man time

what is it about hanging out with the guys that helps reset life? what i mean is... every once in a while i need some "man time." whether it be poker, camping or disc golf... it's necessary. i've talked it over with andrea several times, and it's interesting to see the differences between hanging out with the girls and what guys do when they get together. while man time usually involves some form of ruggedness and or competitiveness... girl time often means going to a spa or going shopping or just going out to eat. there's nothing wrong with either of these... but the differences show me why time with the guys or girls is so important.

recently i went camping with dmitry. i hadn't realized how long it had been since i'd gone camping. have you ever done that thing where you list all your favorite activities and then you write the last time you did it? it usually ends up kind of a downer. well it had been way too long since i'd gone camping. and while our wives weren't pumped about us being gone for a whole weekend... they understood and we had a blast. there's just something about chopping wood, jumping in a cold-ass mountain lake and making fire (what i believe to be about as close to creating a life as a man can get... which interestingly still involves destruction) that makes me feel like a man. i think too many of us work in cubicle offices doing work that doesn't stimulate our brains like it should and we just need to get out and rough it every once in awhile and get back to our raw self.

i thought about this recently because i'd heard some guy on t-v saying men were becoming more feminine due to the hormones being injected into livestock. i don't know enough to weigh in on that... but i do see more and more guys in our society becoming too passive and sensitive. i noticed a huge difference when i was 16 in boy scouts. we had a shift in leadership with our scout masters being 10 years younger than the previous ones. they were so worried about their young boys that we stopped camping or doing anything resembling the scouts i loved.

there are just some weird movements in our culture that began with a good intention but have gone too far now. i could probably write a whole blog about how society has been destroying and belittling the career of stay-at-home-moms... the most noble career in my eyes... but i'll leave that for another day.

planned spontaneity

last night... randomly... i decided to take andrea out to dinner since we hadn't been out for awhile. my dad was nice enough on one hour's notice to watch stella, which i said was good practice for a future granddad (this is not a hint, i mean future).

for dinner i chose salem's greek restaurant the macedonia. i'd eaten there before but it had been some time. it's located in the reed opera house, which is one of my favorite downtown salem buildings.

not only was the food great and in my opinion fairly priced... but our waitress/hostess kept bringing us stuff "on the house." we wanted to try some greek wine but weren't sure about committing to a full bottle when we'd never had it before... so she brought out a sample. this may seem like a normal thing to do... but i've noticed not very many restaurants offer this up front... usually you have to ask. she also brought out some pita bread and tiziki sauce while we waited for our meals. and after we ate, andrea asked to sample the desert wine and the lady brought us each a glass for free (normally $6.50 a glass). in addition to the great service... the food was awesome and anyone who's been out to eat with me knows... if there's lamb on the menu, kevin's getting lamb.

one of the highlights was also the dolmas. what i like to call mediterranean spring rolls. very good even if they kind of look like a green poo.

i also love hummus. but we didn't have any at the restaurant... but i plan on making some tomorrow for the debate. if you like hummus and want to try making some... here's a quick and easy recipe. my advice though is make sure you have a food processor or that your blender can really destroy the garbanzo beans unless you like your hummus chunky.

all in all a great experience and i highly recommend it to anyone in the salem area.

when we moved to salem i was convinced there was nothing to do here... but with a little searching, andrea and i are discovering some cool attractions (i.e. the northern lights). the thing with salem is you have to do some research and testing to find the hole in the wall cool places unlike eugene and portland where every corner has something to offer. it makes going out almost more fun because of the unknown adventure that may unfold.

bringing sexy back

last night i was de-virginized of the sex and the city phenom.

here's how it happened...

recently andrea and i visited the local theater/pub and watched the movie "wanted." the experience was pretty good because the northern lights theater is cool and the whole beer or wine with a movie that's only $3 is awesome. the only downside was our (or rather my) choice of movie. wanted is awful and i really mean worse than cabin fever awful. in exchange i promised andrea that i'd make it up by watching sex and the city the movie with her.

