Salsa

Ok, so for ages now, I've wanted to try an experiment in making my own salsa. I don't like the chunky, pico de gallo-type salsa. I lean more toward the pureed (mostly) type of tomato salsa (not salsa verde). Most recipes I'm seeing online don't specify the type of tomato. I'm thinking of using plum tomatoes, which I seem to recall someone saying was good for salsa. Some white onion, cilantro, jalapeno (or serrano) pepper, lime and probably some garlic. So I ask anyone who has made their own salsa, or even anyone who just likes salsa or knows anything about making it: Does that sound pretty decent? Any particular recipes out there that you particularly favor? Any proportions I should keep in mind, or warnings I should heed (e.g. use gloves for the peppers, add lime juice slowly)?

Kiwee Toolbar and Unlocker

Ok, maybe someone out there can help me. Does anyone know what this damn Kiwee Toolbar is? It popped up a couple days ago. We did not download it, or anything else that it could have been piggybacking on. It just appeared one day. We used Control Panel to uninstall it, and it just popped back on the next day. Every time, it keeps doing the same thing. I tried Googling it, but every item that mentioned it either involved individually removing about 120 lines of code from the registry (which I don't want to mess with), or downloading another unknown program called Unlocker. So it's either deal with unknown, unwanted toolbar, or load questionable unknown, unwanted program to remove unknown, unwanted toolbar. Any suggestions?

Zorn Era Ends, Shanahan Era to Begin

Well, it should be official today. Or, as rumor has it, if Buges announces his retirement today, then it should be official tomorrow. That would be the classy thing to do, so as not to overshadow someone who has been with this team for so long and has meant so much to it. So, they'll probably announce Shanny today. It will be interesting to see what he does, once he gets here. The scuttlebutt is that he's cleaning house in the coaching staff. Not shocking. I think we could stand some new blood with the assistants. Supposedly, he's bringing his son in as Offensive Coordinator, and Mike Zimmer from Cincinnati as Defensive Coordinator. Not bad. Cincy's got the 6th overall defense in the league. And.... really? The Texans (where little Shanny currently is OC) is the top passing offense? And 10th overall offense? Wow. Ok. Anyway, given our dismal record, and the flashes of talent we showed, I think a shake-up may do some good.

The real interesting part will be seeing what Shanahan does with personnel. GM Bruce Allen said in his press conference yesterday that the new coach (he refused to name him yet) would start off with the players here, implying that wholesale change is not in the cards. This could be good news, or this could be disaster. Word is that Shanahan likes to draft young QBs and mold them to his system. This could be a fiasco if he tries to do that here, at least right away. It seems glaringly obvious to me (and to 95% of the announcers and analysts on TV & the Internet) that our top priority needs to be the O-line. If that isn't addressed this offseason, it won't matter if we put Peyton Manning in at QB. Well, maybe not Peyton, but nearly anyone else. I've made my case for Campbell here previously, and my opinion hasn't changed. He was running for his life nearly all season and still managed to throw for over 3,500 yards, 20 TDs and only 15 INTs. If you look at what he has done when he got protection, you can see he's thisclose to taking his game to the next level. I say give JC the protection he needs and keep him around. If coach wants to mold a young QB, draft one in a few years and begin the process. If Shanahan comes in and addresses the line, I will be hopeful. If he comes in and tries to draft Bradford or Claussen, then my suspicion would be that Snyder's still pulling the strings and we're in for another tough year.

Decisions... Decisions....

Well, it's that time of the year again. I have a Christmas gift card and Christmas cash. Now, I just need to decide what to spend it on. The first thing that popped in to my head was to buy a Nintendo Wii. Now, I'm not a huge gamer, but a few months back, I was at my friend Keith's house, and he has a Wii. We played Star Wars: Force Unleashed, and it was bad as a MoFo! That would be my primary reason for getting the Wii. Not only could I play alone, but I could connect over the Internet and play against Keith, and others who have it. Also, Wii has the Wii Fit games that you can use to get exercise & burn calories. However, as I understand it, the Wii does not play BluRay, like Xbox and PS3 do. I believe Xbox and PS3 will also stream Netflix movies. But PS3 is also $100 more expensive. There also remains the option of simply getting a BluRay player, and bag the whole idea of a game system. Or I could go another direction entirely. So, I pose the question to you, the audience. Which way do I go? Thoughts, please?

