Grocery shopping got moved up to Friday this week. One reason was that we didn't go the week before, and there were no drinks or food in the house. Perhaps the more important reason was that Kristi decided to have young married friends over Saturday, so we needed to purchase some dessert ingredients. I decided to make a cheesecake, which I had done twice before, but I decided to use a new recipe...but more on that later.
Wal-Mart was the same as always, and afterwards we dropped stuff off at home before going to Zaxby's for dinner. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the Simpsonville Zaxby's is disappointing. Not only are their wings drowned in sauce (which isn't as good, and also is not the way they are supposed to do it), on two occasions they have been cold...so cold one time that I actually took them up and asked them to cook them more, something I pretty much never do. Friday they were warm, but still drowned. Maybe things will improve with time.
After that we came home and after watching some TV I started on my cheesecake. The cheesecake recipe I had used before was good, but I wouldn't say awesome. My favorite recipe site is http://www.allrecipes.com/, and I found this recipe, which had 228 reviews with a 4.5 star rating. That's an amazing rating, especially with so many reviews. The recipe uses a shortbread crust instead of a graham cracker, which I wasn't sold on, but I thought I'd give it a go. Here's a picture of the crust once cooked:
And here's a picture of all the ingredients ready to be mixed.
I should mention that each of those eggs was cracked with only one hand, and I only had to pick one very minute piece of shell out. For the yolk only eggs, I used the old crack into the other hand technique:
Unbelievably I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, but let me tell you, it really was incredible. It reminded me alot of Carnegie Deli cheesecake (which they have at California Dreaming by the way). Not only that, I think I actually like the shortbread crust better than graham cracker. My cake did crack some in the middle, and supposedly if you are a great cheesecake maker you don't get cracks, but it doesn't affect the taste so I don't really care. I have a good bit left over, but I am not sharing it, because it is delicious. Well, except for Joe, I told him I'd bring him a piece.
By the time the cheesecake was done it was pretty late so Kristi and I went ahead and got in bed with visions of a fun filled Saturday dancing in our heads.
I got up around 9 on Saturday and got started on some yard work. I had been putting off planting the bushes in the back yard, even though there were only 4 of them, so I decided to go ahead and finish. We have a few bare spots in the mulch beds, but we are going to wait until spring to plant the rest, which will included Lantana, Spikes, Azaleas, and Chinese Fringe. One of the bushes I planted in the back on the corner, was a Camelia. I think I am most excited about it because I really like the flowers it has. Hopefully it will do well where it is.
After the yard work I ate some lunch and then watched Clemson play Duke for a little bit. It was pretty obvious that we were going to dominate them, so I didn't feel a need to stick around the TV for the whole game, so Kristi and I left to run some errands. I had to ship out the guitar head that the guy finally paid me for, and we stopped at some stores along the way. By the way, I decided on the blue sparkly Mapex, but the guy took so long to pay me that someone else bought it. I am pretty sad about that, but I guess I will just be patient and wait for something else to come up. For some reason I just didn't feel good about that Starclassic snare, so I think I will just sit on it for a while.
Since I didn't have any good options online anymore, I decided to stop at some pawn shops to see if they had anything. Pawn shops have typically been disappointing for me, and it was the same on Saturday. Each one only had 1 snare, and neither were anything worth looking at. Kristi had fun looking at the jewelry I think, it was kind of a funny experience to go to pawn shops together. We also stopped at Palmetto Music to look at their snares. They had a 6.5 x 14 custom brass snare which looked pretty sweet, but since I eventually want a 6.5 x 14 Ludwig Black Beauty (which is basically a brass supraphonic), purchasing it wouldn't have worked with my new policy. Disappointed by my lack of options I went to FedEx to ship the package, and then Kristi and I shopped at the mall for a little bit. We went to Guitar Center on the way home...nothing there either.
After shopping I took Lucy for a walk and then watched football for a little while. It was good to see USCjr. get stomped. I think that while they may have a better chance at beating us this year, they may be a little over confident. I think there is a chance that we could come out a beat them by a touchdown or two, especially since it's a home game. I don't think the SEC is quite as good as everyone thinks, and I think we are getting better and better. As long as we mess with their passing game, we'll hang in there pretty well. I hope our DC comes up with some good schemes!
