Jefke.com

On Friday natty and I celebrated our 5th anniversary (wedding). Which is pretty damn crazy. Like so many other things—it seems like it was just the other day, and yet a lifetime ago that we were able to coerce people from all over the world to gather in Maryland to see us officially tie the knot. Since then, it seems we’ve accelerated our adultification of our lives at a pretty brisk pace—car, house, dog, baby. It seems like I live like an adult, how come I still listen to the misfits and want keep thinking if I can just hold on till xmas break the new semester will start and I’ll have a better job (or something). Anyway, we’ve hit quite a milestone. In conjunction with the anniversary, we went out to dinner alone for the first time since the capt joined the team.

In essence our first date in 15 months. Natty would probably argue our first date in 10 years, but we can discuss that later. Natty’s mom came over to watch the boy and we headed to the local bistro we frequent for such occasions. I think we bot had a bit of nervousness that we wouldn’t have anything to talk about with out the boy there. I broke the ice with a few “the pope, a minister, a rabbi and an unman are in a whorehouse in prauge” jokes (kidding). All in all things went well. Our waiter looked like a cross between jude law and robbie Williams, neither of which he was familiar with (yes, natty asked him). I had steak frites, natty had some broiled steak.

Throughout the meal I had various waitstaff’s asses pretty much in my face as the served the tables next to us, par for the course I guess. Natty ordered chocolate mousse for desert, so I decided to keep it real, and ordered up myself a remi-martin. I dunno what it was exactly, but that went straight to my head. Out of practice, it’s shameful.We got home and lo and behold the capt was in one piece and in good spirits. All in all a successful evening.

Saturday we headed out to western-ish MD and met up natty’s friend michelle for some autumn related tourist activities. There’s a bigish farm out there that has all sorts of fall related stuff going on—pick yer own apples/pumpkins, petting zoo, and other stuff. The weather was a perfect fall day, crisp but not cold—the sun never getting too high in the sky so it felt like it was setting all day. The capt loved the tractors for the hay ride—and climbing over the pumkins—sadly the pumpkin patch was a bit picked over, so we had to scour to find a good one. In the end michelle spotted one, and we took that back to the home base to pay for it.

When we got back to the fort, the capt decided it was time to join the elite ranks of upright, biped (-al) beings. Oh he’s been walking with the our or that of inanimate objects for a while now, and earlier in the week he stood up and did a couple stutter steps, but Saturday, he just stood up, and proceeded to string 3-5 steps together. He’d then plop down on his butt, and smile and giggle out of pure self pleasure. After a couple short trips, he then, started crawling to the other side of the kitchen, turning around, and then walking back to us. Each time going farther and farther. It was really amazing. Each time getting a bit stronger, experimenting with something and adjusting. After a while it was like crawling was boring, so he’d go to a spot and then crawl in circles, almost breakdancing in slow motion for about 5 rotations, then he’d find the right spot and get up to walk. Naturally there was a lot of video tape and camera shots taken. A truely big big night. I guess the next big milestone is what—him mowing the lawn for me? College? Marriage?

Yesterday was something of wash out—earlier in the week I got it in my head that I wanted to make a turkey, sort of an early thanksgiving. Not sure why, but I thought it’d be a good idea—we could freeze the left overs and such. Now natty’s pretty busy with school, so it’s understood that I need to tend to the boy so she can get work done. I’ll just say this—it’s hard to watch a newly walking 15 month old and prepare a turkey, caramelized onion gravy, potatoes, asparagus, and stuffing (the stuffing was out of a bag from the store—but still). In the end I pulled it off, well sorta.

Last fathers day or Christmas or anniversary or birthday or something, natty got me a fancy pants electronic thermometer with remote monitoring—I had asked for it as I’ve always had mixed results with instant read thermometers. So I set that baby up like alton brown and watched as the temp danced around from one second to the next—110 to 175, to 129, to 145. to further complicate things, all the cookbooks say “until a thermometer reads 175 when inserted into the thickest part of the thigh”, oh great—where the fuck is that.

Apparently the thigh isn’t the leg, because, well the leg is the leg, so the thigh is closer to the body? Until about 4 years ago I never really understood how the turkey I take out of the fridge actually walked around, I mean I know the drumstick is a leg, but the fact that poultry is always presented essentially upside down on its back with its legs in the air doesn’t help me picture where the thickest part of the thigh is. Anyway all this to say that our turkey was delicious, tender, moist, falling off the bone.

Then later when natty went to carve the other side of the bird, it seems the meat down by the wing was underdone. Now I cooked the fucker 20 extra minutes (mostly b/c I couldn’t get the capt to stay away from the oven door long enough for me to get it out) and after poking around several different areas around the bird, I was reading at least 180—which initially made be scared that I made a sawdust bird–but nevertheless that fucking wing area didn’t seem to get al the way done. Natty went into ‘the baby’s gonna get food poisoning” mode. And basically the evening went to shit. So keep your fingers crossed for us.

So that’s it—on Wednesday I fly out to beautiful anahiem California to assist the DFTU client host a conference/workshop. I’m not very excited. Seems like it’s going to be a lot of work and a lot of time flying coach. it’ll also be my first overnight trip since the capt arrived, fro all my belly aching about not getting sleep and needing a break—I think it’s going to be really hard to be away for that long—at least he started walking while I was home. Though it would have been pretty poetic if the only time I’m on the road in 2 years he started that up while I was away. This client doesn’t seem to smile on the car service to the airport like the other one—so no towncar driver interview—but I imagine 6 hrs in coach (in the middle seat I’m sure) will yield some good stories.