I guess Tiger's knee is feeling OK

In a post a couple of months ago (link here), I included an imbedded clip (second clip) showing Tiger Woods making a long birdie on the last hole of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill to win over Bart Bryant by a single shot. It was a dramatic shot, complete with full on Tiger hat-slamming celebration mode.

Well, last night Tiger showed he has fully returned and is ready to once again pwn the rest of the golf world. At Bay Hill to defend his title, he started the final round trailing Shawn O'Hair by 5 shots. He did not finish that way.

Tied with O'Hair at -4 coming the the last hole, in fading light due to an earlier rain delay, he needed to make a 15-16 ft putt to avoid having to come back the next day for a playoff. See below for the results. Click on the little "HD" in lower right to see it in HD.

Paula's Texas Orange

After quite a bit of searching (most of it quite tasty), I feel I have finally found a worthy "economic recession" replacement for my favorite orange liqueur, Cointreau. Cointreau is outstanding in my favorite mixed drinks like margaritas and comsopolitans, but tends to run $37-$40 for a 750ml bottle. And it never seems to be on special in my local store, Twin Liquors.

With the cutback actions taken at my company (mentioned in a previous post here), I needed to save some money, so I began trying cheaper substitutes. I tried Patron Citronge, Gran Gala, and Bauchant to only marginally acceptable results (the Citronge isn't that bad). But when I tried Paula's Texas Orange, my search was over.

Paula's is made in Austin, TX, and is unfortunately only available in Texas right now. As good as it is, though, I hope they'll expand and make it available to the rest of the country. It has a very fresh, light orange flavor that does not taste artificial at all. It makes great margaritas and cosmos. Heck, you can even make an All-Austin Cosmopolitan by using Paula's and your choice of three different Austin-made vodkas: Tito's, Dripping Springs, or Savvy.

While I still think Cointreau is the best, Paula's Texas Orange allows me to make margaritas and Cosmos that taste almost as good as those made with Cointreau, but for much lower cost. That's certainly something to be appreciated these days. Cheers!

Additional side note: "What about Grand Marnier?", you may ask. While I agree that Grand Marnier may be one of the best orange liqueurs out there, I prefer G-M for straight sipping in a cognac / brandy snifter. I think it's a bit heavy and overpowering for my margaritas and other mixed drinks. But this is simply my personal preference. Arguing about whether Cointreau or G-M is a better orange liqueur is like debating whether an Aston-Martin DBS or a Porsche 911 Turbo is a better car.

Daniel and Lauren Attempt Dog Training

With the help of Vic Garcia and his dog, Pete (above), Lauren and Daniel attempted to take Pete for a walk around our backyard last week. Results were, um, mixed.





Lauren's training method was to try "running screaming from the dog in terror"!

Musical Friday, Carla / Dale Wedding

My church friends Carla and Dale (pictured above) are getting married tonight at church during our usual Friday night service. They've asked us to do our normal music service, and have requested two songs they like for their wedding, You Won't Relent (by Misti Edwards), and Majesty (by Delirious).

In honor of their wedding, I give you today's Musical Friday offering, the "You Sexy Thing" scene from one of my all-time favorite movies, The Full Monty. Key piece of advice: Remove Cigarette, THEN Shirt. Another all-time favorite quote where Dave says, "Anti-wrinkle cream there may be ... anti-fat-bastard cream? there is none!"

The Perfect Commute

Very strange commute to work today. Not only are lots of folks out this week at my company, but I think lots of people in Austin took today off from work as well. I drive to work from Kyle to Oak Hill on some 2-lane backroads through rural areas, and most days I get behind some slower folks on a good portion of the drive.

But today, not only was the weather perfect (dry, clear, low of 47F, high today of 80F), but my drive was about as perfect as can be. I had no one in front of me for probably 20 out of the 26 miles to work. Even the few cars I had in front of me for a short stretch weren't going all that slow. Even two stoplights that are normally quite long were not crowded and turned green just as I got to both of them.

Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket!

Aston Martin dealership

Front page article on the Statesman this morning is about how John Eagle European plans to open an Aston Martin car dealership in Austin. Link here. I like business owners like this who have the stones to ignore the recession and boldly proceed with business plans. That V-12 DBS (picture from Statesman article below) is a sweet ride for ONLY $260,000!

