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If you have the opportunity to take a cooking class at Central Market, do it. We attended COUPLES: STEAKS ON THE GRILL, during their Passport Argentina celebration. Naturally, everything was Argentine themed.

Besides learning to make specific dishes, we also learned cooking techniques such as the proper way to hold a knife, core a bell pepper, crack and chop fresh garlic, season a grill, know by touch how well-done a steak is, etc., etc. The little tips and tricks alone made the class worth it.

Our appetizer was Crudites with Romesco Dip. The dip included toasted almonds, garlic, cayenne pepper, red wine vinegar, and a couple other seasonings. We then had zucchini, tomatoes, cauliflower, and mushrooms to dip and eat as we made the rest of the meal.

Then we prepared the burnt tomatoes, which are exactly what they sound like. Tomato halves, olive oil, black peppercorns, salt, and fresh oregano leaves. The tomatoes were seasond and placed in a pan until the cut side started to burn. Then they were taken off the heat and drizzled with freshly chopped oregano. Yum. We then made our Chimichurri sauce and Crillo salsa to put on the steaks.

The steaks were thick-cut ribeyes. But this wasn’t just any ribeye. These were imported from Argentina. Argentina eats a LOT of beef! Because they are highly self-sustaining, they don’t export much of what they grow and raise, so this beef is a rare treat in the US, as are many Argentine products. You could tell the difference in the meat just by the dark, rich color. And, man was it ever tender!

For desert we made Orange Flan, with whipped cream (it took 3 of us to finally get it thick enough…use an electric mixer next time!), and orange supremes (how the orange was cut…interesting). The whip cream was awesome because we added vanilla. Our instructor did give us an interesting bit of information about vanilla and using it in recipes. It seems vanilla is about 35% alcohol by volume. Bourbon and several other liquors are about 40%, so you can substitute it in a 1:1 ratio in any recipe that calls for vanilla.. I might have to try that some time.

Not only did we have some great food and wine, but we learned a lot. Because Central market is having Passport Argentina, they have a lot of items that will only be available for a limited time. One is the Alfajor, the favorite cookie of Argentina. Double yum! The one we had was coated in chocolate with dulce de leche in the middle. I may move to South America. We bought a couple of boxes of the cookies (last ones) and a big ‘ol jar of the dulce de leche that we can put on all kinds of stuff. We also picked up a bottle of the red wine, Tapiz Malbec, as it is one of the best I’ve had.

Today was my surgery to have the basal cell carcinoma removed from the bridge of my nose. Prior to surgery, the doctor thought it wasn’t too bad. He knew it was aggressive, but I think he underestimated just how aggressive it was. The first time he cut a little more than he thought he needed too.  Practically the entire spot came back positive instead of just the inner circle. He then had to go a lot bigger and a lot deeper. I thought I was getting a third nostril! That test came back and showed there was still MORE cancer at the top, so he had cut higher yet again.
 
Then he decided it would be best to do a skin graft from in front of my ear instead of cut a flap from my cheek because he thought it would heal better in the long term and have less of a scar. He gave me 4 options too pick from. I’m not a dermatological surgeon so I told him to do what he thought was best. He wanted to do the graft so that’s what I got.
 
Because it was a graft, I now have a lot of stitches in TWO places on my face.  And because of the graft he had to do a 3rd set of stitches. After he stitched my ear back together and the graft in place on my nose, he created a bolster, which is a THICK piece of gauzed soaked in something. He then sewed that bandage to my face OVER the graft to keep it moist and in place. Then  he placed gauze and tape over both wounds.
 
I have to leave these bandages in place for 24 hours. Then I clean them and apply new bandages twice a day for a week.  Next Thursday I go back to have the stitches removed. I then keep it bandaged for another two weeks until I get it checked again. After that I am supposed to leave the bandages off and keep it clean until I go in for my 3 month check up. At that point he will see how smooth it is and how it looks. He will also do microdermabrasion at that time if I want it and/or need it to make the area smoother.
 
