When The Murders All Began

Every Halloween some friends of mine get together for a "Murder Mystery Dinner". If you haven't ever been to a murder mystery party, basically everyone dresses up and acts like their assigned character, and you follow the mystery in a pseudo-scripted/-improved activity to discover who the murder is (sometimes you are the murderer and you don't even know it until the very end)! Well I stumbled upon this picture from the first Murder Mystery dinner from about four years ago:

Murder Mystery Dinner 2007

In case you couldn't tell, that is me on the far left in the ghastly-white complexion. I was supposed to be the 60-year-old Sir Hamish Hogwash in The Mystery of the Pungent Pumpkin Poisoner, a free murder mystery game you can download. I think I took the old-age thing a little too far, but everyone loved it and we had a really good time. If you are wanting to try out your own murder mystery dinner, but don't want to spend any money, this one was pretty fun for a first-time experience. And if you want to add a fun twist, checkout my post about the murder mystery dinner we hosted back in 2009 for more fun ideas for your own party.

Our Inviting House

This is the view our friends and neighbors got as they approached our door this winter:

Watch your head!

Not very inviting, is it? At least we had our little "Welcome" sign to make people feel more comfortable as they reached our ice cave. Luckily we didn't have anyone slip on the ice that formed from all the dripping. We're definitely going to have to put some gutters up this year!

Dedicated to Breeze

Dogs are the funniest animals! Growing up, we always had a dog in the house. And while yes, they are a lot of work and cost a lot of money in food and upkeep, they are just too much fun to skip out on! Here are two dog-related videos I've seen in the last little while that made me laugh really hard:

When my wife decided to move back to Utah to finish up school and left me here all alone in Nevada (don't worry honey - I don't hold it against you :) I asked her if I could get a dog to keep me company. She told me that she wanted a dog too, but didn't want it to get too attached to me and not like her as much after being with me for a full year. Lame. So hopefully within a little while of her returning we'll get ourselves a good dog (or two?)

But this post isn't supposed to be about dogs in general, but about BREEZE - my sister's Golden Retriever dog (who has really become our family dog) and has been one of my favorite dogs growing up - thanks Amanda! Don't let the blog post title fool you - she didn't die or anything - I just wanted to put up some pictures and video of the best dog around.

Growing Up

As is the case with most dogs, Breeze was a very cute puppy. Breeze was the first dog I've known since puppy-hood (all our other dogs were already adults by the time I was born, or we got them as adults from a shelter) I remember that Breeze had really bad "puppy breath" (it smelled like crap - literally) and I always wondered if it was because the puppies ate each others poop. Thankfully Breeze stopped (or never started) eating poop, so her breath has improved since then. Our other dog Hazel unfortunately has never given up the practice... :-/

Puppy Breeze

Teenager Breeze

Doesn't she look like she's going through that "awkward teenage phase" in that picture? It always makes me laugh :)

A Patient Pup

Breeze is one of the most patient dogs around. She'll sit and stay for eternity just waiting for you to tell her "okay!" before she can get up and move. She's also content to spend the entire day by your side - so long as you are willing to hold her paw.

Breeze also puts up with a lot of crap from us. She'll endure the torment as we pile a tower of treats on her nose waiting patiently (and steadily) for us to give her the command that will allow her to dine on her snout snacks.

Balancing Breeze

She will also let us play mean tricks on her (like tying a bone to the ceiling just barely out of reach), as long as in the end she does end up getting her reward:

An Unusual Hobby for a Dog

The most unique thing about Breeze is how she loves to play dress-up. She's happy with all the attention she gets when she dresses up in something like this:

Baseball Breeze

Cool Breeze

Clown Breeze

Granny Breeze

Mourning Breeze

Old Man Breeze

Painter Breeze

Bank Robber Breeze

Police Breeze

Reggae Breeze (with some paw-holding action)

Scary Breeze

Scuba Breeze

Sexy Breeze

Snowboarder Breeze

Cave Explorer Breeze

Swine Flu Breeze

We've had Breeze as part of our family for 6 years now, and here's to many more years of enjoyment and companionship with Breeze!

P.S. What is your favorite dress-up photo of breeze?

Nerds Building Stuff!

Remember "Engineering Week" back in high school and college? They'd usually have some sort of neat demonstration, and there was ALWAYS a building competition (usually bridges of some sort). I never participated in school and recently got depressed when I realized that I'd never have another chance. Then came along GE.

GE celebrates "Engineering Week"
and has a building competition.

When I saw the posters up announcing the event I was stoked. I don't know if I was more excited to find out what we would be building, or to see how badly mine compared to everyone else's! After all, I'm a software engineer, and we have all sorts of mechanical and electrical engineers that can build any kind of contraption you can think of! Luckily they let us form into teams - ideally we'd have one of each type of engineer on a team to be able to tackle any sort of problem, but instead I joined a team with 2 other software engineers. We were determined to show up the other engineers!

