WTB: Hazmat Suit

Just got an update from Heather, RE her mom’s cancer:

Reese’s Ups the Ante

I have to tell you about a diabolical new plot. You know how hard it is to deal with Reese’s peanut butter cups? Sure you do. You have to peel the paper off, and you get chocolate under your nails, and half of the chocolate sticks to the paper, and then it gets on the steering wheel or the surgical instruments or the flight yoke or whatever you’re handling at the time.

Well now Reese’s has gone medieval on us. They are selling enormous BARS of their trademark confection. Yes, you have to gnaw through the paper, but after that, it’s pure uninterrupted pleasure.

Stay away from these things. Reese’s was never intended to be this easy.

Brief

Couple of things.

1. My sister is on her way to a hospital in another state, to have her lung looked at. She may have some kind of fungus. It’s not cancer; don’t get excited. If you would like to pray that she makes the trip safely and gets her problem fixed, I would appreciate it.

2. Reader Ed pointed me to another blog. The proprietor has a friend named Donna, and Donna has a “serious health issue.” Prayer is requested. Not sure what’s happening, but I trust Ed’s judgment.

Mike and I are about to hit Gordon Food Supply. I hope we survive.

Mill Nearly Here

The milling machine is eight minutes late.

I can’t stand it. Oh, the suspense. And the dread. What if my measurements are wrong and I can’t park in the garage after this?

This morning I realized I should have bought T nuts to attach my vise to the machine. I have a clamping set, so I’ll be okay, but I should have some studs and nuts that are dedicated to the job.

Now it’s nine minutes late.

I wonder what the day holds for me. A lot of cleaning, I would think. This machine may be slathered in cosmoline. I hope there are no problems with it. If these people take seven weeks to ship a mill, imagine how long they take to fix one if it’s busted.

Ten minutes late.

I’ll have to tram it. That will be my first real challenge. After that, I install the vise. Then I may throw some metal in the vise and see if I can square it up.

I’m really pathetic. Last night, I went to the marina with my dad to try to get his GPS working. It turns out that Garmin GPSs are extremely finicky about power supplies, and a lot of people have problems because of it. The sloppy guy who installed this one has it on the same circuit as at least two other pieces of marine electronics. The Garmin tech said we should run a wire to the battery, just for the GPS. Right. That will only take five hours and forty feet of wire.

Here is the pathetic part. Someone had left a big tubular aluminum thing near the trash. Maybe an antenna. Naturally, I grabbed it. Hey, five pounds of free aluminum, and several feet are anodized. Black. Very pretty.

Fourteen minutes late.

Mike will be here tonight. Maybe I’ll fix a Costco prime rib eye for him. They’re very nice, but truthfully, the choice steaks I got last week were so good, I don’t think there is much point in buying prime for everyday dinners. The prime jobs are better, but not way, way, WAY better.

Fifteen minutes late. I better go out and look up and down the street. Just to be helpful.

So This is Ecstasy

Costco had prime beef today.

This is EASILY the greatest day of my life.

They had boneless rib eye steaks for $10 a pound. Not bad at all. That’s not far from half price. But they had rib eye ROASTS for $7.27! Oh, man. You can get a roast two feet long for a hundred bucks. Maybe ten decent steaks. If that isn’t a good reason to convert a beer cooler into a deep freeze, I don’t know what is.

The sad thing: Costco probably had prime beef the last time I went. I think I looked in the wrong place.

When He’s Ten Feet Wide

What IS it they put in McDonald’s breakfasts?

I just ate a McMuffin, a greasy biscuit sandwich, and three hash browns, and I’m pretty sure I’m high. I can’t get enough of this stuff. The only breakfast I like better is a big Southern breakfast with country ham and biscuits and gravy. And jelly. And honey. And red eye gravy. And Dr. Pepper.

There has to be a drug in this stuff. It can’t just be grease and flour and eggs.

I look forward to this all week, because I diet every day except Saturday. All week long, it has been oatmeal, oatmeal, oatmeal, OATMEAL. I have breakfast with my dad on Tuesdays, and on those days, I have a tuna sandwich, because eggs are bad for my gall bladder. Once a week, I have to have something I can actually taste.

I stopped losing weight. I guess I manage to eat so much on Saturdays, it kills the rest of the week. I may have to adjust my calories downward. But I’m not giving up Saturdays. I don’t care if the other days go down to three hundred calories each. I have to have decent food on occasion.

Speaking of decent food, I had a magnificent Costco steak this week. I went down there hoping the local Costcos was one of the stores where they had started selling prime beef. Sadly, it was not. But I picked up some choice rib eyes, and beef grading is not an exact science, and what I ended up with was pretty much the same thing as prime. I pan-fried one for dinner, and it made my eyes roll back in my head. I think it pays to study the beef you buy, because you will occasionally find something better than the grade on the label indicates.