City of Brotherly Love

Well, I had something exciting happen this weekend. We were in Jersey for Thanksgiving and Chrissy's Aunt Fran's 90th (!) birthday party. The original plan had been to head home late Saturday night, hopefully after the traffic had eased. However, at the party, we were talking to Chrissy's cousin Joe, who lives in Winchester, VA. Joe shares Eagles season tickets with a friend of his, and had been planning on taking his brother Mike, who was at the party too, to the Eagles/Skins game on Sunday. Unfortunately (for him), Mike had a flight leaving out early in the morning. Joe's wife, much like mine, would go with him and enjoy the game, but would rather him go with another real fan who will enjoy the game. After a little discussion, he asked if I wanted to go to the game! I'm sure he would rather have gone with an Eagles fan, but at least this way, he didn't have to find a sitter for the kids.

Fortunately for me, we had brought laundry to do, so I had one of my Redskins jersey's. And, of course, I had my Skins hat. So, steeling myself for plenty of ribbing, I met up with Joe and we headed to the Linc. I wasn't overly fearing for my safety for two reasons: 1) I'm not the type to come back at drunken idiots yelling at me. I'll just let it lie. 2) What were they going to say that I didn't already know? "Redskins suck"? I'd just shrug and say, "And?..." While I certainly think we have potential to play much better than we have, we are currently 3-8.

So we head to the park and look around for a parking spot. On our 3rd side street, we finally find a spot and pull in. There are two guys sitting in lawn chairs enjoying some pre-game beverages. Of all the possible spots on all the streets and all the fans milling about, guess what? One Eagles fan and one Skins fan! So we chatted with them as we ate the Wawa hoagies we picked up on the way in. Once we were done eating and pontificating, we headed to the stadium. As many people as we passed, I was surprised not to hear any comments until I was about a block from the stadium, when a police officer directing traffic shook his head ruefully, sighed and said, "I know you can't help it." This brought me to attention of another fan who called out, "Here's an asshole!" After that, I made it the rest of the way to the stadium relatively unscathed. A few times, I hears "Redskins... mumble mumble..." muttered under someone's breath behind me.

Before the game, Joe showed me around the stadium a bit. A little mini-tour. It is a very nice stadium. A lot more character to it than FedEx Field. There was HeadHouse Plaza, an area where various vendors hocked their wares while a band played on stage. In addition, there was an Interactive Zone with activities for kids, including Play 60 activities. I even saw a few Skins fans milling about, though not nearly as many as there were Eagles fans at FedEx four weeks ago. Inside, next to the pro shop, there was a hall of fame area that had names on the walls of past players, glass towers showing notable past players, photo collages showing key moments from each decade. In the South corner of the field was the Miller Lite Phlite Deck, where a band played at halftime.

After the tour, we headed toward our seats. Upper level, row 5. However, in our section, there is what I believe was an area for handicap seating, which took up the first four rows, and was lower than where our seats were. So, for all intents and purposes, we were in the front row of the upper level! Naturally, on the way there, I heard "asshole!" a couple more times, as well as "Redskins suck!" Once we made it to our seats, the people around us were very nice. The one exception being a Redskins fan two rows behind us. He was so annoying, I wanted to smack him, and we were rooting for the same team! He was much louder than I was, and repeatedly called for Philly players to get injured or killed. I'm all for healthy competition, and good-natured "insults" between fans, but he crossed the line. I don't want anyone (even Cowboys players or fans!) to get hurt or killed. I just want a good game, hopefully that the Redskins win. I did get a good game. Unfortunately, we lost 27-24. Not a huge surprise, but disappointing. On the way out, one Eagles fan in the row behind us even tapped me on the shoulder and said admiringly, "You guys played a tough game!" Guess that's about the most we're going to be able to hope for this season...

Letting Go and Moving On

I was looking at my sporadic blog, and at my earlier post about our new cat, Mister. I realized I hadn't posted a picture of him here. I had put some pictures of him on my Facebook, but not here. There may be some people who see this who don't see my Facebook, and vice versa. So in any case, this is Mister:









This segues nicely into the subject of my post. I've been struggling recently with letting go. I saw a comedian (I think) a while back talking about friends who have died, and how long you should wait before deleting them from your cell phone. Oh, wait. It was George Carlin. It was his last special on HBO before his passing. Interesting. Anyway, in a similar fashion, I don't know how soon is too soon to change my digital presence to reflect Buddy's passing. I have a picture of Buddy for my avatar on several different sites to which I regularly post. I have a pic of Buddy as the wallpaper on my phone. A few times, I have gone to change it, wanting to put a pic of Mister on there. But I always stop before I do. I feel like somehow I'm betraying Buddy's memory by doing so. I know that's completely irrational, and strictly an emotional reaction, but there it is. So, how soon is too soon?

