baked lemon chicken

i mentioned that we got some nice, new, oven-safe cookware for christmas and i wanted to make something using those and the fresh rosemary i snagged from the cabin (well, indirectly from my in-laws herb garden). so, my first thought went to chicken. i found this recipe and was a bit daunted by its involved-ness. nevertheless, i decided to go for it and picked up a lemon and a few things on my way home from work yesterday. my one main task was the entree and my dad fixed some fried squash and cornbread. lindsay mixed a salad and i whipped up the balsamic vinaigrette dressing. we had dinner multi-course style since i had to bake the chicken for 45 minutes while basting every 15 minutes. i think we ended up only waiting around for a few minutes in the end. oh yeah, it was delish! very tasty if i do say so myself! i was going to take a pic, but it wasn't terribly pretty.

the car is packed and loaded and i only have to work til about 11:35a. go vols on monday!!

back at home

the week at work has been quiet. maybe a dozen cars in the parking lot instead of 200 or so. on tuesday evening, we took dad out to malone's - now rated as a top 10 steakhouse in america. i got a spicy shrimp pasta instead of the standard filet mignon (it's good, but i'd had it before) and just like the cilantro friday night, i paid for it big time. i guess i just can't have spicy food at all anymore :-( i swear it's the stupid gall bladder thing. a year and a half later and i'm still trying to figure out how to eat with(out) it.

dad has been with jake all week (preschool is closed down this week and july 4th week) and jake has been great for him. he even climbed into bed for his nap on his own yesterday.

this coming weekend will have a schedule just like last weekend: we'll both work a half day tmrw, me, dad, and jake will all be in danville to pick up L right when she gets off work, and then we'll head to nashville. we'll leave nashville on monday afternoon (after the ut game i guess) and return to work on tuesday.

happy new year!

christmas at the cabin

alright, it's wednesday already for the love. i'm gonna back date one post that i wrote over the weekend and then try to sum up the rest of the weekend here.

on saturday, jake slept til around 8:30a (!!) and we had a yummy breakfast and lounged around until the company arrived. Around 12:45p, L's mom's mom and aunt, uncle, and cousins showed up and they gals spent the afternoon making gingerbread houses. the guys went downstairs and watched a good portion of ut's awesome comeback against ut - two straight years ut picks up big wins against texas. ut will have 10 wins before conference and you can't expect them to be much worse than, say, 12-4 in conference. that's 22 wins before the sec tourney! i'm loving the bruce pearl era.

in the evening, we had some savory steaks and burgers on the outdoor built-in jenn-air grill - that thing is great! over the course of the weekend, we watched some movies: christmas vacation (friday night), invincible (later friday night?), little miss sunshine (sunday afternoon)

ah, i guess that means i should get to sunday. since we were packing up and leaving on monday morning (christmas day), we decided to make sunday morning (christmas eve) 'christmas morning'. we got some new, awesome cookware (emeril stuff) and L was very surprised by a string of pearls i got her. i also had a few surprises: a travel mug with a picture of L and Jake printed on it, some baseball pj pants, a rotating spice rack (18 new bottles!), a really good chef knife (the big one), and the little miss sunshine dvd.

as expected, jake racked up with a bunch of games; an artist's easel; an atv-looking power wheels; a fire truck / big rig that expands into a playset; buzz, woody, and jessie 'action figures'; and a cool aqua doodle drawing pad.

i helped dad make greek spaghetti for lunch and we all lounged most of the day. sunday evening, dad and i went down to the wears valley umc christmas eve candlelight and communion service. it was packed out with probably half of the 200+ being vacationers like us. keep in mind, wears valley doesn't even have a post office yet - just a couple of gas stations, a few churches, some cabin rental places, and some shops. a fun little community though.

when we got back, we tried to eat up leftovers from the weekend so there would be less to take home. on monday morning, we packed up and had to put the cookware, the fire truck thing, and the power wheel on top of the highlander. we got home safe and sound about 4 hours later even though it poured the rain and soaked the cardboard boxes on top.

getting to christmas

on friday, i left work, got to the house, finished loading the corolla, drove with dad and jake to danville to pick up L at work, transferred stuff to highlander, drove towards i75, stopped off at sonic in stanford, and continued on towards tn.

we stopped at the rest stop across the state line, swapped drivers, and i took a nap for a bit. we had to pick up something at L's parents house and, just for fun, i tried to see if i could pick up their wifi signal from the car. success!! we continued on to sevierville and stopped off at a store where L had to swap out some thing she purchased there back before thanksgiving. at this point, i resumed driving and got us to wears valley where the cabin is. however, as we ascended the mountain, we began driving into a fog like no other. we finally made it, but had to go super slow most of the way up the mountain (normally a 5 minute drive).

