That's really as good as it gets lately. Have a funny picture to make up for it...
Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey
Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking
Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man
All I've done lately is hang out, finish the digital family photo album disks, and I also started/finished the absolute mission of putting all my music CDs into my laptop. Now I just have to sit and put all that music on my phone. In the past few days I've hung out with Danielle, Mikey, Heather, Melody, and Alex. Not really doing anything but sitting at hookah, sitting at each other's houses, and checking out a new dive bar (that was a brief trip). It's been fun though. I have a lot of pictures of Riley's dog, Echo, sitting on Danielle and tormenting her.
Oh, how it makes me laugh. She used me as a pillow as well but I generally shove her into a spot that suits me, unlike Danielle.
The dog is a pain in the ass and I'm usually mad at her for barking, growling, and trying to eat my hand to get attention. I absolutely adore her when she's quiet and calm. What a big teddy bear she is! She's also very warm when it's cold.
That's really as good as it gets lately. Have a funny picture to make up for it... Lindsey
Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man
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It recently came to my attention that my dear friends Danielle and Jessie aren't the most savvy when it comes to self defense. I'm not talking "lookit me I'm a bad ass". I'm talking "I'm gonna break this hold, kick you in the nuts, and run like the wind". So I took it upon myself to teach them what I could. I trained in Tae Kwon Do when I was younger, so self defense I have a decent handle on. First step was teaching them to make a proper fist. I tend to forget that not everyone knows what I think is super basic common knowledge. The thumb should always lay across the curled fingers. Put the thumb on the side or inside the fist and you run the risk of jamming or breaking your thumb. Then I taught them a basic stance. Your feet should be roughly shoulder width apart with knees bent. Whatever is comfortable and gives you good balance. I point whatever foot I put in front forward and my back foot points to the side. From that stance, I had them jab and throw what I've always known as reverse punches (punching forward while turning hips and back foot) into a small punching bag. Once they didn't suck at that and could throw a punch hitting with the index and middle knuckles, we went over knife hand strikes. Basically you just swing a knife hand at someone's neck with the pinky side of your hand. We also threw some elbows and learned the palm strike to the nose or chin. With the palm to the face, you could rake at your attackers eyes, grab his shoulders or head and ram it into your knee. Effective stuff. From there we went over a knee strike and how to rock your hips into the strike to really make it effective. I also went over a low side kick to the knee or shin. With a side kick the way to go is to use your heel and rotate your hip into it. The hip puts a lot of power into the kick. Then I made them get on the floor to throw side kicks from an "I just got tossed like a rag doll" position. From the floor a side kick stays the same; use your heel and rotate the hip into it for power. This also targets the knee or shin. Make it hurt and make it count. You have to remember, these techniques are meant to disable an attacker that probably maybe wants to rape and kill you. Possibly not in that order. It was then getting late so I very briefly taught them how to get out of a wrist hold. If someone grabs your wrist, yank/twist your hand toward the attackers thumb. The thumb is, surprisingly, the weakest link. If the break doesn't work, target eyes, nose, neck, groin, knees, shin, and the solar plexus (the spot right under your sternum). Target those anyway actually. That concluded our lesson for the day. I'm going to get them together again to practice some more as well as to teach them blocking and getting out of bear hugs and head locks.
First and foremost, remember to make yourself a difficult target. Always be aware of your surroundings! Have your keys out and ready as you approach your vehicle. Thread your keys through your fingers so you can use them as a weapon when and if you punch. Stick them out of your fist between the index and middle fingers and/or your middle and ring fingers. Yell at them ("Back off!" or whatever...) and use what's around you to your advantage. I've read and heard of using hair spray or perfume sprayed into your attacker's eyes. If all they want is money or your phone or bag, give it up. Nothing you own is worth risking your life. If it comes to blows, simply disable your attacker to a point where you can run like hell. Don't stick around to exact revenge. The girls did very well and were very appreciative of the lesson. I hope you've also gleaned some knowledge from this as well. I had a lot of fun teaching them as well as it's been years since I've taught anything like this. I'll give a synopsis of our next lesson as well. Until then, be safe and stay tuned. (Am I signing off of a bad tv show?!) Lindsey Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man Ok, so I actually just painted my own nails, but whatever. There's this trend right now called nail caviar. They're these teeny plastic (or something) balls that you adhere to your nail. Some people just put a few in a pattern or line. I have no patience so I am not one of those people. I just cover the whole nail and I love how it looks.