Nerdy side note: A quick check of a mortgage calculator shows my CAR payment for that car on a THIRTY-YEAR finance of that amount at 6% yields a monthly payment of over $1500, more than 3.5x my current Altima car payment (for only 4 years). If you could get 0% interest for a 5-yr note you're talking 4333 / month, a solid 10X my current car payment!

photo by Ralph Barrera, Austin-American Statesman

Little Mermaid, or Burrito Lady?

My daughter (pictured above) wanted to become a mermaid, so my wife wrapped her up tight in a blanket. Voila! I kind of thought she looked like a burrito, though. Made me think of that jingle for Chipotle restaurant, "hey, hey, hey, burrito lady ... drive me crazy ... burrito lady".

Down in front!

After church Sunday, my good friends Vic and Sarah Garcia (photo of Vic above) took Natasha and I out for lunch at Cheddar's, a local casual dining place. The lunch crowd was pretty heavy, and we had to wait 30-40 minutes for a table. We had our hands full keeping my kids entertained and well-behaved while waiting, so we were thankful when 2-3 seats at the rather crowded bar area finally opened up for us to at least let our kids sit down (they like the cool high bar seats) and for us to order a drink. There weren't enough seats for us all and Natasha and I were standing behind our kids in the seats to watch them and keep them still.

As the bartender is making our ritas, a guy seated behind me at a booth waiting to get his food order asks me if I would move so he can see the TV playing a college basketball (think it was an ACC conf tourney game) game. I was a bit taken aback because I thought it was pretty clear that because I was with my kids that I could NOT move! There was definitely not another place all 6 of us could move to in the bar area. Furthermore, this overall bar area had like 4-5 TVs that this guy could have easily gotten up and moved to to watch the game if it was that important.

Anyway, I told him, "No, I can't move because I need to stay here with my kids and friends," the guy's wife huffs and says, "Uh, rude!". I wasn't really angry until she said that. I got pretty pissed at him and moved over and got in their faces (maybe 3-4 feet away) and said, "Look, sir, if YOU want to watch my kids I'll send 'em right over and then I'll move. But we're waiting for a table and waiting for the bartender to make our drinks. I will MOVE when they have our table ready and they call our name." He didn't say anything else after that. Like George in Seinfeld, I later thought of many more witty things to say (...the JERK store called and they're running out of YOU!).

My wife thought perhaps I was a little too aggressive with him, but I felt I did pretty good not to drop a bunch of f-bombs on his head and toss him through the window. Later after we got seated the manager came over and apologized to us. She and the bartender at least confirmed that the other guy was in the wrong on the issue. Vic had the best line of the entire day when he said with a straight face to the manager, "Man, it's those CHURCH people coming in here on Sundays!" to which the manager gave him a high-five.

The restaurant itself turned out to be pretty good and we had a great time and wonderful visit other than that incident. The frozen ritas we ordered for about $7 were easily twice the size of a frozen rita at most places, and not diluted! I think maybe the barkeep felt sorry for us after that incident and maybe put in a couple of extra floater shots or something! The food was also very good and they gave us large portions.

Oh, I just learned that I have the wrong photo. My bad! Corrected photo of Vic below (on left), along with good friend Kevin Aymat who passed away last year (to whom this blog is partly dedicated).

Great weekend with old and new friends!

This past weekend was really cool, and it was rather unexpected. This weekend was going to be just like any other, but we learned a few days ago that old friend from church Alex Gonzalez was coming into two with his daughter Moriah.

People began linking up using Facebook, and we ended up getting several old friends together at our church for our Friday night and Sunday services as well as for a reunion cookout and jam session at our church on Saturday. We in our current church (me and Natasha, David and Anya, Jennifer and Darren, Wes and Corey) hooked up with Steve and Wendy Gonzalez, Kevin and Scott Hertenstein and their significant others, Sarah Mueller, John Myers, Parker White (not sure if that's his last name or Guggisberg...) and his kids, and Loy and One Gilley. See below for a group photo (click on photo to see large version), or link to more images on my Flickr page here.

Musical Friday -- Ron Burgundy plays the Jazz Flute

My friend Vic Garcia posted this link from the movie Anchorman on his web page a few days ago, and dedicated it to my mom, who used to play the flute a lot (in HS and college), calling her Donna "Sweet Lips" Triplett. Nice.

