1. Use a LOT of water.

Most people don’t use enough water and, as a result, the water gets too starchy too quickly.  Look at the pasta pot you are using and consider going up a size for your next run.

2. Salt the water heavily when boiling

I put a whole handfull of kosher salt in for a large pot of boiling water.  You can use less if you are using iodized salt, but think tablespoons, not teaspoons.  This gives some taste to otherwise bland pasta.  You’ll know if you used too much if the salt overpowers the pasta when you get to the tasting phase.

3. Bring the pot to a rolling boil before thinking about putting in the pasta

For reals.  This is the A#1 tip.  You want the pasta to cook quickly, not soak in water.  Bring the water to a full boil, then back off the temp a bit before you chuck in the pasta.  Makes a huge difference.

4. Test for al dente often.

After the pasta starts moving on its own in the water (you can tell it’s cooking), start sampling it, and sample it every 30 sec to 1 min.  Let the pasta go a little undercooked rather than overcooked.  Al dente is when the pasta is firm but not bony.  There is nothing to substitute for practice here.  Try and try again.  Remember the pasta is going to continue to cook a bit in step 6 below, so slightly underdone is good.  You just don’t want any boniness.

5. Do not wash the pasta when you strain it.

Your getting rid of the starch and salt and flavor, cooling the pasta too quickly, and the pasta will stick together worse if you do this.  Big no no.

6. Do not leave the pasta dry / overstrain

OK, so the best thing to do is to take pasta out of boiling water and put it DIRECTLY into simmering sauce.  Let the sauce and pasta cook together for a few minutes.  This infuses the pasta with the flavor of the sauce and gets rid of the thick sauce glob on top of dry/sticky pasta glob when you plate it up.  The starch on the pasta also thickens your sauce a bit.

If you’re not using a sauce or you REALLY want your guests to be able to put on their own sauce (so not the way the italians do it), immediately put some olive oil over the pasta.  This is to keep it from sticking and to make it shimmer and taste yummers even on its own.

Do these things!

7.

Today, for the first time, I noticed at the bottom of every Groupon web page they have some funny kid thought.

Here was the one that had me in stitches this morning:

For reals… teachers do live in their classrooms! I totally thought that as a kid… Either that or they were robots and just got into the one tall closet they all had in their rooms (but never opened) and turned themselves off.

A few updates…

First, I felt quite overwhelmed on Saturday night when A2 brought home the haul she made at the baby shower thrown by her church friends and family.  This wasn’t a shower, it was a downpour!

Seriously… each one of those bags is chuck full of stuff!

We got so much stuff!  Stuff is everywhere now.  Our entire family room is now covered in stuff.  This does not bode well for my recent commitment to lead a stuff-free life (Ben – I will get around to posting that 100-things blog some day – I think we blew the 100 things just in this one shower).

Really, I felt quite overwhelmed and grateful that people, many who have only known us for what feels like a short two years, would be so generous and giving.  Between this, the shower her coworkers are throwing this Friday, and the garbage bags full of clothes that keep appearing, we’re not going to have to buy a stitch of clothing for this kid!

While A2 and her mom and grandma enjoyed the shower, Ben, Travis, Ron, and I went to the NFL Experience at the Dallas Convention Center.

This thing was a pretty incredible celebration of all things NFL.  I don’t think I’ve seen Ben that thrilled since we explored the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse at Disneyland as kids (epic treehouse).

We didn't buy this.

Perhaps the best part was when we did the “Quarterback Challenge” – there were three cutouts, a receiver behind two defenders, that you had to hit in the hands with the ball.  You had 3 balls.  Ben’s score 0 of 3.  WhiteEyebrows’ score?  3-3.

Boo yah!

I’m pregnant.

Well… actually… I guess the appropriate term is “we’re” pregnant.  At leaste that’s what people say these days, “We’re pregnant.”