I am not a photographer either. Anyways, it looks awesome and I dig it. I pulled that whole "accent nail" crap that's also in style. I like that look as well for some reason. The fun part is that most people pay a fair amount of dough for these things and I found packs of eight different colors in eensy vials at the dollar store. Hell yes cheap beauty crap. The last time I did this my nails were teal and I used pale pink (almost translucent pink) "caviar". I used the same purple as the rest of my nails for the base color, but last time I used beige or tan or taupe... Whatever. I just wanted it to be a solid base in case it was see through. It really turned out well both times. I use my index finger for the accent nail because I have found that bowling will ruin a good manicure. The last time I had rhinestones and stuff on all my nails I had to scrape them off my middle and ring fingers so I could bowl properly. What a pain in the ass. Now I just bypass that. I think sometimes. I'm going to go marvel at my mad nail art skills now.
Lindsey Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man I almost forgot to blog! Argh!!! Told you I suck at this...
Today was spent at the shooting range with Alex, running errands, watching The Proposal while he took a nap, and hanging out with Danielle and co. That's really about it. Well, I did watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail this morning and Brave when I got home. That's really it. I got a few new movies to add to my ridiculous collection (ridiculous = 500+ DVDs). I'm a crazy person when it comes to my collection. They're in big ass DVD holder book things. Three of 'em. Alphabetically. I have the entire list in a file on my computer so I can keep track of them all. It's sad. I really do enjoy it though. Anyways, that's really kinda it for today. I'll try to be more interesting tomorrow. Lindsey Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man I suck at this blog thing. I haven't posted anything in three days. Blog dump time.
Thursday was Valentine's Day. My morning was spent going through the last of the pictures from grandma's house and scanning the ones for the digital photo album into the computer. After that it was time for proper Valentine stuff. My boyfriend (Alex) got me a massage at this amazing spa. Best. Thing. Ever. Friday was Alex's birthday and the first day of the estate sale. The sale went really well and then I went with my boyfriend to Danielle's because she needed help finishing a cake order and I had her bake a small cake for Alex's birthday. I piped a ridiculous amount of frosting onto the cake to simulate grass and wrote "happy birthday" on it. Go to Danielle's blog to see the finished product. Then I wrote "You're OLD. Congrats." on Alex's cake and ate some of it. Best chocolate cake ever! So fluffy and moist. Then we went bowling for a bit. Saturday (today) was the final day of the estate sale and most everything is gone. Everything that's left is going to be picked up by a veteran's association or something. I'm glad all that stuff will be going to a good cause. Now I'm hanging out with Danielle doing nothing because we're both absolutely exhausted after our crazy week. Tomorrow will be spent with Alex because my birthday gift to him is going shooting. So that'll be fun. Hopefully there will be a nap somewhere in there. I'm so glad all that's left to do is birthday shooting and a final cleaning of grandma's house. I'm so done with all this business. The digital photo album is also in the works, but that's actually pretty fun. I took the photos for our family friend to her the other day and seeing her reaction to the pictures of her grandchildren growing up and pictures of her children when they were young was well worth all the effort. Very happy I decided to do it. I still have pictures to dole out to the family and our friends, but that shouldn't be a hardship at all. Before I forget, I sewed a blanket for Alex as a Valentine/birthday gift. I got 2 yards of fleece (bowling print of course) and cut off the edge that said it was made for JoAnn fabrics. I then used almost 9 yards of double fold quilt binding to edge the fleece. I zigzag stitched it on and it was much easier than I thought it would be. It turned out beautifully. He loves the blanket. Fleece is super warm so he's using the crap out of it while it's still cold. I'm going to sew a lap blanket for myself so I'll take pictures of that process and make a post for it. I'll try to post more regularly if things mellow out like I think they will. Stay tuned! Lindsey Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man Went to my grandma's house to help get everything ready for the estate sale today. The woman had an obscene amount of pictures. Most were of the family, lots of them were from trips the grandparents took together, a few were of random race cars and stuff from races grandpa went to with my dad. No one seemed to really want to go through them, so I volunteered. I wanted to be able to get the pictures of my immediate family as well as pictures for my semi-estranged aunt and my half-brother's mom. Being that my brother was the first and only grandchild for at least seven years, there were tons of photos of him. I'm probably the only person, except my dad, who wanted the car photos. I found some really cool old black and whites from the early days of racing. It was a tedious job that took hours and I'm not even finished yet. I'm also setting aside pictures for a few of our family friends. My ultimate goal is to collect the photos of grandma and grandpa together or apart to make a digital photo album for their four kids (my dad, uncle, and two aunts). I'll also make copies for my brother and the Felandos (long time family friends. My dad and his siblings grew up with their kids and I grew up with the grand kids. Definitely a Pedro family thing). Here are a few of my absolute favorite photos.