Some Stats on Jason Campbell

Toward the beginning of the season, I had a discussion with another Redskins fan regarding Jason Campbell. Like many others, he stated that he thought Campbell needed to go. I disagreed, saying that the problem was the Offensive Line, not the Quarterback. We agreed that we would see who was right by mid-season. Now that we're into the 2nd half of the season, I went through some stats and put together an argument for my side as follows:

During the Kansas City game, when Campbell was benched at half, and Collins came in:

- Campbell was 9 for 16 for 89 yards. 1 sack, 1 INT, 0 TD. QB Rating 46.1
- Collins was 6 for 14 for 75 yards. 2 sacks, 0 INT, 0 TD. QB Rating 60.1

Last week against Atlanta:

- During the first half, the Offensive Line gave no protection. Campbell was sacked 5 times. Portis had 4 runs for 4 yards. Then, Portis went out with a concussion. Betts came in and had 4 runs for 14 yards The team had 1 FG. No TD.

- By all counts, Zorn and Bugel completely ripped the team for playing terribly (stating, among other things, "This is not Pop Warner football!"). During the 2nd half, the O-Line began blocking much better. At which point:
- Betts had 11 runs for 56 yards + 1 reception for 23 yards. Cartwright had 7 runs for 16 yards. The Line gave up no more sacks and team scored 2 TDs.

This week agains Denver, the O-Line blocked better than they have all year, and:

- Campbell went 17 for 26 for 193 yards. 1 TD, 0 INT.
- The Skins rushed for more yards than they had all season, and scored more points than they had since week 2 of last season.
- Campbell's QB rating for the Denver game was 100.3, which was better than the week 10 ratings for Joe Flacco (98.1), Payton Manning (97.4) and Donovan McNabb (93.7).
- Campbell's current QB rating for season is 87.9, which is better for the season than media darlings, such as Matt Ryan (78.8), Jay Cutler (76.0), Matt Cassel (75.3).

All of which is to say that I think Campbell is a good QB. I'm not saying he's Payton Manning or Tom Brady, he just needs an Offensive Line that protects him. He got that in the beginning of last season, and the Redskins went 6-2. He didn't get it at the end of last season, or the beginning of this season, and the Skins went 4-12 for that period. He got it on Sunday, and we beat the 6-2 Broncos, who were and are still at the top of the AFC West. I rest my case.

Mister Update

First big kitty news, Mister had his first vet appointment yesterday. Well, not exactly his first, but his first with us. He had two vet appointments in NJ before coming down here. But this was his first time seeing our vet, Dr. Shah. It was so cute. We walk in a couple minutes after 8:00 a.m. (our appointment was at 8:00), and there is half the staff waiting to see our new boy! They all loved Buddy so much, they were all excited to meet Mister. Naturally, they all thought he was adorable.

He was very curious about the new surroundings. He jumped on the exam table, jumped down, did a few laps around the room, jumped on the counter, jumped down. At one point, he tried to jump up on the top edge of a corkboard on the wall. That didn't work out so well. But he was able to push off before falling down and he landed safely back on the exam table. Best of all, though, he got a clean bill of health from the doc. Yay!

Even though he was really good while he was there, he still wasn't too happy about the whole experience. When we got home, he pretty much ran for the bed and stayed there most of the day. He seems to have settled down now, though, and he's looking forward to a visit from his Aunt Noelle this weekend.

Vacation and New Beginnings... and New Beginnings?

Well, we're back. We spent last week at the beach in Wildwood, NJ. Naturally, it rained almost every day there. Of course, except for Friday, when we were packing up to head back. But, as the old saying goes, a bad day at the beach is better than a good day at work. Seriously, though, vacation is vacation. I always feel that you can't control your circumstances, you can only control how you react to them. Whether we were able to sit out on the beach, or were stuck in our room, or wherever else we went, it was up to us to have fun. And so we did. We went to the Naval Air Station Wildwood Aviation Museum at Cape May Airport. We went down to the Boardwalk one morning when it hadn't started raining and rode rented bikes. We played Rummikub. We visited Douglass Fudge for the first time, where I found that the fudge well exceeded that of any other I have tasted. In fact, they have sugar-free fudge that tastes better than any other regular fudge I have ever tasted! (sorry James). We finally got to try chocolate-covered bacon from Laura's, after seeing it on Dinner Impossible! Everything really is better with bacon.