Here are the basic rules we had for the competition:

• Our challenge was to build a wind powered vehicle that would transport a small plastic duck along a set course
• The vehicle could consist only of materials purchased at Wal-mart with a supplied $20 gift card
• Nothing can be donated to (or by) the team
• The vehicle must be wind-propelled (there were 3 fans along the course to power the vehicle - as shown below)
• No part of the vehicle may be left behind (i.e. no launching the duck)

The Course

At first our designs were WAY too complicated. We were going to do some sort of tricycle-sailboat-thing with the front axle attached to the sails which would turn the vehicle in whatever direction the wind was blowing. Then we remembered we only had a week to build, test, and compete so we turned to a more simplistic idea - what if we could put the duck inside some sort of ball? Then we'd just have to make sure it was big enough to catch the wind, and light enough to move really fast!

Here's what we made:

Meet pac-man

The duck fits right into his mouth for safe-keeping!

We wanted to do a bigger ball with lighter styrofoam, but when we looked online we found that a styrofoam ball around 12" to be about $65! So we had to go with this denser (but cheaper) nerf foam.

There were 10 different teams that competed in the challenge. I have video of all of the runs (each team was allowed 2 runs), but it was too messy to put them all up here. Instead I have the TOP 5 Building Competition Runs over at my TOP 5 blog if you are interested in checking them out. For now I'll show you our best run (we ended up taking 2nd place - we lost by 0.2 seconds) and the winning run. Sorry for the bad quality!

My Team - 2nd Place

1st Place run

Ironically the winners had a design that was actually pretty close to our original tricycle-sailboat idea; just without the movable axle. Unfortunately, in competitive times like these, there are no prizes for 2nd place, but we're already looking forward to next year's building competition to try for the coveted 1st place spot.

Three-Way? Yes Please!

No matter where you are in the world, there is always some new kind of food that you have never tried, or a food that is exclusive to the area you live. While I was in Cincinnati on an LDS mission, aside from people eating roadkill and squirrels, they ate spaghetti topped with Chili. And they called it a two-way. Want to add cheese? Ask for a three-way. More toppings? Four- or five-way and so on from there.

The other day I made a batch of some homemade chili and was thinking about what I could make with it when I remembered the Cincinnati-style meal. Here's my creation:

A six-way with chili, cheese, fresh tomatoes, salsa, and sour cream

Next time you're looking for a simple meal, but not the same-old red-sauce spaghetti, suggest a 3-way to your significant other and see what they have to say!

To the East!

A couple of weeks ago I flew out to Wilmington, NC for some work training. I've never been to the East Coast, and Wilmington is pretty much right on the coast, so I was excited for the opportunity to be in a beach town and experience their unique food. Typically when you hear about the water from the Atlantic you always hear that it is "so warm", and I was excited to try it out because the water in the Pacific is always so cold! Unfortunately I guess that doesn't hold true in February - the water was frigid! I talked to some of the locals though, and they said it has been colder than usual because of some unusually-cold weather down in the Gulf. Just my luck! It was fun being at the beach though, and of course I had to take the opportunity to send a message to my wife (who didn't miss me fortunately since we're already apart):

Aww... How sweet!

The best part of the trip (besides the training of course... heh heh...) was the FOOD! Check out the awesome cuisine I tried!

A Mexican sushi-roll! Avocados, rice, cheese, tomatoes and shrimp!
And instead of Wasabi they had chipotle/BBQ dressing. So good.

A crab cake INSIDE of a crab! I wasn't expecting this on my seafood platter -
it was more of a WTF moment - but it too was delicious!

Raw Oysters - I always have been curious about them and never sure if I would actually do it, but the opportunity presented itself and I just went for it.
They were saltier than I expected, but overall not too bad.

I also was told by some locals to try out a place called "Smithfield's Chicken 'N Bar-B-Q" and to get the "Chicken and Barbecue" platter. So I went into the restaurant and asked for the "BBQ Chicken" and the lady looked at me like I was a little slow. She replied "You mean the Chicken and Bar-B-Q?" I was a little confused at this point - was "Barbecue" a food here or something? Turns out it was! Barbecue in North Carolina mean pulled-pork in a vinegar- & pepper-based barbecue sauce. It definitely was different, but it was really good! And they even have a mail-order service where you can have "Bar-B-Q" shipped to you front door anywhere in the United States!

Old and Decrepit

Many of you have heard me often complain that my body is growing old way too fast. With frequent sore joints, a "neck of a 60 year-old", and the fact that I started losing my hair in high school, I feel justified making that claim. But when we went to Disneyland last year I had the opportunity to "see what I would look like in 50 years". I just stumbled on these videos that I took and thought they were pretty funny.

I selected the "gain weight" and "tan often" options on this video

So if you see someone who looks like this next time you are in the grocery store, don't be surprised if it is me and my body just decided to age a little on me again!