That's only a few of my favorites. I picked those out of a larger group of faves I had set aside from an even larger stack of photos. I'm actually glad I took on this endeavor. I've gotten to see us all grow up again. There's still A LOT to be done though. I have to scan loads of pictures, get in contact with one aunt to get the contact information for my other aunt and my grandparent's friends, have lunch with my uncle's ex-wife to give her pictures, have dinner with my brother to sift through all his pictures, and burn the photo album to disks. I already scanned the old race photos (obviously) and sent them to our racing friends. I'm sure they'll love them. I kinda feel like I'm the only one that would do all this to preserve our memories this way. I have such a crappy memory so it means a lot to me to have these photos. I don't even care if everyone else wants their pictures, they're getting them *glare*. I'm now going to go be a vegetable because my back is killing me from hunching over photo albums all day.
Lindsey Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man Sorry for the lack of posts. Yesterday was my cousin's baby shower and today was bowling and hanging out with my boyfriend. There's not much to say really. I was super aggravated yesterday because my mom was being very critical... Of everything, so I went to chill out at Heather's. I definitely needed the chill time. Today I bowled fairly well. At some point I was unintentionally a massive jerk to Alex (the bf) and I feel really bad about that. That's all I'm saying on that matter...
Anyways, I really haven't been up to anything much and I haven't had much to say about it. Kinda detrimental to the blog. Hopefully I'll get some sewing done tomorrow, but I'll only be able to tell you that there was/wasn't sewing as it's for a gift and I have to wait till I give it to talk about it so it stays a surprise. I also have to help prepare all the stuff from grandma's house for the estate sale this weekend. I'd rather sew, but I have little choice in the matter. Meh. Oh well. I'll get back to you with (possibly) more tomorrow. Lindsey Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man I was going to post all about my day, but I've decided it was boring except for dinner with Danielle and Riley. After dinner we got pie and it was awesome. We didn't make it because we were being lazy and Rusty J's video needs to be put together yet. Standing around waiting for Riley's girlfriend to get off the phone so we could get said pie, Danielle said she was going to make me do more kickboxing with her because I said pie was necessary. I told her I was going to call her a bitch in my blog, so she shrugged and said, "Eh, fair enough." Luckily video editing and time constraints got me out of a workout. Yay pie! Onto the subject of my title. My absolute favorite I-have-no-food-or-money dish is... Damn... I've never named it... Screw it. Have a recipe: Broke meal (I'm lazy and decided not to walk the 5 feet to my pantry/fridge to take pictures. Yay interwebs!) Cook the ramen as per the package instructions. Drain out the soup. Dice about half a can of SPAM (lick off the creepy jelly stuff to gross out friends and family ) and fry in a pan. Scramble eggs and add to pan with SPAM and ramen. Cook until eggs won't give you salmonella. Top with or mix in the cheese. Add more cheese. Munch on SPAM that didn't get diced. Eat cooked food. Realize being broke ain't that bad. Go get job. Best of luck.