Several awesome lines from this scene:
-- Tino: "...when the desert coyote eats the heart of the young, and the blood drips down to the children"
-- Ron: "I couldn't possibly ... really, I'm not prepared." (pulls flute from sleeve)
-- Ron: "Oh, that's baby-makin' music right there!"

Taylor Manson (friend's daughter) picture in Tuscon paper

My good friends Steve Manson and Kim Braun live in Tuscon, AZ, where he works for Raytheon Corp., and she is a freelance music composer (film scores, etc.) A couple of years ago, Steve and Kim adopted two kids, Taylor and Ryan. He sent me a really cool little article that featured a photo of his daughter Taylor in the local Tuscon paper. Link here for the story. Excerpt and photo of Taylor demonstrating her device below.

Taylor Manson's grandmother didn't have the strength to swing a hammer and obliterate an old hard drive with sensitive information in it. So Taylor consulted with her father and ended up creating a hard-drive crusher using a metal plate and a car jack. "I never thought I'd actually invent something," she said, surrounded by a throng of young admirers intrigued by new modes of destruction.

Taylor's mother, 42-year-old composer Kim Braun, said the fair was far better than the science fairs she remembers of old.

"There are only so many volcanoes you can see," she said, adding she was impressed by the ingenuity of the students. "The inventions are very creative, but at the same time, there's a practical application for them."

Martin's Pflugerville girls team loses ... understandably

My colleague Fonzell Martin has a daugher, Kaylan, that plays for the Pflugerville girls HS basketball team. See previous post about her here. Their team lost in the state semifinals to Nimitz. But it's easy to understand why.

Nimitz' best player is Brittney Griner, who is 6'8" (#42, pictured above, being guarded by #10 Kaylan) and can dunk easily with either one or two hands. She scored 44 and had 18 blocks in Nimitz' win. Griner is committed to play for the Baylor Bears. The women's team. I think. Check out a couple of her dunks below. Keep in mind this is a high school girl.

Boys are human? Girls?

Hilarious story from my wife a couple of days ago. She emailed me at work:

After coming home from an errand, I was trying to get both of the kids back into the house. Daniel (age 5) was crawling on all fours not listening at all. So, I told him to get up and walk like a human. Daniel responded that he was a boy and not a human.

I told him that boys are humans.

And Lauren (age 4) chimed in “yeah, boys are humans and girls are angels.”

Jihad Fail

Found a very funny web site, failblog.org. People submit things they consider to be a "fail", with caption "xxxxx fail".

Great example here, captioned as "Jihad Fail":

see more pwn and owned pictures

Bloody Mary, Dripping Springs Vodka, Red Eye

I thought at first when I saw Dripping Springs Vodka (web site here) in my local Twin Liquors that perhaps my alma mater's high school students had branched out in their student activities and had a class making booze! The vodka maker is not actually affiliated with the high school, though. I think it's funny that the picture on their web site has a photo taken at Enchanted Rock, probably 60+ miles away from Dripping Springs.

I'm not really a vodka connoisseur. All good-quality brands seem to taste good to me, especially in cocktails. Although I can tell that Austin based Tito's vodka (which is also quite good) has a bit of corn / whisky taste since it's based on corn instead of potato, wheat, or other grains like other vodkas.

I've started making Bloody Mary's at home lately, and it took me a while to find a recipe I liked. I really like the Red Eye Habanero mix, link here to web site. I've settled on the one below after some experimentation. Note you can also use Citadelle Gin (or other gin of your preference like Bombay Sapphire or Tanqueray) instead of vodka for a change of pace -- that's really good, too.

20th Hole Bloody Mary
-- 4-6 oz Red Eye Habanero bloody mary mix
-- 2-3 oz Dripping Springs Vodka, Tito's Vodka, or Citadelle Gin
-- juice of half a lemon, freshly squeezed
-- few dashes worchestershire sauce
-- few dashes of Tabasco sauce

Mix all above in ingredients in tall glass, stir, add ice. Can also garnish with celery stalk, jalapeno-stuffed olives, or banana peppers as desired (I usually skip those formalities, especially if I'm making this on a weekday evening). BTW, I made these last night and didn't have any lemons so I used lime instead -- my wife commented that it didn't taste as good.