticut.
But finally, after 6 long days of driving, I made it to my grandmothers house in East Hartford, CT.
It is worth noting at this point, that my family is crazy. I arrive to the beginnings of what would be a flurry of chaos and excitement. Within minutes of my arrival, basically all of my family is at my grandmother's house, and we are grilling corn and steak, cooking lobsters in beer kegs (an interesting operation that involves mounting a modified keg on a propane burner, putting water in the keg, and dropping lobsters into it), and mounting all sorts of chaos. It was awesome.
Anyway, I'm gonna wrap up my last blog, with a “what I learned sort of thing”
1) Nebraska Sucks. Never go there. I'm never going back.
2) I do well at long drives. I sort of knew that before, as I've driven long distances before, but knowing that I was able to drive all the way across the country by myself is pretty cool.
3) I like blogging. I'm gonna keep doing it. Not as regularly, but I want to keep it up.
4) I'm feeling better and better about moving to Boston. I was a worried and a bit nervous, but having this extended amount of time to think made me more confident in my decision.

I will have an epilogue with all of the final tallies of mileage and MPG and stuff like that in a bit. I'm going to enjoy my time relaxing in CT first though.

Stefan's Shipping off to Boston: Day 5

Of course, the last night has to be the difficult one. Apparently I didn't book my hotel right last night. I don't know how it happened, but I had really crappy internet in the Chicago hotel, so it may be that, or I just might be an idiot. Anyway, so when I got to my hotel, there was no reservation, and they were really full, because apparently its tourist season in Erie. I'm also not exactly IN Erie, as all the hotels were super expensive, so I'm a bit north of Erie too.
Anyway, I'm in a small smoking room in this Super 8. It doesn't smell too bad, and I have all the fans on. I should be alright for just tonight, and then I'm going to bail early in the morning.
Well, lets start at the beginning then.
I stayed longer in Chicago that I have in other cities. This was because I went out to lunch with my friend Lana. We went to a cool little pizza place in a suburb of Chicago. It was tasty and fun.
Anyway, this caused me to leave Chicago pretty late, like 1pm. The drive today wasn't that long, distance-wise, under 500 miles, but it felt like forever. It was also oddly expensive. There were quite a few toll roads between Chicago and Pennsylvania. All of Ohio was one big toll road that cost me like 10 bucks. And then there was another one as I left Chicago. It was uncool. I also realize that that is backwards geographically.
Anyway, the entire drive it looked like it was going to rain, but it never did. Maybe I'll catch up to that storm front tomorrow.
There was also a giant ton of road construction on the drive today. I would estimate at least a third of it was construction, which is stressful because you have to watch your speed and the roads are all messed up and super annoying.

On a completely different note, I made an observation about truckers today. I feel I've passed several hundred of them on the road this trip, so I feel uniquely qualified to make this completely unscientific judgement.
One the back of nearly all of the trucks are advertisements for employment at whatever trucking company they are working for. Sometimes they will be little witty saying or something, but mainly they are just like, “You should work for x company, we will pay you.”
So I started thinking about this. Who are these ads targeting? It can't be people like me, who are on long road trips, because if you are driving across the country or something like that, you have something going on. People don't drive to look for a job. People who are on short trips probably aren’t looking for a job driving long distances.
So these must be for other trucks. But this would mean that truckers jump ship enough to warrant massive advertisement.
So now I have a mental picture of truckers as road-bound mercenaries, always looking for a better deal. This is how this scene plays out in my head:

Its an office, shot in black and while like old film noir. The Venetian Blinds cast horizontal shadows across the mahogany desk where the overweight boss is sitting, smoking a cigar and sipping a glass of scotch. He goes to put the scotch down, but his desk is covered with paper and files. He finally decides on the least important stack of papers, and sets down his glass, and leans back in his high-back leather chair. It is at this point that our trucker hero bursts into the room. He wears dark jeans, a leather jacket, a 3 day old beard, and a trucker hat pulled low.
“Hey boss-man,” he grunts
The boss nods, “Whadda want?”
“Alright Boss, here's the deal” [At this point he goes on and lists a bunch of things that annoy truckers. I really don't know what this would be, but probably lots of drives through Kansas or something like that.]
“Yea so?” The boss-man replies indignantly, he takes another long puff of his cigar, and lets the smoke hang over the small office.
“So I'm leaving. Got a new gig. Payin' me more.”
“The hell did you find a new job? You don't even know any other companies.”
“The back of another truck. It had a number, gave 'em a call. They're paying more.”
“You son-of-a-bitch. You know I can't compete with truck-back advertising.”
“Damn straight. I'll see you around.”

And with that, he pulls out a pack of cigarettes, puts one in his mouth. Grabs a pack of matches, lights his cigarettes with one, and tosses the match into the glass of scotch.
He then turns and walks out the door.