Yeah, it hurts. I took TWO hydrocodone as soon as I got home and then passed out on the couch for two hours. I still can hardly keep my eyes open. And those hydrocodone don’t seem to be doing just a whole heck of a lot! It STILL hurts.
 
So currently I am extremely tired and I feel like someone tried to tear my ear off and hit me in the nose with a baseball bat. At least I only feel it when I am awake. Or asleep…when it hurts and wakes me up.

Thanks to everyone who sent me messages via email, Facebook, and Twitter today. I appreciate it.

Last week I posted on Facebook and Twitter about the daughter of the former preacher where my wife and I used to attend church. She has been in the hospital for over a week now and is nowhere near being “out of the woods”.

She contracted the flu, and later went into sepsis, sending her to the hospital. Her heart, lungs and kidneys began shutting down. Over the next few days, her blood pressure dropped dangerously low and could only be maintained with several risky medications. She has also been on a breathing machine because she cannot breathe on her own. Then her hands and feet began to turn black due to lack of circulation. It has been a very up and down hour to hour situation.

If you would, take a few minutes to read some of the updates on her CarePages Site. You can avoid registration by using the login name Jenny@Bizaillion.com and password Friends. The family has been updating very regularly. The comments and posts show how many people are praying and keeping vigil for Jenny.

The following is a letter from one of the Shepherds at the Decatur Church of Christ where Jenny’s father is the preacher. If you are able to help, please do. Also repost this on Facebook and Twitter. I was without health insurance for over two years and it is by the grace of God that nothing serious happened to me. I cannot imagine the stress financial worry would add on top of the medical situation of a loved one.

The past several days the burden of this hospital bill has been weighing on my heart. David & Jenny have no medical insurance. When they first arrived, the hospital assured David not worry about how they would pay for her stay and that the quality of Jenny’s care would in no way be diminished due to this fact. We have been earnestly praying for a week for God to miraculously heal Jenny.

It is obvious that He has heard our leading by the fact that she is alive right now. Wouldn’t it be an incredible witness to this world for the 4,000 plus people who have been praying to each contribute $100? Let’s challenge ourselves, be diligent, and act quickly to ease this burden from the family. We can return this hospital’s generosity to the Bizaillion family by helping take care of this debt. The hospital didn’t hesitate to take care of her, let’s not hesitate in giving sacrificially. Please give something even if its not $100. Our goal is $500,000!

Here’s the simple process: Go to the Gregg Pearson Foundation at www.greggpearson.org, click on “donate”, during the donation process click on “special instructions” and type “Jenny Bizaillion”. 100% of what is donated will be given to David and Jenny. The GPF is a tax deductible 501c3 organization.

From Russ Hamilton, Shepherd at Decatur Church of Christ

There are also links below this (and every) post to make it easy to send it to others.

I am currently reading Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves in preparation for some things I will be doing at work. We are working to harness the power of social media to grow our business. In addition to the book, I have a meeting this week with Shama Kabani, CEO of The Marketing Zen Group, a social media marketing company. I’m looking forward to meeting with someone that really understand how to use social media (and how NOT to use it).

I saw a status on Facebook this morning that is a perfect example of a company thinking “outside the box” to create viral marketing for their new chocolate bar. Nestlé’s genius here is in the low cost to create a buzz and increase brand awareness and recognition. I also appreciate how they seem to avoid taking themselves to seriously and have a little fun with customers.

If you are still with me, here comes the payoff for you:

Call the Nestle Crunch Hotline at 1-800-295-0051. Listen to the brief message until it asks if you want to continue in English or Spanish. Don’t answer. Just wait quietly for about 10 seconds and you will smile. Promise! Keep going a…nd press 4. Listen to the options. Now this is a company that knows how to answer the phone.

The day after tomorrow will mark one year since I took my first DSLR out of the box. I was pretty good about shooting regularly for the first six months. Then, my favorite lens jammed and I put off having it repaired. And put it off. And put if off. I finally got it done just before Thanksgiving, but with the holidays and the cold, I really haven’t made many serious attempts to get out and doing any major shooting.