as soon as we unloaded the car, i started making my chili. well, jen's veggie chili, but i enjoy making it because it uses all fresh ingredients and regular spices. no mystery 'chili' spice pack (though that's delish too). in the middle of making it, we decided not to double the recipe since a few extra family members who dropped in had already left. this left me with too much liquid from the veggies (extra onion and pepper), but i tried to amend a bit and it turned out pretty good. the cilantro ate my insides alive (again), so i guess i'll have to give up on that one.

later in the evening, while L and my mother-in-law were playing santa's elves and stacking / organizing all the presents, L realized that she had forgotten a major, time-consuming present that she had made for around seven people / families. she was devastated. heart broken. i tried to cheer her up by telling her that her sadness emphasized how she had the caught the true spirit of christmas: giving instead of receiving. it helped a little, but she was still really sad. she'll mail the gifts when we get back home.

good visit

mom and charlie met me at work at the end of the day on tuesday. i showed them around my meager surroundings and then we jaunted through traffic to the house. we threw a freezer lasagna in the oven and caught up regarding their day visiting ma-maw in the 'personal care facility' (i.e., not a nursing home, more like a senior center). they said she's doing good and they played some christmas tunes on the piano after lunch.

we watched a movie (the devil wears prada - good one) and jake stayed up late since he was going to hang out with them on wednesday. he stayed up so late that he didn't wake up in his dark room until 10:30am! that might be the latest ever for him. they had a fun day playing both inside and out, upstairs and down. i ended up having to work a bit late and got home around 6:15pm, but lindsay ended up having to both work late a bit and run errands after work instead of during lunch. by the time she got home at around 8:30pm, jake had had a bath and was ready for bed and we had all eaten dinner around two hours earlier. oh well, such are the joys of a busy time of year, right?! we watched 'white christmas' and i'm sorry missy, but i think you have to grow up with it ;-) however, i was dozing at the end and lindsay finally settled down to watch the last half and she really enjoyed it. it felt like it was all coming together as my eyelids began their descent.

anywho: dad arrives around 5pm, L and i work half days tmrw, and then we all drive on to the cabin for a fun christmas weekend with L's family.

merry christmas to all!!

garden blog

i've set up a separate garden journal where i plan to keep a record of everything i do for the garden. all the books i skimmed mention this so you can see the next year when you did what and how you should adjust what you did. i expect the posts to be dry and for my benefit, but you may enjoy it. most posts will be something akin to: "planted tomatoes into garden. weeded for 30 minutes."

p.s. merry christmas! what are your plans for the next two weeks?

yesterday was a long day

we went to knoxville and back. for good reason though: one of lindsay's closest friends moved to houston two months ago after living in knoxville her whole life (even went to ut-k). dawn, husband shane, and their son tucker came into town to surprise their family and we took the opportunity to run to town and meet them for lunch. we also had jonathan meet up with us so we could see him too.

afterwards, we went back to lindsay's parents and hung out for a while. we watched ricky bobby (disappointing) before getting back on the road and then we got home at 10pm. we'll be making the same drive friday afternoon, except we'll be going straight to the cabin. and if you're looking for a place to stay in the smoky mountain area some time or for a get together with friends and family, then check out chestnut ridge cabins!!

winter reading list

i've already updated the sidebar as i've been trying to put this together, but here goes. we'll see how much i get done, but here's a start:
- finish celebration of discipline by foster in our lifegroup - only 3 chapters left.
- skim through gardening books (i did this friday night, but garden planning will require more.)
- fantasyland by sam walker
- skim the nazarene books from the seminary library (due back in january)
- finish weaver on strategy by earl weaver
- blue like jazz by donald miller
- narnia - the silver chair
- harry potter & the hbp (#6, 2nd read)
- roger angell - the summer game
- devotions starting in 2007: a year with thomas merton

i'll be surprised if i get to these:
? the last word and the word after that by mclaren
? traveling mercies - anne lamott
? another baseball book
? finding faith by mclaren

a list of my harry potter reads is after the jump.

i need a place to finally store this, so here is my chart of harry potter reads.