we also watched no country for old men and fargo... two films that are definitely more guyish than chick-flick... so i owed her.

well, now i've seen it and having never seen more than 10 minutes of an episode i will put myself out there and admit that the movie was alright. i appreciated that the film didn't bash men as i'd thought it might, and it dealt with relationships more realistically than most entertainment media usually does. i still find sarah jessica parker kind of weird but the movie was better than i'd expected and much better (as any former roommate or andrea will tell you) than many of the random movies i bring home out of boredom.

i do not however feel the need to catchup on the show and watch all 6 seasons. i wouldn't say i'm a huge fan and have been won over (like andrea and my mom won me over on gilmore girls, a story for another blog) but it was fun to watch it with my wife... which hopefully helps me maintain a few man-points.

next film on the list is 30 days of night... sure to be a "winner" as it's my boredom choice off blockbuster.com.

radiohead still rules

has anyone seen the new marketing/creative push by radiohead? i'm probably behind the curve on this but i thought it was pretty cool and worth mentioning. they have the individual layers/tracks to the song reckoner available for download so people can mix their own version of the song and upload it for popular vote. it's not completely original by any means... but i still think it's cool. especially with a band like radiohead that does so much mixing of it's own.


if you're interesting in atleast checking out some people's mixes... head here.


also... a local portland band that has a radiohead sound but is still original and i atleast dig them is climber. check them out and support a local band.

puppy fun

for those who don't know... andrea and i have a puppy named stella. we got her in june after our 6 year old cat max died. she's a yorkie and a lot of fun for a little dog. there are some interesting stories but it's a new blog so new stories are in order.

(for the cat adventure at dan and paul's, refer to paul's blog for the story)

this blog is instead about our recent adventure to the portland animal hospital.

andrea and i went to see jeremy and kristy for dinner last friday. since stella was spayed just last tuesday we thought it would be best to bring her along so we could keep an eye on her instead of leaving her at home. we took her in her little carrier and the vet gave us an elizabethan collar so she wouldn't be able to get at her stitches as spaying is very invasive (removal of both ovaries and the uterus). while we were eating we kept her in her carrier. she started to wimper more and more and just as andrea was getting ready to open her carrier stella started yelping bloody murder. next thing i know, andrea is handing me our puppy with her insides on the outside. luckily kristy knew where the local animal hospital was and rushed us into her car to get there. i sat in the front still holding stella while kristy drove and andrea sat in the back praying. at first i was okay. she wasn't bleeding and she calmed down... or went into shock... so she wasn't kicking too much. but after staring at the mess in my hands for who knows how long (probably 10 minutes but it felt longer) i started to not feel so good. i started seeing stars and my hearing got muffled. by the time we reached the hospital i knew if i tried standing up i'd just fall over... so once we were there i handed off the pup to andrea to rush in. after a second i thought i was good but i only made it in one set of doors before i had to take a knee and kristy had to help me in the rest of the way. by the time i got to a chair my vision was black and i could barely hear. i don't know how long this went on but it didn't seem long... and then it all just cleared up and i was fine. i found andrea and we sat and waited to hear from the doctor.

stella's okay now... the doctor said one of the sutures failed and that's why she popped open. they figured it was a failure on the equipment and didn't charge us what most likely would have been $2,000.

God blessed us in so many ways that night and since. kristy and jeremy were awesome and i can't imagine what it would have been like to try and figure out where to take stella if they hadn't already known.


now stella just has a longer scar and an even longer story to go along with it.

new site... same banter

so i decided to create a new blog site to talk stuff up post-deployment. while this one will most likely still deal with military topics, since i work full time for the army... i will also go into more personal stuff like what color socks i'm wearing (none today) to fully round out the reading experience and make my life seem more interesting than it probably is.

enjoy...