I’m guessing this is supposed to indicate that the pregnancy is a joint/team effort, and that, as a husband/father, you are involved and supporting your wife/partner as she goes through her pregnancy.  I still kind of wince, though, when I say this.  Despite the woman’s best efforts to make the man as miserable as she is during pregnancy, the woman is still bearing the brunt of the pregnancy.  Sure, they may ask us to go at odd hours of the night to find some random food they insist on consuming, but let’s be honest, we’re not getting larger and having all our internal organs pushed around inside ourselves by some alien spawn.  I feel more comfortable saying WE’RE expecting – but SHE’S pregnant!

So, first, the obligatory questions:

What is it?

We don’t know yet.  We are hoping for a human.  A2 really wants a boy.  Badly.

Yes, we are going to to know as soon as possible.  In fact, we’ll be finding out NEXT TUESDAY!  I don’t really get those who want to wait or be surprised.  I guess this is because I just don’t care either way.

When are we due?

March 15th – ish.

How has A2 been feeling?

Pregnant.  The first trimester was challenging because she just didn’t feel well.  She wasn’t sick enough to throw up most days, but just didn’t really have an apetite, and didn’t feel like going out or doing anything.  She was always tired, and sometimes a little cranky.

This made me nervous for our Italy trip, but the second trimester started the day before she left, and she felt great through the whole trip.  (Might have something to do with all the sleeping in and relaxation we did!)

Her latest “feelings” are mostly feeling like something is rearranging her insides.  She wakes up every morning feeling like muscles and things are stretching and pulling everywhere.  But, generally, she is feeling good and bearing the rearrangement of her insides well.  My wife is completely unflappable.  She is awesome.

Are you excited to be a parent?

Well – yes and no.  I guess I just don’t have visions of everyone holding hands and spinning in a circle for all eternity.  I’m far too aware of the reality of the long-term pain, cost, and struggle that raising children can be.  I know it can be a joy as well, but I’m under no delusion that it will be easy.

It’s like asking if you’re excited to go on a mission.  You know it’s going to be awesome, but you know there’s going to be hard days and difficulties.  You don’t know who your companion is going to be.  You don’t know whether you’ll like life on the other side of the ‘big change’ as you did before.  You just hope you can adapt and do your best.

Bottom line: Yes.  We’re excited to have our own children to screw up and who can blame us for all their problems.

I’m sure the WhiteEyebrows blog will become quite the mecca of parenting pontification in the next few months and years.  As we prepare to make this transition, I’m sure I’ll be pouring my thoughts out on the blog… or not.

Where are the pictures?

If you read to this point, that means you deserve to see a few pictures, right?  :)

These are old, from our first ultrasound at our first appointment.  We’ll have some better ones next week!

]]> http://www.whiteeyebrows.com/im-pregnant/feed/ 7 http://www.whiteeyebrows.com/new-way-to-get-a-job/ http://www.whiteeyebrows.com/new-way-to-get-a-job/#comments Sat, 28 Aug 2010 17:49:46 +0000 WhiteEyebrows http://www.whiteeyebrows.com/?p=3105 So… Facebook makes its money by selling ads; targeted ads.  Ads that target.

Here is a targeted ad I saw today:

Talk about a non traditional way to get a job!  Not that I have any hiring power in Cisco …

This weekend, we enjoyed a friday night game night with our friends, the Brauns.  It has been TOO long since we hung out!  The best part of the night was when little Elizabeth came running into my arms and playing on my lap for a few minutes.  Granted, her motivation was to avoid having to go to bed, but still – it was a FIRST!  She is finally warming up to her Uncle Brows.

Saturday was going to be an intense yard day, but it wasn’t to be.  I got up early to attend a baptism, and when Audrey went to go pull the mower out, she saw the TruGreen people pulling away – no mowing for 48 hours!  At least our weeds will die now, and we’ll hopefully have something to mow!

We decided we could still trim the bushes, but when I got my trimmer out I quickly found that all of the batteries were dead.  As dead as dead could be.  I guess winter likes to drain batteries?  Who knew?