Dinner is pretty dull for me these days. Roasted chicken, grilled fish, pork chops, or pan-fried steak, plus a couple of boring vegetables that are low in carbs. The food is good, but there is no imagination in it. And it’s a little monotonous. Lunch is almost always a tuna salad or salmon salad sandwich and a little fruit. If I didn’t break loose on Saturday, I’d go insane.

Imagine eating a gorgeous rib eye with steamed snap peas and Brussels sprouts. This is what I am reduced to.

In my book, I advised people to cook steaks outdoors on a propane-powered griddle, and that gives incredible results, but lately I’ve been using a cast-iron skillet on the stove, right under the vent fan. The smoke has been tolerable. Seems like a piece of cast iron will start imparting a wonderful flavor to steak, if you cook steak in it regularly. Maybe I should dedicate that skillet to rib eyes and CFS.

I believe a Christian has to have self-control, and that means you can’t eat everything you want. Like Jim from SOTW says, it’s irritating to hear a big, fat, sloppy preacher with a 50-inch waist and giant wattles make the ridiculous claim that it’s a sin to drink moderately.

Why are Christians so fat? Is it my imagination? The people at my church look pretty normal, but if you turn on religious TV, you will see some real porkers punishing the pews. I guess we take the energy we can’t channel into other sins and put it into gluttony. If you’re letting your physical urges ruin your life, you’re sinning, aren’t you? How is weighing 300 pounds significantly different from taking drugs or being a drunk? I realize obesity has fewer ill effects on you and your family, but it will still kill you and make everyone around you miserable. Have you ever sat next to a fat person on an airplane? Do you have a fat relative who ruins your meals because of the way he or she eats? Do you have someone who makes it impossible for anyone else in the house to get anything good to eat, because he or she nails it as soon as it comes in the door? Do you have a fat relative who always gets the best seat in the car because he can’t get in the other ones? Fat people hog the bathroom, because they have to. They ruin furniture. Fat women destroy wooden floors with their tiny heels. If you’re huge, you’re probably making your family suffer. You should try to do something about it.

I wrote that silly cookbook, but it wasn’t intended to be a set of rules to guide you through every day of your life. I am fat, and I will never claim it’s okay, and while I will continue cooking good food as often as I can get away with it, I will never stop working on my weight.

Speaking of drinking, I haven’t made beer in ages, and I really need to get back to it. I rarely drink, but it would be a shame to get so good at homebrewing and then throw it all away. When you drink very little, you ought to make it count. Have something really good. I can’t remember my last drink of hard liquor, but I can promise you it was something excellent. I can afford it because one bottle lasts two years.

I wish it were next Saturday already, so I could hit the drive-through again.

I Decipher the Lathe Chart

Time for the world’s worst machinist to pose a stupid question.

I have been complaining that my lathe doesn’t tell me how fast the power feed moves. It has a threading chart, and I assumed the little measurements on the chart, below the thread pitch numbers, indicated the distance the carriage moved per revolution when threading. However, I didn’t bother to see whether the measurements made sense. Yesterday I realized they did not. For example, at 4 threads per inch, the measurement is 0.0367″, which is not even close to the 0.25″ each thread would require.

Are these numbers power feed speeds? They have to be. The manual doesn’t say, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.

I got amazing news from my rigger today. He says the mill should arrive at his place by 1:00 p.m. This is like waiting for the Second Coming. There have been so many false labors, I find it hard to believe that it will ever get here.

I wish I had some metal on hand for a project. I have lots of round stock, plus a little thin rectangular bar, but my only meaningful piece of milling fodder is my 72-pound chunk of mild steel, which is the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread. I had the chance to get a Jet band saw at a great price, but I failed utterly, so I have no practical way of making smaller pieces from the loaf. I can use the mill, but that would take a century and waste a lot of metal. I guess I could part it in the lathe! That would be pretty terrifying.

I was kidding just now, but I suppose it’s possible. Mount it in the 4-jaw chuck, center-drill it, stick it on my poor beat-up dead center, and pray. I’d have to back the tailstock off every time I got close to the center of the work, because you’re not supposed to part using a center. I’d also have to drill over and over, because each slice would take a drill hole with it, and then I’d have slices with drill holes in them, so I’d have to face the material down to the point where the holes disappeared, wasting metal.

I wonder how slowly I’d have to run the lathe. Like 20 RPM, unless I wanted to dodge a 72-pound missile as it came off the chuck.

No, this is not a great idea. I may as well get a band saw or find someone to cut this thing. If I pay someone, I have to decide in advance exactly how big the pieces will be.