We did finally have to come back. But we were not alone. As you know if you read this blog, last month, we had to put our beloved Buddy to sleep. Well, about four or five months before that, a young cat began loitering in my mother- and sister-in-law's garage. After a several phone calls, discussions and back-and-forth decisions, they decided to keep him. Not for themselves, but for the unfortunate, inevitable time after Buddy was no longer with us. We knew we would want another cat at some point, we just weren't sure how soon. Well, a month later, we knew we would be in NJ for our shore vacation, and decided to bring Mister home with us when we came back. They had taken him to the vet, so we knew he was a healthy, neutered male about two years old (sadly, many people in that area drop unwanted pets off in the countryside, rather than find homes for them or take them to shelters). It has been just over a day, and he seems to be adjusting pretty quickly. After the initial lap around the apartment looking for the way back to the garage he knew, he worked is way under our couch. He stayed there for about an hour, before finally coming out. He walked around again, trying to figure out where he was. He eventually got used to us enough that he sat in my lap for a few minutes. Then he wandered again, eventually ending up on the couch. He spent most of the afternoon sleeping (he had a rough morning), with periods of waking up to explore. He still hasn't eaten or drank much, but we're hoping that, as he gets used to the fact that he is safe here and his food is safe here, his appetite will pick up.

The other, fortunate-yet-unfortunate new beginning was the new football season which began this weekend. The Redskins lost their opener to the Giants 23-17. The game really wasn't as close as the score and stats might indicate. They looked fairly outplayed in many aspects of the game. I don't know what happened to the much-touted West Coast Offense that we displayed to great effect against the Steelers' 1st team in preseason. It looked like Zorn had abandoned the passing game and reverted to the Gibbs run run run game. The "upgraded" defense looked like it got some of the big plays (a sack and 2 turnovers) it wanted, but at the expense of basic good play across the board. DeAngelo Hall got an INT, but missed several tackles that let big plays get by him. Haynesworth created some pressure, but not enough to collapse the pocket on the QB as we wanted. Orakpo was virtually invisible all night. I certainly hope this was just a rough beginning and we'll shake the rust off next week. There's no reason we shouldn't beat the Rams next week, but then again, there was no reason we should have lost to them last year!

Sad News and Angry Letter

As I'm sure most of you are aware (especially those on Facebook), we had to put our beloved Buddy to sleep. To make a very long story short, he was at least 15 years old (we never new for sure exactly how old) and diabetic. Toward the end, he stopped eating and drinking, and was so weak he could barely stand. We really did try everything we could (antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, testing his blood sugar) to give him (and us) as much time as possible. We finally had to let him go. It got to the point where it was not going to be fair to him any more. It was a difficult decision, and the first time either of us had to make that decision, but it had to be done. By the time we actually brought him to the vet, his condition had deteriorated to the point that neither of us had any doubt that we did the right thing. It was tough for us, but right for him. *sigh* Very sad.

Ok. That was the sad news. Now, the angry letter. An angry e-mail, actually. A while back, I had been noticing some delays in the turnaround of the movies on our Netflix queue. I went back & forth with Netflix customer service sending me non-responsive form letters that had nothing to do with my problem. Someone finally answered me personally, that Netflix was sorry, blah blah blah, if it happens again, let them know, more details, yadda yadda yadda. It happened occasionally after that, but for the most part was fine. Recently it has gotten worse again. So I did a little looking on my history and wrote back to them. Maybe you can tell me if this happens to you, too. When we return a movie, we put it in the mail, Netflix receives it the next day, then ships out the next movie later that same day, we receive it the following day. Three day cycle. One day each for shipping each way. What I have noticed is that during periods when we watch a lot of movies, suddenly, it takes two days for them to receive our returns. This month, we have returned eight movies (with a ninth on the way back). Our last four movies were mailed on two consecutive Mondays, but Netflix didn't show them as received until Wednesday, which means we didn't get the next movies until Thursday. This only seems to happen when we exceed about five movies in a month. What I suspect is that, when our frequency of return becomes to high, they will receive a movie, but hang on to it for a day before officially marking it as received. The more movies we can get out of them in a month, the more processing they must do and the more postage they have to pay. If they can slow us down a little, it saves them money. Maybe if we get fed up enough, we'll upgrade our membership and they can make even more money.

Hmm. Just thought of something else. I didn't think about until I was just writing this post. I'm sure they will say that they have no control over the Post Office, and it's probably just random delays. The one problem with that, which I did mention in the e-mail, is that the delays only occur when our frequency of rental increases. The other problem, which just occurred to me, is that the shipping delay never occurs when they ship us the movies. Only when we return them. That would be a pretty big coincidence...