The boss, visibly angry, throws his cigar into the glass as well.

[And Scene]


Milage today was 467, and I haven't gotten gas yet today. So no MPG yet again.
The plan for tomorrow is to drive through upstate New York, then cut down through Massachusetts and then into Connecticut where my trip is done!

Stefan's Shipping off to Boston: Day 4

So I'm a bit tired and its a bit late, so this is going to be a shorter entry than usual.
Today I drove through all of Iowa and most of Illinois. The drive itself wasn't too bad. I think I'm starting to get a hang of this, driving for 8 hours every day thing. I becomes less and less of a huge deal.
Iowa is probably about what you would expect it to be. Hilly and full of corn. However its also really flooded. There are some really bad areas full of half-submerged cars and flooded businesses. That was pretty sucky.
The other interesting thing was about 200 miles out of Chicago I hit a GIANT thunderstorm. It was actually really cool because I was basically chasing is for a while, so I could see all the lightning and stuff. Then I hit it and it was a pretty decent amount of rain for a while, but all of a sudden it started POURING. It was crazy. Like I couldn't see more than 20 feet in front of my hood. But I was eventually out of that and made it to Chicago ok.
After getting to my hotel and putting down all my stuff I went to go have dinner with my Aunt and Cousin. However they live on the other side of Chicago, so that was another hour of attempting to navigate the very confusing streets, highways and sub-highways that is suburban Chicago. But I got there ok, and had some quaility family time. It was nice to actually socialize with someone not over the internet.
Then I navigated backwards in the dark, and didn't get too lost at all!
Now its sleep time.
Milage today was another round of about 550.

I leave you with Youngblood Brass Band

Stefan's Shipping off to Boston: Day 3

First off, I dislike Nebraska. Its boring, and really hot.
But before anything else, I forgot some stuff from yesterday.
1) Denver has some really passive aggressive signs as you come out of the Rockies and into the Denver area. They are all aimed at truckers and say things like “You are NOT out of the mountains yet. There are still curves and steep grades ahead.” and “Don't relax yet. There are still hills.”
2) Lambda Alphians, if you are going to National Convention, (which I highly recommend) and you plan on driving, you could easily make it a really awesome trip. You could drive to Zion, which is a one day drive from Irvine. Then spend a day or so in Zion, because its awesome. Then drive to Arches like I did. Maybe stay in Moab and then continue on to Colorado Springs, which is a bit south of Denver. Just a suggestion if you were looking for a more extensive vacation.
The drive today was nothing exciting. The eastern part of Colorado is like a warning for Nebraska. Its kinda flat and boring, but nothing compared to Nebraska. Just so much corn and cows.

A few exceptionally weird things happened on the drive though.
First is the thing I tweeted about. Around noon I stopped in North Platte to grab some coffee, as I need to stay nice and caffeinated to drive for 8 hours. Just as I was about to pull into the Starbucks (yea I know, but its the only thing thats not gas station coffee.) I caught a flashing digital sign by a gas station about half a block down the road. It first flashed the price for gas, and normal things, but then it showed the gem; “The Best Looking Cashiers.” I was confused, scared and had an immediate flight or fight response. This turned into get coffee as fast as possible and get the hell out of North Platte.

I also got the dirtiest look I've ever gotten from a cop today! That was exciting.
So I was about 15 miles outside of Omaha on a 3 lane highway, going about 80 or so. (Speed limit was 75...) I'm in the far left lane, and I check my rear view and there is a Cop in a truck coming up fast behind be, lights blaring. I panic for a second, but realize that the middle red “I'm gonna pull you over” light wasn't on. Which is good. So I try to move to the left to let him by, but there is a huge big-rig in the next lane, completely blocking me in. I can't go anywhere. The cop then speeds up, tailgates me, and honks, before swerving into the breakdown lane and speeding by giving me the aforementioned dirty look. He was followed by another normal cop, who did not give me such a look. They speed off going at least 110, weaving through the bit of traffic.
About a minute later I see the two cops on the side of the road with another cop, who has pulled over a car. The cops however are gesturing wildly and sprinting back to their cars, which then hurriedly get in and speed off. I have no idea what they were after. But I didn't see them on the side of the road or anything agin. So that was pretty weird.

The one music related thing that I did today that is notable is I sort of re-discovered a really great Prog band called Frost*. I have one album by them, although they've apparently released a new one. But man they are great. Amazing keyboard/synth work, and the whole band is just insanely good. And they manage to make really complex and great music accessible and even catchy. Even if you aren’t into prog give this a listen.



Now for the numbers section of the blog!
Since I didn't have all of the info yesterday, lets recap.
Yesterday's mileage was 632 Miles. I used 19.55 gallons of gas, for a MPG total of 32.32. (I'm surprised that its that high, there were a lot of mountains and stuff.)