So we went to Plan C: clean off the back porch.  We had about 10 pots of various dead vegetation on our back porch that needed to be removed and destroyed.  When we were all done, we were left with a single potted tree.  Kinda sad, but kinda good.

I returned to the inside world where I got laundry and dishes done while Audrey washed her car and soaked up some of the great spring sunshine.  What a beautiful, allergy-filled day it was!

That evening we enjoyed Sherlock Holmes together.  I thought it was a really good movie.  Well played!

Sunday, I barely made it to my 6:30am meeting.  A2 had to re-wake me up at 6 after I had disabled my alarm at 5:30 and fallen back to sleep.  I trudged to church and put in my obligatory 8 hours.

When I finally got home, A2 suggested that we watch Star Wars Episode 3 (the only one she had never seen…) so we did!  It was a miracle that she suggested it.  The only greater miracle would be if she ever asked to watch The Princess Bride.  Somehow I avoided falling asleep during the movie.

We took a nice walk after the movie and enjoyed some of the activity in the neighborhood.  These are some of the few weeks where people here in Texas enjoy being outdoors, unless you’re an allergy sufferer in which case you still have to wait for the fall to truly enjoy nice temperatures.

Nice weather outside always turns my thoughts back to our boring back yard.  On our walk, we talked about what we wanted in our back yard.  We verbally designed a 20 or 30 thousand dollar back yard, and then came back to reality to know that we just needed to do something simple that we could enjoy a few times per year.

Does anyone have any landscape design skillz?  We need help translating our vision to paper!

Back to work today…

Excuses:

• A2 has been sick, so I’ve been focused on barking at her that she’s not drinking enough fluids.  She, for her part, is putting Vicks vapor rub on her feet in order to keep from coughing at night.  Does this sound completely illogical to anyone else but me?
• Work has been busy.  I’ve been swatting software bugs faster than you can spell supercalifragilesticexpialidocious.  (I think I spelled it wrong)
• I’m feeling a bit uninspired.  I think being married is training me have fewer opinions and just defer to what my spouse says.  Even though other married men are nodding their heads as they read this, it doesn’t make it right.
• Blogging is on the decline.  I think blogging hit its peak in 2008-09, but now that there’s been movies about blogging, it’s going out of vogue.  Those of you who know me know that, if anything, I’m EXTREMELY conscious of staying in vogue.  This is why I’m still sporting a hair style from 2003.

Does anyone even read this, still?  Or have I completely falled off of your blog reading list.

I introduced her to Suze Orman’s Retirement Roadmap which Suze presented on her show last November or December.  In it, she details what she thinks people in every decade of their life (20s, 30s, 40s, etc) should be doing now to save for retirement.

My ears especially perked up when I heard it, because she started with people in their 20′s. Good financial planning or investment advice and strategies for people in their 20′s is practically non-existent out there.  I’ve searched the web pretty extensively, and very few people ever get past a blanket “it’s best to start early because look how much more you can potentially make.”  Well, the problem is, they never get into exactly HOW we make that much more with time on our side.  Instead, they just focus on those in their 40s or 50s who have higher net worths and screw ups to deal with.

Anyways… Suze’s advice: for those in your 20s who have access to a 401k with a matching contribution, contribute to your 401k only up to the match, and then open a Roth IRA and contribute up to the $5000/yr max there.

What’s the difference, you ask?  The 401k is an employee sponsored account/program for retirement that saves and invests your money pre-tax, thus making your taxable income lower.  This is great for high-income people who are trying to jump into a lower tax bracket by contributing to retirement.  There are great incentives to do a 401k, the foremost of which is an employer match (a.k.a. FREE MONEY).  Always take the free money, I say.

The Roth IRA is an individual account (not owned by the company) that takes money you’ve already been taxed on and invests it for retirement.  The earnings and the corpus of money is not taxed as income when you withdraw it during retirement.