I parted my pathetic hammer handle project with one end in a chuck and one end on a dead center, but I pulled the dead center out before I got close to the end. I hope that’s not insanely dangerous. It seemed to make sense. The center kept things working through most of the cut, and at the end, it wasn’t necessary.

The VFD is pretty great. Combine it with the back gear, and you could probably turn slowly enough to roast a pig. Helpful when parting.

VFD…pig roasting…help! I’m having an awful idea! I have a crappy 3-phase motor I’ll never be able to sell. How cheap can I get a VFD for it? I’d be the bull goose pig roaster of all time.

Thank God, the VFD is too expensive. It’s $144. There is no way I would do that. Tempting idea, though. Low frequencies for slow cooking; crank it up to throw excess grease off the pig. I guess the motor would burn up at 1 RPM.

I never followed up with my pig roaster idea. A long time ago I planned to weld one up, out of fence posts. But the motor I ordered never arrived. They discontinued it or something. I should check Grainger. Fence posts cost virtually nothing, and I already have a couple. The motor is the only real expense.

Costco Gets Even Better

I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it. It’s too good to be true. If I believe it, it will turn out to be a hoax, and then I’ll be crushed.

A news story says PRIME BEEF IS SHOWING UP AT COSTCO.

No. It’s a cruel joke.

I am absolutely crazy about prime beef. This is one reason I love rib eyes so much. A choice rib eye is nearly as good as the prime version of some other cuts. I don’t buy a lot of prime beef, because it’s so expensive. Once in a while, I’ll get a prime rib roast, age it, cut it into steaks, and freeze them. But I haven’t done it in a while. Even I feel strange, paying over $150 for one roast.

I still laugh about the “green bag” the store gave me the last time I bought a prime roast. It’s really stupid. The greenies, in their hysteria, are moaning about a nonexistent landfill crisis caused by grocery bags, so the store decided to reward people for big buys by giving them reusable cloth bags. I paid $162.50 for a huge hunk of corn-fed prime beef, so I qualified for a ridiculous hippie green bag! I love it.

Now maybe I can get a jump on the prime beef game. According to the Wall Street Journal, the economy is hurting steakhouses, so the beef they usually buy is going to grocery stores, and the prices are low.

Did I just wake up in a dream? Don’t pinch me.

I don’t understand why prime beef has always been so hard to find in some areas. Mike lives near DC, and you would think there would be an awful lot of spoiled, narcissistic people up there who would be willing to buy prime beef which they are unable to appreciate. But he has a hard time getting it. Maybe the people who eat prime are generally willing to go to restaurants to get it.

Big mistake, if true. My steak dinners blow the steakhouses away, and yours can, too. You have to be nuts to waste money on Ruth’s Chris or Peter Luger’s when you can eat better food at home, cheaper.

I guess I was noticing a fortunate trend when I saw prime rib selling at the local store for $12 per pound last week. That’s not bad at all. It means I can get five mindblowing 2″ rib eyes for $120. If they have prime at Costco, I can do even better, although they’ll probably cut out the bone.

To me, the ideal dinner is a rib eye, a big baked potato with sour cream and butter, homebrew, and a killer dessert, like homemade blueberry cheesecake or a big apple pie. That is as good as food gets. I would guess that the ingredients for an entire cheesecake run about $10, if you downsize my recipe to make it more practical. Add $48 for the steak and maybe five bucks for the potato, and you have a dinner that will kill two people, for around $65. Why would you go to a restaurant and pay more for inferior food?

Costco charges about $5.50 for choice rib eyes. Some dude in the story I linked to says they charged him $9 for prime steaks. And Costco rib eyes are always boneless, so while I prefer bone-in, the price is even better than it looks. I would almost buy another freezer to nail that deal down.

I was thinking of filling my second beer cooler with frozen food, to make Obamanomics less frightening. I guess I should do it.

I shouldn’t be glad. People are suffering. That’s why the cheap food is turning up. In a year or so we’ll probably see many, many things dropping significantly in price. Businesses that benefit from high markups in good times have to slash their margins to survive in recessions. Prices will fall, but many people will still be unable to buy. I’m assuming Obama’s efforts to devalue our money will turn out to be weaker than downward pressure on prices.

I got a crazy deal on my milling machine. It would have been a deal at full price, but they reduced the price AND threw in a variable-speed head. I suppose they were thrilled to make a sale.

Man, I hate being on a diet. I get 1800 calories on a typical day, so I can’t fit a real meal into my schedule, even if I only eat once a day. You can get 3000 calories in a high-fat feast without really stuffing yourself. A rib eye is probably over 1500. My only decent meals come on Saturdays, when I drop the restrictions. So I only get to cook good food a couple of times a week. And this is how I plan to live from now on. Maybe I can get some relief if I make smaller portions of good food.

