In the Sinkhole

Per my usual routine I left the apartment at 6:15 but was shocked to be greeted with a traffic jam on Hancock Road. Usually there's hardly a car in sight when I leave for work. When I got to the first stoplight I was detoured right by a traffic control officer. So much for going west toward work. I busted an illegal U-turn and made it to work just slightly later than my usual 6:30 start time.

When I crossed the 215 I noticed there wasn't any traffic. Something was amiss. Turns out there was a huge sinkhole that closed all the north and south bound lanes and they decided it was a good idea to detour all the traffic past our apartment. I feel so lucky. Nothing like even longer traffic jams in SoCal. If only I had a street bike today, splitting lanes up to stoplights would have saved me 15 minutes in a commute that should only take 8 minutes! On the way home I went 4 miles in 23 minutes. That's not ideal gas mileage in the old Ford.

Incredible Dinner

I had my favorite meal tonight for dinner. I've always loved hamburger and gravy over mashed potatoes. More specifically, I've always loved my mom's hamburger and gravy over mashed potatoes. It's always a meal that reminds me of home and family. My mom sent over her recipe almost a year ago and life got too busy to make the meal. Finally, now that our lives have slowed down a tad, Tracy got the recipe again and we made my favorite meal. Tracy's favorite meal is mashed potatoes and gravy with meatballs ... only real difference is the meat isn't in balls. My mom made this meal for us awhile back and Tracy was hooked just like I am.

Believe it or not, the hamburger and gravy tasted nearly identical to my mom's sauce. It's one thing to get the ingredients, it's another to actually cook it right. The sauce was my responsibility tonight and I guess I actually succeeded. And, for the first time ever, Tracy made mashed potatoes. We've only made the instant potatoes, which really are worthless compared to the real thing. Tracy did a bang up job and the mashed potatoes were really, really good. She added half and half, butter, milk and sour cream and they were delicious! So, I'll perfect the hamburger and gravy and Tracy will perfect the potatoes. Perfect match. Neat. I guess it takes two of us to equal my mom's good cookin', but she does have a few dinners on us!

It's not right to get this excited about dinner, but we were really pumped. Man we love that dinner. Miss you mom it's not the same without sharing it with you and more importantly, Happy Birthday!!

Supercross V-Day

You can't really call it romantic, but we're going to spend our Valentine's Day evening watching Supercross at San Diego's QualComm Stadium anyway. Hopefully this time the parking lot doesn't stink of piss and puke like it did at the Chargers vs. Raiders game I attended a while back. That wouldn't really be ideal on V-Day.

We are also deciding between a few restaurants in the historic Gas Lamp District for an early dinner. I'm between the House of Blues and the Gaslamp Strip Club that is known as one of the best steak joints in San Diego. What's unique is you cook your own steak at your table. That could get interesting! I'm not so sure how busy these restaurants will be a 4:00 or so when we plan on eating. Reservations seem like a lot of work.

The Supercross race gets underway at 7 p.m. so we'll have to hit up an early Valentine's dinner. We'll be cheering for KTM's Justin Brayton and Ryan Sipes tomorrow night and hoping for no rain ... there's been a lot of that lately. February is historically the wettest month of the year here so I guess it's expected.

But, let's focus on the present. Tonight, Tracy is baking me a white cake with strawberry frosting as our V-Day treat! I don't think I'll be waiting until tomorrow for that.

Ouch!!!

You'd think I'd know better then to break apart two frozen hamburger patties with a curved paring knife. Umm ... apparently not. Last Friday I made up patties from scratch and froze the remaining patties in some wax paper. Naturally the paring knife was the closest utensil within reach so I decided it would be a good idea to use it for the patty separation. Usually I use a butter knife when separation duties call. Sadly, I even thought about cutting my finger up before I put the blade between the patties. What did I learn? I guess Chicago Cutlery makes some pretty sharp knives.

The paring knife had no problem working through the two frozen patties and gouging out a chunk of the tip of my left thumb. In fact, as I'm typing this I'm learning I use my left thumb on the space bar way more than I ever thought. Cutting a chunk out of my thumb isn't as bad as it sounds. Well, at least that's what I'm telling myself. Tracy just looked at me strange, grabbed me our Band-Aids that we thankfully had on hand and started helping cook dinner without saying anything smart assed. I'm hoping I would have done the same for her, but I'm sure there would have been one smart assed comment mixed in to get me in a little heat.

We Love Our Blokus

Derek, Chad and Katie made the trip up from San Diego on Saturday and we promptly fed our Blokus addiction with them in town. Katie and Derek enjoyed the game, but Chad (blue sweater) didn't seem to have the attention span for it. He was too busy finding just the right song on 80s and 90s hits on the TV.

After a few games of Blokus we caught a cab to old town Temecula for some fun at a club we weren't aware of. Most bars close at midnight here, but we got lucky and found a pretty nice establishment with DJ and a nice outdoor patio.

It turned out to be a fun and late night. After sleeping in on Sunday, Tracy made everybody french toast and the crew hung around until about 3:30 watching movies and playing our second favorite game Aggravation. We have the homemade version that Tracy's friend Amber gave us for Christmas two years ago. I guess we just really like board games.