Kristi and I went to Moe's and then came home to get ready for the party. Three couples came, and it was alot of fun. We ate the desserts we made (Kristi made brownies), and then we played some games. Apples to Apples was a little dull like always, but Catch Phrase was it's usual excitement. It was a very enjoyable night, and it left both us and the pets pretty tired.
All of this leads me to today. I woke up very early like always and got to church a little after 7. I ran sound, and oddly it was in some ways one of the best Sundays I've done, and in other ways it was the worst. First of all, I really enjoyed mixing the strings. I thought they ended up sounding really good, and I really enjoyed the whole atmosphere the sound created. I also really enjoyed the songs, so that coupled with the great arrangements and sound made for a really fun time. I did make several mistakes though that really frustrated me. In the first service I had a little trouble with feedback from the string bass mic. It wasn't high stuff, just a soft low rumble, but it was frustrating. The guy that played was only there this morning, and it didn't show up during their warm up, so I just had to do my best with it and then trouble shoot between services. I ended up unplugging his monitor and compressing him less, which fixed the issue. I also messed up on a few key parts. In two services I started fading out Charlie's mic when I thought he was done talking, only to have him start again. Again, not super noticeable, but really frustrating for me. Other than that the only other mess up was not being ready for Matt to start the Prelude in the 2nd service, but I didn't mind that one as much because it isn't really a part of the focused service time. Either way, hopefully next time I will do a little better.
Kristi and I ate lunch with the Boyds as usual, and then came home. I took Lucy for her walk and then we watched some TV until community group. Kristi made a delicious salad to take because tonight was just a meal night. We have really enjoyed community group and the friends we've made.
We got home and hung out for a little while before going to bed. Tonight I successfully purchased an Acrolite, my Christmas present from Kristi. I ended up having to spend a good bit more than our budget, but I will either take it out of my allowance or use money from the Marshall if I don't buy another snare for a while. I had lost about 4 Acrolite auctions before this, but since this was the year I wanted and was in pretty good original shape from what I could tell, I bid a little bit more to make sure I got it. If case you forget, the Acrolite has a similar seamless shell to the Supraphonic, and the 5.5 x 14 is one of the 4 snare drums I definitely want. Here is the auction if you are interested in seeing it. I will be excited when it gets here...Merry Christmas to me. I guess I'll have to let Kristi have it until Christmas so she can wrap it...but I'll definitely try it out first. This whole snare selection thing has been a good test of patience for me...like tonight I actually watched a really expensive Mapex Phosphor Bronze 5.5 x 14 go with no bids on Ebay. But, my new policy of only collecting nice things that I want long term would not allow me to buy it, because since I eventually want a 6.5 x 14 Ludwig Black Beauty, the Mapex Bronze would only be holding me over.
I am happy to report that Lucy and Oliver have been becoming good friends. Sometimes Lucy gets a little rough, but Oliver just purrs away while they play. Sometimes I think Lucy could chew his ear off and he wouldn't care. Lucy is even learning to share her toys with him:
Actually, she doesn't really want to share. When Oliver decided to explore her crate she squeezed in behind him and sat in the back guarding her bone. By the way, I did a really bad photoshop job to that second picture so his eyes weren't glowing...can you tell?Oliver has been great to have around, he is very laid back and friendly, but he gets really lonely when we put him in the laundry room at night. He usually cries a little, but tonight he just cried and cried. Getting into bed tonight was quite an ordeal. His crying upset Lucy, so then she was scratching on the door and crying also. Neither of them would stop, so after some frustration I put Lucy in her crate and just let Oliver cry. After about 20 minutes he finally stopped, and Lucy finally decided to lay down. I put her back in bed, and she thankfully decided she would go to sleep. Hopefully Oliver will learn to sleep in his bed in the laundry room soon without complaint, because I definitely cannot handle 30 minutes of that every night. I guess it is kind of nice that the two of them like each other so much though.
Wow....how was that for a long post? If you made it through that and read every word, I commend you. Tomorrow I'm going to skip Psych, and then go to Micro. I only have one test this week, so that will be nice. Maybe this week will be the week I find a good maple snare...we can only hope...
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