I guess if I can get boneless Costco prime rib eyes, I can cut them thin enough to make them fit into a normal day. When I get bone-in rib eyes, I can’t cut them any thinner than 2″, because that’s the distance between ribs.

It’s rough, writing about this on a day when I had oatmeal for breakfast.

Costco mission this week.

Cheap Meat!

I paid a visit to the grocery store to get some wings for dinner. By the way, this is one of the great low-carb feasts of all time. Add salt, pepper, and garlic. Bake at 425 for one hour on a broiling pan. Serve with a mixture of Frank’s Red Hot sauce and butter. Simple.

Anyway, while I was there, I noticed they had beautiful prime rib for $12 a pound. Not choice. Prime! I trembled with desire. This is only 20% more expensive than choice.

It’s funny, but meat seems cheap right now. A couple of years back, I paid $12.50 for prime rib, to age and cut into steaks. Then the price went up. Now it’s down. And the store was packed with cheap chicken. Costco’s meat prices are down, too. Thanks, Fannie Mae and Barney Frank! I wish everyone could benefit from the low prices.

I had to call Mike. A meat-bargain sighting is no fun without someone to share it with.

I thought he was coming down this weekend, but he’s really busy. Might make it a week later.

I would appreciate it if people would include him and his family in their prayers. I’m hoping all four of them end up attending church regularly, and that they start to see the blessings flow.

I can tell I’m going to have to have prime rib soon. Or age a roast for steaks. I only have two aged rib eyes in the freezer, and they’re choice. That is unacceptable.

Still no milling machine.

China Wins Again

Today, as a favor to my dad, I sat through a Cutco presentation. Cutco is a knife company, and the knives are marketed by an outfit called Vector. Maybe it’s the same company. I don’t know. They hire college kids to go around selling knife sets to people they know. The daughter of one of my dad’s business contacts asked if she could show this stuff to me. Supposedly, she would get paid whether I bought anything or not.

I hate having things sold to me, unless it’s something I already know is worthwhile. I also hate wasting a salesperson’s time. And there was no way I was going to buy anything. I have so many knives. Two Japanese cleavers. A santoku. A Forschner chef’s knife. A $20 Chinese cleaver which is probably the best kitchen knife I own. A 14″ Forschner scimitar. Two bird’s beak paring knives. Two cheap Henckels chef’s knives I rarely use. A Japanese chicken knife. A Tojiro nakiri. Other knives I can’t remember.

I was asked to bring out a steak knife, my favorite serrated knife, and my favorite straight-edged knife. I brought out the Forschner chef’s knife, a cheap Henckels bread knife, and a Henckels steak knife. The rep brought out a piece of rope–same material as baling twine–and asked me to cut it with my chef’s knife, with only one stroke. The idea was for me to get halfway through and look like a boob, so I could then try the Cutco, which would go through effortlessly. Sadly, this is not what happened. I had given my knife a few licks with a diamond hone in the kitchen, so it slid through the rope like it was a Vienna sausage. The cleaver would have bitten into the cutting board as well.

My other knives didn’t do so well, but then, they’re crappy knives I never sharpen. If meat requiring a sharp steak knife ever makes it to my table, I’ve done something very wrong. I don’t use serrated knives for cooking. A really sharp knife will go right through bread without deforming it; serrations are for people who can’t sharpen anything.

The rep also cut a penny in half with a pair of Cutco kitchen shears. This is impressive, although the shears lacked the notch kitchen shears ordinarily have, which catches and holds chicken bones so the shears will cut them. I would not want to cut chicken without that notch.

A lot of people on the web say nice things about Cutco knives. Perhaps many of these things are true. However, it’s very obvious that a lot of these people are shills. Or at least they look that way. Check out this quotation I found:

Besides that though, Cutco knives are really better than ANYTHING else. My parents have owned their set for over 30 years and they are still sharp!

Yeah, I’m sure that’s an honest comment. This person also claims he used to be a rep, and that he sold 29 sets in 40 tries. No salesman is that good. If he had done that well, he’d still be doing it, wouldn’t he? Maybe not. If you have talent like that, you need to forget knives and move up to something like commercial real estate or private jets.

He’s probably telling the truth about his parents’ knives. They stay sharp, because his parents always use their other knives.

Here’s how sales works, in the real world. Make 50 calls, get 5 responses, make 1 sale. Maybe this guy is the Mozart of sales, so the rules don’t apply to him. But I am skeptical.

The Cutco pitch goes like this. Henckels knives retail for $1500 per set, and they sell for $1000 per set, and our way better knives sell for $749 per set, and we’ll sharpen them free, forever. A quick Google reveals that a 9-piece Henckels Five-Star 18-piece set can be had for $560. That’s not the cheap Henckel line, either. Wusthof Classics–better than Henckels–cost about the same amount.