Today's Milage was 554. I used 15.25 gallons of gas, for a MPG total of 36.32. (Flat ground makes for better mileage!)

The plan tomorrow is to drive through Iowa and then into Chicago before dinner time.
I'm halfway there!

Stefan's Shipping off to Boston: Day 2

I'm in a major step upwards from the Motel 6 in the middle of nowhere, thatI was in last night. I booked the hotel last night using expedia or something, and it worked out really well. I thinkI'm gonna do this for the rest of the trip. Its a really odd hotel. Its got all the normal hotel-y type things, but it also has a full kitchen. Like full stove, full-size fridge and stuff. Weird.

I didn't listen to anything new or groundbreaking today, so I'm gonna talk about the actual trip, because it was much more exciting. The one actual cool music thing that happened was listening to Suburban Legend's “Bright Spring Morning” (the slow one, off Dance Like Nobody's Watching) while driving through the red hills of Utah. That was pretty awesome.
This drive was probably the best actual driving I've ever done. The routeis beautiful and the roads are fun to drive on. Lots ofnice curves and hills that keep it interesting rather than straight through the desert.

I also took Matt's advice and made a bit of a detour halfway th

rough Utah, and went to Arches National Park. That was a really great idea. Getting to Arches involves a southerly detour off I-70. Arches National Park is a really pretty park, that isn't to big, so it was great for me to just drive through and hi

ke a few short hikes. Actually I take that back, Arches is a large park, size wise, but the interesting parts are spread out in

a few pockets of really cool sandstone.

That was a really good way to break up the drive.

One of the more stunning parts of the this was the drive back. I decided to take a more scenic path back, so that I wasn't backtracking. This was an amazing drive. I followed a river northwards through a maze of sandstone canyons that

eventually opened up into a large hilly grassland.
From that I rejoined I-70 and took that into Colorado, where I got to drive through the Rocky Mountains. This was another g

reat ride, as it started out following the Colorado River through more canyons. But this was really cool, as the highway was basically a continous bridge that were built about 25 feet over the banks of the river and wound through the canyons. I wasn't able to take any pictures as it was curvy and fast, sorry.

Then I went over the Rockies themselves, which while pretty, my fully loaded car wasn't too happy with. Luckily I don't have any more giant mountain ranges, some smaller ones, yes, but no more Rockies.

Milage today was 632 miles. No MPG rating yet, as I haven't filled up on gas. Will report back tomorrow.

The plan for tomorrow is jogging northwards to Nebraska, and then a straight shot across to Omaha.

Stefan's Shipping off to Boston: Day 1

So I'm writing this in a Motel 6 in Beaver, Utah. Beaver is a tiny little town that is lacking in charm, character, or anything else that makes a small town bearable. Just so you know I'm not messing around, I'm talking no stoplights small. Like I had Wendy's for dinner and going to have McDonald's for breakfast, because those are the only places to eat here.
Anyway, the first day of driving wasn't too bad. I got off to a bit of a slow start, but made good time to Vegas, where I ate lunch with Seth. We went to Burger Bar, on Allison's suggestion. It was very tasty. The burger was big and juicy, and the toppings were great. Would definite recommend it.

After lunch, it was another haul to the little town I am currently in. The drive so far hasn't been too bad. And its been helped by the large amount of good music I've been listening to.

Notable mentions for this leg are:
Black Mountain. They sound kind of like a proggy Led Zeppelin with a both a guy and girl singer. Its quite good.


I also listened to one of my more guilty pleasure type bands. This is a band called Boysetfire. They are like a hardcore-ish punk band. They are quite good, and all of their lyrics are politically charged which is fun.



The last notable band is one that Matt recommended to me, the Rumble Strips. They are really interesting, and I need to listen to them a few more times to get a handle on them, but they are good driving music at least.



So today I drove 514 miles, from LA to Vegas to the middle of Utah.
I also used 15.6 gallons of gas, so I got a 32.8 miles per gallon, all the way out here. Pretty good for my car.


The plan for tomorrow, is to drive basically straight east from here over to Denver, CO. This is another 500 some miles, so its gonna be another long day.

Stefan's Shipping off to Boston: Day 0

So today was my last full day in California, and holy shit was I busy. I had to get everything ready for my early morning departure and I was going to meet basically all of the Irvine people at Olive Garden for Hannah's birthday dinner. This was my last chance to see everyone, and it was great. I had a lot of fun, and I'm really gonna miss all of the band people. Its going to be sad when basketball season rolls around and I'm not a part of the UCI Band.
If I didn't get to see you recently, I'm sorry. I wish I could have seen absolutely everyone, but thats how it goes.
To illustrate how busy I was today, here is part of my to-do list:
Get an oil change
Get gas,
Wash my car
Pack my car with the boxes that are packed
Finish the laundry
Pack my clothes
Prepare to pack my computer
Buy extra oil and coolant
Go to Target to buy a Cooler and Snacks.
Pack up the Wii
Print out the directions and assemble all of the assorted maps.
Put music on my ipod for the drive

There was more stuff to do, but I don't remember the rest of the list.