I wanted to take a class last fall, but with the jammed lens, I figured it would be pointless. But that has been remedied. Tonight I filled out the paperwork to register for my first photography class! And even better, I already know the instructor, Jorge Martinez.

There are two things that I am most looking forward to in this class. The first is going back over the technical aspects of photography with a professional photographer, rather than just reading it in a book and experimenting. The second is the assignments. While experimenting, I quickly realized that the best way to get in my head what I was reading in the book is to create specific assignments. Problem was, I never took the time to do it. Now those assignments will be provided.

So, year two with the camera starts with a little professional training! I am looking forward to really spending the time to get into my camera this year and really learn how to consistently create quality photos.

Photo by of shewatchedthesky

Christmas Eve I came down with some kind of illness. Christmas Day was pretty miserable. Since then I’ve gone from feeling better to worse to better and back and forth. So I finally broke down and went to the doctor today to get some meds. Got shot full of some steroids, antibiotics, and cough medicine.

While listening to my breathing I noticed the nurse practitioner staring at the spot on my nose. It’s a sore that started innocently enough as a scratch but hasn’t gone away in 6 months. After looking in my ear, he held the light up to it, asked how long I’d had it and says, “You need to have that removed. Its cancer. Basal cell.” Then he went on to describe the meds I was getting.

My first thought was, did he just gloss over that? Cancer? Like its an after thought? I had my suspicions (which is probably why I haven’t had it checked sooner), but his diagnosis was very casual. Now, I’m not all worked up about it. It’s a minor skin problem. I’ve had friends diagnosed with cancer that required invasive treatment and therapies. I’ve known people that have died from cancer.

Mine is nothing like that, and I don’t pretend to know what they feel. But for just that split second as the words passed his lips, I think I felt that tinge of emotion from everyone that hears “its cancer”. My dad has had two removed from his forehead and is fine. Mostly, I am not looking forward to the hassle of having it removed and knowing that it will follow me on insurance forms forever. That’s what really gets me!

And thanks to friends and coworkers that have told me I need to have it checked. As uncomfortable as that may be, it is appreciated. So if you know someone that has a strange looking spot, tell them to get it checked. You can’t have it looked at too soon!

If you manage a blog or other website, and have done so for more than a few months, you have surely come to understand how much work is involved. Generating new content, writing the posts, editing and uploading images, etc. This is even more cumbersome if you use a more advanced theme like the grid and magazine style themes that are becoming popular.

Eventually, burnout ensues, you feel like you have nothing to say, or you just get tired of the grind. Happens to everyone.  If you look at my archives by month (bottom right of the homepage) you can see that in 2008 I was posting up to 27 updates a month. By 2009 that dropped significantly and I practically took November and December off.

So now it’s 2010. I have a few things I would like to accomplish this year. However, I often fall into the trap of working all day and coming home with the desire to sit on the couch, grab the remote, and do nothing the rest of the night.  I am hoping I can make this year different.  There is always a laundry list of things I’d like to get done or spend more time on including several projects such as this site and my photography site.

One is trying to focus a little more on doing some writing. That will probably begin with this site.  Writing for this site is sometimes hard because I have never created a specific focus here. This means some times I will sit down to compose something and scrap it figuring its to serious (for lack of a better word) for what I normally post including all the goofy stuff I find online.  Finding the time and energy is also tough. So this year my first focus is going to be on making the time.  I will first have to sit down and have a discussion with my DVR about the shows we are and are not going to be recording! Secondly will be opening the to do list after its created each day instead of just moving things over the following day.

This is going to be an interesting year! I am planning to update more often, keep things going over at the photography site, and annoy everyone via Facebook and Twitter. So, subscribe to my RSS Feed, bookmark my photography site, and stalk me on Twitter!

One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport. We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really friendly. So I asked, ‘Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!’

This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, ‘The Law of the Garbage Truck.’ He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don’t take their garbage and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets. The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take over their day. Life’s too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so…

‘Love the people who treat you right. Pray for the ones who don’t.’ Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!

via email

Social media websites are abundant and targeted to audiences from the general public to every specific demographic under the sun. Two of the biggest kids on the block are Facebook and Twitter (because who over 13 still uses MySpace?). I have actively used both services for more than a year and both have changed during that time, either in form, or function. It took me quite sometime to figure out what the purpose of each service was and why I might want to participate. Then came the question of why I might keep both accounts.