Henckels and Wusthof have forged blades. Consumer Reports says Cutco blades are stamped. Hmm…

I should also point out that the Cutcos look cheap. The web says they’re 440A stainless, which is the cheap grade of 440. What you really want is 440C. And they’re thin. The handles look like plain old plastic to me.

As I have said before, I am no longer a sucker for expensive knives. I have two Shuns, and I would never buy one again. They chip if you look at them funny. The ergonomics are weak. You absolutely cannot put them in the dishwasher under any circumstances, regardless of what the ads say. And a good price for one Shun santoku is $80. These are not knives. These are toys for people who can’t cook. If you spend a lot of time serving bad pretty food prepared with expensive equipment, Shuns are for you. If you want something you can use, get Forschner.

Don’t let what happened to me happen to you. That’s what I’m saying. I was an idiot. Learn from my example.

My two favorite knives are the Chinese cleaver and my Forschner chef’s knife. The cleaver takes an edge fast, so sharp you can hold a sheet of paper in front of you with one hand and swing the cleaver all the way through it. It minces garlic into tiny particles, with shocking speed. You can make sheets of ripe tomato with it. The back side tenderizes meat. The side knocks the peels off garlic cloves. The Forschner sharpens fast, cuts beautifully, and comes out of the dishwasher looking like new. The Shuns…I’m not sure where they are right now.

Total cost for a Forschner and a cleaver, including shipping? About $45.

I’d use the cleaver all the time, if it were stainless. I hate washing things by hand.

I wished I could have bought something the Cutco girl showed me, just as a kindness, but $749 to relearn a painful lesson…bad idea. These knives may be great for people who can’t use a stone or a hone. I can put a razor edge on a dull knife in under a minute. I don’t need something that has to go back to a factory to get an edge.

I admire anyone who has the guts and determination to go into sales, but this product is not for me.

96

Is there anything more wonderful than being up on a Saturday morning, chock full of McDonald’s food, with 96 brownies chilling in anticipation of later use? I think not.

I don’t know what McDonald’s puts in this stuff to elevate my mood like this, but I wish I could buy a pallet of it.

My diet is going well. I’m losing slowly but continuously, and it’s not a strain. I shouldn’t call it a diet. I’m planning to live like this forever. It’s the plan I was on before Mike and the cookbook ruined me, except that I upped the calories. I used to eat 1500 per day, with unlimited Saturdays. Now it’s 1800, which is more realistic over the long term.

Mike really destroyed my life. He showed me how to make pizza. I made it worse by making it fast and easy. Controlling myself was just not an option. I could still eat pizza for two meals every day and never get bored.

As noted yesterday, I decided to make brownies for church. They’re putting on a feed after the service tonight, and I figured this was a good way to be helpful. Maybe people will start to realize I’m there. I just sneak in and out.

It was tough making all those brownies on a diet day. I didn’t cheat, although I did have some batter and include it in my daily allotment. When I woke up this morning, I had brownies on the brain. I could almost hear them giggling at me.

I’m not really a brownie freak. Having made so many of them, I have managed to blunt my enthusiasm. Still, when you’re dieting and you have maybe twenty pounds of them on hand, it’s a little hard to stay on the path.

I decided to update my surprisingly old Garmin handheld GPS. I still think of it as new, and it looks new, but it’s three years old, so it’s an antique. I got my map software running on this computer (I used to have it only on the laptop, because the laptop can be taken on the boat), and I got the updates going, and it turns out you can now put your tracks on Google Earth.

Hmm…the tracks don’t show up, but the waypoints and so on do.

HA! Mike knew I was blogging about him. He interrupted my writing with a long phone call.

I better take a look at one of those brownies. QC is what I’m all about.

Many, Many Brownies

As much as I would like to be dodging hot strips of 304 stainless, I am up to something else today. Making brownies for church. Tomorrow they’re having some kind of feed after the service, and they solicited food from the congregation. I was hoping Mike would come down so we could do ribs, but he’s been delayed. So it’s all me. That means something easier than ribs.

I just plopped two trays of brownies in the oven. The full boat recipe. Nuts, chips, and coconut. I’m resting while they cook. I can’t fix the next bunch until these come out of the pans.

I tried to save time by making two batches at once, but it doesn’t work all that well. I’m going to have to face the fact that the recipe is a little light on batter. If you put coconut in the middle, you have to reserve half the batter to put on top of it, and if you’ve done this, you know how hard it is to spread. The oven’s heat helps, but it’s still a pain. And if you’ve mixed two batches at once, it’s worse, because you are likely to screw up and put too much batter in the bottom layer. If you do that, fixing the top layer is nearly impossible.