Music today, while I was preparing was a lot of Death Metal. Opeth, Amon Amarth and Eveulite all got heard today. Something about Death Metal makes me productive.

Anyway, the plan for tomorrow is:
Leave at 8am, and drive to Vegas. Have a lunch break in Vegas. Then continue on to a little town about an hour and a half north of Zion National Park in Utah. The town is called Beaver. The drive itself is a bit over 8 hours. I will post the mileage and all of that once I get there.

Now off to bed. Gotta start this trip off right..

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World Review

My first exposure to Scott Pilgrim was a trailer I saw on one of the video game blogs I frequent, (Kotaku). This was several months ago, so I had never head of the graphic novels or the characters. The trailer was intriguing, as was the subsequent breakdown of all of the pop culture references crammed into that minute and a half. I was intrigued, but not overly so. Anyway, time passed and the hype about Scott Pilgrim grew. So when I was given a chance to read the graphic novels, I jumped on it (thanks Allison!).

The Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series is an interesting thing. At its core it seems to be a simple love story. Boy meets girl, falls in love, must overcome obstacles to be with girl, and eventually succeeds. No surprises there. But the interesting part is how its wrapped in a generous helping of blatant metaphors, the actuality of fighting Ramona's ex-es, the pop-culture and Canadian references, and perhaps most importantly the complete non-existence of the 4th wall. This is a graphic novel about making graphic novels. The characters frequently reference the fact that there are still multiple chapters or books left in the series, and the book is almost mocking you for attempting to take its story seriously. It is an exercise in pushing us to suspend our disbelief and seeing how much we will actually buy into. Actually fighting the ex-es? Sure, we can take that at face value. Leveling up? Yea, thats just a metaphor for character development right? But its not. Thats the entire point of the book. These aspects exist simply to exist. It is a remarkably self-aware parody of the entire genre. And it even goes beyond other genre parody to the point where it understands that it is within the genre it is parodying, it becomes self-parody. After finishing the final book, one thought occurred to me. How the hell were they going to make this into a movie? How could you even attempt to do the types of things that were accomplished in the movie without making it flat and trite?

Another major concern of transforming the graphic novels into a workable movie was the casting choice. The decision to cast Michael Cera as the lead was a decision almost universally mocked. Would he take this interesting, brash, willfully-ignorant, asshole-ish character and turn him into the bumbling socially-award George Michael that seemed to befall every single other role that Cera portrays?
Luckily for the viewer, Cera's performance is great. His portrayal of Scott Pilgrim is spot on. No worries there. (Whew)

However the big issue was, how can all of the details I talked about earlier transform into a movie without it losing its entire soul? It would be easy to just take the core story of Scott Pilgrim and make a movie about that, but it would be defeating the point as the graphic novels were so much more than that. So what did they do?

They took the idea of self-parody and applied it to the movie. There I said it. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is a parody of every movie ever, AND itself. And its brilliant.

It is the Anti-Inception and gloriously so. Here's why; a common dissection of Inception is that it is a look at the way action movies are made. Large action set-pieces are delicately crafted and weaved together to create something believable for the person experiencing the movie. So much so that the individual doesn't even recognize that they are watching a movie. The word bandied around to describe this is immersion, although that seems to be technically incorrect.
But anyway, it seems like the creators of Scott Pilgrim saw all of this, and simply went, “Well, fuck that. Lets just throw things together. Fuck immersion. Fuck character introductions, fuck drawing the viewer in. Lets just made a goddamn movie.”

Then they went and smoked large amounts of weed, drank 4 cups of coffee and played Street Fighter for 12 hours straight. Then wrote a script.

You never forget you are watching a movie while sitting through Scott Pilgrim. The movie doesn't let you. But thats not the point. It makes you look at yourself and laugh and go, “Am I really going to let this level of disbelief slide?” And you don't. But thats what makes it funny. You are laughing at your inability to accept the actions of the characters. They don't care. They don't tell jokes. They just interact within this insane world they inhabit. You, the viewer, can't understand this world, and you don't want to. So you laugh, because why would vegans have physic powers? And why would ANYONE accept that as justification? But they do. Its fine. Thats just how it works. You don't need explanations. Scott Pilgrim doesn't need to have a training montage to show how he learns how to fight. He just does. You don't need to have an establishing shot to understand whats going on. You just need a quick cut to a black screen, or to another background. When two characters are having a conversation, you don't pay attention to the background, so why have it? Cut it out! Its gloriously minimalistic, all extraneous, artful pretenses are thrown out the window. Movies are about being entertained by the absurd. So Here is a giant pile of absurd. Be Entertained!