That's really all there is to it. I've eaten it for every meal and it's never a bad time for it. Because only half a can of SPAM is used, if you don't eat it all in the interim as I would, you can get two meals out of it. It's also pretty good hangover fare. Always remember: it's not bad until you can't afford processed meat in a can. Lindsey Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man ...With excercise. I hate getting off my ass, but I always feel good after a workout. Endorphins and all that jazz. Whatever. The point is, Monday is bowling (surprisingly a workout), Tuesday was Aikido, Wednesday was a mile or so walk, and today was a "Turbo Jam" kickboxing fiasco with Danielle. I ain't doin' a damn thing all weekend.
Now we're hanging out at Pharaoh's Shisha after a trip to the panaderia. Hell yes conchas. Nummy. Good thing I worked out today. For dinner earlier tonight I made pasta with pork meatballs. Really basic tasty goodness. Here, have a recipe: Pork Meatballs 1 pound ground pork Worchestershire sauce 1 egg Garlic salt Basil (fresh or dried. I used freeze dried.) A bunch of crunched up saltine crackers or bread crumbs Toss it all in with the pork. I abhor dishes so I mixed it in the pork tray thingy it comes in.
Roll the pork mixture into balls.
Take a packet of onion soup mix mixed with enough water to cover all your meatballs. Boil and drop in meatballs.
While the meatballs cook in the soup, start boling water for pasta. Salt it like crazy when it gets to a rolling boil. Add pasta. Duh. I like penne.
Pasta sauce time. My dad never seems to like anything made from scratch, so insert crappy, store brand pasta sauce here.
I always use wine, a little water, and some vinegar (basalmic or red wine) to get the last dregs of sauce out of the jar. I also added a cube of this awesome frozen garlic from Trader Joe's and a few sprays of this basil concentrate (first time using it. I was curious. Works well). Couple shakes of pepper and some more Worchestershire sauce and heat it till it starts to bubble.
Drain the meatballs after 15 - 20 minutes (I forgot to tell you to lower the heat so it doesn't boil over. Sorry). Drain the pasta when it's cooked however you like it. Combine them with the sauce. Serve with or without cheese. My dad is partial to the grated Parmesan crap from Kraft, but I would use shredded Parmesan or Romano cheese.
Lindsey
Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man Danielle and I went for a walk with her roommate's pit bull pup, Echo. It was roughly a mile and a quarter at a relatively brisk pace. It was good... Except for the fact that I spent a good hour last night in that Aikido class doing forward rolls and standing in that crazy stance. It's safe to say I'm sore and I haven't decided to tack on the adjective "happily" or not.
Some time after our walk, we decided we needed to bake banana cookies because we have a ridiculous amount of overripe bananas about. My mom is gluten free and my dad is diabetic, so I try to bake without gluten or sugar. I also try to bake in a way that is some semblance of healthy for myself and my gut. I found a banana cookie bar recipe online and modified it. Thing is, because they were supposed to be bars they turned out quite dense and resemble cake. Therefore I have dubbed them "cake-ies". Sugar & Gluten-free banana cake-ies: 3/4 cup Splenda (I use the store brand because I'm cheap) 3 mashed ripe bananas 1 tbsp oil (I used a blood orange oil from a company in Temecula. If you're not lucky enough to have access to the awesome crap in Danielle's kitchen, add in lemon and orange zest) 2 eggs 1 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp baking soda 1 cup coconut flour 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/4 - 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg (fresh ground is always best) Take all the ingredients and toss them into the mixer. Then, well, do what mixers do best.
Do your best to not be an idiot like me and make sure that you don't get any of the banana peels into the mixer. They are not easy to pick out. Exhibit A:
Also, if you are a genius like myself, don't flick the mixer on with your HAND in the damn BOWL! It freaking hurts. A lot.
Ahem... Make balls of dough a little bigger than a golf ball or, if you don't golf but know the game of beer pong, a ping pong ball and flatten them a bit. Put them either on a greased cookie sheet or on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Bake them for 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Let them cool for a while and enjoy.
Danielle also baked some amazing banana cookies, but I don't know how she made them. I was busy getting banana peel out of my dough and beating the crap out of my hand. Trip on over to her blog Film Making and Cookie Baking for the recipe and how-to. They're absolutely amazing.
Lindsey Jewelry: HardWear by Lindsey Sister: Film Making and Cookie Baking Rusty J: Rustified - Lifestyle Inspiration from a Renaissance Man |