The Church of the Blinding White Light of Stupidity

Back into the swing...

I'll be posting more, now that my vacation and testing and all is over... sometimes I just don't have anything to say...

The Chef's Garden...

When I was young it was more important
Pain, more pain, though I laughed so much louder, yeah
When I was young

I'm cooking dinner for Rita and the local daughter tonight.

Rack of lamb
Braised red potatoes
Green beans w/ bacon
Strawberry shortcake

Roasting lamb always reminds me my first job cooking in a french restaurant, Tony Ridgway's Chef's Garden. During the late 70's it was one of the best nouvelle cuisine restaurants in Florida.

Rack of lamb, salmon en croute, sauteed veal, boneless chicken stuffed with artichokes and black olives. One side of the menu never changed, on the other side we experimented. Sauteed salmon steaks in watercress fume, Steak New Orleans (A NY stuffed with oysters), tournados King Henry the 8th, Sea Bass in fennel.

All the line cooks had been recruited because we knew how to work as tradesman. Paul Carter was a house painter, Tony Penny was a mason, Mike Etienne had worked construction and I had been an iron worker. Most of us had cooked before, but not at this level. Tony Ridgway and Gary Johnson taught us how to cook and how to make a kitchen run smoothly. We were taught the techniques, the methods and the importance of consistancy.

If you've ever read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain you have pretty good idea of what our kitchen was like.

Sex and drugs and rock and roll is all my body craves...

Mix that with some drawn butter, bechamel, veal stock and a little chou paste, stick a bottle of vodka in the salad crisper then go to the dumpster for a doobie break and you have a more complete picture.

We had a pair of dishwashers from North Carolina, The Wall Brothers, who were unique. Steven (Slim) had been electrocuted a few times, once by a high tension wire and twice by lightning. He had some facial tics but was otherwise fairly normal.

RC on the other hand, was as cantankerous a fellow as I've ever met. He had taught mathematics at one of the schools in NC (Duke or NC State, I think) and had quit. An extremely bright guy, he contented himself with drinking and washing dishes for a living. He would stand at the dish machine, bitching about women in his nasal North Carolina mountain accented voice...

"...buy me a beeer... buy me a beeer... that's all these bitches want... they want to know what kind of car I drive and then won't talk to me because I drive a beater... damn car gets me where I want to go, why should it matter to them?... buncha cum drunk whores... "

... so one night I'm at the bar, getting shift drinks for the kitchen crew and as the women's bathroom door opens behind me, I hear RC's distinctive voice wafting from inside the ladies room... "... buy me a beeer... stupid bitch didn't know who she was askin'..." and at that moment I could see the airconditioning grill over the dish machine and realized that it must open on the other side into the ladies room... and for at least three years, RC had been "entertaining" our female patrons with his observations on women's dating motivation...

That week the AC was reconfigured so that the kitchen was on a separate duct... it was cheaper than finding another good dishwasher.

Yard Work...

I've been on vacation all week and because Rita had to attend class, I've been working in the yard instead of soaking up rays at some nice beach...

Actually, I soaked up enough ultra-violet radiation by the time I reached twenty to give fourty people cancer, living near the beach in California and Florida, so it's nothing I'll miss.

I butchered a few trees, poisoned the lawn and wacked the wild flowers by the mailbox.

Piss-off, Mother Nature, you should have kept your damn plants out of my way...

Oh, Yeah... My Favorite from the batch...

The Bubs, giving the dogs a "Stern Talking To"...

How have I managed to survived this long?...

When I was 14 I thought I would never survive to see 17... I remember thinking that I would be 50 in 2003 but that it would never get that far... at 20 I believed 25 was unattainable... I was living fast and trying to die young... it appears that I failed at that... and I was never very pretty so the "good looking corpse" part wasn't a consideration...

Now, here I am, 50 years old, an invitation to join AARP on my desk, spending my birthday cleaning house and damn glad to be doing it...

As Dad used to say, "Getting old sucks, but it beats the hell out of the alternative."

...or something like that...

My Bubs...

We had the Grandson Friday night and his Aunt Jessy came over to sit with him while I took Mah out for a 2 1/2# porterhouse at Doe's Eats.

A mighty fine chunk of dead steer was consumed in short order, preceeded by six fresh, fried gulf shrimp and washed down with cold Dr Pepper.

Before we left, I took some (a lot) of pics of the boy being himself.

He lights up my days...

50 on Monday...

I turn 50 on Monday... my brother Bill turns 54 the same day...

Happy Birthday Bro'...

I passed the test...

I got the results from the CISSP exam I took last Saturday... It was pass/fail and I passed... Rita and I will consume vast quantities of dead cow in celebration...

Now I have to polish my resume so the folks at (ISC)² can investigate my background... then, when all checks out, I will get my certificate....

Crap, this means I will be paying dues...

I'm Studing for the CISSP Exam...

I work in Computer security so the powers that be decided to provide me the opportunity to become a Certified Information Systems Security Professional. I will be spending the next week in class for 12 hours every day and I have a thick book to read.

In the mean time, check out Our photo pages and Rita's Blog...

I will be back... eventually...

Onanism is the only ism for me...

I cruised over to the random name generator... courtesy of The Corner by way of Overcome by Events...

And my new name?

Onan Merritt Smith

Hey, wasn't Onan the guy who spilled his seed?