I crunched on this advice in the back of my mind for a few months, and it started making more sense:

1. 401k + Roth IRA provides diversification.  Whether you think taxes will be higher in the future or lower, you just might be right.  :)  The best way to protect against an unsure future is to diversify, and having both a 401k and Roth will give you the ability to draw from each pool at the right time, or preserve the pool if you need to.  Plus, having some of your income tax-free will lower your overall taxable income during retirement, which has the potential to be high if you started saving in your early 20s for retirement anyways.
2. More trading options with a Roth IRA.  The money in your Roth can usually be invested in a lot wider variety of investments.  It can also be quickly turned back into cash, if you need.
3. Fewer penalties with Roth. You can withdraw the money from a Roth much easier than a 401k, and without the 10% IRS penalty.

The downside?

A Roth will require more care and attention than a 401k.  You will usually not have the ability to do paycheck deductions for a Roth, so you just have to be SURE than when you reduce your 401k contribution to the match, you really go through with making the Roth contribution.  Otherwise, you just gave yourself a raise at a great cost to your retirement.

We also found out that even if one spouse works, you can have a Roth IRA in each person’s name and contribute up to $5000 in each, giving you a combined after-tax savings of up to $10,000/year.

More info:  http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/25/pf/expert/ask_expert/index.htm

Consider this your plate of holiday cookies and your annual “Christmas card” from WhiteEyebrows.

It’s been a good year.  You can read about it at my wife’s blog. I don’t have much to add to the events.  You all basically know what happened this year: we got engaged, planned a wedding, got married, did a lot of traveling, and learned to live with each other.  I still draw pretty pictures and Cisco, she still plays around with spreadsheets at JC Penney.  She wants a dog, I don’t.  We both work hard at church – I’m the Bishop’s secretary and she’s a counselor in Young Women’s.

What you may not know is this…

…About a year ago, I turned into a completely useless lump of a man.

I was dating my future wife and preparing to propose to her.  First, I was busy creating the most awesome proposal ever, then I got busy creating the best wedding ever.  I basically shut off the outside world for four months as we prepared, planned, and executed a wedding, then we disappeared off the face of the earth for two weeks. We came back, blissfully married, and proceeded to have a great first 9 months of marriage.

During that time, my universe pretty much collapsed – not in a bad way.  Not in a lets-to-talk-to-the-therapist way.  I just naturally turned into someone who was content to stay at home, snuggled on the couch with my wife, watching stupid reality television and going to bed early.  Friends mattered a little less, extended family mattered a little less, and the world outside our home pretty much melted away.

Not that I’ve haven’t been challenged or grown this year.  It was a very good year for me at work.  It was also a particularly challenging year at church with a whole new level of commitment and skills needed for my calling.  So I guess I haven’t been totally useless… just mostly useless.

You might have noticed my uselessness as you’ve read this blog.  Sometimes, I click into articles that come up under my “Random Posts” section and think: “Wow… that was some really good, original thought.  Whatever happened to that WhiteEyebrows?  I think my brain is turning into a turnip.”

Then, last night, I had a dream.  I dreamed I was sitting in a Freebirds restaurant, but it wasn’t all beatnick like the real Freebirds.  Apparently, Freebirds had been bought by the Lay’s corporation, and they did away with all the personality in the joint.  Anyway, we went up to the second floor of the Freebirds where I attended a concert by some small choral group — and here’s the part that blew my mind — they sang about 6 or 7 songs which I have never heard before.

Now here’s my question: How can my brain make up completely new music in its sleep?  I’m not a composer or arranger.  I listen to a fair amount of choral music, though, and wonder – how can my brain artificially produce choral music and make it sound so good!?  I was in total bliss listening to this group sing.  I was one of the only audience members, and they were TIGHT.

So maybe my brain isn’t complete mush yet?  Maybe I’m just delusionary…

When the Space Shuttle undocked from the ISS earlier this month, they had to jettison their waste water before reentering earth.

At least when the space shuttle pees, it creates a beautiful celestial event.

More info.

Go Cougars!!!

And it is…

I have cardboard box kleptomania.

