We are visiting with some friends for New Years and tonight was my night to cook. Last weekend, I made a batch of these carnitas (and salsa verde) and stuck in the freezer before crisping it up today for a taco/burrito bar.
And oh my lord, was this stuff tasty (and surprisingly easy)
Wednesday, December 25, 2019 →
Started the day with homemade cinnamon rolls and ended it with a sous vide turkey porchetta.
Along the way, I made gravy from the trimmings and homemade chicken stock, helped my wife make a kickass chocolate roll cake, plus a whole bunch of sides.
Nothing left now but to finish this bottle of wine I had to open to make the cranberry sauce.
Merry Christmas.
Currently rewatching “The Force Awakens” post-“Rise of Skywalker”
A) Yeah. The creators knew the ending from the beginning. It’s all in there. B) Rise deepens a lot of this movie. C) I like TFA a _lot_more now.
🎥
And we finish with a personal best single solve for 4x4, his first solve in less than 2 minutes.
Three new personal bests, all crossing a threshold (below 30s or below 2m).
Not a bad day all around.
That said, Benjamin still ended up trimming almost 10 seconds off his personal best single solve for 3x3 and more than 10s of his personal best average.
He missed making the second round by a quarter of a second. 0.25s.
So. Close.
(He’s taking it all in stride)
Gosh darn it. They trimmed the number of competitors. Meaning you had to finish in the Top 69 to qualify for the second round (instead of Top 74).
Benjamin finished 70th.
No second round after all. Barring something weird.
The live scoreboard has switched to “Done” … and Benjamin’s name is still in green.
HE DID IT!
ON TO THE SECOND ROUND!
Update! Benjamin finished with personal bests for a single solve and average over five solves - and that average is sub-:30.
Which means I’m furiously refreshing the live results page to see if he qualified for the second round.
(I suspect he has)
If for some reason, you’d like to follow along with today’s competition, live results are here: live.worldcubeassociation.org/competiti…
Benjamin finished 56 of 95 in 2x2.
#NotLast
An interesting wrinkle to today’s competition: There are a lot of first time competitors, and the top 60% of 3x3 (the standard cube) make the second round.
Benjamin finished in the top half of his last competition.
pins and needles
With Benjamin at another cubing competition for the day. And this time, not only is it here in Indy, but he brought a buddy.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019 →
The Louis CK episodes of Parks & Rec take on a different sort of tone these days … but maybe that’s just me.
Closing the weekend with red wine and Samoas.
As you do …
I’ve made better steak and the failure mode of popovers is an eggy muffin, but this didn’t turn out bad at all.
Hawaii-Arizona 🏈 on the TV. Whole family’s asleep. First ever try at from-scratch biscuits in the oven (so I don’t have to worry about them in the morning/can take a mulligan if I need it).
This ain’t bad.
As much as I’m enjoying Week Zero of college 🏈 this evening (and especially the Arizona-Hawaii nightcap), I’m starting to get mega-stoked about kicking off Week One in person for UCLA at Cincinnati Thursday.
Today: Homemade red sauce and chicken parm.
Tomorrow: Grandma’s biscuits and sausage gravy, then steak for dinner.
So, I had been eyeing a Michigan-Michigan State doubleheader in my quest to (eventually) see a game at every FCS stadium. Turns out, same weekend, a Vanderbilt-Western Kentucky double looks way more doable (assuming Vandy gets the JP nooner spot)
Spent the long holiday weekend cleaning up our playroom/library and found this baby in an open Amazon box.