My solution: extra batter on the side. Hope it doesn’t mess up the cooking time.

Nonstick foil is a gift straight from heaven. I used to bake these in wax paper, and I always ended up peeling parts of it off with a knife. Now I line the pan with foil and lift the brownies out. Once they’re cold, the foil almost falls off.

It’s a real pleasure, being able to give something back, apart from dry monetary contributions. I hope people enjoy these. I can’t really recommend they buy the book, but the food is spiritually harmless, if taken in moderation.

Plus Impending Mike Visit

I guess I say this every week, but church was fantastic today.

For the last four weeks, the subject was Philippians 4:8, which says we should try to think about things that are Pure, Praiseworthy, Lovely, Admirable, Noble, True, Excellent, and Right (my mnemonic again: PPLANTER). I’ve been keeping it in mind, but it wasn’t all that easy to apply.Try it. Think about something good for a minute. A couple of minutes later, you may be thinking about something horrendous.

Today, we got a clearer idea how to put it to work. Pastor Wilkerson listed three things that oppose the Philippians 4:8 attitude: contrariness, covetousness, and cynicism.

I’m sure glad no one has ever seen those things on THIS blog.

Shut up.

I guess I don’t have to explain contrariness. It means you have to be a pain in the butt all the time, instead of going with the flow. Here’s a clue that you are contrary. People call you “a pill.”

Obviously, you shouldn’t go along with people when you have a good reason to object, but that’s not what he was talking about. Some people have to be an obstacle all the time, just to look smart or feel important. I have heard wild rumors that sometimes people who post blog comments act this way. I have heard–don’t quote me on this–that if you Google some commenter’s names, you will find an endless number of argumentative and smug yet worthless and fundamentally wrong comments on other people’s blogs.

That’s probably just an Internet legend. No one would really do that. I certainly couldn’t name five such people off the top of my head. No, I could not do that. Don’t even ask.

Covetousness means you’re never happy with what you have. But you’re pretty sure you’d be happy with what other people have. I suppose it makes sense to say it contradicts the spirit of Philippians 4:8, because you can’t be thinking positively about the things God has put in your life, if you’re sure they stink compared to the things he gave your neighbor.

Cynicism–I am so glad I’ve never been guilty of this one–means you are suspicious of other people and have a negative attitude.

The notes we were given say, “He is a champion of innuendos, double meanings, and put-downs.” I may know someone that description fits. But it also says a cynic turns people against a person who tries to “think best.” That’s not me.

I know I’ve gone overboard a lot. On the other hand, I don’t consider myself a true cynic. A true cynic is a kind of bigot. You never get a fair shot from someone like that. I’ve been critical of people I thought were con artists and bloviators, but I don’t question the existence of good people. I don’t automatically assume people are lying when they claim good motives (unless they’re emailing me from Nigeria). But I could do better.

The message I took away from this is that I should quit being negative just for the joy of it. And I should work harder to see the good in people and things. I was working on that already, although it may be far from obvious.

On the way home, I heard some guy on the radio talking about our duty to submit to government. I thought that was interesting. I see two main goals in Christianity. First, you want to get eternal life, and that’s easy, because it’s a matter of asking and believing. Second, you want to live in the kingdom of God here on earth. Not so easy. You have to behave and pray and worship and study, etcetera. It’s like being an Orthodox Jew, only with better food.

This guy pointed out that you can’t be lawless and live in the kingdom of God. You have to submit to government. Here’s a depressing extrapolation that occurred to me: we should probably pay tax on Internet sales.

I realize the states themselves are responsible for the Internet tax problem. They choose not to provide a convenient method of paying, and enforcement is nonexistent, and in actuality, they are complicit in the whole business. Legislators routinely shout down efforts to reform the system, because they know everyone will hate it. You could make a very good argument that we are not obligated to care more about this than the states are. It’s like illegal immigration. The law says “do this,” and our lawmakers say “but we won’t help, and if you don’t do it, we won’t do anything.”

Still, the better choice is to look up the silly forms and pay. At least on big items. Arrgh. I would rather have God’s power flowing in my life than save 6%. I want my prayers answered. I don’t want to bring shame on the church. I want growth. I guess I can cough up 6% in order to keep from screwing that up.

My attitude about taxes is as follows. I have never hated paying taxes. What I have hated is saving receipts and filling out forms. I complain about high taxes all the time, because they wreak havoc on the economy and punish productivity and make for creeping totalitarianism. But I don’t get upset when I have to pay. Maybe I should, but I’m always so happy to know what I owe, I hardly care what the number is. I just want to get the check written and kiss the IRS goodbye for another year.