Yes, friends.  I, WhiteEyebrows, fully admit to being a hoarder of boxes.  I love a nice fresh box.  I love the smell of corrugated paper, stapled and taped together in a rectangular cube.  I love the various labels, insignias, and markings that a box can accumulate throughout its useful life.

I’m sick, I know.

So here’s the story.  We recently went to the cannery to start our long term food storage.  When we were deciding where to actually put the food, my wife gave me two options: install a storm cellar in the back yard, or clean out the walk in closet in the guest room.  Since the storm cellar was infinitely more expensive, I went for the latter option.

The picture above is only part of the boxes that were being stored in the guest closet.  I keep boxes for a lot of reasons… 1) if I ever need to ship the major applicance/electronic device it came in or 2) if it’s in good enough shape to ship something in at a later time in my life or 3) if I ever need to move.

Here is part of the trash we pulled out of the closet.

Let me show you what I’ve convinced her to keep.

The Mac boxes. We paid way too much for these things to EVER throw the boxes away! And what if I sell a Mac someday?

The box for my Apple monitor, the box for the stereo tuner (which she gave up on breaking down because it had a TON of staples in it), as well as a few small boxes for shipping small items.

Boxes with my life history in them, a few large boxes for shipping, as well as a big bag of packing materials. (where are the packing peanuts when you need them!)

Boxes that are just way too nice and perfect size to throw away!!!

And of course, our new food storage!

You can’t really tell, but the closet is much emptier now and much cleaner!  I will miss my dear old friends as they go to their new, recycled home, though.

Does anyone need a box?  I’ve got ‘em.

Yesterday I saw a sign in our neighborhood advertising a furniture clearance at the model home in our neighborhood, so this morning I went to check it out.  It was a mad-house!  They had 3 tables there, but the one in the formal dining room I totally fell in love with.

And of course… it was sold and paid for already.

So like a complete idiot, I scoured the table for any kind of brand name or clues as to its origin.  Finding none, I took the measurements and wrote down as much information as possible…

…and then turned to my good friend Google.

First I tried putting in the original Chinese manufacturer’s name.  I got their website, but they only listed office furniture… boo!

Then I followed some links to a few online bill-of-landing slips from the manufacturer to see which companies/warehouses they were supplying in the US.  No luck there, either.

Then, in a desperation buzzer shot, I tried Googling the measurements.  VOILA!  The table had such unique measurements that just Googling the measurements brought up the table!

In a matter of minutes, I was comparing prices online for the table, and thankfully I actually found it in our price range!  (free shipping and no sales tax!!!)

Wanna see it?

BAM!

Do you love it?  I don’t care if you do, because I do.  So there…

Without further ado…

You can view all of them on Picasa.

We have to give mad props to our photographer, Jimmy Bishop of Gideon Photography.  He is an AMAZING photographer!  He does weddings in Utah and California, but said he’d be willing to come to Texas if any of you are interested!

If this is the 4th or 5th time you’ve seen me link to these, I apologize.  Apparently Web 2.0 really runs my life.

I do grill a mean steak, though. This is one thing Texas has given me. (Thank you, Texas)

Having recently found out that women can’t live on grilled meat alone, I have been trying to venture a bit out of my comfort zone, trying a few new recipes to vary the pallette of my dear wife.

Last night’s menu was tilapia with rice, broccoli, and cheese.

I learned:

1. Fresh garlic would have been MUCH better in the rice. garlic powder is nasty.
2. you don’t really NEED cheese on broccoli.  might have been less work and more tasty with just the freshly steamed brocooli and maybe some butter and salt.
3. I should have used less water in my rice when adding other juicy substances (like tomatoes)
4. I love Costco.  The tilapia was the best part of the meal, and it came directly from their freezer section… just 10 minutes in the oven at 375.

And here is what my wife thought of my meal:

But that’s OK, because she has to do the dishes.

So here’s to developing your talents and trying new things.  As long as your wife doesn’t barf later.