Facebook is very obviously different from Twitter. Facebook has photo galleries, a place friends can leave messages, tons of applications, games, and interactions with other companies, services, groups, etc. You can use it to send emails to your friends when you may not have their email address (like that old friends from elementary school you just met up with again online). You can share just about any part of your life on Facebook. Obviously, its services are much more robust than those of Twitter. So, why have Twitter at all? And why use both services?

True, Twitter only lets you type 140 characters. That’s it. But it is that simplicity that makes Twitter work. Yes, you can “update your status” on both sites, but Twitter even differs from Facebook here. Any company or group can create a page on Facebook, you can become a “fan” of their page, and then get their updates. But many companies and groups don’t need all the options that Facebook allows. They don’t need a picture page or a wall or applications. All they want is a simple way to send out a short message or a link to something useful. This is where Twitter comes in.

Over time, I realized that, unconsciously, I was using Facebook and Twitter differently. Once I recognized this, I did it purposefully and really benefited from having both services. So what is the difference in how I use them? It’s simple: If I know you personally, we are / were friends face-to-face, or I have come to know you very well online, then I will add you as a friend on Facebook. You will not get added if I knew your brother at school or we went to church together 20 years ago but never had any interaction. For me, Facebook is about personal relationships. I have five or fewer friends on Facebook that I have not met in person.

Twitter is the opposite. While I follow my friends on Twitter, I follow far more people that I have never met and never will meet. I use Twitter to follow people (or companies) that I share similar interests with. @johndobbs and @Tykerman1 (now a celebrity) are people I met on Twitter and, after many chats, became friends with. They are both also friends on Facebook. Tyler is another Facebook friend that I met online through his website, Building Camelot. We are now also friends on Twitter, and I have recently become a guest author on his website.

Email used to be the fastest way to get news. Now I get 90% of my news from Twitter by following news outlets. I get coupons from some photography companies I like. (@BHPhotoVideo, @AdoramaPix, @PopPhoto). I get TONS of links to photography articles and tips from photography websites I follow on Twitter. I have seen some amazing photographs from links I posted by people such as @FotoZine , @NatGeoSociety, @AmazingPics, and @ReutersPictures.

I get weather (however reliable), local information, humor, and sports updates. I follow people on Twitter that I have something in common with, have met through my other Twitter followers, or found from any number of places. These are just people I don’t know personally. And just for fun, I even follow a couple of celebrities (Punky Brewster, Ashton Kutcher)

Much is possible within the scope of 140 characters. It’s not about letting people know when you are going to bed, eating soup, or eating cereal (unless you are @treymorgan). In fact, those are the exact kinds of updates that will PREVENT people from following you. I use Twitter as an information source and connecting with people that I might not know otherwise. Many of the people I follow are Christians and they use their Twitter updates to encourage one another and help keep each other focused on what’s important in this life.

Twitter can be what you make of it. There are many articles on the web about how to use Twitter and “guides for newbies”. To be honest, I’m not sure how everyone else uses Twitter. I have followed and unfollowed many people depending on what value I get from following them. Some rarely post anything, and some get dumped because they “overtweet”. But over the last year, I have found a good mix of followers that keep me informed and entertained.

If you don’t have a Twitter account, get one and try it out for awhile. Fridays are great for finding people to follow because of #FollowFriday. This is where people recommend others for you to follow. So get online, look up your friends, make some new ones, subscribe to some new sources, and maybe even you favorite web sites and bloggers, and see if you can’t find a niche of useful information.

Later this week I will work on what NOT to do on Twitter if you want to get the most out of it.

Wow, I love these things, but I never knew this is how they grow. For some reason, I always imagined a tree was involved. Hopefully, mine will be tasty, if I don’t kill it first! And if you are so inclined, you can learn how to grow one of your own.