Next week the church is having a July 4 barbecue thing after church lets out. “Coincidentally,” Mike may be in town. I let him know. We started talking about how we needed to take some food. Mike came up with an argument proving it was our Christian duty to humiliate everyone else with our ribs, in order to keep them from having unrealistically high opinions of themselves. I guess there may be some flaws in his theory, but I think ribs would be a good idea. Not sure how many racks I can get in the Hoginator. I talked to one of the pastors today, and he confirmed that they were soliciting food. I might make four or five batches of brownies, since they can be made several days in advance. Cheesecake would be too decadent, and besides, people would get in fights over it.

I’d like to take some food, because I haven’t gotten involved with the church, beyond showing up. I feel like I keep taking without giving anything. Of course, I provide a little financial support, but there is more to supporting a church than writing an occasional check.

Is it okay to smoke ribs over a pan of beer and then take them to church? We may find out.

I hope Mike makes it down here. My diet is going well, so I think I can survive a visit.

Stick This in Your Brain

Someone was asking for a dolphin recipe. I’ll tell you what I like to do with these tasty fish. I adapted the traditional Cuban recipe for fried snapper. Hmm…might as well give you that first. It’s called “pargo entero,” or “whole snapper.”

Take a whole snapper. Clean it. Scale it and remove all the pointy bits. Cut the head and tail off if you want. Make a series of slashes from top to bottom on each side about an inch apart, down to the bone. You can slant them toward the back of the fish as you go down, if you think it looks prettier.

Egg white will make everything stick better, so apply it if you like. Rub salt and crushed garlic into the fish. Pepper too, if you want. Now cover it with cracker meal and fry it in hot oil. Peanut oil is standard. Some people mix parmesan cheese into the meal, but it can burn. Get the fish nice and brown.

Dolphin are bigger than most snapper. For a big fish, you make fingers, which are strips about as big around as a finger. It will be better if you throw out the dark meat. If you do this with a snapper or small grouper, you don’t have to skin it. Don’t eat dolphin skin.

I serve this with lime wedges and tartar sauce. Wonderful.

Deep-frying is best. If you have a turkey fryer with a basket, go for it. Otherwise, pan-fry with enough oil to cover the fish halfway.

Church was wonderful yesterday, as usual. I couldn’t go on Saturday, so I was really ready. I got there earlier than usual. I’m always amazed at the quality of the music. I don’t know where they find these people.

They’re still teaching about Philippians 4:8, which is all about keeping your mind on good things. I made up a mnemonic for the NIV version. “PPLANTER.”

Pure
Praiseworthy
Lovely
Admirable
Noble
True
Excellent
Right

The key is to remember that P is the double letter. You’ll go crazy if you get confused and try to think up two R words.

One of the associate pastors talked yesterday. One of the things he talked about was the problems men face with lust. That’s a tough one, because these days, most women think it’s appropriate to dress and behave provocatively, even at work. Somehow we have turned that into a virtue. Women don’t understand the male mind; if they did, they’d realize what a stupid strategy this is. It leads to problems for both sexes.

He talked about the difficulties men face in certain situations, such as beach outings and web surfing. He said sometimes the best thing is to take a break from the Internet. That’s a great idea. You can’t be tempted if you’re not online. When I got home yesterday, I decided to take his advice. I’ve been overdoing the Internet, so it seemed like a good move. I didn’t turn the computer on once, and I didn’t miss it. I had a very relaxing day, and it was productive as a Sabbath. I got out my Complete Jewish Bible and went through Philippians, Ephesians, Colossians, and some other stuff, making notes in the margins.

Ephesians is very useful. Christians don’t have a clearly defined set of laws to follow, but this book lays out very good guidelines for our behavior. Chapters 4 through 6 will save you a lot of page-flipping. I guess I could make a simple list of the guidelines this book provides. You don’t always have to read the text itself to get the benefit.

The Internet is loaded with temptation, and lust is only part of it. Internet rage is a real problem; Christians are not supposed to be angry and abusive, but try blogging or joining forums, and you’ll see how hard it can be to avoid getting drawn into the corrosive spirit. Then there is gossip. Some of the biggest websites are proudly devoted to it, and it can cause you real problems. The ancient Jews believed it caused houses to literally rot. The “leprosy” referred to in the Bible was not always a human disease. Sometimes the word “leprosy” is used to describe this rot. And how about covetousness? Internet shopping is a fantastic resource, but a lot of people abuse it. It has helped me get into a number of rewarding hobbies, but from time to time I’ve bought things that were pretty stupid, and some people shop just to fill time. Worse, they buy on credit, spending money they haven’t earned yet.

