Omnivorous?!?

Today I had a weird encounter and I am still trying to figure out how to handle it! It all started during that time of day that you are trying to figure out what to eat for dinner. Well I looked outside and saw a beautiful day with just the right number of clouds in the sky and thought, "Today seems like a fantastic day for grillin!" So I went to my local commissary (well OK, there is only one within an hour of here but it is still local) and picked up a couple of wonderful, marbled rib-eye steaks.

From Gillin w/ Vegetables

Came home and fired up the grill, trying not to burn the house down but still insuring that it only took one match (got to love lighter fluid, is there really ever something as too much lighter fluid? . . . )

From Gillin w/ Vegetables

After applying a Top Secret rub of spices and salts to my steaks, I threw them on the grill.

From Gillin w/ Vegetables

There is just something soothing about knowing that your dinner is cooking over the flames right before your eyes . . .

From Gillin w/ Vegetables

Alright, so now the steak is just the way I like it, medium well (just enough pink to make it tasty but keep you from suffering for it) I go ahead and throw it onto a plate for eating. Now I know what you are thinking. I am a guy and this seems like nothing really special to blog about. After all, men cook on the grill ALL the time. Well, I am not sure if the planets have aligned, if I was visited last night by Martians, or if the world is coming to an end but this next part is anything but normal. **CAUTION: These following pictures are not for the faint of heart or for those brave ones with the name T1 or T2**

From Gillin w/ Vegetables

Yep, that is right, those are the dangerous, scary, from-the-ground green specimens also known by common folk as Veggies!! I am not sure the reasoning but I decided to put those things some out-of-this-world people call vegetables on my plate and eat them.

From Gillin w/ Vegetables

But after a few 'rabbit' bites, I couldn't help but notice a beautiful steak staring back at me so I had to entertain him too.

From Gillin w/ Vegetables

Well I guess my science teacher didn't lie to me when she told me that humans aren't in fact carnivorous. I got to say though, it was an outstanding dinner and I think the chef is definitely pushing for a new standard of 6 not 5 stars!!

From Gillin w/ Vegetables

A wonderful day

Well I am really enjoying playing with my new camera and now that I have a tripod, I can stop taking "postcard" photos and make them a bit more meaningful by adding a handsome looking guy ;)

In the Beginning

From BMT

In the beginning there was just God. Well while at boot camp, our Technical instructor or TI (similar to a drill sergeant) thought that referred to them being there in the beginning. In the Air Force, Basic Military Training or BMT takes place at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. We are there for 6 weeks as our introduction into military life and initiation. For this time we spend a lot of time marching, marching, cleaning our living areas, oh and did I mention marching.

From BMT

We also do a lot of "pushing Texas" (pushups), sitting in invisible chairs, and being spat on by an angry TI who swears that we are the scum of the Earth. While going through it, one is just dying to get it over but looking back, it was a lot of fun; some great stories came from that experience.

From BMT

Really you can ask anyone who has gone through boot camp about something funny that happened there, they wouldn't know where to begin.

From BMT

As you can see I gained skills of loosing hair, making a bed that you can bounce a quarter off of,

From BMT

shining boots that where just caked with mud 30 min earlier and well looking like 29 other guys with no hair and wearing the same clothes.

Weekend Adventure

Well this weekend was quite an adventure. First I went to a friend's house who is deployed to Afghanistan to mow his yard. Lucky for me his yard had the grass pretty long and a very poor lawn mower. What should have taken maybe 30 min at the most became a 2 hour fight with a lawn mower that did not want to cut. After that was over I came home to tackle my own backyard. To my surprise I found an intruder inside my house. A large yellow jacket who was trying to set up shop around my computer books. To his dismay, I was armed with a can of air which I used to give him frostbite. Bye Bye yellow bugger! Afterwards I cut my lawn to find it taken over by multiple red ant farms. It was like a red ant resort. Too bad the weed eater had to pummel that 5-star hotel. Well after a Indiana Jones styled day, I decided to take some pictures of this really cool plant with heart shaped flowers. As well a plant that only two weeks ago wasn't there and now it became one giant cabbage patch. What a beautiful day and a stunning backyard :)

My "Postcard"

Well it is no secret that I love to run and I definitely enjoy the beautiful outdoor, so it is perfect when I live only a block away from an outstanding place that allows me to do both. Bure Park. This I will admit was one of the reasons I choose the house that I did to move into. I wanted to have a place that had running trails, and not just one loop to run but a place where I could customize my run to the mood and time of that day. This park has plenty of paths that interweave throughout the gorgeous landscape and makes it easy to fit in a 4 mile run without running the same path twice. Granted it is a place where many come to walk their dogs so you have to be on the lookout for "land mines." Since running with a camera can be a bit difficult and counter productive; I took advantage of a wonderful day to walk and capture the beauty of this park that I spend so much time in running.

Trip to Germany

Well I had a very interesting one week trip to Ramstein Air Base, Germany for a CISCO SONET class. We started out with not the greatest weather; three days straight of rain. Then Wednesday things lightened up for us as we went to the Castle Burgruine Nanstein in Landstuhl, Germany. It was a small castle partially in ruins but fun to explore. As our class was coming to an end on Friday we learned that a volcano erupted in Iceland shooting up an ash cloud that was coming over Europe. Though the ash cloud was not visible it would choke up any airplane's turbine, thus grounding all European flights. Well we wouldn't let that stop us from coming home so we decided to drive through the Netherlands, Belgium, and France to catch a ferry acrosss the English Channel and drive on home. Fun times.

Schnitzel

Here at Ramstein Air Base, Germany; they have many detachments from different coutries stationed on the base. The Germans had a restaurant that serves authentic German food, so I had to take advantage of it and try the famous "schnitzel." Schnitzel is a thin slice of pork that is beaten to be smashed. It is then breaded and fried; nothing to complicated but tastes absolutely great. Great food!!