HP&tSS: march 2001, november 2001, january 2004, june 2007
HP&tCoS: march 2001, october 2002, february 2004, june 2007
HP&tPoA: april 2001, march 2003?, march 2004, june 2007
HP&tGoF: april-may 2001, april 2003?, april 2004, july 2007
HP&tOotP: june 2003, may 2004, july 2007
HP&tHBP: july 2005, may 2007, july 2007
HP&tDH: july 2007

updated on 07/26/07

updated to-do list

for the past three months, my new to-do list on my google personalized home has had assignments for school and a few personal things. it now reads:
high Work hard at work!
low Read for fun!
low Plan a garden!

my work at the patent office

just caught this link on my google personal home: google launches patent search site
check out all 21 of the patents i allowed: link
wild.

used book snob no more

for only $104, as a bit of an extra christmas present, i was able to clean up my amazon saved list from about 43 items to under 30 items. most of these 14 books were originally at least $12-15 each and some were around $20. The actual cost would have been at least $250. was it worth it for books i may only read once before they collect dust on the shelf? nope. so consider me a used book snob no more. almost every one of these books are in perfectly fine condition. i think two or three of them may have some wrinkled pages and quite a few have a single black marker mark on the bottom, but that's it!

as you can see from the picture, going down the stack, i have a new devotional book for 2007 (thomas merton), three more christianity books that i've been waiting a long time to snag, three david halberstam baseball books, a roger kahn baseball book, one more roger angell baseball book (commitment: i will read at least one angell book this offseason), a baseball book on the players and history around the early 1900's, an easy reading book on one guy's fantasy baseball adventure, and three vegetable / herb gardening books for our big garden in the spring.
well, happy reading for me! though most of these will have to take their place at the back of the line.

p.s. from searching the last couple of months, it looks like i haven't mentioned the garden yet. click to read more...

i wanted to do one this past season and then regretted not doing it. i'm going for it this year. i'm not quite sure how big i'll be able to do, but i have a lot of usable land. i'm hoping for a 20' x 40' monster, but it depends on how many rocks i'll have to dig up. i'm really looking forward to it and it will serve multiple purposes. we're planning on staying here for quite a few years. this symbolically plants more 'roots' for us. after an initial investment, this will eliminate the cost (albeit not terribly great) of purchasing vegetables and herbs (ok, those are expensive usually) from the store. this gets me outside into the fresh air. this gives us something to do as a family rather than just watch tv or play on the computer. and lastly, as i learn to cook more, this gives me a fresh supply of a ton of ingredients. i may be getting in over my head, but it will be fun for a while.

sermon sunday

well, that went ... alright. the act of speaking / preaching went pretty good, but i'm still not totally pleased with the sermon itself. i tried to break it down, but i needed to break it down even more. this was the first time i read a fully written sermon and though it was nice and helpful, i don't want to sound like i'm reading a sermon. practice practice practice. constant vigilance!

mp3 version of the sermon (16MB)
final text version of the sermon (pdf)

that time of year again

enjoy these videos and game again this year: christmas goodies

sushi day

well, that was a kind of nice surprise. out of the blue, an acquaintance at work invited me to go to lunch with a group of his friends for the sushi special at a japanese restaurant across the way. it was a good, but a bit more, shall we say, authentic than i've had before. it came with a small version of the salad and soup you get at an hibachi restaurant and a good sized bowl of 4-5 pieces of sushi on a bed of sticky rice with some kind of green spice on it. a standard blob of wasabi and ginger slices were on the side of the bowl. i think that was the first time i tried the ginger. yes, it cleansed my palate, but otherwise - no thanks. anyways, it was pretty cool to go to lunch with some people even if it doesn't become a regular thing.

welcome!

to any new visitors that stop by as a result of the christmas letter: welcome! feel free to leave a comment and say hey! there are a ton of pictures available in the gallery link at the top. i'm going to try to get some 2006 pictures up after the end of the semester. enjoy!

winding down...

ok, it's not wound down yet, but it's getting there. i'm feeling a little less stress this morning and i will feel even better when i go to bed tonight having given my last little speech in class and having e.mailed my sermon (oh yeah, did i mention that i'm preaching at church sunday?) and message notes to the appropriate people at church. i'm looking forward to preaching and it'll be the first time in a long while. two years? i remember using two clips from groundhog day one of the last times i preached (looking up netflix rental history: Groundhog Day returned 08/04/04). wow.

well, we wrote a christmas letter for the first time and sent it out monday after going to kinko's to get a lot made on sunday. i apologize if you did not get one; we sent out around 80 as it was. i've already e.mailed the pdf to a few people - let me know if you would like it e.mailed. i wonder if we'll send out 100 next year? not sure that i want that, but... :-)

spiritual experience in class?

i meant to write about this last week, but last tuesday for church planting class, we visited a church in the area that was planted, or spawned, from another church in town nearly a decade ago and has grown to about 1500 now. about half of that was just in the past year after they moved to a new facility that allows them to do a lot more.

the church itself was pretty cool, but what struck me was the authenticity and the alive-ness of the people we met that night (there were multiple events going on on a tuesday night). after being a christian practically all my life, i saw something in them that was just a little bit different that what i "have" and it made me contemplate my own faith and situation in life. all is well, but it was a moving experience that will shape what we continue to help do at our church and in the future.