I have a rule about shutting down the PC at 8 p.m. I am not doing a great job of following it, but I’m going to buckle down and get serious. At that time, I should be spending time with my birds or doing something else of value. I’ve been getting to bed early for a long time now, on the theory that nothing I need to be involved in happens after ten o’clock, and I’ve been proven right. Abandoning the web in the early evening is also a good idea. I should quit even earlier.

I suppose it would be a violation of Philippians 4:8 to fail to point out the positive things about the Internet. Let’s see.

1. Biblegateway.com and other sites let you browse your favorite version of the Bible online. That’s very useful, and because you can cut and paste, it helps you share what you find with others.

2. It’s easy to donate to charities online. I have a list in my sidebar. Two favorites: World Vision and The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. World Vision will let you choose the gift you give, and they’re not all temporary fixes. You can give things like giving pigs or fruit trees to poor families in Africa. Or vaccinations. Right now, they have a deal where you can donate money for medical machinery and get matching funds to multiply your cash by 14. The IFCJ will move a Jew to Israel from a place like Ethiopia or the former USSR, for $350. You can change someone’s life permanently for a relatively small amount of money. You can save up until you’re ready, or you can partner with friends. You may have doubts about giving people temporary handouts, but when you move someone to Israel, it sticks.

3. A number of ministries have sites where you can download podcasts and videos. Perry Stone has all his TV shows online, if you’re a prophecy buff. Try Voice of Evangelism. And there’s a big site with tons of canned sermons from various people: Sermonaudio.com.

And of course, there are places where you can go to get prayer. Oddly, this site has become one of them.

I got a little out of hand while I was trying to learn about and acquire machine tools. I had to spend a lot of time looking things up and asking questions. It got me in the habit of spending too much time online; I just realized this yesterday. Now I’m more up to speed, so there is no reason to sit glued to the monitor all day.

Hope you find this helpful.

Notice his Hostility Toward Government Employees!

Today Mike and I got to help my dad run his boat up the Miami River to the yard. It was a pleasant ride, tarnished–as usual–by the people who open and close the bridges. The fine person who has the incredibly demanding job of raising and lowering the South Miami Avenue bridge–working a total of perhaps forty minutes per shift–refused to even answer our hail. While I wait for these characters to get it in gear, I often think of the old story about Ted Turner, climbing his own mast just to punch a bridgetender in the face. I don’t know if it’s true. But I would certainly understand.

When we got to the Brickell Avenue bridge, which had a prominent sign saying morning openings were only restricted before 9 a.m., we were told we had to wait until 11. And we had arrived at 10:45. The bridgetender seemed very nice on the radio; maybe the insane unannounced restrictions weren’t her idea.

Anyway, we made it to the yard without incident.

Tonight Mike and I made pizza. I mean we BOTH made pizza. I picked up cheese and sauce during our Gordon Food Service mission yesterday, and tonight we put on a tour de force. I made a pie, and Mike made a second pie plus garlic rolls swimming in Costco olive oil. The cheese was GFS mozzarella/provolone blend. It was excellent. The pizzas were slightly different, but each was sublime in its own way. I felt pretty good about it, because Mike had had to attend a funeral during the afternoon, so I had to make all the dough on my own.

I bought an interesting product this week. Sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour. I created a bigger batch of starter from it, and today I put it in the dough. I only had about three hours for the pizza dough and one hour for the roll dough. It made the pizza dough noticeably better. From now on, it will be standard. I have read that it makes dough’s texture better, and that seems to be true.

I was relieved, because the last two pizzas I made were a little off. I still got it. You can’t touch this stuff at any Miami pizzeria I’ve been to. They’re nowhere near as good. Now that I think about it, even though I lived in New York, the best pizzerias I’ve known were in the northern half of this city. Weird. But I lived near Columbia University, and there were only two pizzerias in my area. I’m sure there were better offerings all over town. And on average, New York wins, hands down.

Mike and I will be going to church either tomorrow or Sunday. I’m all excited. As much as I’ve gotten from my renewed relationship with God, I have been utterly unable to pass that success on to anyone else. Maybe to some extent through my blog, and maybe through prayer, but not directly. Now I have someone who is completely open to it and eager to take a closer look.

I have the funniest idea about my machine tools. Remember how I developed an interesting in machining because I wanted to make a device to crack stone crab claws? I’m thinking I may manufacture a bunch of different cracking devices. All sorts of different designs. They run through my head at night. Electric ones. Ones with gears. Some with cams. I may do it. Although putting them on the web might make it impossible to patent them. I might come up with something that was so much fun to use, it would have commercial value. Let’s face it. Virtually all nutcrackers are garbage. I’m sure it’s fun building weird one-cylinder engines, which seems to be what every home machinist does, but that doesn’t appeal to me.

What am I going to do with that gallon can of hot fudge sauce?